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Fall+Banter


Ginx snewx

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8 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Cocorahs guidelines to clear up the confusion 

One of the difficulties with accurate and consistent snowfall measurement is related to the melting, settling, or evaporation of snow before you have a chance to measure it (especially in the Fall and Spring). Please try to do a measurement as close in time to when the storm ends as possible. Don't wait until 7AM if the snow ended the previous day. During long-duration snowfalls, you may choose to measure and clear the snowboard every six hours. The total snowfall would then be the summation of the different measurements.

 

In very big snowfalls (20" or more), you may find yourself averaging several readings around your yard and estimating depth

I'm pretty sure that is outdated info you dug up. They encourage 24hrs now. 

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1 hour ago, dendrite said:

I'm pretty sure that is outdated info you dug up. They encourage 24hrs now. 

http://www.cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=snow

It is still right on their main snow page.  Like I said before, its not in the actual training slideshows, but it is till right there-maybe that page is dated.

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10 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

http://www.cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=snow

It is still right on their main snow page.  Like I said before, its not in the actual training slideshows, but it is till right there-maybe that page is dated.

Very vague. For the common person, it's rather unclear. What defines "long duration?"  And then, you can go further. If long duration is, say, 18 hrs or more..you do every 6 hrs. However if a snow event last 15 hrs..you wait until the end?? See what I mean here?  Just make it every 6 hrs or as close to that as possible. Who cares about keeping it intact with older reports. Snowfall measuring is so variable anyways...it's a useless task IMO to try and align it with older COOP reports.

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5 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Very vague. For the common person, it's rather unclear. What defines "long duration?"  And then, you can go further. If long duration is, say, 18 hrs or more..you do every 6 hrs. However if a snow event last 15 hrs..you wait until the end?? See what I mean here?  Just make it every 6 hrs or as close to that as possible. Who cares about keeping it in tact with older reports. Snowfall measuring is so varaible anyways...it's a useless task IMO to try and align it with older COOP reports.

Yeah I'm with you on all of that.

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14 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

http://www.cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=snow

It is still right on their main snow page.  Like I said before, its not in the actual training slideshows, but it is till right there-maybe that page is dated.

How did you get to that page outside of a google search? Did you click your way there through their main page?

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8 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

But yet first order stations will do every 6 hrs. :facepalm:       

I think every report should have the method attached with the measurement. If you measure snow meticulously for a whole season try to measure at an interval that is the most frequent that you can consistently follow. If that is 6hrs...great. Stay up until 12am and then set your alarm for 6a like I do because you're sick in the head. ;) if it's 8 or 12hrs...do that. If you only want to do it once per morning then go that route. I don't like the idea of observers changing it up on a per storm basis...i.e. don't do 6hrly on the weekends when you're home and then do 24hrs on the weekdays when you have work. 

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6 minutes ago, dendrite said:

I think every report should have the method attached with the measurement. If you measure snow meticulously for a whole season try to measure at an interval that is the most frequent that you can consistently follow. If that is 6hrs...great. Stay up until 12am and then set your alarm for 6a like I do because you're sick in the head. ;) if it's 8 or 12hrs...do that. If you only want to do it once per morning then go that route. I don't like the idea of observers changing it up on a per storm basis...i.e. don't do 6hrly on the weekends when you're home and then do 24hrs on the weekdays when you have work. 

They should try and make it uniform. Why would you encourage first order stations to measure every 6 hrs, but then say something else for COOPs just so they fit with older reports? This makes no sense to me. Obviously people have lives and the 6 hr rule is not easily as followed when you don't have airport observers. I get it. But at least come up with some sort of uniform method that makes all of us have a standard to try and use. If someone can only do it once a day that is fine. But at least by setting some sort of "rule," you'll have people try to adhere to it as much as possible.  

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12 hours ago, dendrite said:

I'll add that I think NWS and cocorahs encourage 24hr snow measurements like the COOPs. Cocorahs says to report the greatest total new during the previous 24hrs, but they don't follow the measure and clear every 6hrs method. Those obs will still experience a lot of compaction compared to the 6 hourlies. I'm pretty sure jspin is fairly consistent with his more frequent measurements and clearings.

Right. And in all likelihood, most people are just measuring once in the morning before they report. Like the quotes from Ray said, we have a range of observing "level" at every WFO. Some people just don't put the max effort in, and you are really just getting one report of new snowfall in the morning.

