SnowGoose69

1 hour ago, the_other_guy said:

If CPK got 4.3 this isnt really a bust. Just a low end of the range.

I lived thru busts in the 80s and 90s before we had all this technology in the palm of our hand. You would go to bed expecting snow and you would wake up to grass.

Enjoy it! As someone rightly pointed out, a snowstorm from the NW is a rarity in NYC. Also a rarity (lately) in NYC: a snowy December.

You don’t usually see widespread “clear air busts” anymore these days.  These types of cases where a small sector of the impact region gets screwed is more common vs the entire storm taking a track 100 miles off at the last second 

Oddly enough snow growth based on ASOS reports relative to radar echoes and ground reports seems good.  You would not think thats the case given the area went over to sleet for a time though.

5 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

HRRR is on some serious crack or there's still quite a bit to go for most of this subforum. 01z run just coming out has 0.70" liquid for my backyard, 0.55" for NYC and even 0.40" out by Morristown. Has a pretty good period of snow overhead by around midnight sparked by the stuff coming in from western NY and ends around 5am. 

That area might actually hit LI.  I still think places as far west as the Nassau/Suffolk border could do well but I'd think it'll swing too far E for NYC and you have to expect given its coming from the NNW some degree of downslope will happen

The sleet changeover did not even matter much as it stands now.  The 5 boroughs would have had maybe 1-1.5 so far had that not happened.  The QPF bust is really the issue.  We'd have seen 5 plus easily in and near the city even with that brief surge of the sleet

2 minutes ago, BxEngine said:

As long as this storm puts knyc over 3” for december we’ll have an above avg snow winter. Or something. 

I got a report of 2.4 from someone in Central Park about 15 minutes ago.  I don't think that is correct, would think something more near like 1.5 is realistic right now

Just now, Krs4Lfe said:

Massive bust low for us. I doubt Central Park even makes it to 3” at this rate. It’s been a while since we’ve had a busy like this. We’re more overdue for bad busts than we are for a 4” snowfall. Pitiful 

They'd actually get over 4 easily probably if the back edge of this was not so quickly approaching.  Its mostly all snow there now once again

Ratios are not as good either as I thought they'd be.  POU has had .38 liquid, friend lives about 2 mi from the airport he has had only 4.9 so far, similar readings on LI it seems where its about 10 or 11:1.  I felt maybe 15 was possible especially up in the LHV

Long Island is probably still fine.  Not sure about Queens Brooklyn Bronx or NYC though unless that line stops like the 12/3Km NAM showed 

Given the radar over NYC and NE NJ I’m surprised most stations aren’t reporting anything 

9 minutes ago, MANDA said:

Lets give it a couple of hours to see what happens but I agree surprised parts of Warren County NJ and Stroudsburg, PA area are mixed at the moment.

There were some runs of the RGEM and NAM that suggested those areas and even into middlesex could mix for the first two hours before heavier rates pushed the line back south and west   

1 minute ago, Winterweatherlover said:

Euro often too dry in these scenarios I think. 

I feel its always too dry with the exception of deep lows.  Its not always a huge error but .25-.30 too low can be 4-5 inches if you have a 15:1 event.

I think NYC finally gets 4, whether its 4.1 or 7.2 I don't know but I'd lean closer to the 4 for sure right now though.

The Euro has been low on QPF in most significant storms so far to impact the Midwest/Lakes/NE this last 2 months so I am not surprised to see it doing the same again.

4 minutes ago, winterwarlock said:

is this really turning into a 8-9 hour event...basically 6-3am

It won't even be that, it'll be 4 hours from like 7-11pm.  I think after that its just snizzle/pellets/frz drizzle, even in SW CT and the LHV where they may get 7-10 inches that'll happen.  Its rare to see big overrunning type events be snow all the way through, even in areas which get hit hard

The GEFS/EPS still strongly disagree on virtually every indice.  GEFS likes more of a -AO/NAO/WPO/PNA whereas the EPS is way less negative on the AO/NAO and same story on the WPO/PNA

I mentioned 2/8/94 earlier for a different reason but this storm may resemble it in one way in that 80% of the accumulation may occur in the first 4 hours where some places might see 2 inch per hour rates at points.  After 9-10pm it could be very light spotty type stuff with even a chance of some mixing in areas that largely stayed N of the mix line during the peak of the event.

