Gravity Wave

Low gets closed off east of the Delmarva Saturday morning. WOW.

We have 24-36 hours worth of runs to get that deform band 30 miles west.

Hopefully we can get the CMC and UKMET to bite tonight, that would make the GFS a massive outlier.

I wonder how much further west we could get this to go. Even small shifts cause huge changes in snow totals.

The position of the 700 mb low is perfect for NYC on the NAM. 

Wow NAM looks great, even if it's at the end of its range.

12 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

That prediction was amazing considering there had been a decade plus of conservative forecasts since the March 2001 bust.  I guess the Euro really had much more respect back then.

 

Yeah the Euro was known by many as Dr. No back in those days, as it had a habit of destroying hopes that had been raised by big solutions that the NAM, GFS and CMC would spit out. Lots of memories of late nights when the other models showed big hits followed by 90 minutes of unbearable tension as everyone waited for the Euro and finally predictable disappointment when it showed a fish storm or a strung-out mess. Few people would ever really get excited about any potential until the Euro was fully onboard, and on the rare occasions when it would agree on a big event it was usually still more stingy in terms of QPF than the others. The numbers it was spitting out for the 2015 storm were shocking and it's a sign of how highly regarded the Euro was at the time that pro mets followed it so confidently when there were some red flags (like the CMC/RGEM being eastern outliers when they were normally the west/amped outliers).

3 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Wait....March 2001 dropped 5" of back end snow when 2 to 3 ft were predicted, and the first two thirds of it was rain which really sucked.  in Jan 2015 there was zero rain, not a single drop and 10 inches of pure snow, that's what makes it better.  Also we got our thirty incher the following year, so all was good with the world, right?

 

I think March 2001 is the bigger bust because if busted for more people (including in SNE where they still got hit but missed out on the gaudy projected totals and blizzard conditions due to a sloppy phase) whereas January 2015 was only really a bust for NYC, most of NJ and the LHV. That being said, 8-10 inches when the NWS was forecasting 24-36 is still a massive failure by any definition.

The fact that the Euro didn't even gesture towards a more eastern solution is comforting. Now we need to get the GFS and CMC back on board tomorrow.

3 minutes ago, NJwx85 said:

Miller A's always have a narrow jackpot zone with a major screw zone just to the NW of wherever that sets up. See 1/26-1/27 2015 and to a certain extent 12/26/10 as examples. 

It doesn't get any sharper than this.

 

I was in the one-inch snowhole for that storm (Allentown). WSW for 10-16 turned into a coating of pixie dust. A truly awful memory, and reading the reports in this forum of what was happening 50 miles to my east made everything ten times worse.

The Euro control just spat out 2 feet for most of the subforum.

3 minutes ago, NEG NAO said:

still 5 days to go - thats a long long time in the modeling world....

Absolutely, and the GFS has decisively outperformed the Euro this winter. My guess is the Euro is playing its catchup game where it gradually caves to the GFS as with the inland runner 2 weeks ago.

Meh. Not impressive for the city compared to GFS and CMC. Beautiful setup but the surface low is still too far east.

That being said, it was a big improvement from 0z and we're just a tick away from an amazing outcome.

The timing of the phase and the axis tilt is really key. Had the latter happened a tad earlier on the GFS we go from MECS to HECS.

8-10 in the city on the EPS mean, 10-15 on LI.

Needless to say, extremely impressive considering the lead time and the fact that this is an ensemble mean rather than an OP run.

Plenty of a margin of safety for us if this NW trend continues. With this airmass and the HP where it is, we should stay all snow unless the low passes almost overhead. Plus it looks like the kicker might prevent the storm from getting too far north.

Light snow on the east side of Manhattan. Many sidewalks have been made slippery by the excessive salt that has been thrown down...

So far this winter is reminding me of 2018-19, where one big storm slid just south of us due to bad luck early on and we came up with snake eyes the rest of the season. I think the highlight of the year was getting 2 inches of slush in late February.

9 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

closest approach here then it moves SE and out to sea

Let's get a repeat of this in exactly two months, thanks.

