OceanStWx

Any ASOS Ryan included in that list is definitely flat surface. I'll give Kevin 0.25" on his oaks.

He quotes Ryan who said no major issues.

Let's do it. I'll shovel one more time before I'm shoveling ice into my boat drinks.

Standard KFS reduction is 60% off the top.

Possibly in time for 00z this evening.

Ensemble sensitivity was focused around that piece from the Pacific too.

Nobody even knows what a freezing rain event is, all storms are blizzards, etc. We serve through teaching and outreach too, and I don't see myself as doing service by allowing misinformation to fester. Opinions are fine, but objective analysis by subject matter experts ultimately determines how events are categorized.

EPS keeps tick tick ticking colder each run. Jackman never gets above freezing at 850 mb now, even on the probability maps. Still a decent CAD signal Saturday. Despite the EPS mean being above freezing there are some probabilities for below in there.

Keep it up, I'm over a third of the way there to last season's total.

My Ariens looked like it was shooting slurpee out the chute last night as I was trying to chew through that bank at the end of the driveway. It was about 3 ft high.

Seems like you're arguing a lot for a joke about ice storm criteria. The reason I even come to AmericanWx half the time is to inform people interested in weather how we do things. But if mere mortals don't want to hear about it and just want to do their own thing that's fine.

Not too often you see the north/south gradient reversed for an entire month like it has been. A single storm sure, but to have just about every system perform better to your south is a bit of an oddity. We go from like 40" near the MA border to the high teens in your area.

Nobody is trolling. I'm telling you how verification works. In my opinion it's too often subjective, but when I do winter verification up here I try and be as objective as possible. I also agree some parts of CT will meet ice storm criteria, but claiming the state saw two this month is not accurate. You yourself even said it wasn't a damaging ice storm. I did my masters thesis on this stuff. If you look hard enough you can always find a tree down, 6" of snow, or 0.5" ice on a tree branch to claim a successful forecast, but the reality is that helps no one. You don't improve your forecasting, and it actually taints the record if it is being used for research.

The semantics you complain about is objectivity Steve. I've looked at the obs and LSRs. The ASOSs didn't report more than 0.4" flat surface accretion and the LSRs don't report much more than 0.25" on tree branches outside of a couple reports. Maybe a zone or two could qualify as ice storm, but overall it was a solid advisory event. I'm in agreement that based on feedback from partner feedback the warning criteria should probably be something like 0.33"/0.75" radial/flat accretion. But until then, it is what it is. You're a trip man, you get so wrapped around the axle on headlines sometimes. Headlines don't dictate verification and nobody has argued that wasn't a winter storm.

I just recently heard about the push to make criteria flat ice (I think because the ASOS sensors are designed that way). The national directive is written specifically to include flat surface accretion of 0.25" which is more like 0.1" radial. It would be an insane criteria to have for warnings around here. But the Eastern Region supplement that allows for higher thresholds never specifically mentioned radial. So now we're kind of stuck in no man's land. I would imagine local offices would push for something more along the lines of 0.75" flat for criteria, which would work out to around 0.3" radial. I think the hardest part is that the grids we create now are flat surface. But we've trained both forecasters and the public to think radial, so they see much higher totals now and get anxious. If you're accustomed to radial and we forecast 1" that's a serious event, but the reality now is that's closer to 0.4" radial and probably a low end warning.

Well that's the information we get from utility companies. Their issues don't become widespread until you get ice accretion over 0.33". It's also not necessarily the amount of trees, but the type. If you have a lot of evergreens they evolved to droop branches as the weight increases, allowing snow and ice to slough off. If you have a lot of trees with crowns reaching up (like we plant in developments) they'll struggle when they accumulate ice/snow. That doesn't mean localized areas aren't going to have it worse than others. But a single point doesn't verify warnings, you need need coverage over half a zone (typically a county).

Ginx I just said the 0.3-0.4" is borderline, you could argue from a utilities perspective that it was close to an ice storm for them. But CT did not have two ice storms this month. Everyone gets so sensitive if it doesn't fall into specific category. Sometimes it's okay to just enjoy the wintry weather you get and not need everything to be a ice storm or winter storm warning.

The reason our criteria is higher is because our forests and infrastructure is less susceptible to damage because we get a high frequency of freezing rain events. Like I said, our power grid is rated for more than 0.25" radial ice accretion for the very reason that freezing rain happens a lot around here.

I think this is my point. An ice storm by definition is damaging, if it wasn't damaging it was a freezing rain event.

If you get 0.5" of ice from freezing drizzle, absolutely. Generally you aren't seeing significant impacts to trees/power lines until you get over about 0.33" radial ice accumulation (which is just over 0.8" flat surface accumulation, roughly 40% reduction). New England has traditionally always verified based on 0.5" radial, but turns out NWS wants that to be 0.5" flat. That's crazy for New England, because that's not even 0.2" radial thickness typically. I would wager on seeing criteria change in the coming years because 0.5" is too low a flat surface thresholds for these parts.

It is a good reminder that when models show a big system that typically you can bet on some form of measurable precip. This case happens to still be a low progged to take a decent track vs. a fropa but you get my point.

Which isn't an ice storm after all. Sometimes freezing rain is freezing rain, and that's okay.

The Christmas Day happy hour GFS had a sub-940 low off Cape Cod.

I mean it will weaken, but probably not before it reaches the CT River.

MWN at 27002KT ain't going to cut it for upslope, but once it's 35G50KT in a few hours it'll be a different story.