Friday, July 10, 2009

June Was A Snoozefest... Will It Get Better?

It has been awhile since I posted... mainly due to working two jobs and figuring out the next step in my life... but who cares, time for some weather!

It certainly took awhile for June to get crankin' with the severe weather in NY. The first day was a clustered hail event from June 9th:

06/09/09:



It took another week to get severe weather to strike NY. Once again, it was a hailer, and it struck a good portion of the eastern half of the state. The lack of wind reports in June was mostly caused by having weak shear, which couldn't organize severe storms into a line. Albany got some nice hail this day, but of course I was out of town:

06/15/09:



And that's all we saw for the first 24 days of June.

Severe weather started to return to a regular summer schedule once the last week of June hit. A low pressure system came through with some decent forcing to go along with daytime heating, giving us two exciting days of severe weather:

06/25/09:


06/26/09:



Daytime heating and a weak cut-off gave us a couple of bouts of severe weather a week later, with reports coming in from eastern NY on June 30th and July 1st:

06/30/09:


07/01/09:



Up to this point, all of the storms in June that gave us severe weather were either cut-offs, or become cut-offs. A similar situation came up on July 7th, but moved out of the northeast a bit quicker than the previous storms:

07/07/09:



It looks like this trough which has been keeping us cool this summer will stick around for a bit longer. I'm hoping that it moves out before I move to NC in a month, but it does not look promising at this time.

Tomorrow is looking really good for severe weather for NY, especially western and central portions of the state. I believe the SPC has underestimated the eastward extent of the severe weather (which I have been saying for a couple of days now), and that eastern NY will get a good showing from this low pressure system as it slides into the region in the late afternoon and evening hours.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

New York State Goes Green on 7 July 2009

Tuesday afternoon/night was an active one meteorologically speaking. Around 2:30PM (when I was getting ready to end my shift at work) intense rain came through the area. Flash Flood Warnings and Severe Thunderstorm Watches covered my area. I even saw very small hail (not large enough though to warrant snapping a cell phone picture). Lightning and thunder also made a very welcome visit to the area.

The appended images show the Storm Prediction Center's forecast and verification (storm reports) for the period around 7 July 2009.











Verification:




The attached base reflectivity images for 0300 - O500 UTC 8 July 2009 show very nice severe cells moving southeastward from New Jersey into New York Metro area.







When I came to work at KTEB yesterday morning, Chris and I immediately began discussing the situation to see if the damage reported was tornadic or straight-line wind related. Speaking with Dan (who was at the other office) we were discussing how it must have been straight-line wind, because the SRM and model soundings were crap.

Here is the Public Information Statement from NOAA NWS OKX:

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=PNS&issuedby=OKX

Well I should get back to work...and by that I mean looking at METARs and GFS loops until we get a phone call or have to record a radio forecast.