The Blizzard of the Ides, 2017 ...observation time

[eekuasepinniW]

This storm is so extreme, it has driven my juncos up off the ground and onto the bird feeder.  

[Perlstyle]

By eyeball, 10-12" of cement here in my locale.

[kdxken]

Incredible afternoon.

 

 

[dryslot]

Just ripping non stop

[bobbutts]

Lightened up quite a bit from the 3+"/hr stuff hours ago.  Radar looking pretty rough.

[psuskiteam]

Interesting that the HRRR (19Z) continues with another 5+ inches for southern NH (10:1 of course...) despite the obvious dryslot with not much perceivable backfilling. Slow to catch up

 

 

[MaineJayhawk]

Off for another walk through Portland.  This is the Eastern Prom.

 

[ROOSTA]

Umm, some dumb-dumb had missing calculations not scripted in. Always wondered why I wasn't getting accurate graphics  

[wxsniss]

Some thoughts as dry slot is almost here:

1) Was there a single model that had a good handle of this storm?

Euro: too cold in eastern SNE, was still showing 1 foot snow in Boston 0z last night 7 hours before start. Way too high on qpf in most of SNE.

RGEM: had rain all the way to Worcester

GFS: no

Maybe the Op NAM? Para-NAM seemed too cold.

 

2) Why were basically 100% of models way too high on qpf in most of SNE? I mean Euro was showing > 2" Philly-NYC-all of SNE last night. That was part of why forecasts busted way too high as we expected much better rates pre-changeover.

 

3) Boston basically had ~2-2.5 hours of heavy snow with decent snowgrowth beginning 11:30. NWS / TV and otherwise forecasts busted too high across the board, but it was close. The poor snow growth since 2pm and eventual changeover robbed us an additional 3-4 inches between 2-4pm.

 

4) Regarding the poor snowgrowth around 2-4pm... I expected much better from soundings... seems like good DGZ omega and saturation, plenty cold column. Here was 1hour RAP for 18z KBOS:

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, CTValleySnowMan said:

This is why many would still prefer the benchmark storm or just inside for a  track here in SNE.  These huggers tend to thump and slot after the WCB rips through if you are too close to the center. Should have been more leary of model qpf output. Maybe convective feedback? Deform action looks beautiful in Upstate/ CNY. I would take huge dendrites ripping with a light wind in deform heaven over this type of scenario today. I never usually materialize huge wind gusts or lose power here in the valley anyways. 

I recall several days back posting opines about the long wave, wave spacing issue modeled during this entire synoptic evolution, from the eastern Pacific across the breadth of N/A ... specifically that the ridge in the west was a bit too far west for ideology.

It's early for the fairest retrospect ... but, come tomorrow, I suspect my opinion won't have changed; what this system had going for it was a reasonably favorable lead side cold air mass... partially locked in place by some +PP up N (but not a lot either).  That helped feed back on preventing a surface track more west due to BL resistance... Probably that, and having the mid and upper morphology being as far E as it was (still less than ideal..) allowed for a snowier impact during this system's evolution.  

Still a lot of fun though -  

 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

There will be some 30" totals in the S Adirondacks. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

18 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Looks like some 26-27" reports coming in West of ALB  in Delaware and Otsego Counties and they are still getting hit hard, so probably some isolated over 30" spots out there.

I had that band about 50mi to far to the east in NYS...damn.

I always expected this s streamer to trend west, until the end, but it went a bit further than I thought. 

[MarkO]

4 minutes ago, WthrJunkyME said:

My backyard:   http://192.168.1.13:8081

Looks like a local network address. Need to broadcast it public. 

Will have an address similar to this:http://24.103.196.50:8150/stream.jpg

[snowgeek]

1st board wipe 9:00 am - 8.25"

2nd board wipe 3:00 pm - 10.25"

4:30 pm - 1" on board (so down to like 2/3" per hour now)

Total - 19.5"

On ground 18.75" (very little compaction)

[bobbutts]

3 minutes ago, WthrJunkyME said:

My backyard:   http://192.168.1.13:8081

That's a private ip range, so it will only be available on your lan.  If you want to share it you need to port forward to the above address from your router and then provide your public IP address.

 

[SlantStickers Anonymous]

Dear lord, I'm going to kill myself shoveling this stuff. Pure cement. The driveway is 7-8" dense enough that I don't even sink all the way through while walking on it. 

Man snow indeed.

[Bakhome]

Steady rain in central RI.
36 degrees, 28.64 or 969.8
 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

I should consider myself  Lucky to still be getting accumulating snow.   I am right on the edge of the dry air, MPM  is about 8 miles further into it.  

25F. SN. Peak gust of 24 mph here but I bet double that a few hundred feet higher. 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

1 minute ago, snowgeek said:

1st board wipe 9:00 am - 8.25"

2nd board wipe 3:00 pm - 10.25"

4:30 pm - 1" on board (so down to like 2/3" per hour now)

Total - 19.5"

On ground 18.75" (very little compaction)

Nice, you broke the drought thus year!   This is your second storm over a foot right?

[Perlstyle]

Jeez, the hospitals in the western burbs better get ready for the 40+ yo males who try to shovel this stuff...

[HIPPYVALLEY]

Snow blower time, this should be fun.  Goggles on. 

[wackymann]

Nice storm in Merrimack Valley   still snowing pretty hard and we have over a foot of snow in Chelmsford.  Waiting for it to stop before we start snow blowing.  We won't reach the 18 inches they predicted, but it's still our biggest storm of the year.

