jm1220

But my hometown Long Beach NY can be awesome too in the rare times when it comes together like Boxing Day 12/26/10. That was ferocious. But it's way rarer than further east on LI or in MA. Any big snow Nor'easter is on a knife's edge for NYC area.

Scituate, MA

The place to chase for anything incredible Nor'easter for snow is Worcester. It somehow works out for them every time. Boston a close second. Boston is never in the "death band" but ends up with 2' plus anyway. Third after Boston is Islip Airport here on LI. Somehow that area gets in on any good one that hits LI. Plenty of hotels!

Yes, there really were 6"/hr amounts from CT to central LI. 30-40" amounts in that swath where the band sat for a few hours, and pretty sure CT's all time highest storm total. Where I was closer to NYC (by 30 miles west), initial heavy precip was sleet/rain and that death band came together too late. There was 12-13" by the end for me when the snow finally took over and there was a good amount of mod/heavy snow west of that band from the upper low combining into that monster, 30"+ about 30 miles east of me.

Don't get me started about that storm and dragging the thread off topic. Rain/sleet on the south shore wasted 10" at least from that storm and...

Three times I've maybe seen 4"/hr in person are 12/30/00 (the one real thundersnow event I've been in) and 1/26/11 in Long Beach, and I think 4/2/07 in State College PA in the very tail end of a lake effect band. And those were insane. I can't imagine higher than that. The Sierra Nevadas I'm sure see some ridiculous snow rates and obviously in this event for Buffalo (and Watertown off Ontario). Was amazing to follow through on all the videos.

Enjoy the deep snow cover until April and get some sleep haha.

Awesome finale. Thanks for all the videos/photos etc for us to follow along with. Insanely impressive that you got your driveway shoveled/snowblown out lol. I'm gassed after one of our relatively lame 12 to 18"-ers down here. Do you have to clear your roof next?

One degree colder than Buffalo where there's now 35"+ of snow at the airport (5" last hour).

Down to 26.

Gonna be another cold night. Already down to 29 here. Maybe my first low 20s tonight.

The band is expected to drift south again later today so their snow isn’t done. It isn’t staying long since it will eventually die off as the wind becomes WNW but there could definitely be another 6” or so in the city. That would bring Buffalo up to 36-40” it looks like. So if that’s what a ‘miss’ counts for I’ll sign up in a second. The highest totals will probably be around 90” in the south suburbs. Unthinkable since NYC’s all time snowiest winter in 95-96 was 75”.

Looks like a snow dinosaur is about to devour the car lol. Unbelievable.

That band near Watertown-yikes. Not as much attention on that one as Buffalo but I’m sure there are 3-4 ft totals there too.

It’s amazing if you’re in the 15 mile swath where the band is, but outside of it meh. The northern half of Buffalo looks like it sees half or less what was forecast because the band orientation is a few miles further south than forecast, and the usual spots south of the city get the best snow.

When I was at Penn State there were brief lake effect bands that made it there a few times and they were quite an experience. Once right before Easter there was 5” of snow in 90 minutes. Very fluffy and was gone the next day. Much more often there are blinding snow squalls that last 5 minutes and coat the ground, but cause spin outs/accidents everywhere.

41, nasty cold rain.

Hopefully the Pacific doesn’t go full Nina roaring flat Pacific jet and MJO lock in Phase 6 like we saw as this Nina got underway 3 seasons ago. I’m not thrilled about the marine heatwave popping up again north of Australia and cool western Indian Ocean. That’s helped wreck our Pacific pattern in the past. As long as the Aleutian ridge can spike to near the Arctic Circle we’ll at least have cold air nearby.

If we want a snowy winter here we have to hope for at least one decent Dec event. Dec with below normal snow almost always portends a lousy winter overall in a Nina.

I made it down to 36 last night.

The east side of these systems always underperform on rain at this latitude. Best we can hope for IMO is a line of T-storms to come through with the front, that seems to be what much of our rain is on the models. But if that doesn't materialize some of us may see only a few brief showers. Isaias/Fay/Ida etc had very little rain east of the track. As bad as Sandy was, I think LI had under an inch of rain when predictions were for 3-6". The east side does often overperform on the wind but it doesn't look to be at a level that would be worse than a nuisance.

It’s phasing into a deep trough and it’ll be a strong cold front passing through so hopefully it does get interesting beyond a windy day for a while. Could be some good T-storm activity ahead of the front, but it could just be the windy/showery day too. We’ll just have to see.

At this point I wouldn’t expect more than showery weather for most of us and gusty winds to 50 mph or so. On the east side of these storms some might just have a shower or two and that’s it. Maybe we can luck out and we get a squall line in the instability as the strong cold front passes by.

How many dead trees are around from the summer drought though? I do agree that it looks like a run of the mill windy/showery event for most of us. The heavy rain will mostly be over PA and maybe W NJ. If anything models keep going west with the low track.

It's becoming likely there will be a PRE on Fri as well before what's left of Nicole makes it here. That looks to be well west of us. Looking like it's becoming the usual PA/NJ soaker and NYC east showery/windy with these systems. At least we have something interesting happening.