and the rains came....

[strollingbones]

* AT 313 AM EST...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED
A BAND OF HEAVY RAIN SHOWERS MOVING NORTHEAST AT 45 MPH ACROSS
THE NORTHERN MOUNTAINS AND FOOTHILLS OF NORTH CAROLINA. THESE
SHOWERS WERE PRODUCING RAINFALL AT RATES AROUND ONE INCH PER
HOUR...AND THIS HEAVY RAIN WILL AFFECT LOCATIONS THAT HAVE
ALREADY RECEIVED 1 TO 3 INCHES OF RAIN IN THE PAST 24 HOURS.
* MANY STREAMS AND CREEKS ACROSS THE REGION WILL RISE TO
BANKFULL...AND A FEW COULD FLOOD LOW LYING AREAS. DEEP
PONDING OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN LOW SPOTS IN ROADWAYS.
RUNOFF FROM THIS STORM WILL CAUSE RAPID RISES ALONG CREEKS AND
STREAMS...ROADS AND ROADSIDE CULVERTS. THE HEAVY RAINS COULD ALSO
TRIGGER ROCK AND MUDSLIDES IN STEEP TERRAIN. BE ESPECIALLY CAUTIOUS
AT NIGHT WHEN IT IS HARDER TO RECOGNIZE THE DANGERS OF FLOODS. BE
PREPARED TO MOVE UP TO HIGHER GROUND SHOULD FLOODING DEVELOP. DO NOT
STAY IN AREAS SUBJECT TO FLOODING WHEN WATER BEGINS RISING...AND DO
NOT ATTEMPT TO DRIVE THROUGH FLOODED ROADWAYS.


it has been raining here for nearly 24 hours or more....the rain is just starting to cause torrents in the yard. during the 2004 flood you could hear the boulders in the creek moving and hitting each other..that is a sound i will never forget...people still underestimate the power of water.

 

[dilloduck]

* AT 313 AM EST...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED
A BAND OF HEAVY RAIN SHOWERS MOVING NORTHEAST AT 45 MPH ACROSS
THE NORTHERN MOUNTAINS AND FOOTHILLS OF NORTH CAROLINA. THESE
SHOWERS WERE PRODUCING RAINFALL AT RATES AROUND ONE INCH PER
HOUR...AND THIS HEAVY RAIN WILL AFFECT LOCATIONS THAT HAVE
ALREADY RECEIVED 1 TO 3 INCHES OF RAIN IN THE PAST 24 HOURS.
* MANY STREAMS AND CREEKS ACROSS THE REGION WILL RISE TO
BANKFULL...AND A FEW COULD FLOOD LOW LYING AREAS. DEEP
PONDING OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN LOW SPOTS IN ROADWAYS.
RUNOFF FROM THIS STORM WILL CAUSE RAPID RISES ALONG CREEKS AND
STREAMS...ROADS AND ROADSIDE CULVERTS. THE HEAVY RAINS COULD ALSO
TRIGGER ROCK AND MUDSLIDES IN STEEP TERRAIN. BE ESPECIALLY CAUTIOUS
AT NIGHT WHEN IT IS HARDER TO RECOGNIZE THE DANGERS OF FLOODS. BE
PREPARED TO MOVE UP TO HIGHER GROUND SHOULD FLOODING DEVELOP. DO NOT
STAY IN AREAS SUBJECT TO FLOODING WHEN WATER BEGINS RISING...AND DO
NOT ATTEMPT TO DRIVE THROUGH FLOODED ROADWAYS.


it has been raining here for nearly 24 hours or more....the rain is just starting to cause torrents in the yard. during the 2004 flood you could hear the boulders in the creek moving and hitting each other..that is a sound i will never forget...people still underestimate the power of water.

Are you taking weather lessons from David ?

True about flooding tho---people act like idiots in dangerous water conditions.
A rushing river or flooded road ain't a bath tub folks.

