Obs and nowcast Major Nor'easter near blizzard Sunday afternoon Jan 31 - Sunrise Wednesday Feb 3

[donsutherland1]

12 minutes ago, lee59 said:

OK the news said an amateur. Not surprised if the news got it wrong. Anyway it does not look like it will stand. The original record apparently was, in all places, Cape May.

I’m glad there’s quality control. Even considering compression, 35.5” should not have shrunk to 22” under the conditions in place.

[MANDA]

This from latest 2/3  -  4:26 P.M. PHI PNS Statement.

Have no idea why it was changed from "trained Spotter to "broadcast media"

Also amount dropped from 35.5 to 35.1 not sure why that is either.

From what I've read will take weeks to months to confirm if this amount will overtake the current 34" NJ state record.

Office of NJ State Climatologist will conduct detailed investigation.

[MANDA]

Based on latest KDIX / KOKX radar the last of the precipitation / bands will have exited all land areas of the and be out over the ocean over the next 60-90 mins.

After (I'm estimating about 84 hours) there will be no precipitation falling over the OKX  /  PHI CWA.

Pretty amazing.

[donsutherland1]

17 minutes ago, MANDA said:

This from latest 2/3  -  4:26 P.M. PHI PNS Statement.

Have no idea why it was changed from "trained Spotter to "broadcast media"

Also amount dropped from 35.5 to 35.1 not sure what that is either.

From what I've read will take weeks to months to confirm if this amount will overtake the current 34" NJ state record.

Office of NJ State Climatologist will conduct detailed investigation.

If the rumored 22” depth is accurate, it almost certainly won’t stand. This afternoon, first order stations including Allentown and New York City had seen depth come out between 75% and 80% of total snowfall. Newark’s depth was > 90% of total snowfall. 22” would be around 63% of the 35.1” figure and that was reportedly a morning measurement.

[wdrag]

2 hours ago, lee59 said:

Just saw on the news that someone reported over 35 inches in Mt. Arlington N.J. which is a state record. It looks like it won't hold. Someone from the climatologist office of N.J. went their this morning and measured 22 inches. 

Forgetting about records--- and barring seeing a specific message on the discounting of 35... which I have no stake in, but I do have a stake in useful snow measuring. For sure, imperfect. 

There are different standards. once/day SD as per CoCoRAHS does not work for me as most useful, where some NWS offices use the clear the board every 6 hours technique which I think has useful application commercially.  

Attached p 63 of the CoCoRAHS snow guide. 

I had 27" of snow FALL, (right in the middle of the pack),  but the SD I measured amid morning Tuesday in this part of Wantage NJ was 18". This 9" less than fell report is I think easily possible, due to crystal packing in gusty winds, as well as increasingly wet snow during the the 45+ hour storm evolution would result in packing. There may  be some science regarding snow packing down with time? 

Just wanted to make sure the differences were noted between snowfall measuring processes and the large difference in SD vs what fell in 6 holy increments.  Which is best? I argue differently for possible commercial snow clearing application and rate alerts etc. Nothing will get solved with this today.

[CPcantmeasuresnow]

42 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

If the rumored 22” depth is accurate, it almost certainly won’t stand. This afternoon, first order stations including Allentown and New York City had seen depth come out between 75% and 80% of total snowfall. Newark’s depth was > 90% of total snowfall. 22” would be around 63% of the 35.1” figure and that was reportedly a morning measurement.

That sounds about right, I had 27.9 inches and my current snow depth is 22 inches.

[MANDA]

Unreal.  Just when it looked like OKX radar was about to be clear a large area of 20 - 30 dBZ returns blossomed over

western 1/3 of Ct.  Large area of steady light snow!  Maybe a patch of moderate embedded?  System just will not give up the ghost.

 

 

[jm1220]

Light snow here again. Just LOL at this point. 

[donsutherland1]

Perhaps the area of snow can reach Islip and bring the 0.2” needed to bring its storm total snowfall to 12.0”.

[jm1220]

Nice big flakes too. Ground is covered again. 

[psv88]

Pouring snow

[Rjay]

Can't stop, won't stop 

[Nibor]

Apparently blocking IS a good thing.

