ORH_wxman

Actually longer out of school for me... over 3 weeks!

From The Foxboro Reporter:

It would be three full weeks before the students would return to school. It took two weeks to clear the school grounds and clear snow from the buildings. But it was further decided to leave the April vacation in place as planned. State law mandates 180 days or 900 hours of school. Foxboro had a longer school day than most towns, and only had to extend the school year by one day to satisfy state requirements.

For students in the former Lewis School on Mechanic Street, it would be even longer before they got back to their regular classrooms, as the school roof collapsed under the weight of the storm. Repairs were delayed when it was realized that changes made during construction had dropped the roof below state safety standards, so students would be temporarily housed in the Igo School Administration Center, now Igo Elementary School, displacing several town and civic agencies that also shared the space.

Well February vacation went in to part of the school days off. So it made it look even more impressive than the already ridiculous amount it was.

It's coming 3/3 to 3/10. Watch out . Seriously though, the best thing I've had in my young life was after the 10/29 snowstorm on that Saturday afternoon/night we were out of school Monday/Tuesday. We also had the famous "double snowday" last year where people were hoping for 3 snow days from 2/1 to 2/3 of 2011. That was when the first storm really trended into the major one with 6-8" for a lot of people when originally the second one was supposed to be the dominant one. That was when stations through out 18-24" amounts...and that busted but it was still enough for double snowdays.

Besides that though I can only remember getting single snowdays. On 12/13/07 we got out of school early and I remember watching flurries fall in 8th grade English last period before we got let out at noon...and by the time I got home it was 1-2" down and a whiteout. I remember being on the news the next day for being the only school without a delay the next morning. Also there was the 2/10/10 bust where we were supposed to get 8-14" and many schools let out early and we ended up with 3" of fluff that night after just flurries and snow showers in the afternoon.

I was lucky in getting multiple snow days in a row so many times...obviously Dec 1992...we got 2 in a row in March 1993 later that winter too even though the storm was less impactful here and ended at the same time (predawn hours Sunday morning)....but it was was still 21" of snow. But it was underforecast here like Dec 1992...they said 7-14" of snow for March 1993 and said 20" would be west of us.

Then I got a dual snowdays off in Jan 1994 when we had back to back storms overrunning us on Jan 7-8 I think, i could be off a bit on the dates...the storm wasn't very memorable so that's why I could be off on the date. The day it started we got off, but we probably could have gone to school, it didn't start until about 8am...but it lasted a long time and it flipped to sleet and maybe even ZR for a time before going back to snow..long duration storm. Like a 36-40 hour deal.

Then we actually got 2 days off in blizzard of 1996 even though we were too far north for the jackpot...we got crushed on Monday morning....but we already had a 20" snow pack before that storm happened...so they cancelled Tuesday even though the snow stopped around midnight that monday night into tuesday...because the sidewalks and side streets were so poorly plowed and shoveled that they had to call it.

Ryan, that is pretty good coverage man...you were actually one of the first TV mets to go gung ho on that storm for both your market and BOS market...that was a big thing, non of the TV mets wanted to pull the trigger...but you did a pretty good job on pulling it even though it killed you to do it with Kevin's floating head in your mind, lol...just kidding.

That is some good video.

Youngsters like weatherMA and ma_blizzard would have been in nirvana in ORH during Dec 1992 since school was out until Thursday or Friday despite the fact the storm started Friday and ended late Sat night into early Sunday morning.

The closest thing I saw to the 2008 power outages previously was December 1992 previously where the southern ORH county towns got destroyed because the snow stayed wetter. Towns like Auburn and Douglas and Uxbridge and Charlton MA were destroyed in that via the power grids. If you look it up on google you probably can find some good info. ORH actually "lucked out" in that one despite lots of power outages in that the heaviest snow on late Friday night was more like a 28-29F snow vs like 31-33F just tot he south while the sfc front hung there.

Yup I was in Holden a couple days after... and shortly after the storm I was up in the high terrain up on the east slope of the Berks.

You are correct that the extent of the damage wasn't terribly widespread. What was remarkable about the snowstorm damage was that the worst damage was in the lower elevations and highly/densely populated areas. Once you got up above 700 or 800 feet the snow was a bit fluffier and you had less leaves on the trees in general.

Imagine ice with leaves lol.