 

[DavidS]

We had freezing drizzle and light rain last night. Made me think twice about trekking out. The sidewalks were glazed over with a very thin layer of ice. For the first time in almost 20 years, NYC was under a freezing rain advisory. Before 1993, the last time NYC had freezing rain was in the '70s. I've never seen freezing rain before yesterday... and I sure as hell hope I don't see it again. Can't imagine what those people up in NE went through a few weeks back!

 

[editec]

Absolutely the worst storm I ever lived through was the ice storm in Maine and Canada about 8 years back or so.

Ice storms are worse, much worse than snow storms.

Five feet of snow with 30' drifts? No problem

Three inches of rcok hard ice coating every surface?

Total disaster.

That ice storm came to us in the form of a freezing fog, BTW.

Why is that important?

Because that means that the ice not only covered the tops of things, but the sides and bottoms of everything, too.

Global weirding at its best.

 

[catzmeow]

The worst one here was this year - Tropical Storm Fay, who dumped 24+ inches of rain on my neighborhood in 24 hours. The flooding was quite severe.

 

[RodISHI]

We have a thick layer of ice everyhwere here from the rain atop the snow and freezing rain on top of those rains on top of the snows in the past month. Our driveway is a three inch ice slab at this point.

 

[DavidS]

The worst one here was this year - Tropical Storm Fay, who dumped 24+ inches of rain on my neighborhood in 24 hours. The flooding was quite severe.

I was shocked when the name Fay wasn't retired. That storm made no less than 6 landfalls and just crawled. No computer model was able to track that storm correctly because it was a freak storm. That is my meteorological definition of it - a FREAK storm. NO storm has ever done what Fay did. It hit Florida at exactly the right time, the right place and wasn't strong enough to move itself and had to be moved by the steering winds. There were several high pressure systems around the storm blocking it from going anywhere. Goes to show you how many variables are in meteorology itself. The setup for this storm has not happened anytime in recorded history, which is over 100 years for meteorology. It wasn't a strong storm by any means, it just couldn't move anywhere and was literally parked over Florida for a week. Thank God it wasn't a big storm.

 

[catzmeow]

I was shocked when the name Fay wasn't retired. That storm made no less than 6 landfalls and just crawled. No computer model was able to track that storm correctly because it was a freak storm. That is my meteorological definition of it - a FREAK storm. NO storm has ever done what Fay did. It hit Florida at exactly the right time, the right place and wasn't strong enough to move itself and had to be moved by the steering winds. There were several high pressure systems around the storm blocking it from going anywhere. Goes to show you how many variables are in meteorology itself. The setup for this storm has not happened anytime in recorded history, which is over 100 years for meteorology. It wasn't a strong storm by any means, it just couldn't move anywhere and was literally parked over Florida for a week. Thank God it wasn't a big storm.

yeah, we hit our 100 year flood records here.

 

[editec]

I would love to see somebody do a study of the trend of "record breaking weather events"

I suspect what we'd be seeing is a dramtic increase in record breaking weather events happening the world over.

Now admittedly, we have only a brief amount of records, but they do go back through about five generations, so if nothing else, they'll tell us that what we've come to expect is not what we should continue counting on.

 

[catzmeow]

I would love to see somebody do a study of the trend of "record breaking weather events"

I suspect what we'd be seeing is a dramtic increase in record breaking weather events happening the world over.

Now admittedly, we have only a brief amount of records, but they do go back through about five generations, so if nothing else, they'll tell us that what we've come to expect is not what we should continue counting on.

Well, not to be disarmingly anti-alarmist, but there is a reason they are called the "hundred year flood plains."

