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Posts Tagged "severe"

Feeding Fox Sparrow

Posted on Nov 22, 2014

Feeding Fox Sparrow

Twan snapped this snappy shot of a fine Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca) feeding in the snow here at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History. We have a solid snow cover thanks to the lake effect madness off Erie in the past week, though certainly nothing of the magnitude our neighbors just to our north do. Fox Sparrows are notorious for seeking out feeders during inclement weather. If difficult conditions strike at the right time, especially in the March movement north, you may end up with several or even over a dozen in your yard. Have you had any of them visiting you this...

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More thunderstorms and flooding

Posted on Aug 12, 2014

More thunderstorms and flooding

I would say “another day, another thunderstorm” but we get multiple events in a matter of hours lately. We’re well past water capacity in a number of areas in the Chautauqua-Allegheny region as flood advisories and flash flood warnings are already posted in places getting even more heavy rain now. Lightning is flashing intermittently as I type this. Stubborn and “stuck” patterns are becoming more and more common thanks to climate change and our jet stream. We need a trough in the west and a ridge in the east soon please. Be safe out there and remember…turn...

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Hailstones

Posted on Aug 10, 2014

Hailstones

With all this talk about severe weather lately I wanted to show everyone what some real hail looks like. I collected these stones from my yard after a storm in Connecticut (really) in October (really!) a couple of years ago. These are not the uniform, smooth, rounded and typical hailstones we routinely find in severe storms. They look like something that came out of a Midwest or Great Plains monster supercell. The “severe thunderstorm” that dropped these in the middle of a quiet, cool afternoon was technically that but not a drop of rain fell, no lightning was seen and thus no...

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Severe tornadic thunderstorm: six years later

Posted on Aug 7, 2014

Severe tornadic thunderstorm: six years later

The best – or worst, however you’d like to classify it – thunderstorm I have ever directly been impacted by and experienced fully happened six years ago today on August 7, 2008. As a weather nerd I will never forget that date. As a human being who values his life I will always remember what it was like to feel a tiny taste of the true power of the atmosphere. I was living in Stratford, Connecticut, a coastal town, and after a relatively typical warm, humid August day we entered the evening as I kept an eye on a large cell moving very slow to the east/southeast further...

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Severe hail in Jamestown

Posted on Aug 3, 2014

Severe hail in Jamestown

Turn up the volume on this one! Here’s Twan’s yard being deluged with hail during last evening’s severe thunderstorm. There are a bunch of very large stones that come down in the middle of the video especially. Most break and begin to melt by the later post-storm time Twan took the photos in the earlier post today but it is obvious some are around golf ball size.

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