NorthShoreWx

8 years ago today:

No.

I went for a hike in Sunken Meadow late this afternoon. The refreshing air and the fresh snowcover was terrific. I even managed to sneak up on these guys: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2WZYxLMa5R/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Looked pretty heavy on the Sagaponack web cam a while back.

Hard to say what your snow depth / measured snowfall would have been with twice as much LE. It was a short enough duration and light enough snowfall that the ratios might have been similar, but there's a sort of "terminal velocity" with high snow ratios. Even with fluff, when there is enough of it piling on, the underlying fluff starts to compress pretty fast. Those big lake effect totals would be much less (but still impressive) if they weren't wiping a board and starting over multiple times during an event. As an aside I'm not aware of any change to the standard that snowboards should be wiped once per day. I think FAA regs call for 6 hours, but NWS specs are once per day. Unless that has changed and I didn't get the memo. I do see a lot of different opinions from responsible people.

I'm pretty sure this photo was taken in Long Beach 2/7/78. Enjoy.

I melted the snow that got caught in my 4" COCORAHS gage and it was only 0.03" liquid. That seemed ridiculous for 1.7" of snowfall (57:1) so I took a core off the snowboard and melted it. That was a much more reasonable .10" (17:1). Moral of the story: 4" rain gages are not good snow catchers. Second lesson: The balance of model QPFs, although trending down, were still on the high side right up until today's 12z runs. That is for my location. YMMV.

After we got married, we lived in West Babylon for a few years south of Sunrise near Arnold Ave. It can be a tough place for snow. A couple of years really stood out including 1994, which was a good winter overall, but WB had about half the snowfall of the north shore that winter. The worst was one day in January when I drove home in a snowstorm only to learn that it had only rained in WB. I saw it first hand because I was making that commute every day. The tables were turned a little during Hurricane Bob. It was just an average rainy day at work with no more than an occasional breeze. When I got home that night after the storm had passed, there were trees down around Babylon. That might have been more of an east-west thing than north-south.

Delaware Bay effect? https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/nexrad/index.php?parms=DOX-N0Q-1-12-100-usa-rad

Solar insolation was less here because we did not order the dumplings (dim sun/m). There was an effect in the street and certainly the leftover salt from earlier in the week helped, but I didn't see the sun through the clouds today. At least today, it looks like winter:

Just noticed a broken line of snow showers moving south from just south of ALB and I-88 to near Scranton. Wind shift/arctic boundary?

There is no State of Emergency here.

Looks like we'll end up with our current total of 1.7". Very light snow still falling and the temperature is 27° Total snowfall for the month of January, and the entire winter season is 5.2". We need another 3.5" to surpass last years low season total. Our average season-to-date through January 19 is 12.2". This is the 3rd day this month with 1" or more snowfall. We haven't had a 2" snowfall since last March 14 (311 days). The current snow depth is 3" which is comprised of roughly 50% each (by volume) of today's fluff and older icy snow. I'm running out of trivial stats, so the above will have to suffice as my entry for the longest write-up of the least amount of snow. So far Guinness hasn't called.

You are 2 miles from here. This band might be the last hurrah. The Psych center photos looked a little skimpy, there's more here. Temp is 26.9° and the wind is occasionally gusting and blowing snow off the roofs and out of the trees. Passes for a nice mid-winter day in my book. Won't affect the overall season much, but today feels like January.

1.2" new on the board in Smithtown as of noon. Snow falling at varying rates accumulated 1/2" in the past hour. Current temperature (12:15pm) is 27.6° with very light snow falling.

0.7" new as of 11am. Pure fluff! Short range models last night hinted at the possibility of this burst along the north shore. I looked at the "max" snow map on HRRR just for giggles and it showed a max right where the decent snows along the north shore have been this morning. I didn't place much stock in the map totals, but the relative placement of them can be interesting. 28° with moderate snow now at 11:30. We're close to that first inch.

The snow maps will be a piece of it if I ever finish them. The rest is subjective since those statistics do not exist.

I am unaware of any supporting data for that conclusion.

I dated a girl from Massapequa (now my wife) and the commute up and down 135 was very interesting during borderline events. I think those Syosset stats are pretty accurate but they are a product of my misspent youth. If you compare them to BNL there are some obvious differences, but I also find that to be true with Smithtown and BNL certain years. We're about 18 miles from OKX and Syosset is twice that. I've long tried to put my finger on a sweet spot, but it's difficult. Part of the difficulty is the data just isn't there to make an objective conclusion. Best guess is along the north shore between Huntington, or maybe even NE Nassau and Rocky Point. In most years, the bullseye is somewhere in that area, but in exceptions it can be anywhere; south shore, east end, even Queens. OKX/BNL is the snowiest spot with a long term reliable record on the island, but it's the only such record anywhere near the north shore and I suspect the elusive sweet spot averages 2 or 3 inches more snowfall than BNL. In fact that may be the case in much of the north shore region to the west of there. I took a stab at this almost 20 years ago, but life has interfered with that project: https://www.northshorewx.com/lisnowfallpatterns.html PS one of these years I'll redo the website and make it more phone friendly (and easier for me to update)

Right now the winds are light West to Southwest on the island, so we are more insulated from both the sound and the ocean and radiating relatively well, which explains the rapid drop heading north on the Sag earlier. Happens all the time...we often get our coldest nights after loosing the northerly component to the wind 1 day after KFOK gets their coldest nights.

Most of the winters in the first half of the 80s had at least 1 good month, mostly in January and the Januarys were cold so the snow stuck around for a bit. Here are snowfall stats from Syosset that include the early 80's. Note that even then March was running snowier than December: https://www.northshorewx.com/ClimateData/SyossetSnowfall1974-1985.pdf

I was playing down the ice accumulations here as trivial, but when the sun hit it this afternoon and some of the ice started falling from the trees it looked like about 1/8". It looked nice with the deep blue sky and the sun glinting off the icy branches. The Sound is still on the warm side. We only got down to 18 last night; even Manhattan got down to 17. Its cooling off though as we had no trouble staying below freezing yesterday with the NE wind. Temp is colder now than this morning (15.9° atm). Met some friends for dinner in Massapequa tonight and had fun on the ride home watching the temperature on the car thermometer drop from 24 at the Southern State / Sagtikos junction down to 19 at the 25A end of the Sunken Meadow (about 10 miles). Once we get the Sound temps solidly into the 30s, it isn't a problem any more.

Maybe related to today's weather, we've lost power again. More likely someone looked cross-eyed at a transmission line. It's to be expected; it's not like we live in Yemen.

I remember hearing on AM radio shortly after 5pm that it was raining in NYC. My disappointment was muted as I looked out the window at the raging snowstorm that dropped about 15" on Stowe. I learned that day that Vermont is a much better place for clippers than southern NY. EDIT: I think you're right. The clipper I am thinking of might have been on the 15th.