[40/70 Benchmark]

QPF is often often over modeled east of the H7 low, but I though that the low level convergence would have been of a bit more benefit.

This storm was very similar to Boxing day, minus the 18" band near Boston.

I'm not sure why the coastal from was essentially non-existant in this event. 

[Lava Rock]

Off for another walk through Portland.  This is the Eastern Prom.

 

Not working today?

[wxsniss]

6 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I recall several days back posting opines about the long wave, wave spacing issue modeled during this entire synoptic evolution, from the eastern Pacific across the breadth of N/A ... specifically that the ridge in the west was a bit too far west for ideology.

It's early for the fairest retrospect ... but, come tomorrow, I suspect my opinion won't have changed; what this system had going for it was a reasonably favorable lead side cold air mass... partially locked in place by some +PP up N (but not a lot either).  That helped feed back on preventing a surface track more west due to BL resistance... Probably that, and having the mid and upper morphology being as far E as it was (still less than ideal..) allowed for a snowier impact during this system's evolution.  

Still a lot of fun though -  

 

 

Actually was thinking about this last night... we were already around 30F in Boston last evening. Another sign that we were toast. Any "buffer" we would have had from that cold air mass 24 hours prior was squandered.

[Typhoon Tip]

14 minutes ago, wxsniss said:

Some thoughts as dry slot is almost here:

1) Was there a single model that had a good handle of this storm?

Euro: too cold in eastern SNE, was still showing 1 foot snow in Boston 0z last night 7 hours before start. Way too high on qpf in most of SNE.

RGEM: had rain all the way to Worcester

GFS: no

Maybe the Op NAM? Para-NAM seemed too cold.

 

2) Why were basically 100% of models way too high on qpf in most of SNE? I mean Euro was showing > 2" Philly-NYC-all of SNE last night. That was part of why forecasts busted way too high as we expected a much better rates pre-changeover.

 

3) Boston basically had ~2-2.5 hours of heavy snow with decent snowgrowth beginning 11:30. NWS / TV and otherwise forecasts busted too high across the board, but it was close. The poor snow growth since 2pm and eventual changeover robbed us an additional 3-4 inches between 2-4pm.

 

4) Regarding the poor snowgrowth around 2-4pm... I expected much better from soundings... seems like good DGZ omega and saturation, plenty cold column. Here was 1hour RAP for 18z KBOS:

 

Re #1 ...it depends on what aspect:  The models handled the advent of a system remarkably well...picking up on a storm way in advance and despite some arguable more or less impacting model cycle depictions, they persisted.  

If we want to get into details and particulars... like timing rain vs snow and amounts --- Oy yoi yoi.. Perhaps some of that ambiguity could have been cleared up by a pure phase.. We got into trouble with this guy because he wasn't really shaking hands between steams too well, and that sort of tilted the system and made for warm layers and dry-slots and other migraines.  

Re #2 ...probably should let the system truly wind down before assessing but ... yeah, it appears 1 to 1.5" should do it; perhaps half ?  I'm less than certain about the exact numbers and that's also yet to be determined.. It may be the source region for the southern component having a hefty PWAT source.  QPF is not a very good metric in atmospheric modeling though anyway?  It's actually not uncommon for x-y-z locations to bust high or low regardless of predictability of event. 

[CoastalWx]

7 minutes ago, wxsniss said:

Some thoughts as dry slot is almost here:

1) Was there a single model that had a good handle of this storm?

Euro: too cold in eastern SNE, was still showing 1 foot snow in Boston 0z last night 7 hours before start. Way too high on qpf in most of SNE.

RGEM: had rain all the way to Worcester

GFS: no

Maybe the Op NAM? Para-NAM seemed too cold.

 

2) Why were basically 100% of models way too high on qpf in most of SNE? I mean Euro was showing > 2" Philly-NYC-all of SNE last night. That was part of why forecasts busted way too high as we expected much better rates pre-changeover.

 

3) Boston basically had ~2-2.5 hours of heavy snow with decent snowgrowth beginning 11:30. NWS / TV and otherwise forecasts busted too high across the board, but it was close. The poor snow growth since 2pm and eventual changeover robbed us an additional 3-4 inches between 2-4pm.

 

4) Regarding the poor snowgrowth around 2-4pm... I expected much better from soundings... seems like good DGZ omega and saturation, plenty cold column. Here was 1hour RAP for 18z KBOS:

These systems that are one massive front end dump typically short change you despite having 4-6 hrs of insane conditions. It comes to the wet bias models have from very strong low level warm air advection in combination with less lift, warmer and drier air in the DGZ. That's why many were doubting those high numbers that Noyes and others had. Just remember to always take the under on exorbitant amounts with these setups. 

[RobertSul]

13 minutes ago, MaineJayhawk said:

Off for another walk through Portland.  This is the Eastern Prom.

 

Wow, that's a gorgeous shot!

[Typhoon Tip]

1 minute ago, wxsniss said:

 

Actually was thinking about this last night... we were already around 30F in Boston last evening. Another sign that we were toast. Any "buffer" we would have had from that cold air mass 24 hours prior was squandered.

squandered?  - or "Marched" ... maybe it's to be expected having two full days of sun a mere week before the Equinox ... Cold air or not... that's going to modulate some -

[CoastalWx]

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

QPF is often often over modeled east of the H7 low, but I though that the low level convergence would have been of a bit more benefit.

This storm was very similar to Boxing day, minus the 18" band near Boston.

I'm not sure why the coastal from was essentially non-existant in this event. 

March, and also storm started to draw in lower level warmth.