March 13, 2017 night 

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Good evening! Mostly cloudy and 26 degrees in City of Albany. Calm wind.The skies will clear Thursday around 6 am. Getting to bed early tonight as with the weather tomorrow I expect a challenging commute. 

I went to Brooklyn Night at the Egg tonight after work today and ate lots of hot dogs, pretzels and beer. Good food but I made sure to drink water now that I’m home so I don’t wake up to a hang over. When I wake in the morning it will be a winter wonderland. 

It’s going to be a very interesting commute tomorrow but with boots and hats, bus time and some luck with the bus tomorrow I’ll make it work. I might get stuck at the office tomorrow but I’ll watch the conditions and try to leave before the last bus makes it out to the suburbs in the evening. Adults don’t get snow days unless of course your a non essential state worker, which I’m not. Tomorrow is a legislative session day  and the business of governing has to go on tomorrow. If I called out for the day, I’d have to use vacation time and honestly I’ll be fine. If I have to spend the night at work, won’t be the first time that has happened.  Don’t worry, I’ll live tweet my commute from hell. At least in the office I doubt we’ll lose power or heat. And they have wireless Internet there. 

Tonight will have a chance of snow, mainly after 3am. Areas of fog after 5am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low of 19 degrees at 6am. Six degrees below normal. Light east wind. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 40 degrees with periods of rain. The record low of -6 occurred back in 1948.

Waning Gibbous Moon tonight with 90% illuminated. The moon will . The Last Quarter Moon is next Monday. The Full “Pink” Moon is on Tuesday, April 11th. The sun will rise at 7:08 am with the first light at 6:40 am, which is one minute and 44 seconds earlier than yesterday. Tonight will have 12 hours and 6 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will snow. The snow could be heavy at times. Areas of blowing snow after 2pm. Areas of fog before 8am. Areas of dense freezing fog. High of 26 degrees at 3pm. 17 degrees below normal. Northeast wind 11 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 11 to 17 inches possible. A year ago, we had rain and a high of 47 degrees. No rain tomorrow. The record high of 75 was set in 1946. 12.9 inches of snow fell back in 1958. That record is going down tomorrow. 

Not a particularly nice weekend on tap. Saturday, a chance of snow before 4pm, then a chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 39. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Sunday, a chance of rain and snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 39. Chance of precipitation is 30%.Typical average high for the weekend is 45 degrees.

In four weeks on April 10 the sun will be setting at 7:32 pm, which is 32 minutes and 12 seconds later then tonight. In 2016 on that day, we had partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 47 and 23 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 56 and 35 degrees. The record high of 86 degrees was set back in 1922.

Looking ahead, Patriots Day is in 5 weeks, May Day is in 7 weeks and Memorial Day is in 11 weeks. I’m sure by Memorial Day Weekend it will stop snowing. Or so I hope, we got wet snow one year when I was camping at Moose River Plains. 

Moonlit Evening

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Yesterday evening, driving home under the moonlit streets along NY 32 in Onesquethaw.

BOMBOGENESIS

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BOMBOGENESIS

"Bombogenesis is cyclogenesis taken to the extreme. Bombogenesis is defined as a mid-latitude cyclone that drops in surface barometric pressure by 24 or more millibars in a 24-hour period. The height contours pack around the center of rotation and the number of height contours increases rapidly in the developing stages. The most common time of the year for bombogenesis to occur is in the cool season (October to March) when the temperature gradient is large between the high and mid-latitudes. Bombogenesis typically occurs between a cold continental air mass and warm ocean waters or between a cold polar air mass and a much warmer air mass. Many Nor-easters are the product of bombs. The contrast in temperature between polar air spilling over the eastern U.S. and the warm Gulf Stream waters sets the stage for cyclogenesis on the boundary between these air masses. Sometimes bombs will develop in the central U.S. between the boundary of polar air and more tropical air. Cyclogenesis that results in bombs requires strong divergence aloft. This divergence aloft is supplied by a strong jet streak diving into the trough axis aloft from the developing low pressure. The momentum of the jet streak and the dynamics in the left front quadrant of the jet streak cause a rapid evacuation of mass above the region of cyclogenesis."

NWS Nor’easter Information

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NWS Nor’easter Information

"A Nor’easter is a storm along the East Coast of North America, so called because the winds over the coastal area are typically from the northeast. These storms may occur at any time of year but are most frequent and most violent between September and April. Some well know Nor’easters include the notorious Blizzard of 1888, the “Ash Wednesday” storm of March 1962, the New England Blizzard of February 1978, the March 1993 “Superstorm” and the recent Boston snowstorms of January and February 2015. Past Nor’easters have been responsible for billions of dollars in damage, severe economic, transportation and human disruption, and in some cases, disastrous coastal flooding. Damage from the worst storms can exceed a billion dollars."

"Nor’easters usually develop in the latitudes between Georgia and New Jersey, within 100 miles east or west of the East Coast. These storms progress generally northeastward and typically attain maximum intensity near New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. They nearly always bring precipitation in the form of heavy rain or snow, as well as winds of gale force, rough seas, and, occasionally, coastal flooding to the affected regions. The heavily populated region between Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston, the “I-95 Corridor,” is especially impacted by Nor’easters."

"The U.S. East Coast provides an ideal breeding ground for Nor’easters. During winter, the polar jet stream transports cold Arctic air southward across the plains of Canada and the United States, then eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean where warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic tries to move northward. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream help keep the coastal waters relatively mild during the winter, which in turn helps warm the cold winter air over the water. This difference in temperature between the warm air over the water and cold Arctic air over the land is the fuel that feeds Nor’easters."

Record Breaking Snowfall

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Will tomorrow be a record breaking snow fall? The record snowfall for March 14 was 12.9 inches set during the Winter 1958.

The National Weather Service is predicting new snow accumulation of 7 to 11 inches during the day, with an additional 3 to 7 inches during the night in Albany.

That means on Tuesday, we may get somewhere between 10 to 18 inches of snow. We just need 13 inches of snow fall to break that 1958. And with the storm strengthening, that seems like a definite possibility.

How America Lost Faith in Expertise

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How America Lost Faith in Expertise

"I fear we are moving beyond a natural skepticism regarding expert claims to the death of the ideal of expertise itself: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, teachers and students, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those with achievement in an area and those with none. By the death of expertise, I do not mean the death of actual expert abilities, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors and lawyers and engineers and other specialists. And most sane people go straight to them if they break a bone or get arrested or need to build a bridge. But that represents a kind of reliance on experts as technicians, the use of established knowledge as an off-the-shelf convenience as desired. “Stitch this cut in my leg, but don’t lecture me about my diet.” (More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight.) “Help me beat this tax problem, but don’t remind me that I should have a will.” (Roughly half of Americans with children haven’t written one.) “Keep my country safe, but don’t confuse me with details about national security tradeoffs.” (Most U.S. citizens have no clue what the government spends on the military or what its policies are on most security matters.)"