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Originally Posted by sa meredith
Just sickening to see. My God...I guess summer will be coming to an abrupt end for "the Strip". As if things were not already tough enough this summer.
You'd have to blind and deaf to not realize ouir weather patterns in NH are changing at an alarming rate. A tornado touches down, we have daily thunder strorms of gargantuine proportions, and now this. What's next? 75 degrees on Christamas? Oh wait, that already happened...2006 (or was it 05)
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The warm December and early January of 2006 was the effect of a very strong El Nino in the Pacific. It alters the weather pattern over North America. When it broke down in mid-January, the jet stream changed to allow the floodgates of the arctic to open, the lake froze very thick, very quickly, and the first few months of 2007 were extremely cold -- we had a white Easter.
The tornado and thunderstorms have been the result of relentless Canadian cold air masses that will not let our summertime air dwell in peace over New England -- we have felt them in the form of sub-70-degree highs the last couple of days. We're on the cold side of the boundary. These cold air masses barge into the warm air every chance they get, lift it, and storm towers form -- thunderheads.
Heavy precipitation happens when the air cools off, when warm air is forced to mix with and become cold air. Cold air can't hold as much water vapor as warm air. At some point, the once-warm air becomes too cold to retain its moisture, and the excess falls out. The more drastically it cools off, the heavier that precip is going to be.
Yes, things are changing, but the common denominator I keep seeing is aggressive behavior by cold air.
Incidentally, it's repeating today. Radar currently shows thunderstorms *parked* over the area just east of Concord along a line from Barnstead to Manchester. The slow-moving nature of these storms was really what got us yesterday. We've had heavier rainfall rates than yesterday but not usually sustained for three hours like we had yesterday. It usually lasts 20 minutes and then it's done. Storms are also firing (and sitting) on the Ossipees now, just north of the lake. More heavy stuff is moving in from western NH and will be here in an hour or so. The weathermap character responsible for this is a low pressure area parked over southern Canada, something I see more often in winter when it causes lake effect snow in western NY. This time of year, the counterclockwise flow around it is making use of the warm moisture of summertime in its path, and therefore doesn't need the relative warmth and moisture of the Great Lakes in order to create weather.
I forgot I'm in "general discussion" and not weather thread.... oops. Forgot to stay on topic. Well since I was just down at the Weirs, I can say I saw the work crews using an excavator to bash in anything over the washout that's unstable (like the ties from the tracks) and they're shoring it up with steel plates. The water has a pollution containment boom in it now.
The Weirs is otherwise open, aside from the 100-foot section of washed out boardwalk to the west of the train station. The MOUNT and all its boats are docking and departing with passengers. Their HQ is open, as are the arcades and the beach itself. The docks are open (Gatto Nero docked there, with me aboard) and you have to use the MOUNT ramp to get to and from the docks. That's the way I always preferred to go anyway. Hopefully the MOUNT people are benefiting from the fact that everyone is now forced to walk past their operations in order to access the docks from the strip. Just don't stray too near the washout or someone will yell at you, and you obviously can't take a train ride until they fix the tracks. The Weirs may also be benefitting from everyone showing up to watch the happenings. What do you do when you get bored of watching them run machinery? All the businesses have their doors open and you can still park down there -- there's just a little less parking until they fix everything.
Looked like they were making temporary repairs because of what's moving in this afternoon. While I was there a well-dressed woman in a NH Resources and Econ. Development car (license plate - "D7") came into the cordoned-off area and parked. Channel 9 is there with a satellite truck. The cleanup process appears to be happening quickly, but the weather may slow it down. Pics coming in a bit.