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Brace Yourselves: Freakish Winds Coming Through
By
Claire Lampen
Published Oct 15, 2019
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By
Claire Lampen
Published Oct 15, 2019
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The Weather has been unseasonably nice recently — a little too nice, if you ask me. October is for brisk breezes that rip dead leaves from their tree limbs and send them skittering through the air, and absolutely not for walking around in a goddamn tank top, as you may or may not have been doing yesterday. If these springtime temps felt like a small but deserved kindness to you, well sorry but the other shoe drops tomorrow: There's a big windy storm on the way, conveniently timing its arrival for your end-of-day rush hour commute. We're talking full-blown gales, plus driving rain, starting Wednesday and creeping into Thursday. Let's just rip off the Band-Aid and get into it, shall we?
Tomorrow starts off with pretty regular conditions, temps climbing through the mid-50s and into the 60s over the course of the morning. By 1 p.m., they should plateau around 65 degrees — at the same time as the rains set in. According to the National Weather Service, we're looking at a chance of rain starting around 11 a.m., which escalates to a likelihood by 2 p.m. NBC New York expects something like 2 inches of precipitation from this coastal mess, which promises to turn many of our local subway stations into communal showers. I'm not seeing much Thunder Potential, but it does appear that the sky may continue to darken as we trudge further into the afternoon, until it's almost totally obscured by leaden storm clouds around 4 p.m. Appropriately spooky ambiance for October, at least.
Also very scary: Surface winds that may pick up speed throughout the afternoon, getting extra freaky tomorrow night. You will doubtless feel like your hair is run by ghosts, as harrowing gusts howl past at 23, then 29, then 36, then a deranged 39 MPH in the first few hours of Thursday. According to NOAA, it'll be tantamount to a gale that breaks twigs off trees and "generally impedes progress." So, maybe do your best to be in bed by 1 a.m., so you can at least enjoy the skeletal sound of stripped tree branches clattering against your windows.
Unfortunately, the wind will continue to scream in your ears through Thursday evening, although it will mostly have calmed to a near-gale — "whole trees moving, resistance felt walking against wind" — or even a strong breeze — "larger tree branches moving, whistling in wires" — by nighttime. The NWS charts a small chance of rain through 2 p.m., as cloud cover drops back to the 50 percent bracket.
Meanwhile, temps will potentially stay confined to the 50s, which is pretty much right where they should be at this time of year. Friday dips down into the 40s overnight, with highs in the low 60s and minimal cloud cover. The whole weekend proceeds mostly that way, making it an opportune time to get started on the autumnal to-do list you've been putting off.
As of today, the best month of all the months is half over, and "you're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you're not," as they say! Get on it, gourd heads:
Claire Lampen
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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