EDIT - BOTTOM BAR

Added a disclaimer...not that I think there's much to worry about, but it's better said that no one should be using this website for critical life-threatening decisions. In reality our community represents diverse opinions and data which are out of our control.

Winter Is Here!

The current temperatures tonight are proving that the first arctic airmass is settling across the Northeastern US. Saturday night is proving to be one of the first really cold ones as temperatures on the coast drop through the 30s, with 20s found inland, an obvious effect of the ocean. This week could see a nor'easter develop though forecasts currently suggest that it will stay offshore, giving coastal areas a minimal impact. The cold front that preceded the drop reflected the strong change of air masses. The NWS reports that Pennsylvania may have witnessed it's first December tornado.
That's all for now!

Screenshot of temps from UCAR RAP.

Tropical Depression 6

Statement as of 2 AM EST

Coordinates 17.3 North 44.8 West

approximately 1100 miles east of the Lesser Antillies

Movement: WNW at 12 mph

Max Winds: 35 mph with gusts to 45 MPH

Min Central Pressure: 1007 mb

Tropical Depression 6 is expected to become a Tropical Storm later on today and continue its WNW track for atleast the next 24 hours. All forcast models presently run the storm well North of Puerto Rico passing near 24 North and 65 West late Saturday and becoming a category 1 hurricane sometime on Friday.

Ernesto...Aug 21-Sept 1, 2006

Ernesto has finally moved through the Northeast after providing a deluge of rain across the eastern seaboard. On Saturday, the last remnants moved out with some final bands providing heavy rain and some gusts of wind high enough to pull down branches. Travelling from South Jersey to Long Island, there were only a handful of instances where debris was large enough to obscure traffic.

Between Ernesto and other systems which have moved through in the last week, the Northeast has certainly gotten it's share of rain. Tidewater Virginia for instance has had places reporting precipitation in excess of 8-10+ inches of rain, more than 600% the avg for the 7-day period. This is part of an area that extends from southern NC up through the Chesapeake. Noticeable also is a band that extends from Central PA through South Jersey, which is not from Ernesto, but a series of severe storms that ravaged the region during previous days. A similar pattern is noticeable extending from the Hudson Valley across southern Connecticut along the Long Island Sound, produced primarily from a string of severe storms. Areas to the north faired out with recieving much less precipitation.

For these reasons many drought areas have begun to pull their total amounts closer to average during the last 90 days, however for the year, areas of interio Virginia are still below average.

For more information on this topic see the National Weather Service's New Precipitation Analysis Pages at http://www.srh.noaa.gov/rfcshare/precip_analysis_new.php

A FEW EDITS

You can now email a particular blog entry to friends by clicking on the email image below every entry. A new category has been created, Personal Weather Stations...make sure your personal station is found here for all to see. Also as one final note, I added the line below the title.

~Matt

Personal Weather Stations

If you have a personal weather station go ahead and post it here. Mine is

Rules and Regs

In an effort to make this blog a pleasant place to read, discuss the weather, and learn, we would like to set out a few rules about posting. Obviously, the usual stuff like vulgarity and attacking other posters will not be allowed. We also ask that you not post generic weather observations as this would move topics far too quickly on the main page. In an effort to keep topics organized, the administrators of this site ask that you use labels such as tropical weather, to label your post so people will know what it is about. The adminstrators reserve the right to change the label you put on your topic if we feel it fits better into a different label. We ask that you keep the posts on topic and we hope that you enjoy your experience. Any changes to the rules of this blog will be posted here.

Edit: Obs Reports

Tonight I doubled the number of observations listed on the sidebar...I'm not gonna list each one I added, b/c they're right there. Anyway hope these are somewhat useful, and I may try to expand/get a better format in the coming weeks.

More Categories to Post Under

Here's a few more categories to post under:
General Climate
Forecasting Techniques
Forecast Models
In the News
Research
Useful Websites

We're mainly doing this for organization purposes, the administrators reserve the right to change where your labels locate your post for better flow of the website.

Thanks,
Matt

Creating Labels for Posts

The purpose of this entry is to save various labels for posts so they can be organized. The following will be the initial labels:
Admin Edits
Group News
Outside the Northeast
Severe Wx
Tropical Wx
Winter Wx
For now it's probably best not to post just random obs b/c that will clutter up the posts. Though if you want to talk about specific events, that's certainly encouraged. Just organize that with the appropriate label(s).
Also, if you're the first one to post on a topic such as a specific storm...Hurricane Katrina, you can create a label for that, but also put it in Tropical.

Editing Setup

For all Administrators, when making edits from now on, edits will be done on your personal account, instead of using the NEWA name...this way we know who made what edits and when. We will use the the NEWA account for more of just organizational things. Not sure what that exactly means at the moment, but I'm sure it will become clearer down the road. If a comment needs be made about any post, do that through the comment area.

Edited the Font, Colors and Template

Just decided to put some work in on getting the template set up.

Building Blocks

In this time of construction, we appreciate your patience as we convert to this format.

Welcome to the Blog World NEWA!!

Well, it's been 3 years in the waiting, but NorthEast Weather Alert is beginning to work on expanding, and we think that this blog is going to really help in spreading weather knowledge and resources to all who wish to use it, members or not. In the next few days we'll hopefully get all the kinks worked out and be setup for the multi-user environment we envisioned! As for now we've setup a few basic settings, which will become more permanent in the next few days. That's all for now!