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Chad, stick around for a second I want you to join in this conversation. A blizzard
expert's joining us here in the Situation Room right now from the National
Weather Service, right now he's the assistant administrator, Louis Uccellini,
but he's about become the director of the National Weather Service.
Louis, thanks very much for coming in. Thank you for having me.
Give us some comparison you studied blizards '78 Boston '77 in Buffalo...
How bad is this one?
This storm has potentially very dangerous storm and given the amount of
snowfall that we expect the fall over its history especially
in New England
it will certainly rank in the top ten perhaps even the top five storms for
that area. Ever.
Ever, since they started keeping records. Since the late 1880s.
So when you say New England, that's a big area. Where do you think it's going to be the worst?
The heaviest snow will be from eastern Connecticut through Rhode Island up
towards Boston into southwestern Maine.
Clearly as the storm, which is now rapidly developing off the East Coast,
wraps up southeast of New England
it will pull the snow back in and it will funnel
the heaviest snowfall into that area.
And whether we thundersnow or not
we expect these bands to form and within those pants we will be seeing to
three inches per hour. Two to three inches an hour and then we're talking
about the wind - wind gusts which will be pretty significant. This is what makes
the storm particularly dangerous. As the low develops and
intensifies we will have very strong winds. We're predicting
wind gusts along the coast to be approaching hurricane-force winds
so obviously if you mix those strong winds with heavy snow you're
going to get whiteout conditions
in a large area we believe, in the same area where they're going to get the
heavy snow.
I want Chad Myers to join in this conversation. Chad, I know you have
a question for Louis Uccellini.
Yes sir.
It was proven again by this storm four and a half days ago that the
European model headed right on the money
and our American models were going left and right. What will you do as the
director to make our forecasts as good as what they're putting out? OK, well two
points: One, you're right, the European Center model was the
first model to lock into the track of this storm and keep it closer to the
coast.
I should emphasize that the forecasters
who were making forecasts for this storm five, six, seven days in advance were
using what we call an ensemble mix
of all of these models and they don't just rely on model. But it is clear
that that model and had the headway on this one.
We already have plans on transferring our models to a brand
new supercomputer, the IBM DataPlex.
That will allow us to start running our models and higher resolution
and our data assimilation systems at higher resolution and we know that this is
a main issue
was our models compared to the European Center. But even with this new computer
we will not
be up to the resolution that they run their models.
Have you seen some major changes in the past few hours
as far as the movement of this storm or storms as we probably should call it.
Actually the storm is following the track and the development that we
predicted a number of days as Chad pointed to and
it's developing according to script. It's going through a very intense
developing face now.
We expected to be turning slightly to the right to put it in a
position just off of the southeastern New England coast,
which is a very dangerous spot for New England - very heavy snowfalls, very
strong winds. Another thing I'd like to note are that the waves immediately along the
coast... The surge?
No, the waves themselves could be approaching the by fifteen to twenty
feet along the coast and just off the coast we're predicting wave heights
greater than thirty feet.
So nobody wants to be out in this water with the storm. Chad,
have another question?
I had more of a statement. I just want to say how thankful
the meteorologist community
in America is that you are now our new director - such as distinguished career
at NCEP. We are happy to have you and congratulations, Louis, a really well-deserved
promotion. Thank you very much, Chad.
You're going to stay with us because we have more questions and especially some
practical questions about the dangers
out there. A lot of people forget in '78 in that Boston blizzard -
how many people died?
Over a hundred. Yeah, so there's a lot of
risk out there. This is very dangerous and
Mr. Uccellini is going to stay with us and and give us some advice.
Chad's going to be staying with us as well. Don't forget you can track every minute of this
storm on cnn.com/weather.
Look at a live picture from New York City's Columbus Circle right outside Time
Warner headquarters in New York City. Not much traffic
as you can see. People are
hopefully inside because it's only going to get worse in the next few hours in New
York and Boston, Connecticut
Rhode Island, elsewhere in the Northeast. The National Weather Service is
bringing in top experts in winter storms. Louis Uccellini is about to become
the new director of the National Weather Service. Once again he is here. He gets
sworn in Sunday morning. What time, Louis,
for that? Starts early in the morning. You'll be busy
all weekend talking about this. They just declared a state of emergency - the
governor, Andrew Cuomo, in New York. What exactly does that mean as far as the
National Weather Service is concerned? Well we provide the forecast to the
emergency management community from the federal through the state
to the local through our various forecast offices.
We provide them the weather information they make the decisions. All
the decisions on
the steps that need to be taken
before during and after the storm. We just heard from Lincoln Chafee, the governor
of Rhode Island, saying this blizzard is different than the one in '78
because in '78 he said they didn't really get much of a warning and with this one
they've had days to prepare. Do you agree with that assessment?
Well actually with the storm in '78 we made a fairly good forecast
but we had a number of forecast busts beforehand so people didn't really
heed the forecast very well and the snow came in late. It
came in later than what was expected. So people went out to work, it started
snowing and everybody got trapped.
In this case we've had very a consistent forecast five days, four days
three days, two days, one day in advance,
so with that confidence level building up and very consistent message that's
provided through all of our forecast offices
working with the emergency management community, they've reacted accordingly.
You can you say this
upcoming blizzard - the one that's beginning
right now - will compare to the one in '78. As you point out more than
a hundred people were killed.
Well in terms of the amount of snowfall in New England and the strong winds - the very
strong winds - we're predicting that
the wind gusts along the coast could approach hurricane force winds -
we'll have a very similar situation that we had '78.
Two to three feet of snow is possible from Connecticut up through eastern
Massachusetts
into southwest Maine so as it's going to be a very dangerous storm in that regard
the fact that people are heeding the advice of their governors, mayors, local
officials
and are staying indoors and they're getting their cars off the street before the main
brunt of the storm really hits
is exactly what you need to not only prepare for the storm but then
adjust and and and recover afterwards. Of the hundred people who died in
'78, what was the cause of most of those deaths? You have
people trapped in their cars, exposure, you have deaths related to
removing snow.
People really put themselves at risk by going out before that storm.
So the most important advice you have for viewers watching in the Northeast
right now is?
Heed the advice of the public officials. They don't do this all the
time and when they do this they mean it
and they're doing it to save your life so
it's best to stay off the roads and it also allows them to recover a lot
faster after the storm
and get you back into your normal life.
So when the governor or mayor says
you can't drive
you're seen on the road and you're not an emergency
vehicle you're going to jail - that's pretty good advice.
Well, they have their ways of enforcing their... It's for the good of their own people.
That's right. They really want people off the streets beause
the main brunt of the storm is just coming in now and we're going to see a very
rapid increase in snowfall rates
from Long Island are all the way up into southeast New England. Winds are
going to pick up it will be very dangerous
and very dangerous right along the coast with the strong waves. We've got
potential surge of two to four feet in areas so they could be some coastal
flooding.
So people really have to pay attention Good advice from Louis Uccellini. Good luck
with your new job starting
Sunday morning. We'll stay in close touch. Okay, thanks.