Nasty Noel takes a swipe at Westport!

By Jon Alden

Community Events of Westport

November 3, 2007

Noel, the fifth hurricane of the 2007 season, turned into an ‘extratropical cyclone’ and took aim at the coastal sections of the Northeast, unleashing its wind but not its water Saturday on Westport. The northeast winds from the back side of this powerful system actually prevented any flooding in Westport because it twisted a tidal surge to the southwest that, outside of creating some heavy surf against the east side of Gooseberry Island and a choppy harbor with two foot waves (top three photos), produced the lowest high tide (4 p.m.) at the Head of Westport (photo lower left) seen in recent memory. In fact, previous storms have turned the Head into a small lake as shown in the photo dated October 28, 2006 to the lower right.

Boating in Buzzards Bay, however, was a different story. Near hurricane force winds of 30 to 40 knots, gusting up to 70 knots, produced seas of 7 to 10 feet! Waves crashing into Nova Scotia Saturday night reached 30 to 40 feet on top of a 2-to-5-foot surge. Seas were 9 to 14 feet in Rhode Island Sound and Vineyard Sound, and 20 to 25 feet off the coast of Nantucket. Not the kind of weather you want to fish in.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “extratropical cyclones, sometimes called mid-latitude cyclones, are a group of cyclones defined as synoptic scale low pressure weather systems that occur in the middle latitudes of the Earth having neither tropical nor polar characteristics, and are connected with fronts and horizontal gradients in temperature and dew point otherwise known as "baroclinic zones". Extratropical cyclones are the everyday phenomena which, along with anticyclones, drive the weather over much of the Earth, producing anything from cloudiness and mild showers to heavy gales and thunderstorms.”

- - - - - - End - - - - - -

Community Events of Westport © 2007 All rights reserved.