RU848789

Light snow started here around 5:55 pm. 27F. Woohoo! I'm going with a prediction of 1", as the storm overperforms hugely for Metuchen, lol. It's still only 30F 15 miles SE of me, but above freezing 20 miles SE of me...

Light snow has commenced! Woohoo! 27F. Guessing the storm overperforms hugely for Metuchen and we get 1" vs. the 1/2" predicted for me, lol...

Amazing how the Euro went from snowmageddon to nosnowatall in one model run, lol

Walt - adding to the avalanche of support for your threads/posts. It's a weather forum and anyone who knows even a smidgen about the weather understands the huge uncertainty inherent in numerical weather predictions, so we all know that 7 days or even 3 days out, a forecast can go awry either providing more or less snow than originally forecast. It's the nature of the beast. But most of us love the tracking as much as the actual snow and your insights on tracking these systems are invaluable, given your incredible expertise. So please keep posting away, thanks!!

Did you play a round of disc golf in the park? Nice course...

That was from Monday evening - looking at something I saw elsewhere, there was a flight tonight which would not have had data going into tonight's 0Z models, which initialize at 7 pm EST.

The huge variance between Op and ensemble runs is a big red flag at this point, especially since it's certainly enhanced by sparse data on the initial conditions for the shortwave still out in the Pacific, as there are no more important deterministic, non-linear numerical model inputs than initial conditions, so until that baby is well sampled (including the weather flight data tonight and relevant data from being over land early this morning), we're flying partially blind, which is why I don't live and die with model outputs until we have those initial conditions nailed down much better, which will likely be by 12Z today The old modeling adage of "garbage in, garbage out" may sound trite, but it's quite relevant here.

A few snow pics, including nighttime snow, a shot of the pond across the street, our house showing my fine shoveling (and the town already having plowed our street by 7 am), and the snow angel I made.

Thought the NWS and other forecasts did well - I'm sure there were some misses, but no significant busts I've seen. Not worth pasting the full list yet, IMO, as it's very preliminary, but it looks like a fairly uniform 4-6" in most of SNJ/CNJ/NNJ, except for Sussex/Warren/Morris, which were more like 2-4", as expected, and most of E PA was in the 3-5" range, except the Poconos/Lehigh Valley, which were more like 2-3". NYC/LI/CT were more like 5-8" with the winner looking like LGA Airport at 8.4" (still snowing on E LI /CT though). https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?new&prod=XXXPNSPHI&wfo=phi https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=PNS&issuedby=OKX

And finally, as of 7:15 am, when the snow had been reduced to flurries, I got a final measurement of 5.75", which outperformed nearly every prediction out there. Just finished shoveling and then a long JebWalk and finally had to make a snow angel - snow was fairly light and fluffy, but with just enough moisture to make decent snowballs. Couldn't have asked for a much better storm out of this setup.

Holy crap it poured snow most of the last hour, so as of 6:00 am, we're up to 5.0" of snow OTG, meaning we got 1.5" of snow in the past hour! Actually exceeded my prediction of 4.75", which I thought was a bit too optimistic, as the NWS had me for 4.2". We just backed off to moderate snow and that might have been the last of the heavy snow bands for us. Still 27F.

As of 5:00 am, we're up to 3.5", but wth only 3/4" the last hour; 27F still. Snowing moderately to heavily with larger flakes again. Should at least get to 4", but not sure about my 4.75" prediction. Great storm so far!

As of 4:00 am we have 2.75" OTG (1.5" last hour) and it's 27F. Snow just went from heavy back to moderate with smaller flakes - hopefully just a lull.

Pouring legitimately heavy snow right now with visibility definitely <1/4 mile - probably about 3/16 of a mile...

Just took a nice Jebwalk - spectacular out thre folks! As of 3:00 am here in Metuchen we have 1.25" OTG for 1" the past hour and it's snowing somewhere between moderately and heavily with gorgeous mostly large (1/2" to 1" across) fluffy dendrites. If we can keep this up for aonther 4-5 hours, we'll make my 4.75" prediction.