[psv88]

IF we can snow another hour, it will be day 5

[LibertyBell]

18 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

The storm rapidly developed along an Arctic front. Its heaviest snows fell north and east of New York City. Bridgeport likely experienced a localized heavy band within an area of heavy snowfall. Some additional accumulations:

New Jersey: Layton (3 NW) in Sussex County: 4.5”; New Brunswick: 10.0”; Newark: 7.5”

New York City: 7.6” (Mount Vernon just to the north and east of the City: 11.0”)

East of NYC:

Connecticut: Bridgeport: 25.5”; Waterbury: 18.0”

Long Island: Farmingdale (2 NE): 14.0”; Setauket: 18.1”

Much more recently, one saw a roughly similar difference over a somewhat shorter distance: The January 26-28, 2015 storm brought 9.8” to NYC and 6.5” to Newark. Islip received 24.9”.

do you think SW Nassau may have experienced a similar increase in snowfall, Don?

This kind of reminds me of the middle storm in the 2010-2011 winter (the one between Boxing Day 2010 and late Jan 2011) that dumped 9.2 inches in NYC but up to 20" across central parts of the north shore of Long Island.

 

[LibertyBell]

15 hours ago, jm1220 said:

If it was 2-3 degrees colder in Boston they would’ve had 12” like places very close by did. Was an extremely close call there and models were too cold by just a tiny amount which meant mostly white rain in downtown and where Logan Airport is. Can’t speak for Central Park really but 17.4” wasn’t bad at all, may have been 18” but can’t complain too much. 

Maybe they closed because parts of Boston had a lot more snow than the airport did?  I heard that 18" fell 9 miles away from Logan!

That should be close enough to still be in Boston!  Could you imagine 18" falling in the Bronx while 1.2" fell at JFK?

[LibertyBell]

On 2/2/2021 at 6:59 PM, HVSnowLover said:

So Boston Logan is basically our version of jfk right on the water. That is one insane cutoff though can’t think of too many storms with that sharp of a cutoff say between jfk and cpk 

Yeah but that wouldn't happen at JFK because JFK is tucked in.  JFK often does better than NYC in snowstorms here are some examples :  Feb 1961, Feb 1969, Feb 1983, PD2 Feb 2003, Dec 2009, Jan 2016.....also notable is the fact that even in changeover storms like March 1993 and February 1994, JFK either did better than NYC or had about the same amount of snow, another one is the Millenium storm where there wasn't a changeover even though the storm bisected Long Island.  Also the amount of any nonsnow precip from this storm was insignificant, basically just drizzle or a few sleet pellets when we were between bands.

 

 

[LibertyBell]

On 2/2/2021 at 6:05 PM, mikem81 said:

I live on Long Island but the Boston statement is a bit misleading. BOS is Logan which is basically in the ocean. All immediate suburbs did quite well. Cutofff was just insane within a 10 mile radius....

they need to stop measuring snow at these places and using them for official data.  whats this fetish to put airports near the water anyway, do they WANT them to go underwater with the rapid sea level rise going on?

 

[LibertyBell]

On 2/2/2021 at 3:22 PM, jm1220 said:

Just saw Hicksville with the highest Nassau total at 17.6". Another yikes. I'd have to say that's a little high but the snow has compacted a good bit and has more water because of the light drizzle so who knows. Next door there's a lowball 9.7" in Plainview. 

17" at Howard Beach lol

[LibertyBell]

On 2/2/2021 at 7:39 PM, NorthShoreWx said:

403. That’s an error.

Your client does not have permission to get URL /proxy/sUx058h1M2XHGVbPCXat7r9p6qhhSmxiL-tXRY0VUG9_gRGS48f436gXHuwgL_3okwZmPB7mDt2b3oC_kBXpedwRtpLRxobJuimJgD6QCT5mmIAbw0zwxgA7UeW8XRTvGelAWVmq9pmS2qiov_ya1urda8OPIpVKxPrmmRyfDzTM0w from this server. (Client IP address: 69.124.252.182)

Forbidden That’s all we know.

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

If the rumored 22” depth is accurate, it almost certainly won’t stand. This afternoon, first order stations including Allentown and New York City had seen depth come out between 75% and 80% of total snowfall. Newark’s depth was > 90% of total snowfall. 22” would be around 63% of the 35.1” figure and that was reportedly a morning measurement.

remember the changes made after the Jan 2016 storm lol

[LibertyBell]

7 hours ago, lee59 said:

OK the news said an amateur. Not surprised if the news got it wrong. Anyway it does not look like it will stand. The original record apparently was, in all places, Cape May.

how do we know that the Cape May figure from 1899 is correct?