12 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Why would the NWS go against what the first order stations attempt to do? Do they not clear every 6hrs?

 

12 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

They went back to encouraging 1 measurement to line up better with historical coop data. The change was pretty recent if I recall. They still want every 6 hours if possible at first order stations. 

Down where we are it typically won't matter a ton but if you are in an area that gets a ton of upslope and high ratio snow then it will definitely make a noticeable difference over time. 

If we want 6 hour measurements, we pay the observers. Which given the budget situation means we have limited resources. We would love to have snow measurements at AUG, but since we already pay PWM and CON we can't afford it. We do the obs at GYX obviously, MWN has their contract, and we managed to work an agreement to get at least a daily snowfall report from MHT from their already existing FAA contract. But that's it for more frequent snow measurements in our area. 

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30 minutes ago, dendrite said:

How did you get to that page outside of a google search? Did you click your way there through their main page?

Go to the home page and then on the right hand side you see the word "snow" in blue with little snow flakes next to it, click that and it opens right to that page.

So it's not on the true home page, but right their on the "snow page"

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Anybody know or can direct me to where I can find things like average date for Boston's frst 1" snowfall, first trace of snow etc. I looked at CLIMOD II, xmacis etc and I'm sort of at a loss here. Thanks. I have an idea in my head, but I need to know the exact dates. This is for the current site location.

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3 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Anybody know or can direct me to where I can find things like average date for Boston's frst 1" snowfall, first trace of snow etc. I looked at CLIMOD II, xmacis etc and I'm sort of at a loss here. Thanks. I have an idea in my head, but I need to know the exact dates. This is for the current site location.

You should be able to snag it from NOWData on BOX's website. Choose the first/last dates and modify it for snowfall. You won't be able to search for traces though.

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27 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Right. And in all likelihood, most people are just measuring once in the morning before they report. Like the quotes from Ray said, we have a range of observing "level" at every WFO. Some people just don't put the max effort in, and you are really just getting one report of new snowfall in the morning.

 

If we want 6 hour measurements, we pay the observers. Which given the budget situation means we have limited resources. We would love to have snow measurements at AUG, but since we already pay PWM and CON we can't afford it. We do the obs at GYX obviously, MWN has their contract, and we managed to work an agreement to get at least a daily snowfall report from MHT from their already existing FAA contract. But that's it for more frequent snow measurements in our area. 

I don't really understand people not understanding that people work and the practicality of 6 hr measures is nil but the option is there .

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Since I work form home, I do 6 hour increments because I can stay consistent and my data will be consistent over a period of years.  Most of the snowfalls since i have been here have been higher ratio stuff and less than 6 hours. Those upslope snows compact the second they stop--so i try to get a measurement right away, obviously it's easier because I work from home. If i didn't my numbers would probably be a little different.

 

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2 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

I don't really understand people not understanding that people work and the practicality of 6 hr measures is nil but the option is there .

Isn't that the point? You seemed to be intimating that people should head out and measure after the snow stops, but that's rarely the case. It's not even practical to be home when precip stops. So the NWS is recommended once a day measurements, as soon as you can after the snow ends. But most often that's in the morning when you wake up for your normal ob.

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Just now, OceanStWx said:

Isn't that the point? You seemed to be intimating that people should head out and measure after the snow stops, but that's rarely the case. It's not even practical to be home when precip stops. So the NWS is recommended once a day measurements, as soon as you can after the snow ends. But most often that's in the morning when you wake up for your normal ob.

No no Chris I am totally in agreement with you but we have the option to submit totals for every 6, deepest of the day or at Obs time . 

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9 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

You should be able to snag it from NOWData on BOX's website. Choose the first/last dates and modify it for snowfall. You won't be able to search for traces though.

Oh is that it? It defaulted to "32" so I assumed it was more for temps. I didn't know that if you selected "1" it would be for first 1" snow. Cool, thanks Chris.

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15 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

No no Chris I am totally in agreement with you but we have the option to submit totals for every 6, deepest of the day or at Obs time . 

CoCoRaHS can be different, but the new coop guidelines do explicitly state not to clear the snowboard before the regular ob time. So theoretically you could measure every 6 hours, but you can't clear. That measurement would come somewhere between measure and clear every 6 hours, and a 24 hour total.

That was the big change. And it does create weird loopholes where it could snow, melt, and snow again and you can only report one of those snowfalls as the max daily total technically.

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