Pink is a winter storm warning. NYC has a winter storm watch  but I believe it will be upgraded to a warning.  Winds will gust to 35 or even 40 mph through this area, causing drifting of the heavy snow.  I expect NYC to receive at least 6 inches and probably more. 

Color Code: Pink = winter storm warning Purple = winter weather advisory, a lesser condition  Green = river flood info Northeast Color code: Dark blue = winter storm watch Pale green = coastal flood watch This is a preliminary forecast of snow amounts. They may need to be adjusted a bit and  the snow band may need to be adjusted north-south a bit. Regardless, this will be a major winter storm  because The numbers are peak  wind gusts during this storm. Many areas will have gusts of 40 mph or stronger which means drifting snow and major travel issues. 

This headline is utterly unfair to the National Weather Service and the meteorological profession. There was "flood watch" 18 hours before the flood began. The NWS, Dr. Ryan Maue, AccuWeather and others did an outstanding job with the forecasts.  It isn't the fault of the meteorological profession that the Daily News  and others were not paying attention, especially when there are apps that will alert you automatically when watches and warnings are issued for your location. If someone at the Daily News  will send me an email, I will describe how to set them up on their smartphones -- and, most of them are free.  Part II I have additional information I would like to provide.  I was finally able to get through the Daily News  enewspaper software to read the entire article. The essential issue was, "Why didn't the mayor tell us?!" The mayor? As we have discussed on many occasions, there is this odd part of East Coast culture where the major of the largest...

Here is the total 24-hr rainfall to 11pm EDT. I've highlighted the rain so you can see the the pattern. And, here is the same map with the geography made more prominent.  There was a similar flood in July, 1903 with Brooklyn officially recording 8+ inches of rain, so this storm was highly unprecedented. And, just three months later, the flood of record occurred on the Passaic River in New Jersey. A warmer climate is not needed to produce extraordinary rainfall in the NYC region. Dr. Ryan Maue's plot of heavy rainfall days in NYC pretty much demonstrate there is no climate signature on this event.  And, Andy Revkin has some thoughts about "debuilding" to mitigate the damage extreme rainfall can create. 

Undoubtedly, you have heard the media reports about the flooding in New York City.  Flooding at LaGuardia. New York Post Rainfall till 3pm EDT. There was an area of 7" south and southeast of Kennedy Airport. Here is the radar as of 3:12pm EDT. Flooding continues to worsen in western Long Island.  The line of thunderstorms (red) that has caused the flooding continues to move north northeast.  The flash flooding in NYC was very well forecast. Here's an example from Dr. Ryan Maue from yesterday. The problem is that school districts did not call of school based on these forecasts nor did other businesses take proactive measures.  Great weather forecasts do not one any good unless they are acted upon. Late News:  The info below came in at 4:52pm. 

Because NYC pizza ovens are causing global warming. 🙄 This stopped being about global warming years ago. This is solely about control. The more we give in, the more authoritarianism we are going to get. 

Conditions in NYC are so bad that "ground stops" are in effect at LaGuardia and Newark International this afternoon causing major  flight delays. That may spread south to Philadelphia during the afternoon. The lights in Time Square have illuminated as if it were night. The amount of smoke is off the chart with today and yesterday's values in red.  The health conditions are literally off the chart.  For those unfamiliar with the usual midday appearance of NYC, below are images of a typical day and from a little while ago. The usual suspects are, of course, blaming this on global warming. My thoughts are here . There is one indirect way climate change (human or natural variability) climate change could have affected the fires and that pertains to the ones that were started by lightning. Lightning seems to be more frequent at the latitude of northern Quebec than it used to be. Because of the remote area and the scale of the fires, humans cannot extinguish them. They will hav...

Because New York essentially ignored the outstanding forecasts of the flooding rains from the remains of Hurricane Ida, it has now reacted in a counterproductive manner.  Early Saturday morning, a day that featured tornadoes in nearby Long Island, NYC sent out a notification for a forecast of a tenth of an inch of rain! This will quickly have the opposite effect NYC government intends --New Yorkers will tune out, or even disable, these messages.  In the strongest possible way, I would urge the new mayor of NYC to stop with these unnecessary alerts and focus on genuine major weather-related threats. 

“I had no idea that there was going to be a hurricane,”  Dangler, 25, told The Post, admitting she typically  doesn’t follow weather updates on the news.  A NYC woman, who admits she didn't check the forecast, went on a blind date during the Hurricane Ida flash flooding. Hilarity ensues. Details here . 

My gosh, how many times are we going to have to go through this? From Saturday's Wall Street Journal  (that I just ran across last night),  “We did not get an alert that said you’re going to have massive, unprecedented rain on Wednesday night,” he said Friday at a news conference. “We obviously would have answered that with a whole different approach.” I guess that is his story and he is sticking to it, but it couldn't be more wrong.  Meteorologists were sounding the alarm, loudly! From my blog on Sunday (three full days before): The map included NYC. From this blog two days before : Note the map includes NYC. And, the day before ,  How much advance notice does de Blasio want?! I realize he is a politician not noted for candor, but still. His constant litany of woe about the lack of warning is starting to backfire. While we meteorologists do not always get it right, forecasts of these large-scale situations are usually very good . They are ignored at society's peril...

I just was in the car for 2.5 hours driving across country listening to the radio and there are people who think the storm was not forecasted well. Dr. Ryan Maue has come to the same conclusion.  We've already discussed how well the storm was forecasted upon its landfall in Louisiana .  Below are forecasts made long before the heavy rain began falling in the Northeast.  Sunday, 3:11pm Entire forecast here .  And, Tuesday, 3:15pm , Entire forecast here . I don't know what more anyone could want. These forecasts were nearly perfect.  And, before the tornadoes got underway. The forecast was made by the NWS's Storm Prediction Center. Below is a map of the tornado tracks in yellow (least strong) to red to white to blue (strongest). Here is a video (second half) of what it is like to be inside of an EF-2 tornado.  Click to enlarge. I had to blank out some areas of noise. It is difficult to understand the narrative that the tornadoes and catastrophic rains were n...

[Bumped from yesterday evening] Indian Point was 36 miles north of NYC.  The more 'green' energy the more blackouts and brownouts. And, we have traded less reliable service for higher energy bills!  It is an absurd situation.  We need to build more nuclear instead of shutting them down!! UPDATE: UPDATE:

The good news is that Saturday evening's power failure in NYC was relatively small. The bad news is that we are building windmills rather than upgrading and securing (from terrorism) the United States' electrical grid. In fact, renewables make the grid less  reliable . There is a good essay on the subject here . The bottom line: we need to get started.

These are extremely unfortunate.  *They were put up by a street artist.  Note: this is revised from the original posting as of 8pm Friday. The Sanitation Department is now taking them down. Mayor de Blasio has not condemned them. I have travelled to NYC for business and pleasure and have always enjoyed myself. We took our children for Christmas 2001 after Mayor Giuliani requested people to "stay in a [NYC] hotel, go out to dinner and see a show" to help its economy after the horror of September 11. Apparently, the government of NYC has forgotten those acts of goodwill of ours and so many others' . See above. However, it speaks volumes that the mayor has not condemned them.