NE U.S. Blizzard, Rainstorm GOES Movies

Late winter rainstorms pummeled  NE U.S.

And the severe weather season hasn’t even begun yet!

The northeastern U.S. was pummeled by blizzards, swamped by heavy flooding, and battered by late winter storms. Two movies of the events were captured by NASA Satellite GOES-12 between February 1 and 16, and March 8 and 16, 2010.

This is a still image of the well-developed storm on March 15, 2010 at 2115 UTC (4:15 p.m. ET) the New England coast. Source: NASA GOES Project

“Following the Nor’easter ‘parade of blizzards’ in February this year, another week-long parade of storms flooded the upper Midwest and Northeastern U.S. in March,” said a NASA GOES Project official. “The merge of three storms in the Midwest was unusual, where the normal pattern is a series of spring storms carried by the prevailing westerlies (winds).”

“The movie was created by overlaying the clouds observed several times per hour by NOAA’s GOES Imager onto a true-color map previously derived from NASA’s Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land-mapping instrument. The infrared channels on GOES detect clouds day and night, which are portrayed as grey for low clouds and white for high clouds. The movie compresses nine days into two minutes. It illustrates how continental-scale land/sea/air phenomena come together to make large late winter storms.” NASA Website said.

“Heavy rains that hit the northeast cause flooding, fatalities, power outages and damages. Downed trees from rain-soaked roots toppled power lines. Outages were reported in Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Literally thousands of trees were reported felled in Connecticut and New York. Flooding forced evacuations and put roadways under water. As far north as Maine, parts of the state received more than eight inches of rain. ”

Total rainfall for the first 19 days of March:

• Boston: 7.45″
• Bridgeport, Conn: 4.02″
• Newark, NJ: 5.24″
• New York City: 4.72″
• Portland, Maine: 3.57″ of rain.

Most of that rainfall was caused by the storms.

The link to the movies: (Unfortunately, the movie were available only in one format, MP4, as of posting.)

1. GOES Movie of the Northeastern US Floods
2. GOES Blizzard movie

Note: The second movie linked to above, is a 2-minute movie compressed from GOES satellite data recorded February 1-16, 2010, capturing two blizzards which hit the Baltimore, Md. and Washington areas.

During the first two weeks of February, Washington, DC,  was put out of action by two blizzards which dumped heavy wet snow as follows:

• 5 inches fell on February 3
• 24 inches fell on February 6
• 12 inches on February 10.
• A second, back-to-back storm followed on February 16 dumping 10 inches on Philadelphia and New York, but spared Washington and Baltimor.

“These storms are called Nor’easters because the counter-clockwise circulation around a low pressure system on the Atlantic coast pushes moist sea air from the north-east into arctic air over the land. This windy mixture creates a very efficient snow-making machine from Boston to Washington. ‘The GOES movie illustrates how succeeding storms form along the Gulf coast, travel up the Atlantic coast, pause over the mid-Atlantic states, and finally slide out to sea,’ said a NASA official with GOES Project.” Source: NASA/EO website.

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