WEATHER OR NOT?

March Melt-ness.
The Mt Chipotle National Research Observatory (MCNRO) continues to monitor the decline and soon (?) to be extinction of this Charlottesville icon.
A large shopping center adjacent to UVA plowed all of its abundant snow into a huge pile near the Chipotle eatery, very visible from the main road that thousands of us use every day to get to work. At its height, it was 35' tall, and at times was topped with an American flag, a large assemblage of beer cans arranged as "sculpture," and other quirky objects.
The MCNRO reported yesterday that the mountain of gritty gray colored ice has shrunk to 22.78 feet and there seems to be no way that it will survive for much longer.
How much longer? I have April 15th in the pool started by some students at UVA's Environmental Science Department who are responsible for MCNRO. For a donation to a fund to bring guest speakers in, I got to pick a date. I am not quite sure how they will decide when Mt Chipotle is officially gone. I suspect that the MCNRO, like the pile of ice, will just melt away into darkness.
The corporate HQ's of the Chipotle restaurant chain are giving out discount coupons to folks who participate.

Glub, glub. The rain in VA ended today around noon after 3 days. I see that the NE area is going to get hit hard. Yall take care.

Any updates from yall up there? Worried about folks in the affected region.

I talked with my cousins in Carver and Middleboro (Massachusetts) this morning. The one in Carver says that people from the health department and fire department have been going door to door in her area telling people to be ready to evacuate. She says there is water in her basement and she has two pumps going. She says that others are also pumping out their basements and the water is flowing into the creek that runs along her property and the backyard is now a pond.

The one in Middleboro lives near the Ocean Spray factory and their cranberry bogs. Some of the roads are flooded, as are the bogs. Her house is on higher ground and is not in danger yet, and she's still able to navigate around the flooded areas to get to work at her job with the utility company. Lots of widespread power outages.

You can get local details here if there are any specific areas you're concerned for:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/index.html

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/23012230/detail.html

There's an interactive storm damage map here:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/22998430/detail.html

I have to look up where Lynnfield is, relative to all this..

I have this whole family of Boston cousins, but the one I know well is well into her eighties. Still sharp though, and she was involved in real estate, so maybe she nabbed a good location when she bought.

Use the link to the interactive map. You can zoom around the whole state and see even the smallest of town names.

The site only tells me about the Kerrigans in Lynnfield and other non relevant stuff.

Here's a Google map so you can see where Lynnfield is in relation to Middleboro.

http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Lynnfield,+MA+flooding&fb=1&gl=us&hq=flooding&hnear=Lynnfield,+MA&ei=x-uzS4-DFpG-Nqj19fEJ&sa=X&oi=local_group&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQtgMwAA

We had a big wind and sand storm in ABQ today. Around 4pm I went out and took some video of the trees as it was beginning to strip some of them bare of their leaves. We have a freeze watch tonight...




http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S1536877.shtml?cat=504

Posted at: 04/29/2010 4:59 PM | Updated at: 04/29/2010 8:57 PM
By: Charlie Pabst, KOB.com

Dust was blowing across the Albuquerque skyline Thursday afternoon.

Gusty, dangerous winds caused headaches all over New Mexico on Thursday, closing roads, damaging trees and buildings and blowing debris across the state.

The enclosed University of New Mexico football practice field has been closed after winds reached 50 mph. Adjacent facilities have either been closed or evacuated.

The univeristy said there was damage to the north end of the so-called bubble facility.

Wind gusts in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe areas topped 50 miles per hour, and a gust of 62 mph was reported on the West Mesa, according to the National Weather Service.

PNM estimated just after 6:30 p.m., Thursday about 3,000 of its customers were without power due to wind-related issues. Crews are responding to about 200 hours, a PNM spokesman said. The largest outages were 1,400 customers in Deming and 700 in Alamogordo.

Lincoln County reported downed power lines, as did Otero County. Otero County also had two reports of trees that fell down on buildings.

Many highways were closed earlier due to winds in Southwestern New Mexico, including Interstate 10 between Deming and Lordsburg and U.S. 180 between Deming and Silver City. Those roads re-opened after 7 p.m.

A roof on a home in the 8000 block of Rio Grande was blown off Thursday afternoon. No one was hurt.

South of Albuquerque, parts of the roof of the Veguita Trading Post on Highway 304 was also blown off. No one was hurt in that incident.

We don't get tornado watches here in NM very frequently!

Tornado Watch:

Issued at: 2:03 PM CDT 5/14/10, expires at: 8:00 PM CDT 5/14/10

Tornado watch 171 remains in effect until 800 pm cdt for the following locations Nm ., New Mexico Counties Included Are:
Chaves, Eddy, Lea, Lincoln.

Severe Weather Statement:

Issued at: 1:00 PM MDT 5/14/10, expires at: 1:15 PM MDT 5/14/10

Severe thunderstorm warning remains in effect for southeastern lincoln county until 115 pm mdt,
At 1259 pm mdt, national weather service doppler radar continued to indicate a severe thunderstorm capable of producing golf ball size hail, and damaging winds in excess of 60 mph. This storm was located near hondo, or about 24 miles east of ruidoso, moving northeast at 25 mph.
Locations impacted include, hondo, tinnie, picacho,
Precautionary/preparedness actions,
Tornadoes can develop suddenly from severe thunderstorms.
A tornado watch remains in effect until 700 pm mdt Friday evening for southeast New Mexico.

67% humidity this evening

ack

It rained here a couple of weeks ago, too. The house was battered by high winds, the lightning was ferocious, but it was the thunder that woke me up it time to see it. Ya gotta be quick, you know?

We flew home recently through a nighttime thunderstorm, ay caramba. Dramatic! Towering clouds that would be suddenly lit from within by lightning.

eastern lake ontario
-------------------------
" heat advisory " has been issued for the great lakes region : stay inside and drink plenty of water is the advice .

it's 30 C and the humidex is edging towards 40 C - even higher in toronto .

electric power stations are working double-time - price per KWH jumped from a forecasted 6 cents to 15 cents !

hot hot hot and power outages around toronto

one transformer done done done blowed up plus some seemingly random outages

It's in New York, and I just got back from 6 hours of soccer camp on astroturf that raises the heat level by 10 degrees. It's a hundred degrees without without the raise in temperature.

almost heaven 6:41p.m. 88 F-31 C 10% Humility.

Your humility is a bit low for heaven, lucky it's almost as hot as hell.