32-Year Winter Storm Archive

[The 4 Seasons]

1 hour ago, vortex95 said:

There were significant issues at many climate sites when ASOS was installed in the mid 90s concerning snowfall.  Some sites like ORH have big gaps in the record b/c of this.  So I would avoid F6 data when it is obvious it does not jibe w/ surrounding reports.  And even when snow observations were set at climate sites were set post-ASOS, we know just from BOS the issues were still rife.  And how about DCA official snowfall for the Bliz of '16?, what a joke when you look at other reports in the metro area.

Well thats whats in the official, set in stone records so i have to use it if im going to highlight the airports on the map. A lot of them are wonky, not just BDL, and not just for the late 90s or 00s. People claim a lot of the NYC data is low, as recent as the blizzard of 2026, but it kinda is what it is. And BDR is notoriously low. 

yea i remember the blizz of 16 was very low for DCA. 

[UnitedWx]

On 3/12/2026 at 6:25 AM, The 4 Seasons said:

That was my suspicion as well, though it is never noted on any of the PNS from BOX during that time and the data is missing in the now data F6.

Do you think it would be fair just to label those as BDL on the maps im doing for that time?

Ill wait to see what @H2Otown_WX says

No, I believe East Granby is different from the airport. I remember this coming up a long time ago. I don't exactly remember where, but believe it was near one of the schools. It's also kind of unfortunate that BDL is used for official measurements as it is regularly/generally the lowest accumulation for the area in any given average winter system... many times by many inches

[dendrite]

59 minutes ago, UnitedWx said:

No, I believe East Granby is different from the airport. I remember this coming up a long time ago. I don't exactly remember where, but believe it was near one of the schools. It's also kind of unfortunate that BDL is used for official measurements as it is regularly/generally the lowest accumulation for the area in any given average winter system... many times by many inches

It’s possible they had an observer doing measurements outside of the airport to represent BDL…just like how CON and PWM aren’t actually at the airports anymore. 

[The 4 Seasons]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

It’s possible they had an observer doing measurements outside of the airport to represent BDL…just like how CON and PWM aren’t actually at the airports anymore. 

i dunno Will seems to think that they are definitely for BDL, at least most of them he said.

When i was reading old PNS they would sometimes state "within 2mi of major airports". So i guess the observers had to be within 2 miles of the airport itself as a requirement. 

[dendrite]

7 minutes ago, The 4 Seasons said:

i dunno Will seems to think that they are definitely for BDL, at least most of them he said.

When i was reading old PNS they would sometimes state "within 2mi of major airports". So i guess the observers had to be within 2 miles of the airport itself as a requirement. 

I agree…probably for BDL. But they were canning human observers as ASOS took over so they may not have had anyone directly at the airport to do the obs. So they may have found a contract or volunteer observer close by. Not sure…just guessing.

[The 4 Seasons]

A little late past the anniversary but i updated the pi-day blizzard as well as Dec 2009 and Jan 21-22 2014 with new snowfall maps

[ORH_wxman]

5 hours ago, dendrite said:

I agree…probably for BDL. But they were canning human observers as ASOS took over so they may not have had anyone directly at the airport to do the obs. So they may have found a contract or volunteer observer close by. Not sure…just guessing.

That's almost certainly what happened. In ORH, they were able to get some measurements from the airport for a while despite no official observer, but then that stopped eventually and they started using an observer near the airport. This process happened faster at BDL. You see so many instances of no report at BDL airport but then you get "East Granby" and I also remember a few times seeing them identical when they happened to put both in the report. It's like when BOS had the Winthrop coop doing the Logan measurements for a while...you'd see something like "0.6 W Winthrop" and Logan airport would have identical totals to the nearest tenth. 

[The 4 Seasons]

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

That's almost certainly what happened. In ORH, they were able to get some measurements from the airport for a while despite no official observer, but then that stopped eventually and they started using an observer near the airport. This process happened faster at BDL. You see so many instances of no report at BDL airport but then you get "East Granby" and I also remember a few times seeing them identical when they happened to put both in the report. It's like when BOS had the Winthrop coop doing the Logan measurements for a while...you'd see something like "0.6 W Winthrop" and Logan airport would have identical totals to the nearest tenth. 

Yep, i noticed that as well. Winthrop COOP was identical to BOS in virtually every event. Same thing with BDR for a long time, over a decade. The Trumbull COOP was identical to BDR which means the BDR ob was not taken in Stratford itself i guess and actually in Trumbull? Or vice versa.

It's impossible for me to know for sure where these obs are taken at each airport and how they've moved or changed over the years, so i just place the ob right over the town that the airport is in and for BDL that's Windsor Locks and BDR is Stratford. 

 

[CoastalWx]

1 hour ago, The 4 Seasons said:

Yep, i noticed that as well. Winthrop COOP was identical to BOS in virtually every event. Same thing with BDR for a long time, over a decade. The Trumbull COOP was identical to BDR which means the BDR ob was not taken in Stratford itself i guess and actually in Trumbull? Or vice versa.

It's impossible for me to know for sure where these obs are taken at each airport and how they've moved or changed over the years, so i just place the ob right over the town that the airport is in and for BDL that's Windsor Locks and BDR is Stratford. 

