OBS/Totals for 12/26-27 Storm

[Dark Star]

54 minutes ago, CPcantmeasuresnow said:

Newark airport measures 4.2 inches and LGA also 4.2 inches and right in between the two Central Park, for once, correctly measures 4.3 inches and now someone on social is suddenly concerned Central Park over measures. Amazing.

I received 2.5" (maybe 2.8" figuring in compression), so I would naturally assume Central Park was not going to excced central Union County NJ (about 10 miles south/southwest of Newark Airport).  But the storm was farther north and east, so the CPK measurement is not suspect, in my opinion...

[psv88]

1 hour ago, Intensewind002 said:

Yeah I reached about 6 here in Lindenhurst, the showers lasted on and off for a couple hours and were pretty heavy gave me an additional 2" from the initial 3.5", with about another 0.6" falling with the light snow overnight between midnight and 5 AM

 

56 minutes ago, Eduardo said:

Can confirm about an even 6 inches in Lindy. 

Happy for the south shore crew. Love to see you guys clean up. 

[dWave]

5 hours ago, wthrmn654 said:

Let's not forget,  they measure and clear the board each time measurement is made,  with how they had sleet and freezing rain, compaction was legit so if the got 4 it would likely not show 4 if any Joe smo stuck a ruler in the snow.  I maybe wrong but that's what my guess would be.  

Yeah I think this is what it is. It can officially be over 4", but be hard pressed to find an actual snow depth to match that this morning.

[psv88]

12 minutes ago, dWave said:

Yeah I think this is what it is. It can officially be over 4", but be hard pressed to find an actual snow depth to match that this morning.

Which is silly of course. The whole snow board thing is ludicrous. Just measure snow on a table top or god forbid the ground and call it a day. People go a little nuts 

[ag3]

I don’t believe they clear the board every time they measure. That was the old way every 6 hours.

Now, I believe it’s clear the board after 24 hours or when there is a change of precip type.

 

[RU848789]

6 hours ago, winterwx21 said:

I just got done shoveling and wow, what a job. Very difficult due to the layer of ice under the snow. I had to scrape and scrape so hard with the shovel to get it up. In some spots I had to put salt down to loosen it up before getting it up. A total of only 2 and a half inches here, but it was a very high impact due to the ice. I am going to skip my workout today because I already got it with the shoveling, lol. Hopefully the next winter storm will be all snow for our area. 

Yeah, I tried about 30 seconds of getting that bottom layer of frozen cement up and promptly decided to just shovel off all the loose snow/sleet and then I spent 5 minutes putting salt down, went and did a bunch of errands, and when I came back the cement was melted in spots making removal easy.  

[Dark Star]

56 minutes ago, ag3 said:

I don’t believe they clear the board every time they measure. That was the old way every 6 hours.

Now, I believe it’s clear the board after 24 hours or when there is a change of precip type.

 

Every 6 hours was silly.  The actual snowfall is what is on the ground (or measuring surface), rather than a theoretical depth not accounting for gravity or other physical properties.  And I believe there is an average based on a differernt number of spots, so as to account for variations due to drifting, or is this just for larger snow falls?

[NorthShoreWx]

3 minutes ago, Dark Star said:

Every 6 hours was silly.  The actual snowfall is what is on the ground (or measuring surface), rather than a theoretical depth not accounting for gravity or other physical properties.  And I believe there is an average based on a differernt number of spots, so as to account for variations due to drifting, or is this just for larger snow falls?

I would think water content would be more meaningful than depth.  Not that measuring air has no value.

[jm1220]

Was in Long Beach and can say they definitely had as much or more than at my house. Winter wonderland there. 

[NorthShoreWx]

Melted the snow that was caught in the 4" gage down to .59".  That works out to 9:1 on our 5.3" snowfall.  Not surprising as I noticed a lot of small crappy flakes for most of the storm.

Second snowfall in a row with light winds where the catch in the gage was quite accurate.

Just about all of the models had us around or over .50 LE, including the NAM.  A couple runs of the GFS were .8 or .9, but otherwise the qpf modeling for LI was pretty consistent and quite accurate.  The snow map algorithms were not as consistent or accurate.

[psv88]

20 minutes ago, NorthShoreWx said:

Melted the snow that was caught in the 4" gage down to .59".  That works out to 9:1 on our 5.3" snowfall.  Not surprising as I noticed a lot of small crappy flakes for most of the storm.

Second snowfall in a row with light winds where the catch in the gage was quite accurate.

Just about all of the models had us around or over .50 LE, including the NAM.  A couple runs of the GFS were .8 or .9, but otherwise the qpf modeling for LI was pretty consistent and quite accurate.  The snow map algorithms were not as consistent or accurate.

Yea this was a heavy dense snow. 

[The 4 Seasons]

I'm working on SNE, Tri-State, CT maps for this event all day today, and a brand new super map i put together for southern Northeast that combines tri-state & SNE. 

I went back on the past 5 or 6 pages and tried to include everyone here. But if anyone has any additional reports lmk now. 

[mob1]

Finished with 4.4" here and have close to 12" for December. Not bad at all. 

[The 4 Seasons]

1 hour ago, mob1 said:

Finished with 4.4" here and have close to 12" for December. Not bad at all. 

whereabouts in brooklyn

[The 4 Seasons]

On 12/27/2025 at 7:44 PM, Dark Star said:

Every 6 hours was silly.  The actual snowfall is what is on the ground (or measuring surface), rather than a theoretical depth not accounting for gravity or other physical properties.  And I believe there is an average based on a differernt number of spots, so as to account for variations due to drifting, or is this just for larger snow falls?

 

On 12/27/2025 at 6:45 PM, ag3 said:

I don’t believe they clear the board every time they measure. That was the old way every 6 hours.

