Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Update to weather advisory

Good afternoon


This morning I advised our human needs community that the current cold snap would not quite reach the threshold criteria established with the National Weather Service (see e-mail below). NWS Albany has just lowered their three day averages slightly:

Mean temperature at Albany (these are temperatures only, wind chill values will be lower). The temperatures at Poughkeepsie are slightly warner (3-6 degrees warner each period):

Tues - Thurs: mean temp 12 degrees F
Wed - Fri: 9 (Thursday into Thursday night is expected to be THE coldest point in this event.)
Thurs - Sat: 12
Fri - Sun: 14
Sat - Mon: 18
Sun - Tues: 23

The second or third week of January is historically the coldest week of the year as measured in Albany, and these levels are usually reached a couple of times per year. The Weather Service seems to be down playing the snow event somewhat for the late week time frame. We will still see some accumulation, but the heaviest snow will be associated with Lake effect squalls.

Please see the tips below, and use extreme caution when working outside. If you know of homeless people within your community, or someone who does not have adequate heat, please utilize the existing human needs / social service network to get these people into the system and out of the cold. If there are large scale outages of electric or natural gas, we will work with these agencies to open additional sheltering facilities.

The Wind Chill Advisory remains in effect for tonight into tomorrow for western Ulster County.
Art