I was actually going to add this line at the end, but didnt, lol...you thought like me...we will probably never see it in our lifetimes, but one day an October ice storm might happen...whether its 100 year or 2,000 years from now no matter what any of us think about global warming or what not. One day there will be an airmass so anomalous or the climate shifts and there is a 2008 ice storm with leaves...imagine that? Both storms show the power of nature with or without leaves...but the ice is just darn destructive on a rate basis.

Will, did you ever get a copy of this?

No I've never seen it. I thought about writing a book on it though, lol. I probably will someday after I'm done with my SNE snowstorm book that Phil and I will eventually do.

Yeah the damage in some parts of the Farmington Valley was just unreal. On par with some of the stuff I saw in Massachusetts after the 2008 ice storm.

That damage in the Farmington valley was on par with the ice storm damage here I saw in ORH county...I'm not sure if it was as widespread in arial coverage but the fact it covered such a large population made it just as impressive.

I think the two storms are awesome in showing the power of two different things....first the power was 12"+ wet snow with leaves on the trees and the absolute destructive power of ice without leaves. (IIRC you covered some of the damage in 2008 in Holden, MA because you called me asking where to go).

There piles in the local shaws here from October...they got down to about 2-3 feet in height before the January "infusion" of snow...so they are crusted underneath what's left of January.

October was really cool for me, but just a big powder bomb. Top 10 event due to lots of snow and top 5 for me due to weirdness. But very little impact here. Roads were drivable the next day, no power loss.

My top storms were

1978 by a lot

2008 Ice storm

April 1997

2005

Oct 2011

2008 is it for me since I wasn't alive in '78...my parents had just started dating back then, lol. My mom actually got trapped at my Dad's pad in Boston because of the '78 storm, she went straight to his place from work since she lived in Arlington but worked downtown in the state building for the Governor (I think Dukakis at the time)...and decided it would be easier to get to my Dad's place in Boston rather than try and get back to Arlington (she parked in a garage at the building instead of riding the rail)...and ended stranded at my Dad's for about 6 days. Cool story anyway.

2008 was sickening damage...Dec 1992 was kind of close here (I think you said you were in Lowell at the time)...but Dec 1992 shut down the entire city of ORH for literally 3-4 business days even though though the storm started Friday and ended on Saturday night...everything was closed from Mon-Wed and many were closed Thursday too.

Hey will, what was the ice storm around here in maybe 2011? I have great stories from that for when I'm not on my phone even.thoufh I was about 11

Huh?

Did you mean 2001?

If you meant 2001 you are probably thinking of the Nov 16, 2002 ice storm in CT...yes, November....really early, but it smoked the higher elevation of CT with a lot of ice damage. It wasn't devastating like 2008 in MA or '73 in CT, but it was pretty bad. Def the worst ice storm in CT in the past decade.

Yeah, the lasting effects of a few storms last winter was memorable, to say the least.

1978 closed schools for a week. All roads in CT were closed except to emergency vehicles - and there was widespread damage on the coast. Oct 2011 had a major impact, but probably not as widespread, but it hit CT hard in some spots.

There was an ice storm in '74 (I think). I have vague recollections of being able to actually use flexible flyer runner sleds since the ice was so thick. No power for at least a few days.

I don't remember 1888.

You are thinking of the Dec 16, 1973 ice storm if you were in CT at the time...that was the worst ice storm there in the past 50 years minimum...possibly 100 years.

The 2008 ice storm here had local effects worse than Oct 2011 and I think part of the reason Oct 2011 wasn't as bad was because of the Dec 2008 ice storm...it pruned so many large vulnerable branches that weren't there to get ripped off in 2011 like in the lowest parts of ORH and obviously down in Hartford and including Kevin's Tolland CT...most of CT except higher spots in Litchfield county avoided much damage in Dec 2008.

Oct 2011 still had some good damage here, but it could have been so much worse if 2008 hadn't happened before it...but of course we went through the disaster 3 years earlier with people not having pwoer for 7-14 days around here back then. Most people in this area in October got it back within 5 days this time. I was out for about 60 hours.

The 3 biggest for impact would have to be October 2011, February 1978, and March 1888.

1888 for amounts, 1978 for drifts/amounts/strandings/coastal flooding, and 2011 for damage.

I'm not sure any others come into that category.

Well def for CT...I'm not sure about MA though since Oct 2011 "missed" a large portion of MA with big snows...even though lots of people had power outages with 6" of snow in interior E MA. There's some coastal flooding monsters like Dec 1992 in E MA that combined with the snow inland that might put Oct '11 behind it.