 

[LibertyBell]

Something underreported was the storm surge with this.  I heard that a snow plow almost got swept out to see when the waters from Jamaica Bay came in near Far Rockaway.

 

[Intensewind002]

Forgot to post to this board, but picked up another 0.4" from the snow showers last night and tonight last night bringing my snow total in Lindenhurst to 15.3" for the whole event, including sleet it would be 15.8" of frozen precip. Could be off a little since there was a lot of drifts as well as low spots, but it was definitely at least within the 12-16" range

[LibertyBell]

13 minutes ago, Intensewind002 said:

Forgot to post to this board, but picked up another 0.4" from the snow showers last night and tonight last night bringing my snow total in Lindenhurst to 15.3" for the whole event, including sleet it would be 15.8" of frozen precip. Could be off a little since there was a lot of drifts as well as low spots, but it was definitely at least within the 12-16" range

a half inch of sleet, when was this?

 

[Intensewind002]

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

a half inch of sleet, when was this?

 

Monday night, sleet was decently coming down for a time around between 6pm - 8pm when i was shoveling, it definitely stung pretty bad with the wind so I'm sure it was sleet and not blowing snow. After i finished there was about a half inch or so of new slush on the part of the driveway that I started out with, which I figured was the remnants of the sleet, there was snow mixed in too which probably partially make up some of that half inch, should have specified on that. By that time the snow was already pretty compacted so I don't think it was from the wind blowing it around.

[lee59]

3 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

how do we know that the Cape May figure from 1899 is correct?

 

Good point, we may never know. I suppose you could say that about almost any measurement from years ago and some from today.

[bluewave]

4 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

how do we know that the Cape May figure from 1899 is correct?

 

Snowfall from earlier eras was undercounted by about 15-20%. So we need to increase the pre 1980s totals by about that much. But we do know that the big snowfall increases since the 1980s are legit since we have used the new measurement standards since then. So we need a snowfall reanalysis project for earlier snowstorms like they do with hurricanes.

https://news.ucar.edu/14009/snowfall-measurement-flaky-history

That can make quite a significant difference. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the snow on the ground at the end of a storm to be 15 to 20 percent less than the total that would be derived from multiple snowboard measurements.  As the cooperative climate observer for Boulder, Colorado, I examined the 15 biggest snowfalls of the last two decades, all measured at the NOAA campus in Boulder. The sum of the snowboard measurements averaged 17 percent greater than the maximum depth on the ground at the end of the storm. For a 20-inch snowfall, that would be a boost of 3.4 inches—enough to dethrone many close rivals on the top-10 snowstorm list that were not necessarily lesser storms!

[uncle W]

4 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Snowfall from earlier eras was undercounted by about 15-20%. So we need to increase the pre 1980s totals by about that much. But we do know that the big snowfall increases since the 1980s are legit since we have used the new measurement standards since then. So we need a snowfall reanalysis project for earlier snowstorms like they do with hurricanes.

https://news.ucar.edu/14009/snowfall-measurement-flaky-history

That can make quite a significant difference. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the snow on the ground at the end of a storm to be 15 to 20 percent less than the total that would be derived from multiple snowboard measurements.  As the cooperative climate observer for Boulder, Colorado, I examined the 15 biggest snowfalls of the last two decades, all measured at the NOAA campus in Boulder. The sum of the snowboard measurements averaged 17 percent greater than the maximum depth on the ground at the end of the storm. For a 20-inch snowfall, that would be a boost of 3.4 inches—enough to dethrone many close rivals on the top-10 snowstorm list that were not necessarily lesser storms!

if you look at snowfalls from before 1980 it seems they made a measurment when the storm ended...example ...Jan 12-14tgh 1964...A long duration blizzard that measured 12.5"...Snow depth reported as 13"...no snow on the ground before the storm...Same with the 1947 storm...they measured 26" and that was the depth when the storm ended...

[lee59]

1 minute ago, uncle W said:

if you look at snowfalls from before 1980 it seems they made a measurment when the storm ended...example ...Jan 12-14tgh 1964...A long duration blizzard that measured 12.5"...Snow depth reported as 13"...no snow on the ground before the storm...Same with the 1947 storm...they measured 26" and that was the depth when the storm ended...

This is a little off topic but it can be argued for the amount of recorded hurricanes today compared to years ago.  Today they include storms that would not have been named years ago, one prime example is this past season when a sub tropical low was given a name and it was off the coast of Portugal.