NorthShoreWx

Imagine the universal harmony in a Utopian world of uniform snow measurement.

3.3" on the snowboard here. Even trying to be good, I would have come up with 4" if I didn't use a board:

Looks like about 3 inches here with enough to plow in the streets. This would have been an enjoyable little event if only the pavement in Manhattan wasn't wet Still snowing, temperature is 30.

Snow mixing in Smithtown. 2:30am 37.7

Not to mention temperatures outside of the city were well down in the teens 2 mornings ago. It's not like today's weather has been the pattern for weeks. In fact daily lows have averaged sub-freezing here since November 1. 11/29/95 was 63 degrees late afternoon and snowing here by midnight. It turned over here before it did in the city. That snow had no problem sticking. This one might not have as much snow, but the table setting seems the same.

I'm way to young to remember that, but I met my old lover on the street last night. And there wasn't any rain.

In spots yes. 2/78 was more widespread and a lot windier. I was near the epicenter in 2/13 and we had nearly 4" LE in the snow and sleet that fell (some high profile roof collapses in my town from that). 78 had less water, but gigantic drifts. Roof problems in 78 were more isolated because most of the snow blew off of roofs. Closest thing I have seen to the 78 wind was December 2010 but 78 had higher winds and the winds and snow lasted a lot longer too. Actually, 2010 was somewhat of a dud here (barely made 12" imby), but the winds made it worthwhile. Edit: Anticipating that someone will ask, we had a couple of hours of rain or rain/mix midday on 2/8/13, but it only totaled about a tenth of an inch of liquid. The precip started as snow in the morning, flipped to some light rain and drizzle for a short time, then the snow went bonkers after about 3pm. We did have a period of mix with sleet in the evening, but mostly heavy wet snow transitioning to a drier powdery snow after about 10 pm or so. I'll have to check, but I think I had 3.87"LE for the storm and almost all of it was frozen. I've never seen that much from one storm, even in '78. I suspect that something similar may have happened in February 1961, but not certain. '78 was windblown powder from curtain to curtain. We stayed on the cold side of the coastal front that got parts of the island up near freezing. When that was happening, we were positively ripping overnight with temps in the low - mid 20s.

I remember the media forecasts (880, 1010) saying "a foot or more" as early as Saturday 2/4/78. I had about 1 snow day before that winter (2/2/76) and we had full school days during all day snowstorms in 2/74 and 2/75 (both were around 9"). It wasn't a district that liked to close and people weren't as touchy feely about driving in snow as they are now (rear wheel drive and all). But they closed school Monday 2/6 in anticipation of the storm. Big time forecast that was actually taken seriously. Then the storm exceeded the high expectations. This after a colossal forecast bust 2 1/2 weeks before when expected overnight rain was actually a 17" blizzard. Good times that winter. 72" season total in NE Nassau County. A friend lived in a split level across the street from the old Sod farms near the high school (now Stillwell Woods) and the drift there was up to the roofline on the tall side of the house. We didn't go back to school until 2/13 (then had regular classes as another 5" fell on Valentines Day). The NSP was closed for days and I saw these giant snow throwers that they brought down from somewhere upstate clearing drifts on the parkway. Here is a photo from one of the industrial parks in Syosset in February 1978:

Nala Repsak ... I literally remember him saying his name backwards on the air. No idea what the forecast was that day, but I remember the name My guess is he'd get a chuckle out of anyone remembering that.

Another way of looking at it is ISP got hosed in early March. We got 12" over the first few days of the month which brought us from single digits to 21.7". We had 4.5" in the November 15 snowfall.

That definitely happens very early in the season (i.e., usually before Thanksgiving) but I don't think so this time. We were snowing at times when other parts of the island that picked up more snow were raining. It would snow, then it would stop for hours. Overnight Sunday was the only rain (most of the qpf that we got). Most of the time during this "long duration" storm, it wasn't doing anything. We just were unlucky with the quantity of LE. For comparison, our storm total LE was 0.49", ISP was 0.84" and Syosset was 0.93" .

Nice. That'll have some staying power, even this early in the season. Total LE here from Sunday through Tuesday was 0.49". Temperatures weren't the only problem.

February 1978 was one of relatively few forecasting successes on big northeast snowstorms prior to 1980. I was in HS and remember being wound up about that storm by the prior Friday. I had an indoor track meet in the Nassau Coliseum all day on Saturday 2/4 and brought a portable radio so I could keep track of what was going on. There are old case studies you can find about the successes in modeling that storm well in advance. I think the model was called LFM or something like that. It might even be a pre-historic ancestor of the GFS.

1.5" here, all from Monday night. It snowed during the day also but not much and shut down quickly once when it was about starting to glaze over things. Only 0.15" LE after 9AM Monday, so ratios Monday evening were probably at least 12:1. Total LE for the entire event was only 0.49" going back to Sunday morning, so if it was a couple of weeks later and a little colder this still would have been a fairly minor event here.

I'm on a SAR team. Surprised we didn't get called out for that. 1.5" in Smithtown. It snowed for a long time but mostly quite light.

Down to 32 with light to moderate snow. Smithtown NY

Hardly wasted any here. Last time I checked, storm total LE was 0.34" Probably less than 0.1" (all non-accumulating snow) since then. That's going back to Sunday morning!

NAM has SLP getting down to 966 east of Boston.

I figured if it did anything, we were ready for snow, but we were dry for hours. It looks great out there now and we are starting to get a coating, but this band could easily pivot west of us fairly quickly...or die out while another one buries us in subsidence. Temp now 34.

Boundary level. The temperatures near the surface / lowest level of the atmosphere. I forget how high that goes. Maybe 950mb, maybe not that high.

Moderate snow here now. Looks pretty cool with the gusty winds, Not sure how long it lasts. Temp is 35

35.7

You're a little west of me. If that shower moving west holds together, you'll probably see snow too.