Weather Watch

Boomers For Lunch

Take Cover! It's a monsoon out there.

Tropical Storm Lee is a thing of the past, but her rain falls on us still.

A large area of strong thunderstorms is rolling over the Cape as I write this. It is pouring to beat the band in Buzzards Bay (village), and the radar shows no sign of it letting up on me. What I get in BB comes to the rest of you later, so don't laugh.

We'll be back later to discuss the situation in the tropics. No fear yet, but we like to keep you informed. We do have a High Surf Advisory. Watch out for riptides if you're swimming, and be careful if you go wave watching. Figure out who the local is, and stand no closer to the surf than they do.

Stay dry!

Awww, Not Again!

Hurricane Katia Could Brush Cape Cod This Weekend
High surd advisory until 8pm Thursday

Sticking out into the ocean is usually a good thing. We have more miles of coastline per resident than any area other than sparsely-populated Duxbury Beach. This status affords us a booming tourist industry, and great ecological diversity.

It also makes us one of those places that wandering coastal storms say a little how-do-you-do to. It's basically an east/west thing, a lesser version of the north/south reason that Florida gets socked so much.

We all pay the price at some point, and this weekend may be our time to deal with the preacher.

Hurricane Katia is a Category 3 storm, with winds of 120 mph. She is expected to make a sort of "C" track, where she comes between Bermuda and the USA before curving radically to the East. That brings her very close to Cape Cod late in the week, maybe Friday night.

Hurricane Katia is a Category 3 storm, with winds of 120 mph. She is expected to make a sort of "C" track, where she comes between Bermuda and the USA before curving radically to the East. That brings her very close to Cape Cod late in the week, maybe Friday night.
    Check Advisory here.

The chances of her hitting us are very slim. If you were forced to place a bet, bet on Katia curving harmlessly out to sea. In that case, the worst we see are some fat swells. I'd say the worst case scenario is tropical storm conditions from an offshore hurricane, and the best case is it goes far from us and we just get fat waves.

There is a .0001% chance that we get direct-hitted, but every forecast model says otheriwse. Most models have her passing offshore Friday as an 80 MPH Category 1 hurricane. We'd have a 300 mile window of tropical storm conditions from the eye. The closer she gets, the worse we get beaten.

One thing to note is that, if we do feel some effects, we'll be on the NW side of her. That means a lot more rain. Her path makes very little difference in our chances of getting big waves.

There is also a system or three in the Atlantic. A really mean looking one is forming about halfway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Leeward Islands, and a pair of systems are exiting/about to exit the African coast. There is also one in the Gulf that could move across Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard.

Only one of the forecast models sends the storm in the mid-Atlantic on an East Coast trip, presently. Forecast models have a way of changing, which is why they keep me on full-time. The next storms to form will be Maria, Nate,  Ophelia, and Philippe.

We'll watch these for you, and turn on the hype machine if the situation merits it.

Alaska Quake; NSTAR Update; Tropic Troubles

Aleutian Earthquake This Morning

A 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck under Alaska's Aleutian Islands this morning. No damage or injuries were reported in this sparsely populated region. It's closer to Vladivostok than Anchorage, I think.

The East Coast suffered a 5.8 earthquake in August, but this one was much bigger. Fortunately, it disturbed only Eskimos and crab fishermen.

The quake did set off a Tsunami Warning for the immediate area around the epicenter of the quake, but nothing had been spotted by press time. We didn't get a Tsunami Warning for our earthquake.

NSTAR Update

26,000 Massachusetts residents are without power this morning. Cape Cod still has 500 NSTAR customers without power, and 800 more are on the South Shore. Most of the remaining 25K are in western Massachusetts, where some communities have that Vermont thing going on.

Hurricane Irene came through Sunday morning. It's Friday morning as I write this, and those numbers are fresh.

NSTAR claims to be getting out to the more isolated neighborhoods Friday, and hope to have everyone all set by Saturday at the latest... at least in this area.

National Grid customers will be pleased to know that this major natural disaster didn't bother to cut short her Hawaii vacation. Barack Obama cut his vacation short, but she couldn't be bothered.

There is still at least one street in Onset blocked off by a fallen tree/power line coupling. I'm also being told that one of those New Hampshire sewer disks somehow managed to wash up in Onset Bay, long after having sewer disks washing up on your beach was fashionable. Dude was just on WXTK, bragging about it.

