The Long Island Sound Curse?
By Brian Dooling on February 29, 2012, 12:00am Last modified: January 7, 2013, 5:36pm
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Ok, ok…there isn’t actually any curse of Long Island Sound, but if you live along the shore and love the weather, it sure seems like it can be a curse some days. The body of water we call Long Island Sound tends to moderate the weather as large bodies of water will do. Like today and so many winters of the past, just a slight breeze off Long Island Sound and your 30 degrees with heavy snow can switch over to 33 degrees and rain. It’s a constant battle all winter long. If a storm moves up the coast too close, the warmer waters of the sound will encroach on Connecticut lowering snow amounts or worse, leaving us with just rain! Growing up as a weather geek and also as a student that loved snow days, it could actually be stressful watching a storm pull up the coast, seeing areas just a few miles inland get six inches of snow while I looked out at the disappointing wet pavement of the school parking lot! The so called curse isn’t just restricted to the winter months either; spring time can be less than enjoyable along Long Island Sound. This is most evident on those first few warm days of early spring, when the thermometer sky rockets to 75 or even 80 degrees in Hartford but can’t get above a damp 55 or 60 degrees along the water. These are those first warm days when all you want is to sit in a t-shirt and shorts under the warm sun but instead get stuck in jackets and sweatshirts due to the cold breeze off the water. So what can we attribute to this curse of Long Island Sound? Well it basically comes down to specific heat. Specific heat is a way of measuring how a surface absorbs energy, especially heat. For example it takes more energy to heat up water then it would take to heat up sand. This is evident on a hot day on the beach. During the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, the sand is hot but the water seems to be the same temperature as it was in the morning. This is because the sand and the water have different specific heats, which means it takes less or more energy (the sun) to heat it up. This also occurs on a larger scale and therefore takes a longer time for Long Island Sound to cool off in the winter and warm up in the summer compared to the land of Connecticut. The way the water modifies the temperature has a big impact on the type of weather in southern Connecticut. So here we are, the Sound making it too warm to snow in the winter, but too chilly in the spring. I have to admit while there does seem to be somewhat of a “curse”, at least to someone who wants the big snowstorm in the winter and the warm days in the spring, living along Long Island Sound also offers its own perks. For some, what I call the “curse” is actually a blessing, saving them from shoveling! From beautiful views all year round, to awesome fog banks, refreshing late summer breezes and occasionally some action with waves; Long Island Sound’s micro climate is never dull. It may be stressful for a snowstorm enthusiast to live on the Connecticut shore but that same stress provides constantly changing weather, which you can’t get bored of!
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