 

[strollingbones]

Well, not to be disarmingly anti-alarmist, but there is a reason they are called the "hundred year flood plains."

o the 100 year floods...in the last 15 years we have had...3 of them....each one hitting a different area of the mountians...the worse being the flood in roan mtn tn....yes hell we count their redneck asses...people died....the snow melt and rains..caused a trailor to give and wash down the river till it hit a concrete bridge..the trailor damned up the valley....no one has any clue it would happen that fast...on the other side of the mtn...roaring creek nc...lost mostly property....shut the whole creek down...bridges were lost going down the toe river...

then the one that all over....it was all over boone and this area...it was before the roan flood...people being rescued by helicopter....i dont think anyone lost their life that flood...just flooded the whole area...

then the last one...which was islolated to the area i live in...washed out a concrete state bridge....washed away a house that had been there for as long as anyone could remember and took the metal walk bridge out...it was about 20 to 25 ft over the river...we were lucky when light came...everyone got out on quads and checked on the older folks etc....for months we had to go on a 25 mile detour to get to work or a village 5 miles from us...once the bridge was closed....it was interesting to see people dealing with the closure...riding quads to one side...crossing on foot to the other where they had parked cars....

100 yr floods my ass

 

[strollingbones]

both the creek and river are raging but it does seem to be holding at a safe level....we are expecting this to turn to snow and i hit a bit of sleet on my way home...

but on the bright side...western nc has needed the rain....we have been in a drought for a couple of years....so we welcome what wont hurt us too much

 

[dilloduck]

o the 100 year floods...in the last 15 years we have had...3 of them....each one hitting a different area of the mountians...the worse being the flood in roan mtn tn....yes hell we count their redneck asses...people died....the snow melt and rains..caused a trailor to give and wash down the river till it hit a concrete bridge..the trailor damned up the valley....no one has any clue it would happen that fast...on the other side of the mtn...roaring creek nc...lost mostly property....shut the whole creek down...bridges were lost going down the toe river...

then the one that all over....it was all over boone and this area...it was before the roan flood...people being rescued by helicopter....i dont think anyone lost their life that flood...just flooded the whole area...

then the last one...which was islolated to the area i live in...washed out a concrete state bridge....washed away a house that had been there for as long as anyone could remember and took the metal walk bridge out...it was about 20 to 25 ft over the river...we were lucky when light came...everyone got out on quads and checked on the older folks etc....for months we had to go on a 25 mile detour to get to work or a village 5 miles from us...once the bridge was closed....it was interesting to see people dealing with the closure...riding quads to one side...crossing on foot to the other where they had parked cars....

100 yr floods my ass

You got nailed by flash flooding---far more frequent---they flood a smaller area but in a more devastating fashion.

 

[DavidS]

I would love to see somebody do a study of the trend of "record breaking weather events"

I suspect what we'd be seeing is a dramtic increase in record breaking weather events happening the world over.

Now admittedly, we have only a brief amount of records, but they do go back through about five generations, so if nothing else, they'll tell us that what we've come to expect is not what we should continue counting on.

There are two types of records:

Old records
Accurate records

It's amazing how we've had two floods of the century in the past 20 years in the midwest during strong La Nina events, isn't it?

If you watch Al Gore's bs movie, you'll see him claiming all of these events are "record breaking events" such as "This is the strongest hurricane ever recorded!" Well, yeah, and that's because our instrumentation is a hell of a lot more accurate then it used to be, and because we're actually paying attention now.

How many sattelites did we have trained on the Atlantic Ocean during the late 1800s to check out the number of hurricanes? So when Al Gore says the number of hurricanes that are hitting us at end of the 20th century are x% more frequent than they were at the end of the previous century... he's right! We had no idea how many hurricanes didn't hit the US, or how many tropical storms were just considered to be bad storms. Doppler radar wasn't even that advanced until the late 1980s, early 1990s.. and they're still improving it.

There are more people living in the midwest these days, so more people + more computers to track every single cloud on the planet = more reports of tornadoes.

Do you know how tornadoes are classified as an F0 or F5?

By the amount of damage it does to structures.

Do you know how many tornadoes actually hit structures? Less than 30%! Tornadoes can form over water (not water spouts, those are completely different weather phenomena), they can form over barren land and you could have a hudge wedge tornado with winds in excess of 300 mph and it not being recorded because it didn't hit a farm.

