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On the Buffalo NWS facebook page someone asked if this event would be like the April 2003 storm and the NWS person responded as follows:

" its not looking like it will be, that storm was in March of 2003, and this event being in April the ice will have a little harder time to accumulate. "

So there you have it. Hope they're right. Seems like rather weak reasoning since this has been an abnormally cold month, more like March than April...

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I think "ought to be communicating risk a little better" is the key point. Most of us on this forum either have meteorological background or are long time weather fanatics (or both). We understand the potential in this system. I don't think that potential is being adequately conveyed by what I'm seeing from the NWS, even though we're less than 24 hours from the start of the event. It seems inconsistent to have "1/2 inch of ice and 45 mph wind gusts" in the zone forecast, while not clearly stating the potential damage that combination could cause. And they're not even acknowledging the fact that some models give us much more ice than that.

I've never worked in an operational forecast environment but I find this all very puzzling. This seems to be the exact kind of situation to over-warn so people are prepared for potentially long term power outages, impassable roads, etc.

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I found this very interesting journal article for Ice to Liquid ratios, and after going through it, and more thoroughly analyzing model output for this event, I'd definitely have to side with the NWS on this. 

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WAF-D-15-0118.1

At high precipitation rates (>0.1 in/hr), freezing rain does not accumulate very efficiently, and obviously, when a model is indicating 1"+ of freezing rain, the actual rate that precipitation was falling at had to be fairly high. So that 1" of freezing rain liquid might accumulate 1/2" of ice at best. 

Throw in that it seems mesoscale modeling is trending north with the storm, and the effect of the strong April sun, and it doesn't pose the high risk for damage I was thinking earlier. But, we'll just have to wait and see.

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Wow did not wake up expecting to see an ISW. Guess we’ll see what happens!

 

Also I know April has been cold and more like March as someone said earlier in this thread, but  here’s some super crazy stats to back that up.

 

So far this April we are running 7.4 degrees below normal. Not only that but every single day this month has had temperatures below freezing.   The average temperature so far for the month is 37.8 degrees which is pretty dang close to the March average temperature of 34.0 degrees. 

 

Also intresting if we keep with the trend and finish this month with below average temperatures it’ll be the 5th out of 6th month we finish below average since November with the only above average month being in February (when we had that incredible 2 week warm stretch of 60s and 70s). 

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4 hours ago, southbuffalowx said:

I found this very interesting journal article for Ice to Liquid ratios, and after going through it, and more thoroughly analyzing model output for this event, I'd definitely have to side with the NWS on this. 

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WAF-D-15-0118.1

At high precipitation rates (>0.1 in/hr), freezing rain does not accumulate very efficiently, and obviously, when a model is indicating 1"+ of freezing rain, the actual rate that precipitation was falling at had to be fairly high. So that 1" of freezing rain liquid might accumulate 1/2" of ice at best. 

Throw in that it seems mesoscale modeling is trending north with the storm, and the effect of the strong April sun, and it doesn't pose the high risk for damage I was thinking earlier. But, we'll just have to wait and see.

Great article. Thanks for posting. Very interesting about the wind impacts on ice accretion. The higher winds (>15kt) that are forecast will likely help the ice that does fall accumulate more efficiently lowering the latent heat release and increasing evaporational cooling and increasing the ice to liquid ratio. Intresting too that the winds forecasted in this event occur in less than 10% of all freezing rain events so all the parameters for this event are pretty rare with a lot of variable outcomes possible.

I don’t think the issue with the NWS was for their forecasted amounts of ice so much as the impact that the amount of ice they were forecasting seemed to contradict an advisory headline when they were calling for “around a half an inch of ice accumulation” and forecasting winds of 40+mph. For what they were calling for an ISW or WSW seemed to make more sense when even in their advisory they said “power outages are likley due to downed tree limbs” which is more dangerous and impactful than an advisory and when the general public sees an advisory they don’t think anything of significance is coming. Add to that the fact that their reasoning when asked about it on Twitter was about as poor and uneducated a response imaginable from what I really still do believe is one of the better NWS offices in the country, it really was just frusterating. I’m hoping it was on of their social media interns who posted that response. 

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