 

Logan still does not have a dedicated observer the field but the observer is in East Boston.

[H2Otown_WX]

On 3/12/2026 at 6:25 AM, The 4 Seasons said:

That was my suspicion as well, though it is never noted on any of the PNS from BOX during that time and the data is missing in the now data F6.

Do you think it would be fair just to label those as BDL on the maps im doing for that time?

Ill wait to see what @H2Otown_WX says

Alright, got some info from my supervisor...so first of all there were no weather observers here from Fall of 1996 to Spring of 2000. Any snowfall data from 2000 to 2012 is also not from CWO's but from the Air National Guard about a mile northeast of where we're situated now. When we were in Terminal B there was no place to measure snow accurately. He isn't sure if the data (assuming there is any) from 96-00 was also measured there since he didn't start working here til a little bit after obviously since there were no observers at all. One thing to keep in mind is that the measurements were often inaccurate. For instance, in the Halloween 2011 storm ANG measured 8" but my supervisor said it was more like 11 or 12"

[The 4 Seasons]

2 hours ago, H2Otown_WX said:

Alright, got some info from my supervisor...so first of all there were no weather observers here from Fall of 1996 to Spring of 2000. Any snowfall data from 2000 to 2012 is also not from CWO's but from the Air National Guard about a mile northeast of where we're situated now. When we were in Terminal B there was no place to measure snow accurately. He isn't sure if the data (assuming there is any) from 96-00 was also measured there since he didn't start working here til a little bit after obviously since there were no observers at all. One thing to keep in mind is that the measurements were often inaccurate. For instance, in the Halloween 2011 storm ANG measured 8" but my supervisor said it was more like 11 or 12"

The official number for BDL for that storm is 12.3" in the climo data. The PNS has 20.3 lol, which i threw out. I'm just using whats in the F6 which is 12.3 for that date. 

So do you think i should or should not use E. Granby for BDL from that period 96-00 when BDL is missing? It sounds like the answer is no. 

 

[The 4 Seasons]

Another thing i just discovered is that there was a moderate event BEFORE the major halloween snow bomb of 2011. I can't believe that. I have to re-do that storm completely because a lot of the coop and cocorahs data i used overlapped for both events. When i've been doing these extremely anomalous late or early events in Oct/Nov or Apr/May i usually assume there is no storms that overlap on almost the same day or day before/after. Clearly i was wrong to assume that. On Oct 27th 2011 there was a 0-7" interior event that covered the Worcester hills, Berkshires and bled into NW CT in the Litchfield hills. 

[H2Otown_WX]

19 minutes ago, The 4 Seasons said:

The official number for BDL for that storm is 12.3" in the climo data. The PNS has 20.3 lol, which i threw out. I'm just using whats in the F6 which is 12.3 for that date. 

So do you think i should or should not use E. Granby for BDL from that period 96-00 when BDL is missing? It sounds like the answer is no. 

 

Hmm, maybe he's thinking of a different storm? Sounds like they way overmeasured on that one lmao. I mean, assuming it really was done at the same place as it was done from 2000-2012 then I don't see why you wouldn't use it...just be leery of the totals in some cases which it seems you're already aware.

[H2Otown_WX]

16 minutes ago, The 4 Seasons said:

Another thing i just discovered is that there was a moderate event BEFORE the major halloween snow bomb of 2011. I can't believe that. I have to re-do that storm completely because a lot of the coop and cocorahs data i used overlapped for both events. When i've been doing these extremely anomalous late or early events in Oct/Nov or Apr/May i usually assume there is no storms that overlap on almost the same day or day before/after. Clearly i was wrong to assume that. On Oct 27th 2011 there was a 0-7" interior event that covered the Worcester hills, Berkshires and bled into NW CT in the Litchfield hills. 

Crazy thing is how warm the first half of that October was...maybe right through the 20th. I just remember sitting in Calculus class with shorts and a t-shirt at The Cann.

[The 4 Seasons]

2 minutes ago, H2Otown_WX said:

Hmm, maybe he's thinking of a different storm? Sounds like they way overmeasured on that one lmao. I mean, assuming it really was done at the same place as it was done from 2000-2012 then I don't see why you wouldn't use it...just be leery of the totals in some cases which it seems you're already aware.

lol

 

[The 4 Seasons]

I updated several storms in the 97-00 period, i've been going back and forth on whether to include E. Granby for Windsor Locks ob. I decided to just label it with asterisk for that period. 

About half the storms in the Historic Snowstorms section have been updated and have new L. Northeast maps.

https://www.jdjweatherconsulting.com/historic-storms

 

[The 4 Seasons]

12 hours ago, H2Otown_WX said:

Crazy thing is how warm the first half of that October was...maybe right through the 20th. I just remember sitting in Calculus class with shorts and a t-shirt at The Cann.

do you remember the snow event before the big storm? I had no idea that was even a thing, i just assumed (wrongly) that there was even an accumulating event before Oct 29-30th. Only far northern Connecticut in the hills picked up accumulating snow. Norfolk 2SW 2.5" 

Oct 27th, 2011