No one talks about the old barometers that we grew up with hanging on a wall or on a mantel. Some had a thermometer and a clock. It was the barometer that was the most interesting. It had little pointers that you could mark the setting and see if it went up or down. If it went down and sometimes really down, you knew that a bad storm was on the way. In the wintertime, that usually meant snow!
While they are still used today and the weathermen still report the readings daily on the weather forecast not much attention is paid to them. Even the Weather Channel reports in millibars rather than in inches of mercury. I suppose that is in part because millibars are metric and uniform worldwide
The point here is this: The lowest reading recorded in the East was during the Hurricane of 1938 in New England and Long Island at 946 MB of mercury. This storm (Sandy) is now at 952MB. While it is low--very low-- I still relate to what a low reading did to us that grew up with old barometers recording in inches. Anything that got close to the 28.00 inches was a deep low pressure or major storm. It was a reading that got people excited and started making plans. [Us kids] didn't know exactly what was going on but we knew something was brewing and we took notice.
The blizzard of January 26,1978 over Lake Erie saw 20 foot snow drifts and of course blizzard condition winds. As the low pressure moved out over Lake Erie the lowest pressure reading was
953MB or
28.05 Inches of HG(Mercury). That was only 34 years ago. Less than the once in 50 years or only a third of once in a 100 years type storms, This will be #4 of once in a hundred or 250 years that I have lived through to date.
The
952 MB being reported for Sandy now is only 1 MB off from the Blizzard of 1978 and that was 28.05 inches. If it hits the projected 946 as some experts forecast, then the readings will be down in the 27.90 range. A normal for good weather is 30.00 inches and 31.00 is super blue skies.
The conversion forMB is the mb reading times 0.0295301 to convert to inches. Since some of you most likely still have that old barometer handing on the wall or siting on your desk or siting on your mantel go set the pointers and see how much more it drops. Don't feel bad if you do still have an old barometer,it's one of those things that we know about the weather that the younger generations have no clue about! Don't it make you feel good to know these things!
