Gravity Wave

Looks like precip is filling back in over the city.

Starting a storm in NYC with temps at 34 or higher is a kiss of death 9 times out of 10.

In the end the heaviest banding did set up over the city, it was just that it was much weaker than anyone expected and wasted on the UHI during the middle of the day (with the exception of NENJ).

Even if the banding and accumulation doesn't improve around sunset, the real losers of this storm are EPA (widespread 4-8 and 6-10 calls which turned into virtually nothing). Even CNY fell a little short of expectations with a widespread 8-12 rather than the 10-16 which had been forecasted. SNE is at risk of a pretty significant bust as well.

It's sticking on roofs and open ground where I am just east of Times Square.

The dirt at the construction site across the street from me is starting to whiten. Flake size is looking good.

Wow at that convection off the coast.

Yup, really picking up now.

Yup, snow has started here as well. Radar is really filling in now.

Light drizzle in Midtown, should see it flip when the rates pick up.

Very encouraging trends for the area tonight. I'm still going to be surprised if the city gets past the 6" mark but it's very possible if that banding parks overhead.

Mostly snow now with a little sleet mixed in in Chelsea.

Sleet/rain mix in Chelsea. Might be transitioning more to the sleet side as I write this.

The marginal temps (and lack of a truly cold antecedent airmass) are keeping me from being optimistic about this storm in the city. Unless the CCB parks overhead like the NAM showed we're going to struggle to get more than a slushy coating anywhere. Even in the NAM scenario we'll lose quite a bit of QPF to melting on contact. 6" is the absolute ceiling for the city IMO (not including the park where melt is less of an issue).

Heavy rain in Manhattan despite the radar showing only scattered showers in the area.

Very impressive, especially given the far greater UHI effect now compared to back then.

Between the air temperature and the wind it was very uncomfortable being out and about in city today. I wish we could get more classic fall days (clear with highs in the 50s) but fall seems to be becoming increasingly abbreviated with all the AN Septembers and Octobers and BN Novembers.

To be fair, the "good" pattern last year was on the weeklies beyond 2 weeks. It never showed up on the OP models and kept getting pushed back on the weeklies. First it was late January, then 1st week of Feb, then President's Day, and then it finally locked in just in time to ruin the spring.

The pattern over the past few years has also been that the Arctic sea ice recovers much less rapidly in the Alaska/Chukchi Sea area compared with the rest of the arctic, which I imagine will help keep sustaining that positive anomaly off Alaska. Could this be a self-reinforcing cycle that will contribute to a more sustained western ridge/eastern trough pattern over the US during the winter?

If the GFS is right we'll keep building on that negative anomaly for another week after that. Moderation comes around the 20th.

The solar minimum definitely helps, and should continue to help for the next few winters as well.

I remember that. I was mostly hanging out in the Upstate NY forum then since I was in Ithaca but I lurked here when it looked like this would become an HECS. I remember a 0z NAM run 36 hours out or so that gave most of NNJ and the LHV 40"+. Easily the worst bust I've seen since I didn't follow the weather closely in March 2001 (although I do remember watching Local on the 8's and having my totals in Allentown slashed throughout that Sunday before the storm). The worst bust I ever experienced personally was January 2014 in Ithaca. It was a rare major snyoptic storm in upstate NY, and the Finger Lakes were, for once, the jackpot zone in all of the models. 16-20", and from how the storm was overperforming in the midwest it seemed like 2 feet was within reach. Every model was on board the night before, with the exception of the old RAP (I think) which had the heaviest snow sliding south, although it was still giving me 8-10". I went to bed expecting to wake up to heavy snow and no classes. When I woke up I heard a car passing on the road outside, and it sounded like it was driving through slush rather than compacted snow as you would expect in a big storm. Sure enough, when I looked outside we had 2 inches of pixie dust and a slushy coating on all the roads, with light snow falling. As it turned out, the RAP was right about the track, and a deathband had set up over an Oneonta-Binghamton-Elmira axis that ended up dropping 24-30" along most of the I-88 corridor. The subsidence from that band killed us and Ithaca ended up with 6", which was pretty much the lowest amount anyone in Upstate got from that storm (areas to the west cashed in more since the deathband hadn't set up yet and there was less subsidence, and areas to the north got lake enhancement and were north of the worst subsidence). Probably my worst weather memory.