CT Rain

Yeah I recall an event in the late 90s where we had accumulating fluff just east of HVN on a WSW wind.

on SE winds off Block Island Sound!

YOu don't take a joke very well!

BDL still averages 49" so you're probably the same. That's not bad. I'm just under 45" in WeHa.

lol - who would possibly be skeptical about a 72 hour forecast for record shattering snows?????? And jeez... 1 comment about OES and you get all bent out of shape.

? I probably was as un-debby as it gets about the October snowstorm.

He also benefits from inserting his ruler into the snow at less than 90 degrees.

Yeah - we actually see the downslope issue a bit more up along the Mass border near Springfield then we do in the Hartford area. It's not a huge thing unless we have a really ripping ENE flow. It's normally fairly negligible. On storms where we're kissing the northern end of a shield of snow... or even a decent deformation band... the northerly ageostrophic dry drain can be lethal here.

I feel like a lot of what Kevin attributes to upslope is really just other factors that benefit elevated locales. For example, on a storm with NE flow... occasionally drier air in the boundary layer will advect south (locally chanelled flow too) down the CT River Valley resulting in a dearth of snowfall from Greenfield Mass to Hartford. When ORH is 24/22 and HFD is sitting at 27/18 it's time for me to tie the noose and jump off the Bulkeley Bridge. That's not downsloping... but it is Kevin doing better because of elevation and avoiding the northerly dry drain. That's a much bigger issue for MBY than downsloping unless it's some really effed up storm like 12/92 or that awful retrograde storm that totally sucked in 2014.

Imagine how well the Tolland hills did on the epic SE flow Westerly ocean effect snow storm that Ginx lived through!

What a dumpster fire that storm was for us. The worst part of it was that the reason we got screwed wasn't even a good one... I could see downsloping, dry air draining down the valley, or even pinging too fast... but that odd standing wave pattern was just absolutely brutal.

I would have preferred 45F and sunshine than live through that storm again

How's the other parameters besides Kp look?

KMWN 230150Z 30014KT 40SM FEW/// FEW010 FEW150 SCT200 07/06 RMK TPS LWR FEW050 HZ DSNT ALQDS AURBO

Awesome shot - Did you get this in Dutchess Co?

Are Bz and Kp related? For example will a positive Bz hurt the Kp or are the 2 indicies unrelated?

What is Bz? Why is it important?

I saw that... though Kp has dropped from 8 to 7 in last update.

Meh that storm sucked

We've seen convection screw up thermal profiles due to latent heat release but this was pretty rare.

Right? Just crazy

Finally made some animations of the level 2 radar data from OKX from the blizzard. On the left is base reflectivity and the right is correlation coefficient. Notice how when the convection fires along that monster zone of frontogenesis on LI/CT CC drops rapidly indicating mixed phase. CC was very low at times (<0.75) which is pretty unusual for a winter storm. A lot of what you had was large, heavily rimed snowflakes and monster wet aggregates. In some cases we had hail under the strongest convection and in other cases we had sleet which seemingly appeared out of nowhere likely due to latent heat release from the convection screwing up the thermal profiles. Almost saw sleet up to Tolland in this storm! There are some really cool things in the dual pol data including depolarization streaks as the ice crystals were forced to line up by the electric field (lots of charge from lots of graupel interactions), gravity waves over NYC to the west of the strong convection (not sure if this was convection related or not) that likely played with the ptype over Nassau County and Queens (you can see lines of low CC even though BR doesn't show the inertial gravity waves too well in this case, and also lots of nonuniform beam filling down radial which screwed with the dual pol products from OKX over RI, N CT, and MA. http://ryanhanrahan.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/brcc_part1.gif

I can't take the credit - http://www.nwas.org/jom/abstracts/2013/2013-JOM21/abstract.php Pretty cool though to see that in a snowstorm - would be interesting to compare when the depolarization streaks appeared and archived lightning activity in the area.

Missed this at the time - but take a look at the dual pol data from the Feb blizzard off OKX. Above the freezing layer (note bright band in CC) the positive/negative streaks of ZDR are depolarization streaks. Atmosphere was so highly electrified the ice crystals were aligning with the electric field vector. Pretty sweet. This is the 3.4 deg tilt so the top of the bright band is ~5kft and the depolarization streaks (normally seen in the anvils of thunderstorms) are above 8kft. The high amount of graupel and small hail in the clouds from convection was able to electrify the clouds enough for this fun.

The 00z OKX sounding did have a layer near 0c at 900 mb before the balloon was ripped to shreds. I do agree that in that band with insane reflectivities (50-60 dbz oriented north/south - so definitely not your typical "bright band") you probably had suspended graupel/hail that was able to form. What is a little odd though is the reports of rain in interior SE CT during the height of the banding. Makes me think latent heat release from convection was intense enough to change an all snow sounding to a rain sounding - at least briefly. Essex, Old Lyme, and other towns around there flipped to pouring rain for a period of time. If you get a chance pull up the OKX level 2 data and check it out. It's really cool.