LibertyBell

the higher humidity is making 100 degree heat more difficult

weird....90 at JFK and 87 at NYC

It was in the news last night that Nassau County is being plagued by a rat infestation....I guess I wasn't the only one lol. Luckily my problems are (knock on wood) solved because I listened to people who told me to find all the holes that were larger than 1/4 inch and plug them all up. My biting/stinging bug problem seems to have resolved itself too- haven't seen anything since I got back to Long Island, except when I was in the bathroom last night and I saw this giant (2 inch long) waterbug....or metallic black beetle.....whatever it was had a really strong shell and both crawls and flies, I wasn't able to catch it but it went down the drain (on its own) in my bathroom sink and I plugged up the drain after that to make sure it doesn't come back out. How long can those things live inside the pipes (or will it come up again from there or some other drain?)

honey bee population is down 44% from last year to this year, from a big queen bee die off during the summer. honey bees are responsible for over one third of pollination.

Weirdest thing, I saw fireflies flashing throughout the night even as it was raining during Fay.

Julian, how many degrees above the horizon would you say it was? NW sky right? moon= half degree. 10 degrees = holding your fist at arm's length. also mind sharing exposure settings- effective focal length, shutter speed, iso, aperture, etc?

I really want to see it. I hope it gets higher up in the sky before it fades. One of my favorite memories with my father is seeing Hale Bopp back in 1997. He's gone now but seeing this comet is something that'd make me feel closer to him. I'm hoping to see it either this week or next, I've been looking for it every night....the deadline is July 22nd, after that it's going to get dimmer as it recedes from Earth. I'm wondering if I should scan the skies with my binos first and if I can find it that way, then look for it with my eyes.

the scarcity of 90 degree days but lots of high humidity, as well as the early tropical hit along the east coast. We've been talking about 1996 as a possible analog since May.

Pangaea....that was millions upon millions of years ago though.

tell me about it, we have dozens of them here. They aren't so good for the bird population either.

the new kind of cross polar flow ;-) considering that Maine and Montreal almost made it to triple digits, how hot would it have been had that air made it down here, Chris?

Is this connected to the record heat we have been seeing across the north (Siberia, Canada, Vermont, Maine, Northern NY, etc?)

of course they are, as are rats, but they weren't as common before humans started dirtying things up. Actually, I dont believe north america had any rats, cats or dogs before they were brought here by boat.

and what the heck was going on in 1908? two long stretches of 80+ dew points and heat in that summer!

Hopefully we will have come clear viewing for historic Comet Neowise, which is now a 1st mag object and will make its nearest approach to earth on 7/22. It will be visible in the NW skies about 90 min after sunset from the 14th onwards (prior to that it was in the early dawn sky about 90 min before sunrise in the NE.)

Yep thats what I have been saying, this is about as "good" of a year for midatlantic and northeast tropical impacts as we have seen in our lifetimes ("good" in quotes obviously because it aint really "good" in human impact terms.) But we also have to look at how this year matches up to 1996 and take note of the fact that an early tropical hit doesn't mean we will get another one later on.

wow thats shockingly high for NYC, I wonder what the highest DP at JFK was?

and none of those summers were particularly hot. Well 2005 at the bottom of the list was very warm, but not hot by 90 degree standards here on the south shore and no 100 degree readings here either. 1996 seems to be a really good match for this summer, first because we got hit by Bertha in early July similar to Fay, and also because of how humid it's been without a large number of 90 degree days. I remember back in May I said that this warm season matches up well to 1996.

It's really nice out there today, loving this lower humidity and warm temps.

The steel wool pads are what I'm using to plug up the holes, also thinking of getting FlexSeal which is supposed to be airtight and waterproof, because that can help me for multiple reasons. Why on earth do mice want to come inside anyway, they are pretty afraid of humans and I never actually see them until they're dead. The UV lamp container thing seems to be helping a lot with gnats and mosquitoes and other biting insects, I've seen a huge population reduction of them since I started trapping them in that container. I just have to empty it out once a week because the damn thing fills up quickly. One of these containers is supposed to cover a half acre, I got two of them and I'm getting another one for the inside. Little flying pests fly into the container and never come back out. I wish there was something like this for mice too. I blame most of these pests on humans- mice, cockroaches, mosquitoes, etc., have proliferated ever since humans started creating all this trash and standing water, etc. Have you heard about the swarms of locusts in South America and India? Seems like it's the worst swarm in many decades, a real plague going on in those regions. It's being blamed on excessive rainfall causing a population boom.

You misunderstood what I wrote, I was talking specifically about rainfall being less to the east of the center. Strongest winds are always to the east of the center, but the point is moot because Sandy wasn't even tropical when it made "landfall." But strongest winds being east of the center is almost always the case, whether it's tropical or not. Like Walt said, the rainfall patterns between Fay and Sandy were very similar; in both cases the heaviest rainfall was in Delaware, because both made "landfall" on the South Jersey Coast. The winds in Sandy on eastern Long Island and New England weren't a "tropical effect" and I wasn't addressing them with that statement. The rains were a "tropical effect" because those rains in Delaware occurred when Sandy was still tropical, the winds on Long Island occurred when it was no longer tropical. I hope that's clear enough for you to understand ;-) And you mentioned Maine, those kinds of winds would NEVER have happened that far north if Sandy was still tropical.

Thanks Chris! Where were those two 57 mph gusts reported from? I saw one on the central NJ coast in southern Monmouth county (near Manasquan?) and the other one in extreme Southern NJ near Cape May.

what time did you have your highest winds? It was really windy up here all night I could hear stuff being blown around in my yard most of the night and knocking into stuff (I fell asleep around 2 am and it was still going on even then!)

49 mph gust at Bridgeport.....is this legit? if so it's the highest wind gust reported at one of our local area official reporting stations.

Walt, on a northerly to northwesterly wind, JFK is actually hotter than either NYC or LGA and more closely matches EWR. In SW Nassau County we are usually hotter than the city on those winds.