Nor'easter

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Nor'easter is a colloquial term for a macro scale storm whose winds come from the northeast, especially in the coastal areas of the Northeastern United States and Atlantic Canada.

More specifically, it describes a low pressure area whose center of rotation is just off the coast and whose leading winds in the left forward quadrant rotate onto land from the northeast. The precipitation pattern is similar to other extra-tropical storms. They also can cause coastal flooding, coastal erosion and gale force winds.

Nor'easters are usually formed by an area of vorticity associated with an upper level disturbance or from a kink in a frontal surface that causes a surface low pressure area to develop. Such storms often move slowly in their latter mature stage, frequently intense.

The northeastern United States and Atlantic Canada, particularly New England (coastal cities) and Nova Scotia, are usually hit with several nor'easters each year, most often in the winter and early spring, but also sometimes during the autumn. These storms can leave inches of rain or several feet of snow on the region, and sometimes last for several days. Until the nor'easter passes, thick dark clouds often block out the sun. During a single storm the precipitation can range from a torrential downpour to a fine mist, but it does not stop. Low temperatures and wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour are also associated with a nor'easter. On very rare occasions, such as the North American blizzard of 2006, the center of the storm can even take on the circular shape more typical of a hurricane and have a small eye.

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"Nor'easter" usage and origins

As a contraction for northeaster, nor’easter apparently has no basis in any regional dialect. Typical New England pronunciation (both seafaring and not), would be “naw-THEE-stuh”. Assuming a contraction were necessary, it would be “no’theaster”. Nevertheless, nor’easter has so thoroughly permeated the journalistic lexicon that those who would eradicate it have no hope of success.

For decades, Edgar Comee, of Brunswick, Maine, waged a concerted battle against nor’easter, which he considered “a pretentious and altogether lamentable affectation” and “the odious, even loathsome, practice of landlubbers who would be seen as salty as the sea itself”. His efforts, which included mailing hundreds of postcards, were profiled, just before his death at the age of 88, in the Sept. 5, 2005 issue of the New Yorker (Talk of the Town).

Despite the efforts of Mr. Comee and others, use of the term has only accelerated. According to Boston Globe writer Jan Freeman (in his 12/21/2003 column “The Word”, “from 1975 to 1980, journalists used the nor'easter spelling only once in five mentions of such storms; in the past year (2003), more than 80 percent of northeasters were spelled nor'easter”.

University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman has pointed out in his Language Log (also archived here that while the OED cites examples dating back to 1837, they represent the contributions of a handful of non-New England poets and writers. Liberman posits that nor’easter may have originally been a literary affectation, akin to "e'en" for "even" and "th'only" for "the only", which is an indication in spelling that two syllables count for only one position in metered verse, with no implications for actual pronunciation.

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Famous nor'easters

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