Dangerous nor’easter targets East Coast with snow, rain, wind
March 2, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
BOSTON – The Northeast is bracing for a powerful storm that will kick off the volatile month of March, bringing damaging winds, moderate to major coastal flooding, rain and snowfall, CBS Boston reports.
Heavy rain, intermittent snow and high winds with gusts exceeding 50 miles per hour are expected as the storm moves up the Eastern seaboard, beginning in New York and Connecticut on Thursday evening. Along the East Coast, authorities told residents of coastal communities to be prepared to evacuate if necessary in advance of Friday morning’s high tide.
Meanwhile on the West Coast, a huge amount of snow is headed toward the Sierra Nevada, according to CBS Boston meteorologist Eric Fisher. Three to five feet of snow is expected across the Sierra. Across southern California, there’s the risk of dangerous debris, flooding and mudslides.
Ahead of the storm, many airlines have issued travel waivers to allow passengers to change their flights without penalty, CBS News’ Kris Van Cleave reports.
Here’s how the storm looks as of Thursday afternoon.
Massachusetts
For the first time since a blizzard hit the region in early January, New England will see “bombogenesis” — signifying an intense and rapidly deepening storm, CBS Boston reports.
The storm has the potential to be a historic, crippling event for southern New England. With major coastal flooding, destructive winds and torrents of rain followed by a plastering of heavy, wet snow, the damage will be widespread and significant. Power outages will likely be numerous and lengthy.
A satellite photo shows a nor’easter over New England on March 1, 2018.
The nor’easter will not have a quick exit, instead blocked by a large area of high pressure over Greenland. Combine a very slow moving storm with the highest astronomical tides of the month and you have the recipe for major coastal destruction.
From midnight to 6 a.m. Friday, rain is expected to arrive from south to north, starting as snow in western Massachusetts.
The storm will become an absolute monster southeast of Nantucket on Friday and only slowly pull away farther to the southeast on Saturday. There will be a large and powerful wind field, extending out several hundred miles from the storm’s center.
Cape Cod and the Islands, as well as Cape Ann, are at greatest risk for widespread, damaging winds, ranging as high as 55-80 mph Friday and Saturday. The rest of eastern Massachusetts will see winds gusting 35-55 mph, enough to cause tree and property damage and cause some power outages.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency director has urged residents in vulnerable coastal communities to evacuate, saying the powerful nor’easter is likely to destroy homes.
“It will be dangerous to remain in the homes,” MEMA director Kurt Schwartz said. “Not only may rescue not be possible, but homes will be subject to significant structural damage. We expect to lose homes during this storm. If you’re in one of those areas, you need to get out.”
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said he has activated the National Guard. About 200 guardsmen will work with local and state officials during the powerful storm.
“I can’t stress this enough. This isn’t a snowstorm in eastern Mass, but the storm itself, especially along the coast, is shaping up to be more severe than the storm on January 4,” said Baker. “While crews were able to perform rescues in between high tide cycles in January, it’s possible first responders will be unable to reach all flooded areas at peak high tide tomorrow.”
Coastal residents are warned that the storm’s impact could be felt for several days. Residents should plan to have medicine, food, clothing, and money for an extended period.
“If you are in one of these typically effected areas do not ride out the storm in your home if you are told to evacuate,” Baker said. “Rescue during the storm might not be possible. Staying in homes in flood prone areas puts yourself and first responders at risk.”
Baker said the storm “will impact the entire state,” though what impact is felt depends on location.
Snowfall is the biggest wildcard in the storm for some areas. In at least parts of New England, the first half of the storm will almost certainly be rain, followed by colder air Friday evening and overnight, changing the rain to a heavy, wet snow.
Snowfall in the hills of Worcester and in the Berkshires could easily top 6 inches before tapering off Saturday morning. Several inches are possible in the eastern part of the state Friday night. With the heavy, wet nature of the snow combined with strong winds, power outages may become a big issue.
Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut
The National Weather Service said all of Rhode Island will be under flood and high wind watches from Friday to Sunday morning, calling the situations “life threatening.”
In Connecticut and New York City, rain is expected to begin on Thursday evening. Moderate coastal flooding in Queens and Long island is expected Friday.
