Weather Discussion..Halloween
Big Change
TREAT
Frontal Passage, “Windstorm”,
Convergence Zone, Pass
Snowstorm, and Arctic Front
Snoqualmie Pass Snowstorm of
October 29, 2006
• By Associated Press
• SEATTLE - Interstate 90 was closed for hours Sunday at Snoqualmie
Pass after heavy snow and hail iced the roads, causing a series of
collisions.
• It was the first heavy snow of the season, and the first snow-related
road closure this fall, the state Department of Transportation
reported.
• The Washington State Patrol ordered the closure in both directions at
3:30 p.m. Transportation Department spokeswoman Lauren
Chudecke said more than a dozen cars were stranded sideways, in
the ditch or on the median.
At 8 p.m. - after agency trucks were dispatched from the Seattle area
carrying chemicals to melt roadway ice - Chudecke reported one lane
open in each direction.
By 8:45 p.m., all lanes were open in both directions, she said, but
motorists were advised to expect delays due to congestion. Traction
tires were advised and oversized vehicles were prohibited.
Snoqualmie Pass at 4 PM on Sunday, Oct 29
Snow Removal On Sunday
East Coast Weekend Blow
A brief but fierce storm with wind gusts clocked at more than 50 miles per hour swept through New York, New Jersey and
Connecticut yesterday, blacking out, at least temporarily, hundreds of thousands of people.
The storm also hobbled passenger service on parts of the Long Island Rail Road and delayed flights by as much as two and a
half hours.
Still, unlike the prolonged aftermath caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto in September and the heat wave in
July, utilities reported rapid restoration of service under quickly clearing skies.
The storm cut a huge circular swath of some 400 miles, meteorologists said. “It was not a northeaster,” which tends to track
the East Coast, said Fred Gadomski, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University. “It was more of a southeaster, which
began in the interior, in Tennessee. But it was a big sprawling storm that is going to hang around southeastern Canada.”
At Kennedy International Airport, wind speeds were clocked at 54 m.p.h. at 9:30 a.m. and at 53 m.p.h. at Groton, Conn. The
ferocious wind swept Connecticut throughout the night and morning, whipping up whitecaps on New Haven Harbor, and
leaving the Connecticut River brown and swollen.
In some towns, the wind stripped away the brightest of the fall foliage, leaving piles of sodden red and orange leaves on roads
and in backyards.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the biggest airports in the region, reported widespread air
traffic delays. Aircraft headed into La Guardia Airport, for example, were delayed an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes in the
early afternoon, and the airport was still reporting wind delays in the evening.
Long Island, where winds knocked down hundreds of trees and power lines, was the worst hit in the area.
At the storm’s peak, around noon, the Long Island Power Authority reported nearly 80,000 customers, perhaps a quarter of a
million people, without power. But by 5:30 p.m., it was reporting that the number had dropped to about 15,000 customers.
Richard M. Kessel, LIPA’s chairman, said at a news conference yesterday that some customers were impatient. “Someone
called this morning and said there was nobody working in their neighborhood,” Mr. Kessel said, “but they called back and
said the lights came on 10 minutes later. That means someone was there working.”
Mr. Kessel said 650 LIPA employees were working 16-hour shifts to replace poles, repair power lines and remove trees from
LIPA facilities. On the Long Island Rail Road, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of passengers were inconvenienced because of
the storm.
Sam Zembuto, a railroad spokesman, said a tree fell on the tracks in Queens at the height of the storm around 10 a.m. and then
a LIPA power line was knocked down in Great Neck, damaging a signal system.
The Port Washington line experienced cancellations and delays of two hours or more, he said. Buses were used to take
passengers at Great Neck and stations east of there to Bayside, Queens. “But it’s taking time to repair everything because of
damage to the signal system,” Mr. Zembuto said.
Consolidated Edison reported fewer than 400 customers without power at some point yesterday in New York City, and 2,500
customers in Westchester County.
In Connecticut, Connecticut Light and Power reported nearly 18,000 customers without power at noon, but said the number
had dropped to 1,438 by 11:05 p.m.
Similarly, Public Service Enterprise Group in New Jersey reported that several thousand customers were out of power at the
ENSO Update
Recent Evolution of Equatorial
Pacific SST Departures
Time
Longitude
Niño Indices: Recent Evolution
The latest weekly SST anomalies are
positive (between +1.0C and +1.4C) in
all of the Niño regions.
Average SST Departures in the
Tropical Pacific: Last 4 Weeks
Equatorial ocean surface temperatures were greater than 0.5ºC above average across
the equatorial Pacific between 165ºE and the South American coast. Departures
exceeded +1ºC between 170ºE and 145ºW, and between 80ºW and 125ºW.
1-28 October 2006
Evolution of SST Departure
Patterns in the Last 4 Weeks
Niño 3.4 evolution – Comparison
for El Niño episodes
Recent Niño 3.4 values,
derived from ERSST.v2,
lie in the lower half of
the distribution of
historical El Niño
episodes since 1950.
Most recent Niño 3.4 values (heavy black line)
compared to values for 14 historical El Niño
episodes. On the time axis year 0001 is the first year
of a warm episode.
Pacific Niño 3.4 SST Outlook
•
Most statistical and coupled model forecasts indicate weak or
moderate El Niño conditions through April-June 2007.
Figure provided by the
International Research
Institute (IRI) for
Climate and Society
(updated 18 October
2006).