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3/1-2/15 Obs/Nowcasting


SR Airglow

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No that staffordville coop is the one that always had questionable totals. I think not all of them are legit. My client in Union used to routinely come in with less than him even tho he's a much better location for snow and he even made comments once in a while on how he saw staffordville's totals and questioned them.

Doesn't mean the total is wrong all the time but it's a red flag site to me.

 

FWIW, I had 5.8" but I measured this morning.  I might have lost a few tenths between last night and this morning but I'm not complaining.  I see some of this totals and scratch my head too but what can you do.  I also scratch my head when he doesn't even report a trace of snow on the ground when there's clearly still traces around his station.

 

I had a 30" snow depth this morning...greatest depth I've ever had in March.

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No that staffordville coop is the one that always had questionable totals. I think not all of them are legit. My client in Union used to routinely come in with less than him even tho he's a much better location for snow and he even made comments once in a while on how he saw staffordville's totals and questioned them.

Doesn't mean the total is wrong all the time but it's a red flag site to me.

As an official coop site it's legit. You can't have someone who keeps official govt records as questionable. He's 100% accurate. It's posdibke the Union guys were off . Dot notoriously undemeasures
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As an official coop site it's legit. You can't have someone who keeps official govt records as questionable. He's 100% accurate. It's posdibke the Union guys were off . Dot notoriously undemeasures

Sure you can, Central Park and Logan Airport are two prime examples that are way more important than a small coop in NECT.
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Is that the Staffordville weenie guy? How does he have more than Tolland being further north? Unless I missed a rogue band over there.

 

How does Tolland have more than Coventry being further north? I know its only about 7-8 miles north of here but Tolland has more than Coventry every single event. Doesnt matter how the storms track or where the bands set up. Tolland always more snow, colder temps, higher wind gusts, lower viability, worse road conditions and deeper pack.

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How does Tolland have more than Coventry being further north? I know its only about 7-8 miles north of here but Tolland has more than Coventry every single event. Doesnt matter how the storms track or where the bands set up. Tolland always more snow, colder temps, higher wind gusts, lower viability, worse road conditions and deeper pack.

 

Magical place.

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How does Tolland have more than Coventry being further north? I know its only about 7-8 miles north of here but Tolland has more than Coventry every single event. Doesnt matter how the storms track or where the bands set up. Tolland always more snow, colder temps, higher wind gusts, lower viability, worse road conditions and deeper pack.

Probably time for you to move if you're this angry about it
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As an official coop site it's legit. You can't have someone who keeps official govt records as questionable. He's 100% accurate. It's posdibke the Union guys were off . Dot notoriously undemeasures

Nah coop totals can be off. This is where you are mistaken. I have done snowfall QC for a decade now and it is still a side business of mine (I make snowfall reports at the end of the season for some clients)...and just because coop totals are official, doesn't mean they are accurate. All those totals people question at BOS or BDL are "official" too...an I'm pretty sure most people don't assume they are accurate all the time and there's a reason: because they aren't. Snowfall is not in the form of some instrument that can be calibrated like an ASOS. It is very time consuming to actually QC the data so it has fairly wide tolerance levels because of that.

Snowfall can be mapped a lot like the MADIS temperature site. The difference is snowfall has more variances in how the totals come out. But when you map out a high enough number of events you start filtering and the data starts meaning something. The coop in question was frequently the highest total around. That starts making you question: "is there a physical reason these totals should always be so high? Is the location excessive elevation compare to surroundings or large orographic effects?" If the answer to those questions is no, then you have a red flag staring you in the face.

That's what that site is to me. A red flag. It's probably not always wrong but it is biased in one direction.

You are also incorrect about most plow guys...they will tend to want to overestimate snowfall because it makes them more money. Perhaps you were thinking of state DOTs.

