LibertyBell

it's all about net.... if the losses in the summer outnumber the gains in the winter year after year it wont matter. You're seeing the effects of that now with parts of the Keys going permanently under water. The King Tide came in a few months ago and never left.

What do you think of this new commercial being put out by the industry about greenhouse gas emissions being half of what they were a generation ago? I oppose natural gas (it's really methane) because of fracking and pipelines, thankfully we have placed a moratorium on them here in NY and are going with wind, solar and hydro. I'd rather have nuclear, but we also had a lot of problems with the Shoreham plant on Long Island, and the power company was eventually charged with racketeering. The rates got extremely high when LILCO was trying to build that plant. The Indian Point power plant was also shut down recently because of issues. These plants shouldn't be near big cities or near fault lines, as Fukushima demonstrated.

and 2 snow events in April, after 4 of them in March!

I think it happened before the 1993-94 winter.... I remember the Dec 26 1993 storm as being the only all snow event that winter for us lol. Was a low moving up the coast developing east of ACY dropping 4-5 inches of snow here. I remember a coast to coast low that went east off of Norfolk that dropped 4-6 inches also, do you remember what year that might have been? I distinctly remember it because coast to coast lows passing south of us are pretty rare.

Wow I wish I could remember that! 2 inches of snow in 20 minutes in Oceanside?! 17 inches of snow in 3 hours in April 1997? Wow that was a big bust down here!

You have a data treasure trove! Any idea what years/dates two of my snowfall memories occurred in? One I know was in December, I just dont know what year....somewhere between the mid 80s and early 90s I think An arctic front passed through during the day with frequent snow showers with partly cloudy skies. At night it began to snow around 10 PM here and snowed for two hours, dropping around 2 inches. I could see the full moon through the clouds while it was snowing hard, giant flakes! I remember seeing the local news show a radar with a small band of snow right near JFK and SW Nassau. One of the other ones was a general heavy snowfall, the best one of the mid-late 80s I think...... 8.6 at NYC and also occurred in December. Ended as drizzle. Another one was during the same period, but in January, I got locked out of my house because my door was frozen lol and had to wait for my parents to get home- that one was in January. For some reason I only remember the LGA total..... 7" Another one, which I'm pretty sure happened in February, was on a front that came down was supposed to be rain changing to snow but a low stalled on the front and we had 30 hours of snowfall! That was amazing even though it was mostly wet snow during the day so didn't stick much at 33 or 34 degrees; at night it really began to pile up! The snow accumulated in a narrow band from EWR out to Long Island.... I think 4.5 inches fell at NYC but we had close to 8 inches here near JFK.... the low stalled near the Hamptons or just SE of there. No snow fell in Philly or Boston. That was actually my favorite storm pre Jan 1996!

Yes that was the one..... looks like both were undermeasured at the Park though as both storms had totals of 20-25 inches at the local airports.

Yes, I'm trying to remember the last notable undermeasurement at NYC, and I think it was before 2009-10. Most of their measurements in this decade have been pretty good. It's the airports (aside from EWR) that seem to have bigger issues now. They still do have problems at the Park with the smaller storms, especially when the last measurement is actually during a storm and it snows for hours afterwards and you can readily tell the final total is an estimate because it ends with .0 Infuriating!

the first big storm of the season and the start of the coldest period of the winter that ended with the big Jan 96 blizzard! We had both a white xmas and white new years! And a white valentine's day too lol. (How often does that happen?) 8 inches at NYC and JFK, but 14" at LGA and 12" at ISP and a plane slid off the runway at JFK and into Jamaica Bay! It was a good storm but still a bit of a bust as the predictions were for 15-20 inches of snow.

Maybe someone will remember the year this happened, I know it was in December..... An arctic front passed through the day and there were snow squalls with almost completely clear skies during the day and high winds, but no accumulations..... Then at night we had a rogue snow squall move in with partly cloudy skies and a near full moon around 10 PM. I remember seeing the weather on WPIX and there was a rogue band of snow around JFK and SW Nassau. It sat there for 2 hours and we had 2 inches of snow in that time, all the while seeing the moon pass through the clouds (or vice versa lol.) What date did this happen? It was somewhere between the mid 80s and mid 90s (prior to 92.)

You didn't have to go that far, JFK had 15" and Rockville Centre had 18"

I remember a late season event that did that at JFK..... April 3 or 4 in 2006, NYC only got 0.1" (but that got them to 40.0 for 4 years in a row- unprecedented!) and JFK got 1.5" or 2". It happened during the day, was that a snow squall? It wasn't the heaviest snowfall rate event at NYC since they got that in the Feb 2006 blizzard, but it sure was at JFK, where there was about half the snow in the Feb 2006 blizzard.

15 inches at JFK! But it all fell at night here and I was so exhausted tracking it all day and waiting for it to start snowing that I fell asleep and never saw a single flake fall!

Chris, could it also have to do with warmer lakes producing more prolonged plumes? In my experience these events seem to be more prevalent in December than they are in other months. Also, do you have the list of spotter reports for last night's event?

ah I understand where you're coming from, but that bar keeps moving because of the overabundance of big storms we've had in the last couple of decades. The reason why I keep a lower bar for Central Park is because they typically undermeasure in these scenarios- as an example, Feb 1961 was only 15 inches at Central Park, but over 24 inches at JFK. If you set the bar at 21.0 then Jan 1996 is no longer a HECS and neither is PD2; do you see what I mean? Not to mention that Feb 1978 and Feb 1983 are also taken off the list. And so is Boxing Day 2010! If you want to change it to NYC or one of the local airports hitting 18 inches (including rounding up), that seems more reasonable.

well all the roads I could see with my eyes ;-) lol the funny thing was that it would snow hard for like 20 minutes then cars would come through and you could see tracks, and then another snow squall would come through and bury the tracks again, this happened several times between 4 PM and 11 PM, the last one started around 10, snowed hard to about 10:30 and lower rates of intensity after that until it petered out by 11. The first one that everyone was talking about wasn't the one that laid the snow cover on the roads though, it was the ones that came after that. I guess it was still too warm when the first one came through?

thats what it looked like here, except whenever a new snow squall pushed through those tracks got covered up again. We had like half a dozen different snow squalls between 4 PM and 11 PM, each lasted about 20-30 minutes with a ton of wind and lots of blowing snow too.

you would have liked it in Long Beach ;-)

last year's was puny here, with this one all the roads were snow covered and it was snowing hard most of the evening!

I dont know Ed, this was my best snow squall event I've ever witnessed in the over 30 years that I remember them.

I thought this one was a lot stronger, more widespread and definitely lasted MUCH longer. No surprise- it's December, when the lakes are the warmest.

lol it snowed for 7 hours here

We had around an inch here in SW Nassau too, 7 hours of snow *4PM-11PM* and roads were snow-covered for most of the night!

That was 7 hours of snow here! Roads were snow covered, easily my best snow squall event ever!

Got about an inch here, the roads were snow covered several times and it snowed at varying rates between 4 PM and 11 PM. Had lots of blowing snow too! Wasn't there a local area spotter total posted?