2 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

wait Long Island had 30" of snow in March? Not here lol

Why is March snow so localized compared to say January snows?  Maybe it's because with the higher sun angle it's much harder for urbanized areas to accumulate snow in March?

 

Well in the NYC area, the further you are from Midtown Manhattan, the more snow you get in March. The boundary temps play a huge role in March since the sun angle is so much worse.

March 2018 is a great example. Manhattan got 6-8" accumulation from the last storm that month, while Suffolk got 18"+

18 minutes ago, SnoSki14 said:

EWR is the only spot that could pull up 90s from now on and even that looks dicey. 

Models looking a lot more troughy late September so we'd have to have a monster heat ridge in October to get more 90s. Unlikely but not impossible. 

I'd be OK with no 90s in October ever again, thanks. 

10 hours ago, bluewave said:

A recent paper used the STP to increase confidence in the reports of tornadoes shifting east from the Plains.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0048-2

Meanwhile, a robust upward trend is found in portions of the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast (Fig. 4). No significant increase (decrease) in tornado environments is observed west (east) of the 95^th meridian. We believe these trends in tornado environments are significant and have not been documented with this level of detail by previous research.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181017172846.htm

The researchers tracked the number of tornado reports from 1979 to 2017, while also investigating regional trends in the daily frequency of tornado-environment formation over the same time period, using an index known as the Significant Tornado Parameter (STP). Frequently used for predicting severe weather, the index captures the coexistence of atmospheric ingredients favorable for producing tornadoes.

Both the number of actual tornado reports and the historical STP analysis showed the eastward uptick in tornado frequency.

"One could argue that because a region's population has increased, more tornadoes are sighted and reported," Gensini said. "But we also identified this eastward trend when using the STP index, which looks at the frequency of tornado environments and has nothing to do with people. This increases our confidence in the reporting trend that we're seeing."

The trend is important for understanding the potential for future tornado exposure, damage and casualties. Severe thunderstorms accompanied by tornadoes, hail and damaging winds cause an average of $5.4 billion of damage each year across the United States, and events with $10 billion or more in damages are no longer uncommon.

 

This is interesting. Has there been any research on tornado conditions in the Great Plains (i.e. the classic 'Tornado Alley')? That study indicates that the plains have been experiencing fewer tornadoes relative to the South and Midwest but nothing about the raw numbers of tornadoes in that region. This obviously isn't scientific but growing up almost every major outbreak seemed to be in the plains and over the past decade it feels like there's been more diversity in terms of tornado distribution. If there are fewer tornadoes in the Plains, what are some possible explanations? 

10 minutes ago, FPizz said:

Heard this from many people at a bbq this weekend.  When everything is warned and nothing happens 99.5% of the time, people let their guard down.  Many were saying we get warnings on our phones all the time and nothing happens.  We know better, but the general public overlooks pretty much all warnings.

My friends have said this as well, it's a big problem. The issue with Flash Flood Warnings (vs T-Storm, tornado, and winter storm warnings) is that most people who get them are at minimal risk of actually being directly impacted by the flooding since they're not in low-lying or susceptible areas, and unless you're familiar with flooding patterns in your area then you're not going to know what your personal risk actually is. If you live in an area that isn't susceptible to flooding you might never experience a FFW that verifies for you personally, and a layperson might then draw the conclusion that FFWs aren't much to worry about. This could lead to them venturing out and getting caught in a much more dangerous location during a rain event because they don't realize that the minimal risk their own neighborhood might be at isn't applicable to other areas.

53 minutes ago, tamarack said:

The EF4 decision was based on the assumption (no pun intended) that the houses on Uncatena Avenue were of substandard construction.  It looked like classic "5" destruction there - slab foundations swept clean and debris so scattered and reduced as to make it impossible to know from which houses it came, or if it even came from houses rather than a lumber yard.  The massive masonry walls of a large building on that college campus were crushed in by the wind, and I've not seen such damage elsewhere from anything less than a 5.

Either way, it was a hugely anomalous event. The only EF5 tornado ever recorded in the Northeast was the 1985 Wheatland - Hermitage tornado in far western PA. No EF-4 has ever been recorded in the vicinity of Philadelphia.