Three Tropical Systems At Work

We have three storms we're watching. The first is TD 13 in the Gulf Of Mexico, and should become Tropical Storm Lee later in the day. Lee is expected to impact along the Texas/Louisiana border. Parched Texans are hoping she goes inland, as she is supposed to drop 20 inches of rain in some locations.

Tropical Storm Katia is in the mid-Atlantic. She was a hurricane, and should become one again. She should be a major hurricane by Tuesday, as she nears the US coast. She is currently forecast to turn out to sea before hitting the USA, but  coastal residents should definitely keep an eye on this girl.

There is also a tropical system forming between Bermuda and Nova Scotia, fairly close to Cape Cod. She should just kick waves back at us, so be careful in the ocean. If she strengthens before TD 13 does, she'll become Lee. If she does so after, she'll be Maria. She's about 500 miles due East of Chatham, and moving Northeast.

We also have some systems moving off of Africa, but there's no need to discuss them at the moment.

Massive Flooding Expected In Bourne, Onset Tonight

Duxbury Beach, incoming high tide.

Residents of Onset and Bourne get a little extra bit of Irene tonight, as the 8 PM high tide is expected to do some damage.

A new moon high tide is bad. A big South wind behind it is worse. A hurricane sort of completes the trifecta. Everyone at the head of Buzzards Bay is watching, waiting, and getting scared.

A larger surge from Hurricane Bob put this area under 10 feet of water, and the elements are combining to mix up a nice batch of Misery Stew for coastal residents.

It's never a good sign when you look out your window and see Joe Joyce and WBZ-TV setting up shop in your front yard.

Buzzards Bay, as we mentioned before, shares a geographical similarity to Bangladesh. Both have a narrowing bay that funnels the water up into the north, which in this case is Onset and Buzzards Bay. It probably won't be that fun to be in Mattapoisett, Marion, New Bedford, or Falmouth, either.

Storm surges of 4-8 feet may hit Onset and Buzzards Bay. We have a reporter embedded in Buzzards Bay (hi!), and we'll get some pictures up either tonight or tomorrow. Power has been sort of spotty here. Actually, power is spotty everywhere. Over a half million people in Massachusetts are without power as I type this.

We also are getting word of a steeple blowing down in Onset, we'll let you know what church when we hear. UPDATE: It was the Emmanuel Assembly Of God church that suffered the damage.

Sam And John are among the embedded Duxbury Beach reporters.

Check out the new treehouse my nutrional coordinator Julianne just got, courtesy of her Aunt Irene.

Julianne's kid, as longtime readers of this column may recall, was the one we interviewed after the tornado earlier this summer. She was 50 yards from the Breath Of The Dragon.

It has crossed this sportswriter's mind that the kid may be a Weather Witch. I bet Bill Belichick would kill to get her... it'd sho' be handy to make it snow on Peyton Manning out of nowhere.

Coach...we're on your side. Have your people contact my people. We can work something out for her.

Batten Down The Hatches!

Irene Is In The House!

Manomet Beach, 10 AM

Hurricane Irene came ashore on Coney Island about an hour ago. She's a tropical storm now, with winds at 65 mph.

We have reports of power outages in Wareham, Buzzards Bay (no streetlights on Main Street), Marion, Rochester, and New Bedford.

A 50 foot sailboat has broken free, and is washing around all over Marion. Duxbury Beach just lost power, as a French voice on my cell phone is telling me.

Someone on my Facebook said a tree toppled and crushed a car in Quincy.

We have reporters in Buzzards Bay and Duxbury Beach. We also have a guy sending pics from a penthouse in Portsmouth, Rhode island.

Buzzards Bay is ominous. Head Of The Bay Road is covered with tree branches, and a large tree is down. We expect an awful bit of flooding tonight as the new moon high tide comes in, and the Bangladesh effect of a narrowing bay brings the pain.

Expect tropical storm conditions for the rest of the day.

Stacey is on Duxbury Beach, while Big Steve is embedded in Buzzards Bay. we'll get an update once we figure out how to upload all of our pictures. We normally cover sports, and have come to rely too heavily on You Tube videos.

Be safe, everyone!

Buttermilk Bay, below:

Plymouth, off Long Pond Road, wires down, power out.

Never let a simple thing like a hurricane get in the way of Jet-Skiing.

Watch that last step, Stephen!