weatherwiz

I mostly use social media nowadays for sports news/rumors but even those are a joke. There is this stupid Boston page that does does for Bruins/Red Sox and the authors are a bunch of click bait tools with their ridiculous titles. I wish it could be blocked from my google searches for news/rumors. I'd also like to tell them off.

The other great part of blogging and posting your reasoning for forecasts is you have something to look back on. This is why I wish I was more active with blogging but really dropped off over the last several years. So I try to rely somewhat on memory which isn't always the best metric. But when I'm forecasting I will try to think of not necessarily similar events but I try and visualize what the response will be to certain things. One thing I learned from Ekster way back to the eastern days was (and this is about thunderstorms) to try and visualize how a thunderstorm will respond to the environment it is in. But I try and extrapolate this concept across weather phenomena. With winter storms, I always try and paint a picture in my head of how the radar presentation will look at how it will evolve based on how the atmosphere is evolving. This concept has really helped me produce some solid snowfall forecasts over the years, but (in the cast of this past storm), if I am underplaying/overplaying certain aspects I will be way off.

That's precisely the reason I love blogging too. It help keeps my sharp and I kind of use it as a way of talking to myself to ensure I am understanding of what's going on meteorologically (under the hood).

Yup. I know every now and then we all debate on would you rather have one big monster storm for the winter and little outside of that or a winter which is composed of many, but small events. There was a time I would have preferred the former, but I think I would prefer the later (I mean the true preference would be many smaller storms but a few big monsters lol). In general, winter and cold suck...but getting snow makes it tolerable. Give me several 2-5" events and winter will be more fun to deal with

Can we just get like 5-6 more systems like this past Saturday, except maybe a few inches beefier?

It's not an excuse...it's just a product of life. Even myself I wish I got to be a bit more invested with local forecasts. But I have to do forecasts for all over the country and its not really forecasting for people so I don't get to do specific forecasts like this (making snowfall maps/forecasts for example). I just do this for fun...but I am so tired after work stuff I barely have the energy to do these maps/forecasts/blog posts. I've been wanting to switch and do videos but I am not a technological person or meant to be heard (why I didn't pursue broadcasting lol). But for my severe weather class this past semester, we had to do a video presentation for our final project and as part of the class I got camtasia which is super easy to use...so I may switch from written blogs to video...might be easier/less time consuming.

I think what you put forth was pretty damn good as what did 4 Seasons and Seymour. I wouldn't even be surprised if some or a chunk of the snow reports were inflated a tad (by like 0.5"), if people measured in the grass when you also account for fluff factor. When I was driving along 84 yesterday, the stretches of median which are flat and grassy...you could easily see grass poking through. It wasn't until like towards Waterbury/Route 8 where that wasn't the case (especially closer to Seymour/Ansonia). But these maps are pretty damn good. There will always be some that end up along the upper end of the range or just over and some that end up along the lower end or just a tad under

Great calls! Ryan had a great forecast for CT too. Edit: Looking back at some posts FXWX had a great call too.

Definitely a D- or an F on my forecast for this. I also try to factor in the backend/reasoning to the forecast into the verification and weigh that much more than the outcome itself. For example, if I did a forecast somewhere of 3-5" and said that would come on the front end of a storm, and it turned out that happened on the back end with a CCB...well that would grade extremely low, but the reasoning was incorrect. The most incorrect aspect of my thinking here was a stronger band developing and impacting Long Island would cut back on totals farther north across CT (subsidence) but that did not happen. While I don't know what everything looked outside Saturday night in terms of snow growth and flake size, it was clear there was just enough lift, combined with a deeper DGZ, to utilize better ratios. I definitely underplayed that component. In terms of assessment, I don't think I would do anything different if I had to do this over. But what I would do is certainly go a bit more "aggressive" (putting aggressive in quotes because we were really dealing with 1.5-2.5") and maybe do a range of 1-3" over a larger area to cover uncertainty better. Or maybe even C-2" but that's a range I hate.

Well I mean they were flying for the Pats...unfortunately so for the Bills lol

And Pats TDs

Guessing snowfall totals outside of the shoreline generally in the 1-2” range…with some locally higher amounts? Definitely more than I anticipated, even up north near me. Up to a coating bad call for inland.

Highway wasn’t terrible but saw two separate accidents on route 8 that looked like spin outs. One was on the southbound side and the other on the north bound side…probably even a few miles from each other. Definitely more snow headed through Seymour and in Ansonia than along 84. Beautiful scenery, everything caked in snow

Meeting a few friend for brunch at Copper City Bar and Grill

Eclipsed 1” here! Have to drive to Ansonia so hopefully highways aren’t bad

If we could reel off like 5-6 events like this in a months stretch we’d be good

Light snow falling. Just measured right around 3/4” so 0.8”

Yup, we went to school together! One of my best friends, great dude

The fluff factor has certainly been in the back of my mind too and I would generally go higher because of that, however, when looking at soundings, I am just not seeing much in the way of lift…and in order for us to maximize the ratio potential, we need lift!!

But glad snow on the shore isn't starting until overnight. Have to make a 2+ hour trip to Stamford from Springfield right now

We shall see. Watch there be a swath of totals ranging 6-8" from NJ across LI maybe even southern RI and SE MA and then some screw north of that. But there is only so much room north the fronto banding can get. These bumps north in QPF are models likely honing in on the fact that these bands usually end up a bit north than initially advertised so while bumping north with the max QPF, there is a whole shift north in the QPF field with no account for subsidence that would have to occur. If air is rising somewhere it needs to sink somewhere else at an equal intensity. We may see the immediate shoreline get into the heavier banding but that just means more of a struggle north of there

Correct, I think that is going to be a huge player here. Outside of that heavier banding signal, it's really difficult to find much in the way of lift. It just seems really weak to me, plus the concerns with subsidence. The stronger that fronto band ends up being, the greater the likelihood for subsidence north of it. I think everyone is going to see light snow, but north of the shoreline it's not going to amount to any more than a coating. There may be some localized 1'' amounts because there might be some brief, heavier pockets of lift moving through but I think its just a very steady light snow but very small flakes. The duration of the snow too will be difficult to really get widespread 1" totals north of the shoreline.

This looks very meh outside of the immediate CT shoreline, southern RI, and SE MA

flurries falling

Getting flurries