But I agree overall it was a monster impact storm for SNE. I would be interested in hearing the damage totals when they finally get them final (in adjusted dollars of course)...the lack of coastal flooding in Oct '11 will prob put it behind a few snowstorms in NE...but in terms of just the snow damage dollars, nothing comes close to Oct '11...not even close.

Trying to put October 2011 in some type of historical perspective in CT. I can't think of any snowstorm other than 1978 that had the same type of societal impact in post-1900. Can anyone think of any others?

Probably not...Feb 1899 probably did.but that was pre-1900. The leaves on the trees made the October storm so unique.

Last February

Pretty anomalous for DJF...about as bad as it gets...we'll have to see where Feb finishes (as there's a few threats still)...but it could end up worse than '88-'89.

Dec 1992 is the storm I always look back at when I'm feeling down about snow.

I know snow wise wasn't that memorable out your way, but the storm itself was such a beast. To have inland spots like ORH and ORE gust higher than BOS is pretty noteworthy.

Yeah we actually nearly verified blizzard conditions and the only reason we didn't is we kept getting too many obs with visibility in the 1/2 mile and 3/4 mile range.

ORH has 6 consecutive hours gusting over 40 knots (not mph) in that storm.

Good storm, but not overwhelming here...the most exciting part by far was the model chase with Boxing Day last year.

February 27, 2008

That was such a crazy winter in S NH...I could never manage over a 20 inch snow pack that winter despite getting almost 80" of snow...but up there you guys must have had 3 feet anyway. 4 feet wasn't out of the question...esp up into C NH.

The last pic could have been April 1st last year?

We didn't have a lot of wet snowstorms last year where we were. Only Apr 1st and maybe the 3-4 incher on Feb 8 before the cold front came in.

No they don't

You dragged the Little Ice Age in by the heels - and maybe you should read up on the LIA - it was a time of profound climatic variability, and it was this variability as much as anything that (presumably) caused much of the misery of the time (e.g. drought, crop failure in the 1300-1350 period leaving the population of Europe particularly vulnerable to the Great Plague of 1347-1353).

So you are saying "the dice were loaded" in the LIA?

In all seriousness, the common famines of the 1600s and 1700s and starvation due to particularly harsh winters is not something unknown about the LIA. I brought up that period because if we are going to go bananas over a degree of warming, then we should probably talk about how ugly a temp decrease of that same magnitude would be.

The bottom line is the climate is not stable no matter how much we want it to be. Would 4C of warming by 2100 have catastrophic consequences? It sure would but that is unlikely to happen. The biggest debate in AGW vs skeptics is the climate sensitivity which has recently been gaining evidence of projections initially too high.

The point is that this is change in ONE direction, not either direction.

Talk about a poor analogy........

No its not...you are pointing out an article that tries to show that things are worse in Bangladesh because of global warming....does that mean we should root fro global cooling now which may make Bangladesh better off but drastically hurt other regions? The point of my post was that most of these articles only show how it could be bad for spots and that nobody ever benefits from warmer temps.

They basically sensationalize the Little Ice Age as this climate utopia and the current state we are in as so much "worse than we thought".

Jesus - you think a little emphasis isn't called for here?

What part of .....continuous fountains of methane being injected directly into the atmosphere over 10,000 square miles of seabed......... do you find so reassuring that it calls for such reticence?

And this in a country that waxes so hysterical at the slightest excuse that we have become tolerized to hyprebole.

We ARE SEEING what is happening with the methane.....

These guys, for instance, are living with the consequences of all this polite understatement of the consequences of AGW

http://www.irinnews....?ReportId=81079

And if that doesn't bother you, maybe the fact that we will be living with them - and lots more like them - as refugees because of AGW will.

Better brush up on your Bengali

There's always going to be spots in the world worse off with climate changing either direction. Its a poor analogy. Its a good thing we aren't as cold as 200 years ago, otherwise crop production would be a lot worse and we'd see more famine on the globe. That's another way to look at it. I can't imagine the amount of famine we'd have if some of those colder years during the LIA happened again now.

Oh that's right...since Dec '09...lol. That was the storm where Andy said it would be in BID right? UKMET fetish.

That winter had some horrifying model teases...that storm...the Dec 19 storm (for interior where we got screwed)...Feb 10, 2010...and then December 1992 plus half a degree in mid March.

snowNH has been asking about that storm since Feb 2010.

Remember when the GFS and UKMET were giving us a Feb '69 redux about 4 days out before the New Years 2010 retrograde storm?

I got really excited for a brief time during that model run until the Euro was the buzzkill.