5 minutes ago, Roger Smith said:

This might be the first time dew points above 60 in KY are recorded on a day before a winter storm hits NYC but those dews are not even going to reach se VA, if the GFS scenario is correct the low that forms takes all day to cross Ohio and is slowly consumed by the attempt to push the cold air back, eventually it just reforms off the southern Delmarva and continues east from there. 

In this kind of setup I don't see a lot of potential for guidance to bust on the mild side, I think there might be a chance it busts on the cold side further south and sleet mixes for a while in c NJ then it goes back to all snow there too. 

NYC will be in the vicinity of 534-540 dm thickness during the bulk of the event, often that is rather marginal for temps but I note that right now, the air mass pushing southwest has an average T/Td of 20/10 under that portion of its outflow (approx upper MI across L Huron into sw ON) and the surface feed is even colder from upstate NY so by morning I would not be surprised to find temps in n NJ and NYC metro near or a little below 20 F. And there will be quite limited warming before precip arrives. I bet there will be numerous comments posted tomorrow just before onset along the lines of "it is much colder than I was expecting" and the result will be precip boundaries further southwest than a lot of the guidance is showing. So in other words the bust will be opposite to what a lot of people are expecting the bust to be. Would be comfortable with 5-8 inches generally and 10-15 local banding maxima. There again those bands could be intense further south than some are expecting. 

2/7/94 was insanely mild down in the TN Valley/SE.  ATL I believe hit 80 that day...might be closest match but February is a different story than Dec.  Its way easier for those places to get that warm in early February than late Dec

I still think NYC ends up with a solid period of sleet with this.  We're seeing the typical correction back south now we often see at this range but then inside the final 18-24 ticks back to the N tend to occur once again and sometimes verification still ends up even further N by 15-20 miles on what your game time start guidance has.   There will likely be 2 big time areas who get smashed here.  One will be the typical just NE of the changeover which might run from like CNTRL LI NW up through Fairfield Co and roughly SWF/POU.  The 2nd will be a frontogenesis/dry air subsidence induced area somewhere in ERN CT probably up into SRN-CNTRL MASS.    Overall the good news is the 3K does not agree with the 12K but given where the RGEM has been consistently and the 3K at 18Z I like a 30 or so mile shift to the NE on this roughly.  I am in Flagstaff so I'll be missing the whole thing.

EPS/GEPS at 00Z long range were close, GEFS not much but at 06Z GEFS was closer to those 2.  Seems main difference is GEFS though stronger on the negative side on the AO/NAO is more + on the EPO and - on the PNA than the EPS/GEPS.  But if we go with history as GA has posted a few times, odds favor the +PNA in January in these similar winters.

1 minute ago, WeatherGeek2025 said:

but this isn't a SWFE storm it's a NWFE (North west flow event)

Its sort of a SWFE behaving event, I guess its an overrunning storm, but yeah very few historical matches to this

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

The 500 mb map preceding the storm has some similarities to December 27-28, 1984. Then, NYC picked up 4.8” of snow, Boston 0.2” and Philadelphia had none.

Comes in as the 6th closest match.  Closest according to CIPS is 12/14/95, overall this setup has more of the NW-SE dive though, 1995 the low tracked well north so the results of that to me are not a good match.  12/19/79 looks like by far the closest match on track but this system is more juiced and more broad.

https://www.meteo.psu.edu/ewall/NARR/1979/us1219.php

2 minutes ago, ag3 said:

I would ignore the NAM. It does whacky things like this sometimes.

When the GFS is much colder, snowier and has support from the Rgem and others, it’s a great sign for snow lovers.

 

It also went insanely north with yesterday's event at about 48-60 hours out too.   Given nothing else at 00Z did that I'd not really change any ideas yet.  The RRFS/RGEM at this range have recently tended to have slight suppression/amped biases respectively so something near what the GFS shows is what I'd go with now

4 minutes ago, EastonSN+ said:

Looking at NWS thoughts on Philly, would think even if there was a changeover 4 to 5 would fall.

Up here I could see it, down there a 40 mile shift they'd be mainly sleet or freezing rain

We'll see over the next 12-24 but this may be the start of the 40 or so mile push NE I expected could happen, thats every 18z model minus the ICON more or less.

30 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

This might be a case where the snow comes in like a wall, falls 2"+ per hour for 2-2.5 hours then quickly starts to shut off. 

2/8/94 did that down here.  Overrunning events tend to do that, it often comes right at the beginning where it goes gangbusters or somewhere mid-end while the in between periods are light.