The U.S. Coast Guard is advising boaters to exercise “vigilance and extreme caution” Thursday night through Saturday. Authorities recommend residents of coastal communities be prepared to evacuate if necessary in advance of Friday morning’s high tide.
A flood watch is in effect from Friday morning through late Friday night for southern Connecticut and southeast New York.
New Jersey
High winds and flood watches have been issued around New Jersey, where most rains will begin Thursday afternoon, getting heavier in the evening. The storm will then usher in a wet and windy Friday, with gusts of up to 60 mph in Jersey Shore communities. Warning signs are posted at Wildwood beaches and some residents are already boarding up their homes there.
Officials in the state worried that the storm could take a chunk out of beaches just south of Atlantic City that are still being repaired because of damage from previous storms. The National Weather Service said flooding is possible Saturday. Waves of up to 12 feet are in the forecast at the shore in New Jersey.
Power outages are also a concern for coastal areas. Officials say Thursday’s dry morning and afternoon hours are a good time for folks to get supplies and batten down the hatches.
Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, heavy rain, high wind and even some whiteout snow conditions are expected in the coming days. The National Weather Service says communities from Pittsburgh east to Philadelphia and the Poconos will be affected.
Rain will start in the state Thursday afternoon in most places and is expected to get heavier overnight. On Friday afternoon, the storm will usher in high winds, with gusts of up to 60 mph near Lancaster, and up to 50 mph in suburban Philadelphia and Allentown. Rain could turn to snow in parts of the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos, causing whiteout conditions with the high winds.
Pittsburgh is also under a flood advisory, and the same storm is expected to bring heavy rain and high winds to a swath of western Pennsylvania from Thursday and into the weekend.
Share and Enjoy
Putin Says New ‘Invincible’ Missile Can Pierce US and European Defenses
March 2, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
He also used the speech to reassure Russians that the military buildup was taking place even as the government was spending big sums to improve the quality of their lives.
But the main attention grabber in the speech was the weapons, which Mr. Putin described as a response to what he called the repudiation of arms control by the United States and its plans for a major weapons buildup.
The Trump administration has said that countering the world’s two other superpowers, Russia and China, was becoming its No. 1 national security mission, ahead of counterterrorism.
It has largely blamed Russia’s military modernization for that shift and has justified new work on nuclear weapons and bolstered missile defenses as the appropriate answer.
Mr. Putin may have further fueled the tension on Thursday by essentially declaring that Russia’s military brains had made America’s response obsolete.
He said a team of young, high-tech specialists had labored secretly and assiduously to develop and test the new weapons, including a nuclear-powered missile that could reach anywhere and evade interception.
“With the missile launched and a set of ground tests completed, we can now proceed with the construction of a fundamentally new type of weapon,” Mr. Putin said.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
He showed a video that illustrated the weapon flying over a mountain range, then slaloming around obstacles in the southern Atlantic before rounding Cape Horn at the tip of South America and heading north toward the West Coast of the United States.
Given that deception lies at the heart of current Russian military doctrine, questions arose about whether these weapons existed. American officials said that the nuclear cruise missile is not yet operational, despite Mr. Putin’s claims, and that it had crashed during testing in the Arctic.
The threats evoked the bombast of the Cold War. But this time they are not based on greater numbers of bombs but increased capabilities, stealth and guile.
Mr. Putin’s boasts about undersea nuclear torpedoes and earth-hugging cruise missiles emphasized the uselessness of American defenses against such weapons.
Oddly, apart from a reference to renewing the American nuclear arms enterprise in his State of the Union address, Mr. Trump has said almost nothing about the new era of competition with Mr. Putin or Russia. With multiple investigations into whether his campaign’s connections to Russians had influenced policy, he has neither protested the Russian buildup nor publicly endorsed, in any detail, his own administration’s plans to counter it.
The cruise missile was among five weapons introduced by Mr. Putin, each shown in video mock-ups on giant screens flanking him onstage. He threatened to use the weapons, as well as Russia’s older-generation nuclear arms, against the United States and Europe if Russia were attacked.
“We would consider any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies to be a nuclear attack on our country,” he said.
