Severe Wind in the Northeast

[czenzel]

Today in Perkasie, a suburb of Philadelphia, we are having really bad wind passing trough. Just wanted to see if any of the other parts of the Northeast are experiencing wind. My station is reporting gusts above 30 mph and things are falling apart (down trees, etc).

If you are in the Northeast please share some data or observations of wind in your area.

They are saying tomorrow the High is to drop about 20 degrees than the normal forecast for the week. Most days are up in the 70's for the high, but tomorrow is going to be in the low 50's.

I found though that the forecast for severe thunderstorms wasn't accurate since we haven't had any storms today. Most of the television stations strived on this, but most of the dark clouds passed without trouble.

Thanks,
Christopher Zenzel

(Mods: if this isn't in the right place please move it, just wanted to get a general observation from people in the Northeast about windy weather today.)

 

[Jason Foster]

It's been fun today with the wind...although the Census enumerators are not having a ton of fun if they are outside. I did only a few, since I was crew leading (assistant) today. There were 50 to 60mph gusts easy. I soooo need to fix my weather station...would have been a perfect day for measurements today.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Oh, yeah, we're feeling it here in New Haven, CT. But then, I pretty much live in an architectural wind tunnel... In fact I was just considering a post in B&G about this phenomenon. I live on a city street where the surrounding buildings seem to dramatically amplify the natural wind. On days like today, when it would be really windy anyway, it can get crazy. I was sitting in my Honda Accord wagon just now, parked right outside my apartment, and I was in all honesty seriously worried that the car was going to get picked up and tossed by the wind. It was rocking around like crazy, I've never felt anything like it. There seems to be a vortex that sometimes forms on high wind days, pretty much right outside my window... Today I could see large heavy duty garbage bags, small tree branches and other debris being lofted way above the tops of the surrounding 20-story buildings. I can still hear the wind howling now as I write this. I was wondering, I know some of the people on this board have wind engineering knowledge, maybe they can tell me, just how much can an urban environment like this really affect wind speeds? It seems to me that I've often experienced gusts on the order of twice as strong as what's being recorded at, say, nearby Tweed New Haven airport. Today I would have guessed I was sitting in winds that had to have been close to 90 or even 100 mph at their peak, and sure enough the local reports are about half that. Is my estimate realistic? In any event, it was indeed a very windy day in the Northeast, that's for sure.

 

[Scott Nelson]

65mph gusts in central MA during wee hours of 5/9/10. Did a bit of scouting this morning looking for major tree damage but was surprised to see only minor limbs, twigs and leaves down. Wind didn't pick up until late afternoon storms (with some hail) cleared out. A windy night is always interesting to me.