Category: Weather

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Meanwhile, on Lake Michigan

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That’s today’s lurid National Weather Service map for the Chicago forecast region. Orange means “blizzard warning.” Although Chicago weather cams don’t show anything beyond a typical dreary February day so far, forecasters say the storm is still on track to hit the area this afternoon.

Purple on Lake Michigan means “storm warning.” Here are a couple of details from the statement the Weather Service issued this morning:

* EXPECT SUSTAINED STORM FORCE WINDS OR FREQUENT STORM FORCE GUSTS FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO 9 AM CST WEDNESDAY.

* DURING THE STORM WARNING…THE STRONGEST WINDS WILL BE UP TO 50 KT FROM THE NORTHEAST. THE HIGHEST SIGNIFICANT WAVES WILL BE UP TO 18 FT. THERE WILL BE OCCASIONAL WAVES UP TO 27 FT.

Eighteen-foot waves? Twenty-seven-foot waves? Wow. Those are big ones on the ocean. Hard to imagine the mostly placid lake in that condition (though I’ve seen waves big enough to break onto Lake Shore Drive just north of downtown before). Part of the alert the forecasters put out today is a “heavy freezing spray warning.” Here’s what that means:

A HEAVY FREEZING SPRAY WARNING MEANS HEAVY FREEZING SPRAY IS EXPECTED TO RAPIDLY ACCUMULATE ON VESSELS. THESE CONDITIONS CAN BE EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS TO NAVIGATION. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT MARINERS NOT TRAINED TO OPERATE IN THESE CONDITIONS OR VESSELS NOT PROPERLY EQUIPPED TO DO SO…REMAIN IN PORT OR AVOID THE WARNING AREA.

Since the warning area is the entire lake, probably best to keep your kayaks and ore carriers tied up today.

Update: My friend Pete pointed me to the Chicago Area Forecast Discussion from earlier today that adds this about conditions along the western shoreline of Lake Michigan:

FINALLY…HAVE UPGRADED TO A LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING FOR ILLINOIS LAKE SHORe COUNTIES. INTENSE NORTHEAST WINDS WILL RESULT IN WAVES BUILDING TO 14-18 FT WITH OCCASIONAL WAVES UP TO 25FT. THIS VERY LARGE WAVES ARE EXPECTED TO BATTER/BEAT/SHRED ANY PANCAKE ICE THAT IS ALONG THE SHORE AND ALLOW THE VERY LARGE WAVES TO RESULT IN COASTAL FLOODING. LAKE WATER LEVELS ARE RUNNING 6-12 INCHES BELOW AVERAGE…HOWEVER WITH 15FT+ WAVES THIS SHOULD BE OF LITTLE CONSEQUENCE. IN ADDITION TO COASTAL FLOODING …THE INTENSE WINDS WILL RESULT IN HEAVY FREEZING SPRAY RIGHT NEAR THE LAKE COATING EVERYTHING WITH A LAYER OF ICE.

Update 2: Here’s a nice piece of forecast geekery–a 30-second animation from the Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System–of the wind and wave forecast for Lake Michigan for the next five days. If you go by this, maximum wave heights will be generated tomorrow morning and will be about 20 feet in the southwest portion of the lake and between 15 and 20 along the southwestern shoreline.

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Wind and Snow Report

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[Sorry–the map above is not clickable: Here are the links to the best storm-related weather sites for Chicago:
Chicago Weather Center: Detailed, newsy blog with good historical statistics from WGN (Chicago Channel 9) weather staff.
National Weather Service, Chicago: Everything you need to know.]

I’m heading back west tomorrow afternoon, American Airlines willing, and I chanced to look at the National Weather Service forecast page for the Chicago region. That big green area, which covers a good chunk of the northeastern corner of Illinois, is for a blizzard watch. If a storm moving across the Plains tracks as modeled, snow will start tomorrow afternoon, ease up a bit, then come in with a vengeance Tuesday into Wednesday. An excerpt from the NWS watch:

WINDS WILL ... RAMP UP WITH SUSTAINED WINDS TUESDAY EVENING BETWEEN
25 AND 35 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 40 MPH POSSIBLE. NORTHEAST WINDS
THEN CONTINUE TO STRENGTHEN TUESDAY NIGHT INTO EARLY MORNING
WEDNESDAY WITH GUSTS UP TO 45 MPH POSSIBLE. THIS...IN COMBINATION
WITH THE FALLING SNOW...MAY CREATE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. ... COMBINED SNOW TOTALS FROM THE MONDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH WEDNESDAY
MAY EXCEED A FOOT AND A HALF ACROSS MUCH OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS AND
FAR NORTHWEST INDIANA. SNOWFALL RATES UP TO 3 INCHES PER HOUR
WILL BE PROBABLE AT THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM TUESDAY NIGHT.

