December 29th Storm Obs

[OceanStWx]

7 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Pretty sure you can make our the cstl front in which the area of wet snow vs dry is easily seen. Vis satellite probably seeing the snow on trees giving it more of a whitish look in cstl Maine. Also a flaccid like feature of snow in NE CT. 

Nice catch there. It is almost a perfect match to where the CC showed mixing. Obviously our highest totals were west of Sebago Lake, but you can see there it looks darker than east of the lake. It's almost certainly snow caked vegetation. 

Eek avoids a greenhouse disaster.

[OceanStWx]

7 hours ago, jbenedet said:

Maybe this is more a question concerning forecasting methodology. I like to think broad first and then gradually work down to the details. The GFS was instructive to me for UL evolution and SLP track--that's all. I think a blend of the GFS/Euro would get you to a similar forecasting result while disregarding GFS snow totals and boundary layer temps.  

I'd love to see the verification scores. I do know the mesos were completely out to lunch inside 24 hours with the track over kpsm and a 960 mb low. The real bust was with the mesos imo, and you got killed--forecasting wise-- if you relied heavily upon them.

I guess my disagreement is with the GFS mid level tracks, because they were screaming bust across our ME zones. If I see the H7 low closing off over CON and tracking through ME, I'm thinking heavy snow is likely for the Canadian border not just inland of the coast. Now the GFS may have corrected at 29.12z, but by then it was too late and the forecast was already in nowcast mode. Our damage was done. I agree the mesos were misleading. Even the NCAR ensemble was well off at hour zero. 

6 hours ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I just want to be clear that I think the GFS was horrible. My point was just that if some weenie used the GFS QPF/clown maps out here he probably would've been right for the wrong reasons. No one out here is praising the GFS...trust me.

It's a bit of a bummer, but a part of me always thought this was going to take a little too long to reach maturity to have a huge impact this far SW. I'll give credit to jonbenedet ramsey for sticking to his guns that this would be more east considering the models were trying to hook the sfc lows so far NW before closing off the mid-levels. It made sense to me too, but the models kept ticking a bit west so you get a bit sucked into the solutions that close in...even pounding PF for a few runs. I sorta knew I was toast yesterday morning with those HRRR runs and the ticks east at 12z. 

Oh I know, I just had to go on a GFS rant. Our forecasts are so GFS heavy, because we have the raw model, the MAV, WPC and the national blend use it, etc. So our forecast was definitely nudged in that direction, and it burned us in ME. 

6 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

It wasn't an easy storm to forecast...that's for sure. Though I'm still a bit surprised that your area didn't pull solid double digits. I figured your area up to around Ossipee was pretty safe for that...the latter still did well (think they scored around 15"), but that western zone of the commahead really got compressed east and it cost your area a bit. I suppose the compact nature of this should have been a little more of a red flag for big totals in areas further west, but it was hard to really rely on that, especially since some of the model guidance was producing mid-level tracks pretty far west until the last possible second. This was a pretty poorly modeled storm overall...I'm sure the explosive and mesoscale nature of the development contributed significantly to the model errors. The Euro was by far the most consistent and correct model...but as you mentioned, it still had its warts in this one.

This was a great example of mid levels dominating the snowfall distribution. Even though there was a significant mesoscale aspect of this storm, when those mid levels lows closed off you got the most intense precip. As they started to stack over the surface low, you started getting 6"/hr rates. And it did eventually throw a deformation band back west, it just happened too late to save Dendrite (no congrats) but did clip eastern NH. 

[TheSnowman]

On 12/9/05 's Snow rates, I got Killed in that Storm, and never saw anything, even at 15 minute clips to multiply by 4, that got much over 3" / 3.25" per hour.  

 

Maybe someone got 4" per hour for a time, but NO One had 6" Per Hour and Certainly not 7 or 8, and for 6 Hours of steady 3"-8" Per Hour.  

 

So so there's definitely a discussion here on how absurdly historical this was.  

[Damage In Tolland]

1 minute ago, TheSnowman said:

On 12/9/05 's Snow rates, I got Killed in that Storm, and never saw anything, even at 15 minute clips to multiply by 4, that got much over 3" / 3.25" per hour.  

 

Maybe someone got 4" per hour for a time, but NO One had 6" Per Hour and Certainly not 7 or 8, and for 6 Hours of steady 3"-8" Per Hour.  

 

So so there's definitely a discussion here on how absurdly historical this was.  

Just pound those keys man !

[Baroclinic Zone]

59 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Everything came together perfectly there. Mid level forcing, low level forcing over the coastal front, terrain forcing (you do have over 1000 feet elevation in the western parts of those two counties. 

 

Yup, I'm quite familiar with the area.  I've been going to the Brighton area since the late 70s. Nice weenie spot for snow.

[OceanStWx]

5 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Yup, I'm quite familiar with the area.  I've been going to the Brighton area since the late 70s. Nice weenie spot for snow.

And a huge PITA when it comes to county based warnings. That "fish tail" of Cumberland County always has more snow, and throws off the wording for the rest of the interior county.

[Baroclinic Zone]

9 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

And a huge PITA when it comes to county based warnings. That "fish tail" of Cumberland County always has more snow, and throws off the wording for the rest of the interior county.

LOL.  I like to say it looks like a duck.  

[Patfan1987]

10 hours ago, powderfreak said:

It is absolutely nuking out right now.

Classic squall sitting on Mansfield at this time.  These are like mini-deform bands, lol.  Same huge flakes just pouring down at bursts of up to 2"/hr.  Just doesn't last as long usually, ha.

It was beautiful up there today. Made a drive up for some beer

[ncforecaster89]

Just wanted to take a moment to convey my deepest appreciation to those of you who took the time to offer your advice and input during this most recent chase; as I continously lost cell phone service and access to live radar.

Although I was fortunate to capture some excellent footage of very heavy rates and large dentrites, I am nonetheless disappointed that I was unable to be at the transition zone to capture thundersnow and the most extreme rates during this particular event.

Unlike other preplanned chases, this one was more haphazardly put together.  My wife, 9 year-old son, and myself were up in Lancaster, Pa. for Christmas.   Since I had promised our son I'd take him somewhere relatively close by to play in the snow,  if a prospective snow event were to occur during that time period,  I didn't have the same flexibility or time available to reposition to a better location as the event unfolded.   My foremost priority had to be getting my family safely to the Wolfeboro Inn in Wolfeboro,  NH...before I could actually chase the most extreme conditions.   As such, I was positioned too far NW to make it into the highest convective radar returns associated with the eastern-most band that materialized farther SE than I had projected.  

Due to awful road conditions, and the aforementioned  3-4" snowfall rates I encountered in the western band...I was unable to drive more than 30 mph as I tried unsuccessfully to catch that eastern-most band...where the thundersnow was found.   I had witnessed thundersnow once,  during the 1/23/16 blizzard,  but I wasn't filming at the time...since I was digging out a stranded motorist.  Just my luck!  Consequently,  my primary objective was capturing it on film during this particular event.   Oh well.  

All that being said,  I was able to document the event beginning around 9 pm in Wolfeboro,  NH,  east and northeastward through Standish around 1130 pm...and up into Lewiston, ME by 115 am.  Road conditions were so treacherous that I got stuck on three separate occasions, despite having rented an SUV specifically to avoid that circumstance.   The plows in Maine simply couldn't keep up with the extreme snowfall rates that were occurring.

It would be 630 am before I finally made it back to our hotel on Wolfeboro bay.  For all the aforestated reasons,  it was one of my most grueling chase events.  

Thanks again to each one of you who assisted me during this particular chase, and happy new year to all!