NorthShoreWx

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.

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.

That probably had a lot to do with it. We had a lot of white rain before it started sticking. Also I think points farther west did better. I think NE Nassau had up to 8 or 9 inches. The Sound helps for most of the winter, but being within a couple of miles of the Sound also gives us a longer growing season kind of like parts of CNY near Lake Ontario (but not as pronounced). We had nothing but a few wet flakes here in October 2011. A couple of miles south there was snow on the ground. An interesting quirk is radiational cooling at night. We are often one of the cold spots on the island a day after Westhampton records some crazy low. Once the breeze begins to shift as high pressure starts to pass to the east, we are effectively far from the water and decouple well while the South shore maintains an onshore breeze. During the "best" radiation nights we sometimes keep a light northerly breeze going all night. Even so, we can be several degrees colder than a mile north of here on those nights.

7 years ago this morning in Smithtown. We got about 3.5" in the post-Sandy noreaster.

It was a good run for the coast. 2 months of 10"+ @ KMGJ is a nice winter. 2011, 2014, and 2015 were good snow cover winters here. I'll run those stats when I get a chance. This winter, we wait for the MJO to find it's MoJO

No such luck. From 12/26/2010 - 1/27/2011 we had 51.4" (33 days). We only had 12" in the 12/26 blizzard. 2010-2011 Snow cover (2N Smithtown): 1" or more from 12/27 - 2/28. At least a trace from 12/27 - 3/6. 20"+ from 1/26 - 2/3. 10"+ from 1/12 - 2/17. Max depth 27" early on 1/27 (not recorded...was 25" at 9AM obs time). 1/27/11:

January 26, 2011 (before the big snowfall). The first 6 weeks of the 2010-11 winter were great.

I recall January 21 from that winter. For some reason I have no memory of the rest of it.

One of the more memorable flash freezes of the past half century. This one was pretty extreme:

I assume it did not get that cold.

Not the first place I'd think of for the LI cold spot, although they were probably already iced in prior to that outbreak. I'll dig up what I had found if I get a chance later.

Old local newspapers refer to a number of spots around -19 , -20 in 1934. Don't know how accurate, but there were multiple such reports. 1934 might have been the colder outbreak though. Deep snow cover and radiational cooling contributed in 1961. Presumably there was some wind and more mixing (i.e., colder aloft) in 1934 for it to have gotten as cold as it did in NYC.

December 7, 2003 Regrettably this was a week before I got my first digital camera. It may have been the reason I got my first digital camera. Good memories and stories from that, including being on the Kings Park Bluffs in blizzard conditions on the 6th and picking up a friend at ISP during strong winds and relatively light snow late in the evening on the 5th. He had moved from CT to FL a few years earlier and was blown away by the conditions walking across the parking lot to my car. That also gave me respect for small airports; air travel was severely messed up and that flight landed at ISP right on schedule despite strong winds and and snow and about 8" on the ground at that point. There wasn't much more snowfall overnight, but we ended up with 16" on the ground after part deux.

Upton on LI set their record low of -23 in January 1961. That's some crazy pipe cracking cold for these parts.

We managed to get squat here. Maybe a few minutes of snizzle.

I enjoyed that one. 14" here and we never got above freezing on north central LI. I remember being called a liar when I said we had freezing rain here while it was plain rain in OC. I still don't really understand how we got stuck in that bubble, but it was pretty cool. I stitched together some video (a little accuwx and Craig audio in the background) and a few stills...Here ya go:

Wasn't there also an earthquake last year? Next comes locusts.

The tough one for ISP is the tornado. The other two happen, athough within 6 months of each other is uncommon; the last time was probably 1960-61.

Is it leaning to the left or to the right?

I hope you had a beacon and avalanche probe with you.

A few seconds of 1/23/2005 here: http://www.northshorewx.com/images/winter2005/Blizzard05/Blizz0501-1500k.wmv

12/13/2007 started as snow but was mostly another sleet-fest here (the third one that calendar year) with a little zr thrown in for good measure:

Ok, I'll bite... never before seen photos from PDII. Yours truly trying to do a front flip on the lawn. I never was a gymnast