A Nor’easter is a storm along the East Coast of North America, so called because the winds over the coastal area are typically from the northeast.
The U.S. East Coast provides an ideal breeding ground for Nor’easters. During winter, the polar jet stream transports cold Arctic air southward across the plains of Canada and the United States, then eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean where warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic tries to move northward. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream help keep the coastal waters relatively mild during the winter, which in turn helps warm the cold winter air over the water. This difference in temperature between the warm air over the water and cold Arctic air over the land is the fuel that feeds Nor’easters.
To a point. But they either omit more technical terms and explanations, or dumb them down. I think they found that viewers’ eyes glazed over when they tried to explain “cyclogenesis.”
Don’t get me started on the idiocy of the “feels like temperature” they seems overly enamored of. And fear for your safety if you start with that apples to screwdrivers comparison of wind chills to temps on Mt. Everest.
I mostly use the weather app on my phone and follow the Gray Maine NWS on Twitter but I have found WCSH Portland keeps the hype to a minimum. Also the weatherman Keith Carson often gives a few seconds to a higher level weather terms in his forecasts.
It’s straight NWS info with no “tuning” or whatever, which is what I want. Easy to flip between the Forecast / Hourly graph / Radar. Also scroll to the bottom for discussion.
It’s free with ads or paid without. Ads don’t bother much, they stay at the bottom.
I have intimate knowledge of the far side of this weather system - would that be a sou’wester? The never ending train of lows marching North, as seen on a weather fax while taking the beating of a lifetime, left a lasting impression. One of them deepened all the way below 920, I swear that is the truth. Truly horrible stuff.
Edgar Comee, of Brunswick, Maine, waged a determined battle against use of the term “nor’easter” by the press, which usage he considered “a pretentious and altogether lamentable affectation” and “the odious, even loathsome, practice of landlubbers who would be seen as salty as the sea itself”. His efforts, which included mailing hundreds of postcards, were profiled, just before his death at the age of 88, in The New Yorker .[10]
G. W. Helfrich, whose letter of September 8, 1994, to the Portland Press Herald reminds us that “New Englanders exercise considerable invention in avoiding the letter ‘r,’ ” and thereby makes the compelling case that the contraction, if there is to be one, must properly be spelled “no’theaster.”
“The word ‘nor’easter’ is a contraction of ‘northeaster,’ a blustery storm with northeasterly winds. The storm has long been associated with New England, but the term ‘nor’easter’ isn’t native to the land of clam chowdah, according to many linguists and a great many coastal New Englanders. The locals, they say, have always pronounced the word by dropping the two r ’s, not the th , making it sound something like ‘nawtheastah.’
Most “nawtheastahs” are born here on NC Outer Banks and whether the snooty New Yorker and the Yankee language police like it or not, we call them nor’easters.
Snooty? Language Police? Maine accent nowadays is strongest now mostly among older working class, farmers, loggers and fisherman. Maybe you are thinking of the Mid-Atlantic accent?
Not thinking of the Cary Grant/Katherine Hepburn theatrical affectation referred to as Mid-Atlantic accent. I am responding to the elitist claims in your post that New Yorkers’ pronunciation of “northeaster” and Mainers’ pronunciation of “nawtheasters” are the only correct ones and that only lubberly wantabes refer to them as “nor’easters”.
Please forgive me for thinking that the two were somehow related and for failing to accept as gospel the constipated ramblings of a bush league newspaper editor who passed away 15 years ago. Your graph proves the point that he belonged to a minority of one.
