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Isabel Eye Animation
Isabel was a category 5 hurricane for over 50 hours, longer than most; Isabel briefly slowed to category 4 status for 12 hours on the 13th. This powerful storm made landfall on the North Carolina coast, causing Hatteras Island to become inaccessible from road washout. Flooding was witnessed as far north as Delaware. The storm came onshore around 1PM EDT on Sept. 19th, very near the time of high tide, which aggravated the coastal flooding.
Image Credit: Plymouth State University
Hurricane Fabian, the 10th Tropical system in the Atlantic basin of the 2003 season, is poised to pass perilously close to Bermuda. At 11AM EDT on this date, the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida indicated the wind speed of Fabian to be 105 knots, with higher gusts. An additional threat from Hurricanes come in the form of a Tornado. One of the signs of good news for Bermuda at this time, is that the occurrence of a Tornado is somewhat lower than most land-falling Hurricanes.
Some data gathered in the past indicates that the increase in surface roughness of winds over land vs. winds over water causes added convergence, leading to Tornadogenesis (to form a Tornado). Since Bermuda is only 19 square miles, the relative impact in Tonadogensis of surface roughness should be small. The East wall of Fabian is expected to track very closely to the island; the East wall of a Hurricane is typically home to the strongest winds and highest storm-surge.
South Portland Acorn
At the Weather Maine location in South Portland, Maine, Oak trees appear to be dropping their seeds earlier this year when compared to last Fall. The date of the first noticeable acorn drop last year was in the second week of September. The date of the acorn drop at this location is determined by the first early-morning audible 'roof drop' of the acorn sitting high above the roof. The morning squirrel harvest is very noticeable during this time, as the acorns can be heard bouncing off the roof, window frames and the parked cars- hopefully the relative cornucopia of food for the squirrels will keep them from digging up the lawn! The recent snap of cool air direct from Canada may have triggered this drop. Future occurrences of acorn drop and temperature trends will be logged.
After a day of record-tying heat, a synoptic-scale weather pattern consisting of a large ridge to the west and a large, high-amplitude negative-tilt trough centered over the Northeast.
The upper-air winds were very strong for this time of year, and this brought in some chilly temperatures to most of Maine. The dewpoints on Friday were close to 73°F (6:50pm 8/25/03 it was 73.8°F). Once this blast of cool, dry air rolled into Maine, the dewpoints dropped rapidly. By Sunday, August 24, 2003, the dewpoint at Weather Maine had dropped to a pretty dry 31.1°F! That is a drop of over 40°F over one weekend. A marked dewpoint drop is a sure sign of the arrival of a new air mass.
The NWS (National Weather Service) issued frost warnings for Northern Maine's weather zones during this weekend, but there was no widespread frost over our Southern Zones. Sanford did get into the 30's on Saturday night, which after the recent hot weather, is quite a shock to the body. Welcome to sniffle season.
Friday's weather featured very hot and very humid weather. At WeatherMaine, the heat index was in the 90's (°F) from 10am until after 7pm. The threat of thunderstorms diminished as a pre-frontal trough came through, decoupling the surface lifting from the upper-level support. There were a few large thunderstorms in New Hampshire, but most of the activity was isolated in nature, and confined to our South or West.
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GRAY ME
225 PM EDT SAT AUG 02 2003
...RECORD DAILY MAXIMUM AT PORTLAND TIED AT 1252 PM...
AT 1252 PM TEMPERATURE AT THE PORTLAND JETPORT REACHED 91 DEGREES.
THIS TIES THE RECORD MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE FOR THIS DAY THAT WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1955.
WeatherMaine.com had a high temperature of:
91.2 °F at 12:20pm (Sensor 1, South Portland)
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