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JC-CT

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    Met Winter 2021 - 2022 Banter

    in New England

    Posted

    10 hours ago, IowaStorm05 said:

    My interest of the evening has been the condition of heavily traveled typical bridges in the US. I was studying about the 2007 Minneapolis Mississippi River bridge collapse. What I read was that the bridge was built in 1967, but had design flaws. It was rated in need of replacement and that was planned for 2020 but it never made it before it collapsed.

    A theme I keep coming across more than one time with basic US road bridges is that A: They were built in the 20th century. B: They were designed to last a specific number of years before being replaced and C: The time for the replacement has come and gone. and C: They are receiving "Poor" or "Structurally Deficient" Ratings but are still being deemed safe to travel on. While the MN bridge that collapsed was among the worst in ratings, they stopped short of condemning it.

    A bridge of particular interest is the I95 Gold Star Memorial bridge that crosses the Thames river between Groton and New London. In doing curious research I was able to find that this bridge fell into most of the above bullet points I discussed. It has a rating of 4 out of 9 for structure: Poor. The bridge has outlived its intended lifespan yet is continued to be used heavily and I see no plan to actually replace it. I won't say much more except that I am glad that I do not use this bridge frequently although I did in the 2000s. I once walked across this bridge in 2020 and while I knew nothing of its structural ratings at that time, the heights were unnerving and gave me adrenaline rush until I made it to the other side.

    Most common road bridges are 20th century construction that has been a fixture of most of our lives as we generally have been alive since the 20th century. But the theme that all of these are going downhill fast is repeating itself and I am horrified to understand that unless drastic action is taken, these bridges are going to probably start collapsing one by one over the upcoming years and decades. 

    Is that the one with like 5 lanes?

    New England Overrunning Event 02/03-02/04/22

    in New England

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

    It was 1-2” and yes, runoff like that can flood your basement’s fairly easily. I never called for all rain either so don’t DIT twist my words please. 

    He wouldn't have to twist anything if you weren't bleeding with envy, bitter, angry and downtrodden over missing the blizzard of a lifetime.

    • Haha 1

    New England Overrunning Event 02/03-02/04/22

    in New England

    Posted 

    In lower levels, models are starting to converge as NAM/ECMWF have
trended colder, albeit not quite as cold as GFS. Forecast soundings
show very favorable signal for a rapid transition from rain to sleet
(perhaps a brief period of freezing rain but that would be very
short lived). Note the warm nose aloft (+2 to 3C) and a deepening
near surface cold layer (-8 to -10C) up to 950 mb. Models also show
a good slug of QPF once the transition occurs, so this could be one
of those rare cases where sleet persists for several hours before
changing to snow as warm nose eventually cools. How fast this all
takes place is key as to how long it takes for sleet to change to
snow and obviously impacts accumulations of each.

At this point, we are becoming more confident that higher snow/sleet
accumulations will be north of Mass Pike, especially along and north
of Route 2 where 2-4" totals are possible. Totals should lower to 1-
3" along Mass Pike and 1" or less farther south, but keep in mind
these totals may need to be bumped up a little in subsequent
forecasts should colder trend continue on models. It`s also possible
that we see more sleet vs snow along and south of Mass Pike, perhaps
as much as 1-2" of sleet alone.

The combination of rapidly falling temperatures Friday could result
in a flash freeze and the transition to snow/sleet is expected to
result in hazardous travel. Since timing is centered around the
morning commute and into afternoon, and could have a significant
impact, we will issue a Winter Storm Watch for our northern CT,
northern RI, and all of our MA zones except south coast, Cape Cod,
and Islands (including the larger metro areas).

Note that icing from any freezing rain should be minimal (just a few
hundredths) and we do not expect any impacts from ice accretion
on trees or power lines.
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