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NNE Groundhog Day Storm Thread


dryslot

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Snow has picked up and suddenly this is looking quite promising. I figure we can get 2-3" out of this to bring us to a foot (or just above) for this storm.

You guys further east should make out nicely, too. Well modeled additional .1-.25" of higher ratio snow for the overnight. I wouldn't be surprised to see flurries and snow showers into tomorrow morning, especially in the orographic areas.

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Wondering if GYX issues WWAs like BOX did.

Looks like 2-3" possible

Snow has picked up and suddenly this is looking quite promising. I figure we can get 2-3" out of this to bring us to a foot (or just above) for this storm.

You guys further east should make out nicely, too. Well modeled additional .1-.25" of higher ratio snow for the overnight. I wouldn't be surprised to see flurries and snow showers into tomorrow morning, especially in the orographic areas.

I think this was the higher ratio stuff we were talking about yesterday that was going to come in overnight

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ambience snow coming down more steadily and slowly increasing. up to 8 inches from round 2, 3.5 from round 1...should reach my over/under of 12 soon. look at that radar! My plow guy finally came and pushed 11 inches off the driveway...it hit me how much freaking snow we have. It is shocking. It is 70 inches or so in 5 weeks. My pathways all over the property are really cool. never seen the sides so high. driveway piles are enormous. Somewhere around 32 at the stake.

Look at that radar! We have 3-5 coming through by the looks of it especially given that it was snowing with no echoes on radar.

Lol what a weenie I have been today...

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Sometimes, but this could be a lot more impressive. Radar is building in too with better echoes. I'm hoping for a fluffy few inches on top.

lol... been under those nice 15-20dbz echoes for about 25-30 minutes now... the snow almost completely shut off as soon as it arrived.

Usually when I whine about this sort of thing, the snow starts as soon as I click submit. So...

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holy.

hasn't stopped snowing up here, a little lull around 5. blew the drive out - looks like a solid 12, has picked up since for another 1-2.

Everything from pingers, to stryofoam balls, to pellet snow, to fluff, sometimes in the same hour up at the mountain - over boot deep on trails, over knee deep in the woods, great day to enjoy New England woods.

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We got a little over 7" up to about 6:30 and had about 3 inches yesterday. As best as I could tell there is about 21-22 inches out in the back yard. Hard to measure in the dark back there. Seeing today was our first storm we have gotten to 6 inches with it really is adding up now.

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Had another 5 inches when I got home at 5:00, making a total of 8 for round 2. With round 1's 2.5 - 3 inches, I was going to be happy with nearly 11 inches. Then came round 3. It looks like this has added another 1.5 - 2 inches, pushing me to a foot. Saw a report on the WCAX news of 17 inches in Waterbury Center. Must have been pretty far up the hill from J. Spin.

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OK...that makes a little more sense to me then. I've been doing this for 15 years too and had never gotten anything ever close to over an inch of snow with a hundredth of liquid so it made me do a double take.

The upper end I’ve heard for snow:liquid ratios from snow sources is around 100:1, of course I’m not sure if there’s a minimum depth of snow that has to be measured in a sample to qualify for these sorts of numbers. It’s easy to get ridiculous ratios when measuring just a few tenths of an inch of snow (as I often do) because heck, with a couple tenths of upslope snow all it takes is a few big flakes sitting sideways with nothing on top of them and the stack just has a ridiculous amount of air. I bet Lake Effect King has seen some interesting numbers for ratios, since that Lake Effect snow stacks up just like our upslope stuff. For this season, one of my favorite “low density upslope snow” storms was the one we had from January 7th – 11th. I had one measurement in there that was 6.1 inches of snow with 0.14 inches of liquid, so the ratio was over 40:1. That is some fluffy snow to be able to get a ratio like that in a half foot of depth.

How do you melt down your cores? Do you do it the quick way by adding warm water and then subtracting the amount you added out? I had a friend who used to nuke it in the microwave, but I was never a fan of that method.

I generally only use the warm water method for mixed storms in which there is liquid precipitation involved and I can’t catch the entirety of the storm on the snowboard – in those instances I need to use my rain/snow gauge to catch everything, or at least the liquid portions of the event. For everything else (fully frozen events) in which I can get everything off the snowboard through a core sample, I use the microwave (push the 30 second button and watch the sample closely so it doesn’t boil). Here’s a quick rundown of my protocol: My core sample of snow is compressed into a dense disc (my boys think those are really cool) using my coring device, then the disc is placed in one of our round-bottom measuring cups (essentially equivalent to a round bottom flask that lets one easily recover all the liquid from the sample). The snow disc is melted in the microwave, then the liquid is measured very accurately with a 1 mL, 2 mL, 5 mL, 10 mL, or 25 mL serologic pipette depending on the sample volume. I’m cautious about watching the melting sample to avoid getting it near boiling in the microwave, but it’s really not an issue with a maximum 30 second timer; enthalpy of vaporization for water (40.67 kJ/mol) is so much greater than enthalpy of fusion (6.01 kJ/mol), that one really doesn’t have to worry about getting the sample to boiling very quickly. Even if I walk away, any extra time under 30 seconds isn’t enough to get it to boiling, and the few µL one loses to evaporation if it gets a little warm is extremely insignificant out of even the low end core sample volumes of 1 or 2 mL that I’m typically working with. Some time I’ll have to make a little video of my method; it may be something fun to do when the boys need a science project for school etc.