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How does Tolland have more than Coventry being further north? I know its only about 7-8 miles north of here but Tolland has more than Coventry every single event. Doesnt matter how the storms track or where the bands set up. Tolland always more snow, colder temps, higher wind gusts, lower viability, worse road conditions and deeper pack.

All true. But you guys have a real nice lake
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Was it 6" for more than 50% of the area?

I have no idea, but where I am is about halfway up in my county, and if I got 6", most if not all south of me did as well.  Also, if you connect the northern line of the warning form r.i. into ct. , you would have ran right over my house, so in theory, since weather knows now counties/ boundaries, I was in a sense within the warning zone.  Sometimes I see half counties put into a warning.  That would have been a situation for this storm for my area, if that makes sense.

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Not sure how the Staffordville guy measures, but obviously if he's clearing every 6hrs he'll almost always be higher than neighboring sites. I think cocorahs stresses one measurement every 24hrs so I'm going to be higher with my totals in these 20-25:1 fluff jobs.

Anyways, who knows? Maybe he is a slant sticker. Looneyburg definitely looked suspicious. I never understood the concept of lying about totals. Are we supposed to be jealous of the person or wish we lived there?

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I always chuckle how I'm almost always the lowest in Hartford County. Granted I'm not in a great area but some of the :weenie: snowfall obs out there are hilarious. I've channeled my inner Cweat and have driven around some of the nearby towns to verify that many numbers we get are inflated high.

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To Will's point...there's a lot of bad coop obs out there. Even from decades ago. I've seen a lot of monthly data where all of the anow totals are rounded off and the liquid equivalent is always a perfect 10:1...almost like they arbitrarily decided this looks like our "average" snow so it must be 10:1. So you end up with a lot of crap like 2.0/0.20" or 10.0/1.00".

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Not sure how the Staffordville guy measures, but obviously if he's clearing every 6hrs he'll almost always be higher than neighboring sites. I think cocorahs stresses one measurement every 24hrs so I'm going to be higher with my totals in these 20-25:1 fluff jobs.

Anyways, who knows? Maybe he is a slant sticker. Looneyburg definitely looked suspicious. I never understood the concept of lying about totals. Are we supposed to be jealous of the person or wish we lived there?

 

 

I think some people just like seeing their totals near the top of the reports (they do report those higher totals in the media)...a lot of it probably isn't straight out "lying" either. More like rationalizing the higher total even if you measured in a drift. Biased in one direction. If the total seems on the high side, you rationalize keeping it. If it seems low, then you find a spot that is higher or a reason to discard the lower measurement. In the end, you might have like 50% "correct" totals and 50% fudged total...but that 50% fudged is always in one direction.

 

I agree the whole thing is silly, but it obviously happens.

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Not sure how the Staffordville guy measures, but obviously if he's clearing every 6hrs he'll almost always be higher than neighboring sites. I think cocorahs stresses one measurement every 24hrs so I'm going to be higher with my totals in these 20-25:1 fluff jobs.

Anyways, who knows? Maybe he is a slant sticker. Looneyburg definitely looked suspicious. I never understood the concept of lying about totals. Are we supposed to be jealous of the person or wish we lived there?

 

CoCoRAHS I think says you can do it either way...but hard to say because they just talk about clearing the snow board but not how often.  Though it does mention taking measurements during storms and immediately after.

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And now the latest thing in the media to do, is to rush to the "jackpot" town and report live from there. Another reason to weenie out the total.

 

Yes - this drives me crazy. I try to report a representative sample of snow totals over the viewing area. It involves a tremendous amount of "weeding out" the weenie totals. 

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CoCoRAHS I think says you can do it either way...but hard to say because they just talk about clearing the snow board but not how often.  Though it does mention taking measurements during storms and immediately after.

 

Yeah CoCoRAHS says either is OK - though 6hr is preferred. 

 

I do a hybrid since I'm frequently working during storms so I try to measure as close to every 6 hours as I can but it's more like evey 10 or something. 

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