hooralph

I estimate about 1-1.5” on UWS

33 on UWS. Cars are coated. 20 stories up we are accumulating nicely already. 

14 minutes ago, SI Mailman said:

NYC Schools closed tomorrow

kind of surprised. Thought with ending time they’d be able to get roads clear.

34/28. Been spitting snow for a while (even back when it was 39).

Just now, hooralph said:

Temp down to 36 on UWS, 27 dewpoint,

Down 3 degrees in past 15 minutes. Was 44 earlier.

35! dropping fast.

Temp down to 36 on UWS, 27 dewpoint,

Down 3 degrees in past 15 minutes. Was 44 earlier.

Looks like we are done with the snow in Manhattan. Nice while it lasted. Came down heavy for about 30 minutes.

I just wanted to jump into this thread to say: this winter sucks, so hard. So very, very hard. I would take the wall-to-wall warmth of 2011-2012 over this. Even with the cold snaps, it ranks up there with the banal dullness of 1991-1992. The sidewalks are disgusting with grime and salt from last week's Squallpocalpyse and Polar Vortex Death Freeze. We need an Old Testament-style flooding rain to cleanse the city like the filthy hellhole it is.

Can we just hurry up and get to the inevitable cool, damp spring?

Carry on.

35 minutes ago, weathermedic said:

This could be the kind of situation where areas along the south shore of NYC (JFK, southern Brooklyn, Rockaway, Staten Island) change to rain and have temps 33-35 while upper Manhattan and Bronx have freezing rain/sleet with temps 28-32. 

How much for Manhattan Valley.

Sleet and silver dollar snowflakes mixing in on the UWS (20 stories up)

Important read from the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html?module=inline

I stay on top of which apps I allow to use my location history ("all the time" vs. "When using the app" vs. "never"). I allowed WeatherBug to keep using it "always" assuming it helps with weather alerts wherever I am traveling. I am a grown up, and know they use location services to target ads. I generally assumed that was to serve them up in app. Not for sharing a detailed record of where I go, which is what they apparently do.

WeatherBug is particularly heinous: "Precise location data from one app, WeatherBug on iOS, was received by 40 companies. When contacted by The Times, some of the companies that received that data described it as “unsolicited” or “inappropriate.” 

And the Weather Channel app...

Quote

The Weather Channel app, owned by an IBM subsidiary, told users that sharing their locations would let them get personalized local weather reports. IBM said the subsidiary, the Weather Company, discussed other uses in its privacy policy and in a separate “privacy settings” section of the app. Information on advertising was included there, but a part of the app called “location settings” made no mention of it.

The app did not explicitly disclose that the company had also analyzed the data for hedge funds — a pilot program that was promoted on the company’s website. An IBM spokesman said the pilot had ended. (IBM updated the app’s privacy policy on Dec. 5, after queries from The Times, to say that it might share aggregated location data for commercial purposes such as analyzing foot traffic.)

For the city itself, the NWS WWA was issued just about the time the snow started to fall (checked my phone - alert came at 12:42), but by that point, people had commuted into the city with expectation of not terrible commute home, so their fate was sealed. Even sounding the alarm and going straight to a WSW for NYC (which would have verified, of course) would have done nothing at that point. For a storm that's going to hit the afternoon rush hard you have to sound the alarm the night before so people change their plans.

Subways uptown were doing fine. I went from Penn Station up to 96, back to Lincoln Center and back uptown while Broadway and Amsterdam are parking lots.

Bonkers. I estimated 4” or so, maybe 5” on UWS about 5:00. Outperforming 11/7/12 for sure. Prayers to anyone trying to drive out of the city tonight.

https://twitter.com/NYScanner/status/1063159341698691072

This sounds fun: 

Heavy snow in midtown. 

MSG roof

6 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Yeah it's looking more of possible surge and fresh water flooding impact, vs wind damage. They'll be wind issues, but I think that's the not biggest problem.

We tend to fetishize landfall intensity but the costliest and deadliest mainlaind storms of modern times were:

• A rapidly weakening Cat 3 (even that was generous)
• A hybrid Cat 1
• A former Cat 4 that looped as a TS for days.

All with unique characteristics. This one has plenty of its own for sure. Multiple high-tide cycles and feet of rain on the coast will deliver unprecedented conditions to someone.

Anyone have any insider perspective on why their mobile app and web site have slid into irrelevance? I know they have had ownership changes that have likely triggered this, but after years of evolving their utilitarian sites into a really elegant and highly usable UI:

• The app (at least for me) is completely unusable. Maybe it traces to the fact that I have a "no ads" subscription, which they broke in a release earlier this year, then fixed. Only to now have no data load. Ever. (Though amusingly, push alerts still work).
• The website has slowed to the point of being unusable.
• They also have completely obfuscated all of the NWS stations, making them impossible to find and stick. A few weeks ago I thought I found a hack and found the old station-based URL's worked. e.g.: https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/ny/KNYC
  
  Only today I tried that again and found, after briefly showing me the KNYC report, it redirects to some garbage station that is 8 degrees hotter.

Whatever has happened - neglect, starved for resources by the parent company... nefarious effort to push their network at all costs - it saddens me as I still can't find an app I like as well.