One sometimes has occasion to wonder what it would be like to deal with this climate again (after the storm blows through, a pretty good cold snap if forecast, with highs in the single digits later in the week). As a kid, news like this would prompt anticipation, excitement, exhilaration–even beyond the prospect of getting a day off of school. Now, part of me would love to see the show; but I’m thinking more of snow blowing sideways and wondering how quickly the airport will become a mess once it starts coming down tomorrow afternoon.

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Snow, and Snow

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I haven’t had to live through a Chicago-type winter in ages. So sights like the alley behind my sister Ann’s house on the North Side of Chicago have a certain appeal: The light on the snow, the tire tracks. Very atmospheric. Of course, I’ll be back in the warm zone in a few days. The atmosphere might be lost on those stay behind, judging by this comment from Ann: “By this point, every time I see it snow, I go, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ “

Of course, there’s snow, and then there’s snow. Below is a shot from my brother John, in Brooklyn, where they had their second foot-plus snowfall in a month yesterday. Atmospheric in a whole different way.

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Cross-Country

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The Missouri River just south of Chamberlain, South Dakota (about 150 miles west of Sioux Falls).

In some part of my mind, I pleasurably anticipate travel. But I don’t like planning for an airline trip or packing for it. I don’t enjoy dealing with the virtual and physical gauntlet air travel forces us to run. I don’t relish facing the group unhappiness that greets you at the gate and accompanies you as long as you’re in the isolated world of your flight. No, I’m not enamored of any of that.

But from the moment the plane leaves the ground to the moment it touches down, it’s hours of visual poetry (assuming of course I have the window seat I want).

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The approach to O’Hare, just west of the airport.

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Flash and Report

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News of the evening: Our big Bay Area thunderstorm, which actually left a signature on the National Weather Service radar just before 6 p.m.–those orange and reddish areas, which were moving from southwest to northeast. We had lots of rumbling and banging here with a couple of close lightning strikes–within about half a mile judging by the short delay between flash and report. Later on, the area of turbulent weather, which dumped a half-inch or more of rain in less than an hour and led to urban flood advisories, moved off to the south and east. Now, we’ve got big banks of clouds moving in off the ocean, occasional showers, and occasional clear breaks that reveal a full moon (OK–technically, the moon’s at opposition and really full tomorrow at 9:29 a.m. I can’t tell the difference.)

[Update, 1:35 am. Sunday: Wow. Now hail is pounding down, and we got one big flash and a long, loud roll of thunder. The Dog is growling and barking and threatening to tear the ass off the weather.]]

[Update: 11:15 a.m. Sunday: Beautiful morning after the storm. A couple blocks south of here, PG&E is working on a transformer struck by lightning last night–apparently the flash I saw before 6 p.m. The utility had four or five trucks on the scene and maybe half a dozen guys working. A nearby resident was out complaining that the power had been out since the lightning strike and asking for reasssurances that PG&E was going to get the lights back on quickly. “Every time there’s a storm, the power goes out right here,” he said.]

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Berkeley: The Weather Record

Mid-November, and the temperature stayed above 70 tonight–“tonight” meaning Sunday night though it’s past midnight now–until well past dark. The forecasts say there are high winds from the north and east just above the tops of our mountains and ridges, and that’s one thing keeping things warm. Walking through the neighborhood this evening, you keep encountering distinct pockets of summery warm air.

Checking the local weather records maintained by the Western Regional Climate Center, I see Berkeley’s record high for November 14 listed as 74, set in 2008. In fact, that 2008 record was the first day in a three-day string of records. On the 15th and 16th two years ago, Berkeley’s highs were 81 and 82 degrees. That 74 record for November 14 was, until today, the lowest high temperature record for the month up to November 21 (the record for that date: 74, set in 1919).

The November 14 record was rewritten today. To what, I’m not precisely sure, because I’m not precisely sure which Berkeley weather station is “official.” I’ve got two candidates.

One is on a rooftop at 2111 Bancroft Way in downtown Berkeley, just west of the southwest corner of the UC-Berkeley campus. Here’s the weather station site, complete with current observations (this is the downtown station that appears on Weather Underground; you can see the enclosure for the station in this Google satellite view). The high at this site today, for what it’s worth: 79.5 degrees.