The insurance people who survey the damage who work with the NWS to determine the type of tornado it was, underplay the amount of damage so they don't have to write bigger checks. So a tornado that was really an F5, is officially recorded as an F3 to make the insurance companies less liable. The reason for this is, unlike hurricanes, there is no way to drop something in the center of a tornado and check out its wind speeds. In fact, a tornado will do the most amount of damage when it's roping up, so it could be a mile wide wedge tornado and still only be an f2. But you don't hear about this from Al Gore, because like the insurance companies, he has a purpose for doing what he's doing.

Here's my take on it:

When we have a strong La Nina like we've had for the past year and global temperatures everywhere are much warmer above average, then I'll be into global warming. 2008 was one of the coldest years on record. Why? Because of La Nina.

We should see another return of it this year. After that, who knows? We haven't had an El Nino (warm) since 2005, the warmest year on record. Maybe we'll finally get a break and be neutral for a year - that would be a boring weather pattern to follow. Average temperatures, average precip. no big storms.

Look at the 1920s. Historically one of the coldest decades on record. We have wild swings of strong La Ninas and weak El Ninos that decade.

In the 1990s, we had two strong El Ninos and barely had any La Ninas. What happened? One of the warmest decades on record.

This decade has been wild. We've had a modeate El Nino and a strong El Nino along with a strong La Nina and re-surging La Nina. It's no wonder you've so many severe weather reports as of late. All of this severely warm and severely cold air are clashing against each other. The stronger the warm or the stronger the cold air, the bigger storms you're gonna get.

Now, we still don't know, for certain, what the hell causes a tornado to form or what makes a tornado really big or really small. What we do know is that if a La Nina keeps growing during 2009, we will have a very weak hurricane season and a very strong severe weather season. You never see the two together... you never see a strong severe weather season AND a strong hurricane season.

Why?

Because severe weather is more affected by cold air.. we're eventually going to get warmer in March when air starts pouring in from the Gulf due to the tilt of the Earth. If that warm air collides against semi-warm air, then you won't have a strong t-storm/tornado season. But what that does is also pre-heat the Atlantic Ocean, which is fuel for hurricanes and tropical storms. But if you have that warm air colliding against cold air, then you have a really nasty severe weather season. But the Atlantic is more difficult to heat and to get hurricanes going.

If you live along the coast, what happens in Iowa during April and May matter very much to you. If they're getting hammered, the chances are reduced of a major hurricane hitting you. If they're barely getting any kind of a bad spring, then you better stock up on supplies.

In essence: Don't trust any weather record before the 1950s temperature wise and before the 1970s severe weather wise.

 

[KittenKoder]

Here we are finally seeing the same weather I grew up in. The last 15 years it's been drier and drier, but now we are almost back to what I remember of Seattle, snow almost every year and rain, rain, and more rain. Woot! Well, not buckets, mostly just sprinkle and mist.

 

[alan1]

o the 100 year floods...in the last 15 years we have had...3 of them....each one hitting a different area of the mountians...the worse being the flood in roan mtn tn....yes hell we count their redneck asses...people died....the snow melt and rains..caused a trailor to give and wash down the river till it hit a concrete bridge..the trailor damned up the valley....no one has any clue it would happen that fast...on the other side of the mtn...roaring creek nc...lost mostly property....shut the whole creek down...bridges were lost going down the toe river...

then the one that all over....it was all over boone and this area...it was before the roan flood...people being rescued by helicopter....i dont think anyone lost their life that flood...just flooded the whole area...

then the last one...which was islolated to the area i live in...washed out a concrete state bridge....washed away a house that had been there for as long as anyone could remember and took the metal walk bridge out...it was about 20 to 25 ft over the river...we were lucky when light came...everyone got out on quads and checked on the older folks etc....for months we had to go on a 25 mile detour to get to work or a village 5 miles from us...once the bridge was closed....it was interesting to see people dealing with the closure...riding quads to one side...crossing on foot to the other where they had parked cars....

100 yr floods my ass

A few years back when the hurricanes come through NC and went through the mountains, it changed a lot of the rivers. Fishing in the Linville river is completely different than it was 5+ years ago, all that water changed the lay of the river.