Now, I believe it’s clear the board after 24 hours or when there is a change of precip type.

 

Is the 6 hour measuring guideline completely phased out now and no one uses it anymore? I typically only measure the depth at the end, unless its a long duration snowfall event or ptype changes over. 

This is from a PDF for snow measuring guidelines for NWS COOP from 2014.

 

[mob1]

38 minutes ago, The 4 Seasons said:

whereabouts in brooklyn

I'm in Staten Island (Willowbrook)

[The 4 Seasons]

On 12/27/2025 at 8:47 AM, bluewave said:

This is probably one of the best hourly snowfall rates in CT last several years. 
 

definitely since Jan 7th 2022. We had 2-4"/hr rates that storm. I got 4.2" in one hour. Huge dendrites and zero wind will do that. 

[The 4 Seasons]

13 minutes ago, mob1 said:

I'm in Staten Island (Willowbrook)

oh your location under your avatar says Brooklyn fyi

[NorthShoreWx]

3 hours ago, The 4 Seasons said:

 

Is the 6 hour measuring guideline completely phased out now and no one uses it anymore? I typically only measure the depth at the end, unless its a long duration snowfall event or ptype changes over. 

This is from a PDF for snow measuring guidelines for NWS COOP from 2014.

 

I believe that FAA guidelines for airports still include wiping board every 6 hours, but all others pay cash.  NWS observers, coops, etc., should clear the board once per day and report the max depth on the board between clearings.  Stuff lives forever on the Internet and there's a lot of confusion, but I think that is the current practice.

Personally, I wipe my boards at midnight, which is out of sync with my ~9am rainfall observation, but that's probably for the best here.

[The 4 Seasons]

Snowfall totals from the Boxing Day December 26-27th, 2025 Snowstorm. Thank you everyone for the reports. I tried to include everyone here but some reports overlap or theres more than one for a location, so i did the best i could. This took a very long time, about 10 hours, so i may have made an error or two If there's any corrections let me know. This event will go up in the archive with sfc/h5/radar when they become available.

The forecast for this was very solid. We nailed the ranges and lower snowfall amounts around the city and NNJ. The 6-10" area was a little higher and narrower than forecast, but overall it was pretty close. B+ for Tri-State.

https://www.jdjweatherconsulting.com/tri-state-25-26

I created these brand new super maps by combining the Tri-State with SNE. These map also highlight all the airports in yellow to be easily seen. Here is the first map for the region. I went back and put together all the Lower Northeast maps for each accumulating event this season and they are here:

https://www.jdjweatherconsulting.com/lower-northeast-25-26

 

[RU848789]

1 hour ago, The 4 Seasons said:

Snowfall totals from the Boxing Day December 26-27th, 2025 Snowstorm. Thank you everyone for the reports. I tried to include everyone here but some reports overlap or theres more than one for a location, so i did the best i could. This took a very long time, about 10 hours, so i may have made an error or two If there's any corrections let me know. This event will go up in the archive with sfc/h5/radar when they become available.

The forecast for this was very solid. We nailed the ranges and lower snowfall amounts around the city and NNJ. The 6-10" area was a little higher and narrower than forecast, but overall it was pretty close. B+ for Tri-State.

https://www.jdjweatherconsulting.com/tri-state-25-26

I created these brand new super maps by combining the Tri-State with SNE. These map also highlight all the airports in yellow to be easily seen. Here is the first map for the region. I went back and put together all the Lower Northeast maps for each accumulating event this season and they are here:

https://www.jdjweatherconsulting.com/lower-northeast-25-26

 

Nice work and forecast as I discussed the other day - by itself I can see the B+, but compared to 95% of the other forecasts out there, I think i should be an A.  I know you're using the NY DMA map, but I've always thought that should've included Warren Co. NJ, also, like the CSA map does, as there's no reason any counties in CNJ/NNJ shouldn't be part of the NYC area, IMO.  I'm not a fan of having the PA counties in the NYC metro as I think they're generally more Philly-oriented (except maybe Pike) and I think Ulster/Dutchess/Litchfield are debatable for NYC, but I'm sure it would be too much work to change what you have and the NYC DMA map is correct - it's just particularly odd it doesn't include Warren.  Also, if your 2.4" measurement in NW Middlesex Co (Piscataway) is mine in Metuchen, it should be in north central Middlesex on the map (if it's Piscataway, that's fine).  

[The 4 Seasons]

10 minutes ago, RU848789 said:

Nice work and forecast as I discussed the other day - by itself I can see the B+, but compared to 95% of the other forecasts out there, I think i should be an A.  I know you're using the NY DMA map, but I've always thought that should've included Warren Co. NJ, also, like the CSA map does, as there's no reason any counties in CNJ/NNJ shouldn't be part of the NYC area, IMO.  I'm not a fan of having the PA counties in the NYC metro as I think they're generally more Philly-oriented (except maybe Pike) and I think Ulster/Dutchess/Litchfield are debatable for NYC, but I'm sure it would be too much work to change what you have and the NYC DMA map is correct - it's just particularly odd it doesn't include Warren.  Also, if your 2.4" measurement in NW Middlesex Co (Piscataway) is mine in Metuchen, it should be in north central Middlesex on the map (if it's Piscataway, that's fine).  

Yeah its too late to change anything now, these maps are set in stone. I made them back in 2022 and used what i could find that looked good and covered the general area and highly edited and refined them in photoshop.

You are correct that 2.4 is from Piscataway i have an overlay of all the towns so i place the reports exactly where they should be, it makes it so much easier too than just guestimating. did you also have 2.4 in metuchen? i must have missed it. The Piscataway report was from @winterwx21