Mr. Putin said he could not show the actual weapons publicly, but assured his audience of Russia’s main political and prominent cultural figures that they had all been developed.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
If Mr. Putin was not bluffing, said Aleksandr M. Golts, an independent Russian military analyst, then “these weapons are definitely new, absolutely new.”
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
“If we’re talking about nuclear-armed cruise missiles, that’s a technological breakthrough and a gigantic achievement,” he said in an interview. But, he added, “The question is, is this true?”
Several analysts writing on Facebook and elsewhere leaned toward the bluff theory. Given the recent history of Russian launch failures or premature crashes, the idea that Russia suddenly possessed a new generation of flying weapons strained credulity.
“The real surprise in among all of this is a nuclear-powered cruise missile,” said Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “It was talked about in the ’60s, but it ran into a lot of obstacles. To the extent that the Russians are seriously revisiting this is pretty interesting.”
Such technology could alter the balance of power, but Mr. Barrie questioned whether Russia was even close to deploying it.
“Does reality mean you have an item in the budget saying, ‘Develop nuclear propulsion for a missile?’” he said. “Or does it mean, ‘We’re going to have one ready to use soon’? I’d certainly want to see more evidence to believe that.”
Mr. Putin said Russia had developed the weaponry because the United States had rejected established arms control treaties and was deploying new missile defense systems in Europe and Asia.
President Barack Obama said that he was willing to negotiate cuts deeper than the 1,550 arms that Washington and Moscow are permitted to deploy under the 2010 New Start treaty, which took full effect last month. But it expires in a few years, and neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Trump has shown interest in renewing it.
The United States has also accused Russia of violating the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. After Mr. Putin’s speech, Heather Nauert, the State Department’s spokeswoman, said Mr. Putin essentially confirmed that by trumpeting the country’s development of new nuclear weapons.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Mr. Putin was correct that the United States is investing in expanding missile defenses. But those were not meant to counter Russia’s huge arsenals, but rather the launching of a few missiles by a state like North Korea.
The new Russian weapons would render such defenses obsolete, Mr. Putin gloated, and if anyone found a workaround, “our boys will think of something new.”
Other weapons the Russian leader discussed included a ballistic missile called Sarmat that could round either pole and overcome any defense system; hypersonic nuclear weaponry that fly at 20 times the speed of sound; and unmanned deepwater submarines that could go huge distances at enormous speed.
Mr. Putin said that some of the weapons were so new that they had yet to be named, and announced a naming contest on the Ministry of Defense website.
Political analysts said it was an effective campaign ploy whether the weapons existed or not. “He’s giving people the image of a desired future, of a future for Russia, and that’s appealing for his domestic audience,” said Aleksei V. Makarkin, the deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow think tank.
Mr. Putin’s guns-and-butter, Russia-can-do-it-all speech came 17 days before the March 18 election. It seemed intended to reassure voters that expanded social spending would help solve the economic problems of the past four years, while sending the message that Mr. Putin was their best hope in protecting a Russia portrayed as a besieged fortress.
The reality that the country lacks the money to pay for a giant increase in social spending combined with a new generation of weapons was beside the point, Mr. Makarkin said.
“People may say Russia depends on oil, Russia doesn’t have the money, but the population at large doesn’t care about that,” he said. “They just want to know that we are a superpower.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
On the social front, Mr. Putin promised to double government spending on health care and raise pensions. He said Russia would reduce the poverty rate — official statistics indicate that around 14 million Russians live below the poverty line — by 2024.
Mr. Putin also said that life expectancy, currently at 73, a leap from when he first took office in 2000, should exceed 80 by 2030.
Critics doubt that Russia will ever have the means to deliver so much, given its stumbling economy and relatively depressed oil prices. Max Trudolyubov, a newspaper columnist and political analyst, called the speech a modern version of the Czar Cannon, a giant 16th-century piece of armament that sits on the Kremlin grounds and that legend holds never really worked.
For years, Mr. Putin has chafed at the perceived disrespect showed to him and Russia by the United States. “Nobody listened to Russia,” he said near the end of the speech, to huge applause. “Well, listen up now.”
Correction: March 1, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated the age of the Czar Cannon. It is from the 16th century, not the 15th century.
Continue reading the main story