Did you work on the Einac too while this was going on?

BS meter pinned!


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...
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:11:26 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:35:32 -0400, wrote:

You couldn't be more wrong. LIS gets compact but very powerful cells
all summer long. Almost daily. We call them "Little Fists of Fury".
They are spectacular. Usually there is space between them that you can
squeeze through if you have enough warning before they reach you.


The really bad guys on LIS (and New England) in my experience are the
slow moving cold fronts that come down from the north west in July and
August. They come at you like a white squall and there are *no* gaps
to squeeze through. We first experienced one in the summer of 1975 on
an evening cruise from Mystic to Block Island. The wind blew 50 kts
plus for over half an hour creating blinding spray and really large
seas in no time at all. When we pulled into Great Salt Pond after
the storm, at least half of the boats had broken loose and were agound
on the edge of the pond. The same front spawned a tornado 30 miles
east at Cuttyhunk with a lot of damage there also.

Weather forecasting has gotten a lot better since then but it's still
possible to get "caught out" if you are offshore with no good place to
duck in to.

Last June 8th, we got nailed pretty badly by a solid line of squalls
from the west. There was absolutely no escape. They were moving so
fast that the first one hit us before the CG broadcast their first
warning. Fortunately, I had already seen that ominous, weird colored
low dark line and knew what it was. I verified with RADAR that it was
an unbroken mass stretching all the way across the LIS. That's VERY
unusual. Usually, thunder storms here are compact and fairly slow
moving. You can see their shape on RADAR and sail around them like a
giant pinball game. Not this time. We immediately dropped the sails,
and made sure everything was locked, latched and tied down. We donned
life vests and clipped on. By the time the second one hit us, we had
already been knocked down once, and seas had gone from 1 foot swells
to steep 6-7 footers. The tops were blowing off them. We couldn't make
any headway, so we didn't have any steering for periods. Every time
there was any slackening, I would get my bearings and head away from
land to try and gain some space. From the time I saw that line on the
horizon, to when it reached us was about 15-20 minutes. It was like a
freight train. A very fast freight train. Oh, yeah, there was
lightning hitting the water all around us the whole time. I mean
constantly, and CLOSE. We emerged from the first cell, and barely had
time to catch ou breath before we were in a second one that was more
ferocious than the first. We got knocked down a second time. It's a
good thing we were clipped in, because I'm pretty sure we would have
been thrown off on that second knock down.

Afterwards, my wife mentioned that at one point, she felt cold wind
blowing on one shoulder and the sensation of hot wind as if from a
guiant hair dryer, on the other. I explained to her that she had just
been exactly in the middle of a wind shear. Based on general
experience, and also the fact that the boat got knocked flat with the
sails furled, I estimate the winds reached over 70 MPH.

Only damage to the boat was missing windex, broken antenna mount and
destroyed wind instrument.

We learned later that someone at a beach was killed by lightning from
the same system about 3 miles from where we were.

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