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


wdrag
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3 minutes ago, wishcast_hater said:

I just got out of the hot tub with my son. Heavy snow turned has turned to more of a frozen sleet type of dendrite all the way up here in Duchess. It’s not bona fide sleet but the characteristic of the snow definitely changed from powder to a more frozen type of precipitation. Not sure why. Hope that is short lived. 

Not to fear... it'll Build Back Better

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16 minutes ago, sferic said:

Liberty NY 8 inches OTG, hope we make it to a foot  @snywx @Ericjcrash @crossbowftw3 Your totals and final accumulation estimates and end time for accum snows

10” here, had to revise from my earlier guesstimate of a foot upon further precise measuring. Biggest flakes of the day now, would guess it’s only now falling back to around 10:1 ratio snow. Missing the bigger band just to my south. 

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1 hour ago, RU848789 said:

 

Cleared the board after the changeover to sleet at 1 pm with that last measurement and have had about 1/2" of mostly sleet since then, so up to 14.0" as of 3 pm; we're back to light snow at 30F. HRRR still has most of E-PA/CNJ N of 276/195 getting 4-6" more through late evening (HRRR did well with showing the sleet that other models missed) and 2-4" south of there down through Philly over to LBI. Key question is whether we get that precip or the dreaded dry slot and if the rest of the precip will be snow, assuming we get it.  

sn10_acc.us_ne.png

Just got in from shoveling #3.  As of 5 pm in Metuchen, it's 31F and there was about 1.5" on the board, since 1 pm when  and I do I cleared it and I double checked depths (in about a dozen spots with ranges from 13-17", not including drifts - have some 2-foot drifts) and they generally increased about 1-2" or so, so that brings my total to 15.0".  Pretty damn good, but it hurts to see all that snow to the north and the west and SW.  But we did better than folks to the SW and some to our W, so not going to complain too much.  Just would've been cool to see those 2" per hour rates for more than 2-3 hours.  Still not confident in getting the 4-7" the NWS "promised" me at 4 pm, lol.  

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24 minutes ago, wishcast_hater said:

I just got out of the hot tub with my son. Heavy snow turned has turned to more of a frozen sleet type of dendrite all the way up here in Duchess. It’s not bona fide sleet but the characteristic of the snow definitely changed from powder to a more frozen type of precipitation. Not sure why. Hope that is short lived. 

Flake size is still pretty good up here although it naturally varies a bit during the course of a storm. I suspect that the closer you get to the mid-level dryslot, the more riming you have to contend with - that's how you end up with flakes that hit the ground looking more like grauple than conventional snow. 

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20 minutes ago, coastalplainsnowman said:

 

Stating the obvious, but looking at a map like the above makes it so clear what the models and the mets have cut out for them trying to forecast a storm like this, when you see how that 4-6 runs up the coast in NJ, meanwhile 30 miles to the NE across the Atlantic, the south shore of Nassau is at 12+.    To be able to predict anything close to that as has been done, is impressive.  Then look at how that r/s line lined up beneath LI in Nassau, nudging north onto land in Suffolk as you go east.  That thing's been predicted by many here for three or four days.  Even going back to wdrag creating the original thread a week ago!  I know you guys set the bar high for yourselves, but that's pretty cool.  We take for granted like it's common knowledge that this storm would form off the coast as it did, where it did, when it did, right on schedule.  You all have a thankless job.  Ok, that's all.  As always, always a blast following these storms here.

Great post and I post on a couple of message boards as kind of a non-met "expert" on weather and most of these folks don't have a science background and the vitriol I get directly (and mets whose info I post there get indirectly) is something to see.  So many think meteorologists suck and should be able to forecast everythng correctly - way worse than anything seen here or other weather boards (moderation can work, lol). I share stats on how much forecasting has improved and try to show how tough forecasting snow is compared to everything else, but some simply don't care.  I think some just like to yell "Bust!" lol.  The other thing I try to share is the extension of the Arrhenius Effect - below is the gist of it from elsewhere.  

"This is a thermodynamic constraint.  Air at about 30C, typical in the summertime, holds almost 10X as much moisture as air around 0C, typical in the winter.  This is an extension of the Arrhenius Effect, a rule of thumb in which reaction rates/chemical activity doubles with every 10C rise in temperature; very similar with moisture content in air.  That's why, for example, it's possible to get several inches of rain in an hour in a t-storm, equivalent to several feet of snow in an hour, which is simply impossible in winter - max snowfall rates are more typically several inches per hour (i.e., we're talking about a roughly 10:1 precip ratio max in summer vs. winter).  The ~10X higher energy/moisture levels in the summertime atmosphere are also why things like summertime t-storms are impossible to predict in location and time in advance - it's both a mesoscale issue (smaller than the modeling grid spacing) and an energy/chaos issue - the uncertainty levels in the models even just a few hours in the future go through the roof when the energy is 10X greater.  Just imagine if we could get 3 feet of snow in an hour in Newark and no snow in NYC?  Talk about complaining, lol.  Well, that's what happens in the summer with convective mesoscale systems and nobody seems to care much."

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