As of 2:00 am, measured 1/4" on the ground (the comment above was eyeballed). Temp dropped from 31 to 28F over the last 20 minutes with the snow falling and cooling the column. Snow is fairly dry and is a mix of small and medium dendrites (plates mostly).

Quickly up to moderate snow here now and a solid 1/4" on the ground. Gonna be a fun night, especially since I bought a new 5000 lumens portable spotlight, which I put in the backyard aimed kind of at our house and it's working great for me to see the falling snowflakes from my recliner, instead of having to get up and look at the snow falling in the street lights - only took me 29 years to get one, lol.

And coming down lightly to moderately already with a light dusting on the ground and 31F. Pretty flakes - very nice dendrites - should be good ratio snow...

Flakes are flying (ever so lightly, but should pick up soon) in Metuchen. Let the games begin!

Great stuff Walt - this is why it's so great to have a pro like you (and many others) on the board. Also, look at that graphic vs. the radar composite - fairly decent match...

In case nobody updated this (haven't checked), FYI, forecast for flooding for the Raritan increased to just about the same record level seen for Floyd in 1999, at least at Bound Brook, peaking around 1-2 pm, then declining, as per the graphic. Let's hope Bound Brook, in particular, can handle this (although evacuations have been ordered - let's hope the mitigations they put in place keep it less severe than back then). Flooding on the Delaware at Lambertville will reach moderate flood stage (looks the same as last night's prediction) and will reach major stage on the Passaic at Little Falls, as per the graphics below (the link allows anyone to look at predicted flood levels for any river in the area). Most roads have improved and are reopening, but not River Rd or 18 and 1 in many locations, especially near streams/rivers. Horrible storm with so many tragic outcomes (8 dead in NY/NJ, so far and incredible damage all over). Nobody could've anticipated 8-12" of rain and so many tornadoes, even with predictions of 3-6" of rain and possible severe storms. https://water.weather.gov/ahps/region.php?rfc=marfc Also, my very good friend is a firefighter in Hillsborough (certainly my personal hero for today) and was doing water rescues all night, but they couldn't reach 2 who died, as per the report linked below. Helicopter rescues being made in some towns in NJ and more are missing. Just tragic. https://www.nj.com/weather/2021/09/nj-weather-2-people-die-in-submerged-vehicles-in-hillsborough-during-ida-flooding.html

Latest Raritan flooding forecast is several feet less than it was for Floyd, which had record flooding on the Raritan. Will still be major flooding, though according to the graphic, assuming that graphic is correct.

Walt - any thoughts on river flooding levels for the Raritan and other major rivers? Floyd type levels or less. Seems like there was a bit more rain in Floyd (10-14" common in the Raritan watershed vs. 7-10" now, by my quick inspection), but antecedent conditions before Floyd were much drier, so maybe it'll be close.

Over the last 12 hours (mostly the last 3-5 hours) we've seen 5-10" of rain almost everywhere along and west of the NJTPK from Wilmington DE (and back to DC/Balt, really) through Woodbridge, with the worst of it in western NJ and eastern PA. NYC/NE NJ will have 5-10" soon, as they just got a later start; just about 5" here in Metuchen with much more on the way. Incredible gradient on the radar estimated rainfall from NW to SE in NJ with <1" for most areas near the coast. Incredible.

Simply unprecedented severe storms/tornadoes and not quite unprecedented rainfall, but looking like as much as Floyd, Irene and what we saw for Henri in spots. Long night - we have some water entering into our basement through our window well windows (the usual path for us in the worst storms), so not posting much - so far, nothing the French drain can't handle, but if it gets much worse, might need to use the portable sump pump. Be careful out there. No more current tornado warnings, which is good - the rain is bad enough...