DEC 18th-20th 2023--Wet, White, Wind?

Results of the rain flowing down into Essex County, the Passaic River above major flood stage through Thursday afternoon.
Here's the link to the graph:
https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?gage=ltfn4&wfo=phi

Within five miles west north east I get Albany, New York, and Binghamton coverage for the NWS. The forecasts can be different. I guess where I live it is the nexus for the time-space continuum for CP's hair to grow back, Jon to get snow, Doc to get stocks, and Scott to get his Solo fired up. Based on the differences in forecasts, Alex and Doc have the right idea: pick stocks, not weather.

Bergenfield reported 54 mph wind gusts.
Those winds are not accurate.
Ramsey had a 43 mph wind gust.

My final rain total is 3.14".

Mugs, my rain gauge gave it up. What do you use?

My bucket on the side of the garage says 5.8 inches if that’s right

That’s the lowland off my driveway. Sorry-I don’t know how to rotate the image. Creek can be a trickle and five feet wide at most until a storm like this. Then it can go 80 ft wide and 6 ft deep and overwhelm the four ft culvert under the road. It’s the Pakanasink creek. It became a pond today, just a few feet from jumping the road and coming up near the driveway. Have not seen this for some ten years.

Oh my Damian that is incredible!!

Buddy in Manahawkin said it was bad down there today at high tide. Anyone in the area confirm ??

Just a footnote. Someone, most likely a Dutch dairy farmer, divided up the property with stone walks. That an a ten ft high crest of dir, some 260 feet long keeps the creek away from the back yard area and that’s where the house foundation drain is. Water has a place to go. Two times in 23 years there was close to five ft of water over that drain. All i could do was put two sump pums there and put water over the back stone wall and hope for the best. We have never flooded. I also have a homemade contraption-a pump with a big hose and filter and 50 feet of four inch flexible pipe. I use it to pump out basements. Good neighbot and sll that. Flooded basements are too common around here .

Mugs it has to floid there. Too much wetlands. Water has no place to go

Had around 3.75 inches here from what I figure in the NWS rain totals.31 degrees, partly cloudy and slight breeze right now.
Damian, I think the ground was so saturated with all the rain we had since November 1 that this storm made that creek by you go crazy.Glad you managed ok up there!

31 degrees at 7:53 in the am, finished with a tail end dusting of snow to make things look nice again!
      Good Luck!

I just wanted to give a quick synopsis of how my ideas fared during this event. To rip the bandaid off, my thinking that those of us along the northern and western periphery of this system would wind up with a period of snow during the second half of this event was wrong. No, last night's fluff doesn't count. The crux of my argument was that as the maturing cyclone was pulling away, and the low-level (i.e. 850 hPa) and mid-level lows (i.e. at 700 hPa and 500 hPa) from the northern stream began to open up, interact with and phase into the southern stream system that was coming up the eastern side of the long-wave trough ahead of the northern stream, they would provide a quick shot of fresh cold air into the back side of the southern stream wave. This would then have allowed the second round of precipitation associated with the dynamics of the southern stream system's actual circulation to transition to snow as the column cooled with the last 3-6 hours of the best forcing still overhead. However, this was not the case. Unfortunately, there remained JUST ENOUGH separation between the two streams that there really was no interaction between the two systems until they were beyond our latitude and longitude. As a result, the structure remained more of a closed, but loosely defined wave instead of being able to consolidate, and therefore, the manner in which the colder air was drawn into the back side of the southern stream system was more like a typical frontal passage rather than a situation where it was able to undercut the forcing for ascent, cool the column, and allow the transition to snow to occur.  Admittedly, everybody else saw this, and the modeling did a pretty good job (eventually, inside of 48 hours) of representing this type of structure and outcome. So, this aspect of the forecast was clearly a bust.......

