Members of the National Guard clean debris as it snows in the New Dorp section of Staten Island, New York, Wednesday. A Nor'easter is aggravating already bad conditions in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Helena Hamilec of the Rockaway Beach neighborhood of the borough of Queens, New York, in the United States of America, walks though her neighborhood where debris that still liters the streets Wednesday in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
Just when the East Coast could not possibly deal with any more bad news, here’s Athena.
Winter Storm Athena, to be exact. That’s the name The Weather Channel has given it, the first of their experiment in naming winter storms. Althea (not Athena) wrote about the new naming system -- and The Weather Channel’s reasons for it --
here.
But, Athena is a nor’easter that’s bringing cold, snow, wind, rain, possible flooding and storm surges to places that need nothing but sunshine, calm winds, gasoline and bulldozers.
As has been said about this storm, it is nowhere near as bad as
Super-gigantic-megastorm Sandy was when it decimated a large swath of the country’s population corridor last week. Sandy combined with a nor’easter then to make that superstorm. This is just a nor’easter, but nothing to ignore.
Now, you may be saying, “Jerry. Stop. I live in Oklahoma, not the Catskills. What the heck is a nor’easter? With that little apostrophe stuck in the middle, it sounds made up.”
OK... it’s a little snippy of a request, but I’ll tell you anyway. A
nor’easter is a very large area of low pressure just off the east coast of the United States. Low pressure systems spin counter-clockwise (like a hurricane), and with the system centered off the coast the rotation brings winds in from the ocean, from the northeast. Hence the name, nor’easter. They are most prominent in the winter months and are notorious for winds, winter precipitation, being generally large and in charge.
Snow has already started falling across parts of the East Coast. And that’s bad for a region still reeling from Sandy. At the peak, nearly 9 million people were without power in several states. That number is down now to about 639,000, but that’s still a little more than the population of Oklahoma City, for some reference.
(And millions in the region still need help. You can donate to the Red Cross to help with their relief efforts
here, and I would encourage you to do so.)
Sandy brought up to 3 feet of snow in some places of Appalachia. Athena will bring between an inch to more than 6 inches from Delaware to Maine. It will also bring wind gusts up to 60 mph, a 2 to 4-foot storm surge in New York City and cold temperatures.
Weather here? It’s incredibly boring. Which is great, because it’s also incredibly beautiful. That’ll change
this weekend when a cold front brings thunderstorms and lows below freezing. All of Oklahoma is currently forecast to get at least some badly-needed rain, but most will fall in our area and southeast. Sorry (again), Panhandle…
-- Jerry Wofford
