I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a storm this big before.
The storm shown here stretches west to east from Newfoundland to Portugal. Its southern tail (cold front) extends into the Caribbean and the north side of its comma head touches southern Greenland.
Not only is it big, but it’s also super intense – comparable to many category 3 hurricanes. The storm’s central pressure, as analyzed by the Ocean Prediction Center, is 953 mb. Estimated peak wave heights are around 25-30 feet.
The storm is forecast to remain more or less stationary over the next few days before substantially weakening and then eventually drifting into western Europe in about a week as a rather ordinary weather system.
Note to Washingtonians: this is the same storm that blanketed the region with 1-4 inches of snow Monday. It’s grown into a monster from humble beginnings. The storm’s giant circulation has drawn down the cold and windy conditions we’ve had since it passed.
Another super, once-in-a-century storm? Why, I ask sarcastically, does it always happen to us?
and why every 6 months?
Just finished speaking to someone back in the ‘old country’ – Devon, SW England and the foul, cold weather continues. I was told that more and more are now starting to make the connection between global atmospheric events and local UK weather conditions.
It’s becoming clear that warming is “tuning” our atmosphere into a different mode. Could it be that as the different atmospheric frequencies and wave lengths change and grow longer that larger, slower moving storms will become the norm?
I know from my recent experience last year with Isaac (caused upwards of $2.5B in damage, but has been largely overshadowed by Sandy), that lower category, but huge and slow moving hurricanes are to be respected just as much as smaller, more powerful storms
Jupiter has had one doozy of a storm last for more than 300 years – so far. Lets hope the slowing and growing of the storms here on earth doesn’t get tuned to a frequency like that.
By the way, I know that because if the Earth’s rotation, a red spot type storm would be impossible here on Earth. But I don’t think that a storm taking more than a week to make land fall is out of the realm of possibility
When one of these monsters come to our shores…oh wait!
Surely you jest:
http://image.weather.com/images/sat/atl_oce_sat_600x405.jpg