OK, that’s one. I was led on a wild goose chase for the second potential official Berkeley weather station by a loose reading of a UC-Berkeley website that describes “The Berkeley Weather Station, 1886-present.” The page mentions that this station is an old and established member of the “Cooperative Weather Observer Program (CWOP)”–an effort that Thomas Jefferson dreamed up back in the 18th century. Looking for a listing for Berkeley’s “CWOP” data, I Googled that acronym. Sure enough, there is a Berkeley station listed: CW1634. A couple oddities, though: The latitude and longitude coordinates for that station put it in a residential neighborhood near the Claremont Hotel, a mile or more from campus. A little more poking around, and I established that CWOP also stands for “Citizen Weather Observer Program” and that CW1634 is at a private home with a contact email belonging to the founder of a well-known local software company. The high at this station today: 81.

So, back to “The Berkeley Weather Station.” I tried to track this down before and didn’t quite get there. Thanks to devoting about two and a half hours to just sitting and sorting through different possibilities, I found a page that gives a precise location for the station, which is at 310 feet above sea level, just outside McCone Hall, near Euclid Avenue and Hearst Street. I tried contacting the guy listed as running the observation program in hopes that I could get access to daily data from the station, but I must have said I’m a blogger, and he ignored me. In any case, this is the station that has provided the data that appears in the Western Regional Climate Center tables that include the high temperature records set in 2008.

Not sure what the high was up there today. A project for another time.

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City, Wind

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I think I mentioned wind yesterday. And all night and today, more of the same. I took Dad out for our customary trip down to the Dairy Queen at Irving Park Road and Central Avenue. Our mission: two chocolate malteds. On the way, we saw a couple of places where treetops had snapped off or large boughs had fallen into the street. It really was windy.

Searching for visual evidence, and trying to move my legs a little, I walked out to Loyola Park, on the lake about a mile and a half east of my sister Ann’s place. On the MIchigan and Indiana shores, the lake might have been putting on a show. Here, with the wind blowing straight out across the shoreline, the water was flat.

But on the walk over there, gusts ripped through the trees, thrashing them. The maples especially–the undersides of their leaves are nearly white–looked like they’ve been turned inside out. Still, it was a warm wind, a summer wind, and everything’s green as midsummer. In a matter of weeks, though, many of those leaves will scatter.

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Labor Day

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Late the night of Labor Day, and one of those southerly winds is blowing in Chicago: gusty, warm, the kind of wind that even when it’s blowing hard seems to have a welcoming edge to it; the kind of wind that can stir up in these parts almost any time of the year–that can lead to a rapid thaw in January, force the first spring day while the calendar still says February, retrieve an evening or two of summer well after the first frost.

I drove with my dad on a round-about route out to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery this afternoon to visit my mom’s and brother’s grave and to see if I could find her parents’ and brother’s graves (I did, and did a little excavating in spite of myself to keep their markers visible). Then we went out to the area where I grew up late in the afternoon just to look around, to see what’s changed (a lot), what’s the same (a lot again) and what’s still recognizable (virtually everything, with allowance for surprises like the old par 3 course where we used to go to play miniature golf having been allowed to go back to nature).

Wandering some of the backroads, we found ourselves in Monee Township, where I tried to find the corner that I had determined, in my 15-year-old’s consultation with U.S. Geological Survey maps, was the high point in our area (something a little higher than 800 feet above sea level. In fact, the Stuenkel Road crossing on the Illinois Central, less than a mile west of us, appeared to be the highest point on the I.C. in the whole state). I had to noodle around a little to get to the place I was aiming for, winding up driving through Monee. On the way out of town, we crossed the Pauling Road overpass above Illinois 50 (Governors Highway, former U.S. 54) and the old Illinois Central mainline. As my brother Chris told me the other night, that I.C. line is now down to one track from the two to four that ran there when we were kids.

The sky was gorgeous as the evening came on. Just two weeks until the equinox.

(Here’s the Google Maps link for the locale where the picture was taken.)

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Bay Area August: Departures from Normal

Saturday and Sunday were actually sunny here, for the most part. Off to the west Sunday night, Venus was visible well after dark–the first time I’ve seen that in weeks. Not that this signals a break in our marathon summer fogfest. The forecast for the next week calls for more of what we’ve been having for weeks along the coast: cool, mostly gray days that might give way to an hour or two of honest sunshine. Highs in the low to mid 60s. (This is not a complaint. Our air-conditioning bills here: zero.)

The map below is something that my friend Pete pointed me to a couple weeks ago. It’s from the Western Regional Climate Center and is a quick take on how much our daily high temperatures have departed from normal. There’s a tiny wedge just north of San Francisco–Point Reyes–where daily maximums have been more than 10 degrees lower than average. Here in Berkeley, highs have been 6 to 8 degrees below normal, and that’s pretty much the story for most of the rest of region. temperatures.gif