NorthShoreWx

When I was a kid the guidance was always to put the sensitive plants out after May 15. Even though things have warmed since then and a lot of years you can get away with planting the tomatoes early, it seems that May 15 is still the date if you want a high degree of confidence.

1 wet flake reaching the ground is a trace. It's anything more than nothing but less than measureable (i.e., a tenth of an inch is measureable). I observed a trace at my location yesterday. It snowed lightly for about 30 minutes but melted on contact with the ground.

For the statisticians in this group, when was the last time the warmest temperature in January was warmer than the warmest temperature in April? There's a good shot at it for both NYC and ISP.

May 9, 1977 was not just a stray flake that some were lucky enough to notice. Durng the mid afternoon a cold rain turned to a heavy wet snow for a while on LI with temps in the mid 30's. It did not accumulate (although a haze of slush did start in some spots) but it was more than just a formality.

Just had a brief but moderate shower of sleet here at 44 degrees.

A little snow is mixing with the rain here. 11:50 am

You were a freshman in 1869?

Decent burst of snow off and on here for the past hour. It's all melting on contact.

This is an 18" Slide Mountain Summit Spring Special.

March 17, 2007 :

Getting a light rain /snow mix here

The only news stories I believe are the ones that tell me the other side is pure evil.

December 25 - 26, 1976 snow totals. In addition to the Christmas night fun, this was significant because for most locations it established a snow cover that persisted well into February:: Patchogue 2 N 7.0 Syosset 5.8 Mineola 5.0 Holbrook 5.0 Islip LI Macarthur AP 4.0 Riverhead Research Farm 4.0 Setauket Strong 4.0 New York JFK Intl AP 3.9 Greenport 3.5 New York La Guardia AP 3.2 NY City Central Park 3.1 Bridgehampton 0.1 Montauk 0.1 Bensonhurst 3.0 Westerleigh (SI) 5.2 Dobbs Ferry 4.6 Scarsdale 5.0 Yorktown Heights 5.0 West Point 3.5 Poughkeepsie 2.7 Walden 4.0 Gardnerville 4.0 Port Jervis 4.0 Bridgeport 5.0 Danbury 5.0 Woodbury, CT 4.0 Stamford (5N) 5.0 Groton 3.5 Middletown, CT 4.0 Newark 4.6 Canistear Reservoir (NJ) 3.5 Charlotteburg Reservoir (NJ) 3.3 Oak Ridge Reservoir 4.0 Sussex 4.0 Cranford, NJ 4.8 Freehold Marlboro 5.0 New Brunswick 6.5 Plainfield 6.0 Boston 2.6 Taunton 1.0 Providence 1.0 Philadelphia 1.7 Baltimore (BWI) Trace Syosset, NY 8AM 12/26/1976: And yes, that pine tree is flipping you the bird

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.

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.