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Re: Equinoctial storms
From: John Huth
Date: 2011 Sep 19, 20:05 -0400
From: John Huth
Date: 2011 Sep 19, 20:05 -0400
Fred -
--
Keeping up with the grind
I've been trying to track from memory the strength of storms versus time of year. Certainly Frank's observation that the height of hurricane season on the US east coast is a bit before the equinox might reinforce it. But, I have to say that my experience with gales and the like point to times more in late October and early November on the autumn end of things. September (with exceptions, of course) always seems a bit calmer - but that's in the Boston-Philadelphia corridor, where I grew up and live.
On the spring end, yes, March is definitely windy, but both February and April pack some real big storms in my memory. The tornado season is definitely in spring, but I'm thinking more of classic gales on the ocean that old mariners associated with 'equinoctial storms'.
It's a matter of statistics, and I would be curious to see how my subjective experience tracks with data.
Anyway, I liked the article saying that there is *always* a major storm after the equinox, you only have to wait long enough.
John H.
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 6:10 PM, Fred Hebard <mbiew@comcast.net> wrote:
In my subjective experience, the strongest non-hurricane/non-tornado winds of the year on land in the eastern U.S. come in March. Those are equinoctial winds.
Fred Hebard
On Sep 18, 2011, at 9:40 PM, Frank Reed wrote:
> The New York Times was certainly a lot more fun back in those days when it was still a local paper. I enjoyed the author's excuse that sometimes the equinoctial storm might be 3 or 4 or even 5 months after the equinox. Now there's the best kind of theory: a theory that can never be wrong. Of course there are indeed frequent storms relatively near the autumnal equinox on the Atlantic coast of the US since that is close to the peak for land-falling tropical cyclones. It's a coincidence that helped reinforce the old legend.
>
> Lasting into the 19th century there was also a belief that the change of the Moon (Full or New) was associated with storms and changes in the weather. Even Bligh on the Bounty in 1788 proposed to wait for the change of the Moon after they had been beaten back by gales near Cape Horn.
>
> -FER
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Keeping up with the grind
