LibertyBell

actually two of the very best occurred in the 70s and 80s.....Feb 1978 and Feb 1983. I recently found out that my second home in the Poconos got 30" in Feb 1978 and also over 2 feet in Feb 1983, that's pretty amazing considering that my first home on Long Island also got over 2 feet from the same storms! There's a select list of only a few storms that have dropped two feet plus in both locations; Jan 1996, Feb 2003 and Jan 2016 are also on that list.

Chris can you post the full list- some of those got cut off, I counted only 11 on the dates I could see. This list also includes the two big ones in 1978! So it's 16 and not 14? PS also something a bit extra if you can find the info on this.....can you post a list of all the storms that've dropped 20" or more at one of the NYC official stations (NYC/EWR/JFK/LGA) and also dropped 20" or more at either ABE or MPO?

and thats the classic solution during the time period we've been outlining....the potential is there, it remsins to be seen if it is realized. all of those were amazing, but there is a wide spectrum within that envelop.....addressing the ones that weren't perfect for us......2/79 was actually a little too suppressed, we got close to a foot of snow here but the historic amounts were just south of us, 2/94 was a dumping of snow followed by a changeover to rain, still double digit snowfall here (sort of similar to the December event)....2/06 had a narrow band of heavy snow concentrated near the city, with lesser amounts outside of that death band, every other storm in that list was historic for a large part of the area though.

I think he means something like Jan 1996 or Feb 2003 or Feb 1983

fyi I went through the list of the late 80s and early 90s winters and what it proved to me is even in the worst so-called "patterns" this area has EVER had we somehow still managed to score 6-9 inch snowfalls....and if you correct that for higher precip totals we now see in our new climate, it explains why we've been seeing such high intensity precip bombs for the last 10 years or so. Add to that that it doesn't have to be below normal temp to get big snowstorms here during the most favored period for snow, mid January onwards (some of the aforementioned snowstorms had temps in the 50s and 60s the day prior to the event and again right afterwards- I'm perfectly happy with that!), then it doesn't really matter what the long term so called "pattern" is. Also I honestly dont give a shit if the entire winter averages 40 degrees or higher, all that matters is that it's in the low 30s when a big storm comes in. We dont judge winters here by cold, we judge them by inches of snow. We already had one decent event and one more will get us to average snowfall for the entire winter and that's a lot more than me and many of us were thinking at the start of the season.

yes I see you are more gungho about mid January onwards which historically is the best time period for snowstorms for us, irrespective of what the so-called "pattern" is.

The anomalous Kara Block was also involved in the big turnaround from December 2015 to the HECS we saw in the third week of January in 2016. It's amazing we had 14 straight hours of 1-2 inches of snowfall and not some fly by night event either, it was a real day time full on blizzard.

Midland has gotten like 5 8"+ events since 1998

wow 1995 is the most memorable example but it also happened several times in the early 2000s.....warmer SST causing this?

Kara block....where have we heard that before

Don how strong was the one we had a few years ago that resulted in the four storms in March and one in April?

So that's now three years in a row

The Poconos is a good place to be for this one!

yeah it's ludicrous especially with all the events undermeasured there-- let's start with Jan 1996..... it's 30 inches plain and simple if not more, let's just admit it and move on.

it's crazy to hold to those numbers since snowfall measuring is so unscientific. we should just accept 29.5 and higher as 30" and call it a day.

2) is definitely right because history has shown us that over and over again.

Historically, it's the Jan 20-27 period that seems to be when many of our big snowstorms have occurred.

hey now western parts of the south shore saw 8" with that. if this historic Bering Sea storm happens that could be what's needed to flip the pattern.

Maybe we need to start dumping more plastic trash into the Pacific,

Play the long game man, history has shown us that our best storms happen in the second half of January.

JB-esque level misleading. But we must also call out the other extreme too. There is zero reason to believe that this will be like last winter. The west to east cause-effect reasoning of the Pacific being behind everything that happens in our weather drives me nuts. So if weather goes west to east can we say that the Indian Ocean is really what determines our weather since the Indian Ocean is west of the Pacific and therefore it must be the reason behind what happens in the Pacific? And if you want to go further down the rabbit hole, you can say that the whole west-east (and north-south) analogy is a holdover from the days when people thought the earth was flat. If you go straight east you'll end up back where you started from (and likewise if you go straight west, due north, or due south.) In reality everything is connected and there is no such thing as cause and effect because of this interconnectedness. There is NO cause and effect precisely because EVERYTHING is cause and EVERYTHING is effect. Ultimately it draws into question this whole simplification of cause and effect which is the greatest fallacy in all of science. It is the main reason why I love quantum mechanics so much and have ever since a little kid (well 7th grade anyway), it makes no bones about it and doesn't simplify anything and boldly proclaims there is no such thing as cause and effect. And you can't dare refute it because every single experiment that has ever been performed has confirmed it, even over relativity and Einstein's objections.

I remember it well. I wonder if anyone has the JFK total from that storm, as it seemed to be a local jackpot. A front stalled just offshore and a low formed near the Hamptons and just stalled there creating a narrow band of snow from Newark to Long Island. If it wasn't for the temps being in the mid 30s most of the day it would have stuck sooner, but it just kept snowing and it started sticking at night. A 30 hour snowstorm! I would love to see the hourly obs and a map of that storm!

do you still think we're going get that bake off of a summer in 2021 Don?

Is this all of them? It's missing an 8.6 snowstorm that occurred in December in either 1985 or 1986 (I dont remember which.) Do you know where I can find a list of all NYC snowstorms 4 inches (or 6 inches) and greater?

omg this is it! It was called a very rare "neutercane"- I remember a TV Met on WPIX talking about it (saying it happens about once every 30 years) and completely unpredictable. Haven't seen one since! What was supposed to be a frontal passage and just a few showers stalled just offshore and turned into a cyclone that caused a 30 hr period of snow from Newark to the Hamptons, we had 8 inches near JFK- that is my favorite snowstorm memories from that lackluster period. It didn't snow at all in Philly or Boston, it was a tristate special! Can someone post the weather maps for this "neutercane"? Feb. 26, 1991 - A surprise snowstorm dumped 8.9" of wet snow, the biggest accumulation in eight years (since 17.6" buried the City on Feb. 11-12, 1983 ). Because the temperature was just above freezing for much of the day the snow didn't accumulate much on the streets or sidewalks. This was the winter's third snowfall of five inches or more.