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Event totals: 12.0” Snow/1.07” L.E.

Wednesday 2/2/2011 10:00 P.M. update: I’ve seen folks going both ways on the event totals (splitting out the first round or not), but my event total is for the entire “one, two punch” as some have called it, since even though there was a break in the action, it has come across as one big strung out system to me. We’ve had some decent snowfall over the past 6 hours, although I’d say the bulk of it has come on since 7:00 P.M. back when Powderfreak put up the BTV radar image. This evening’s snow is much less dense; it’s back down to the ~6% H2O stuff we picked up in the first round yesterday. Anyway, this location hit a couple of good event benchmarks with this last round of accumulation in that we reached the inch of liquid and a foot of snow. The snow is still coming down out there at a similar pace, and there is moisture upstream on the radar, so there will probably be a bit more accumulation to add when I take my 6:00 A.M. observations tomorrow.

I decided to check in and see how some of the local ski areas have been doing with this event. Some resorts haven’t updated since this morning, but Bolton and Stowe have made evening updates and 72-hour totals are in the 1.5 to 2 foot range. A few of those inches could be from the Sunday event though. If I have time tomorrow I’ll try to get a list of more 72-hour totals together, and at that point it should be for just this event.

Some details from the 10:00 P.M. observations are below:

New Snow: 2.2 inches

New Liquid: 0.13 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 16.9

Snow Density: 5.9% H2O

Temperature: 14.9 F

Sky: Light/Moderate Snow (1-10 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 26.0 inches

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The upper end I’ve heard for snow:liquid ratios from snow sources is around 100:1, of course I’m not sure if there’s a minimum depth of snow that has to be measured in a sample to qualify for these sorts of numbers. It’s easy to get ridiculous ratios when measuring just a few tenths of an inch of snow (as I often do) because heck, with a couple tenths of upslope snow all it takes is a few big flakes sitting sideways with nothing on top of them and the stack just has a ridiculous amount of air. I bet Lake Effect King has seen some interesting numbers for ratios, since that Lake Effect snow stacks up just like our upslope stuff. For this season, one of my favorite “low density upslope snow” storms was the one we had from January 7th – 11th. I had one measurement in there that was 6.1 inches of snow with 0.14 inches of liquid, so the ratio was over 40:1. That is some fluffy snow to be able to get a ratio like that in a half foot of depth.

I generally only use the warm water method for mixed storms in which there is liquid precipitation involved and I can’t catch the entirety of the storm on the snowboard – in those instances I need to use my rain/snow gauge to catch everything, or at least the liquid portions of the event. For everything else (fully frozen events) in which I can get everything off the snowboard through a core sample, I use the microwave (push the 30 second button and watch the sample closely so it doesn’t boil). Here’s a quick rundown of my protocol: My core sample of snow is compressed into a dense disc (my boys think those are really cool) using my coring device, then the disc is placed in one of our round-bottom measuring cups (essentially equivalent to a round bottom flask that lets one easily recover all the liquid from the sample). The snow disc is melted in the microwave, then the liquid is measured very accurately with a 1 mL, 2 mL, 5 mL, 10 mL, or 25 mL serologic pipette depending on the sample volume. I’m cautious about watching the melting sample to avoid getting it near boiling in the microwave, but it’s really not an issue with a maximum 30 second timer; enthalpy of vaporization for water (40.67 kJ/mol) is so much greater than enthalpy of fusion (6.01 kJ/mol), that one really doesn’t have to worry about getting the sample to boiling very quickly. Even if I walk away, any extra time under 30 seconds isn’t enough to get it to boiling, and the few µL one loses to evaporation if it gets a little warm is extremely insignificant out of even the low end core sample volumes of 1 or 2 mL that I’m typically working with. Some time I’ll have to make a little video of my method; it may be something fun to do when the boys need a science project for school etc.

Wow, this was a very engaging post! Scientific measurement put into words... have always admired your dedication to consistency and precision.

Btw, those upslope dendrites remind me of my winter excursions to Vt. ... when a few flakes up the lift would paste one's jacket quite effectively. Hell, I had 5" in one hour in the far lower Taconic Hills (SW Ct., near DXR) with the 01/12 storm and ratios couldn't have been less than 25:1 - gotta love that sweepable snow!

One of these weekends I'm going to head up Rt. 7 all the way up through Ct., Ma., and Vt. Savor this special winter...

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The Woodford, VT spotter (2,100ft) is my jackpot location with 24".

Woodford VT 22" for the win!

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&format=CI&version=1&glossary=0&highlight=off&issuedby=ALY&product=PNS

We got another 2.5 or so last night, total of just shy of 10 inches from yesterday. (9.75 we'll say) and 12-13 total over the 2+ days.

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