However, I think that there were several other components of my thinking that verified quite well, and those were the ideas that:

-due to the alignment of the pattern in the Northern Hemisphere, as well as the forcing mechanisms in play in both the Northern Hemisphere and the Tropics, the northern stream energy played a much larger role than models were previously indicating. Instead of diving in over north-central New England, it entered the CONUS across the Upper Midwest and began changing its axial tilt once over the Ohio Valley. It trended so much faster and stronger than early guidance was indicating, that had it been about another eight hours sooner, our forecast would have had a much snowier outcome.

-due to "blocking" across the mid-latitudes and the effect it had on the sub-tropical jet by removing momentum (i.e. causing an anomalous easterly component to the flow relative to the base state of the westerly sub-tropical jet), we saw the steady slowing of the forward speed of the southern stream in successive model runs leading up to the event.

-as an overall effect of the constructive interference between the forcing mechanisms in both the Northern Hemisphere and Tropics, which, per my assessment, led me to the inference of a further east storm track, this turned out to be the case. Upon analyzing the tracks of the 850 hPa, 700 hPa, and 500 hPa circulations, all three of them ended up passing off the coast, but inside the Benchmark (40ºN/70ºW), which was exactly the track that I thought they would take, as stated in my video discussion. As stated above, however, they opened up instead of intensifying due to the lack of the interaction with the northern stream.

So, all in all, my prediction of the sensible weather was a pretty bad bust, but my forecast of the storm track, things such as where the forcing mechanisms would align, and how the progression/evolution of the two streams was pretty darn good. I missed by about eight hours. On the whole:

Sensible weather: F
Evolution of the atmospheric pattern, including the idea of the (partial) phase/interaction: B-

Overall grade: C-

Not a great result, but seeing how close we ended up as opposed to where we started, I am comfortable with saying that although I wasn't completely right, my ideas at least had some merit.

Great job to all of those who were a bit more reasonable with their approach, and accepting of the modeling (Frank, Scott, heehaw, Algae), you guys definitely did a good job with this one

Onto the next!

A footnote to the storm. This is the same picture the day after. The water went down that fast

Hello fellow weather peoples. Can anyone explain to me the historic 25 ft waves that were crashing in Ocean County Nj. The article said it happened on Monday the 18th and it was light out

What actually happened to create those waves?

Wish I could give you a good explanation Bob. Best I can do is say that I had posted a water vapor satellite image a ways back that showed this storms link to the deep tropics. With thing coming straight out of the Deep South, I’d imagine since it was pretty powerful for a long time over water, with its trajectory up the coast, a serious swell had a a lot of time to build and it all came to a head in Ocean county. Call it a perfect storm I guess.

Best I can come up with.

Thanks for the answer.  I was just amazed at the size.  6 ft waves on the NJ shore is a big deal

WeatherBob wrote:Thanks for the answer.  I was just amazed at the size.  6 ft waves on the NJ shore is a big deal

One time I remember when waves that high were reported was the March 1962 storm.That storm was elongated East to West and a long fetch of winds resulted in waves as higs as this recent storm.

https://ocnjdaily.com/remembering-the-great-march-storm-of-1962/

Philly had a foot of snow with that one, we got nothing up near NYC.

Yes Doc you are correct.  My professor in Synoptic Meterology class said the 62 storm sat there like you mentioned for successive high tide cycles and pounded the coast

Here is some video of Ocean County, NJ waves

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jersey-shore-waves-watch-videos-183159887.html

Yep. A big deal for the shore.

jmanley32 wrote:

dkodgis wrote:Here is some video of Ocean County, NJ waves

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jersey-shore-waves-watch-videos-183159887.html

Yep. A big deal for the shore.

INSANITY!! Is there anything left of the beaches or the shore homes, surely there had to be a lot of beach erosion and beachfront home destruction. I mean these are 10x worse than Sandy.

Jman Merry Christmas..this was nothing like Sandy.. during Super storm by sandy hook there was a 32.5 foot wave recorded and there was a huge storm surge..yes the waves were insane last week, but no comparison.