SE RSI Category & Value

[WeatherNC]

Simple, vote...

 

Regional Snowfall Index (RSI) which was developed by NOAA's NCDC as an evolution to K & U's NESIS.  This pole is for the SE Region and I will quote the full text from the site below, as well as the pdf behind it.  For brownie points, reply with a value, winner wins nothing, except for a major winter storm.  I am going with 13.25 - Crippling, index does not take into account ZR which could be catastrophic from Augusta to Columbia to Florence (all major pops).  Questions in how much does the 85 corridor from ATL - GSP - CLT - GSO - RIC get, please note the NCDC SE region includes VA.

 

 

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center is now producing the Regional Snowfall Index (RSI) for significant snowstorms that impact the eastern two thirds of the U.S. The RSI ranks snowstorm impacts on a scale from 1 to 5, similar to the Fujita scale for tornadoes or the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes.

 

The RSI differs from these other indices because it includes population. RSI is based on the spatial extent of the storm, the amount of snowfall, and the juxtaposition of these elements with population. Including population information ties the index to societal impacts. Currently, the index uses population based on the 2000 Census.

 

The RSI is an evolution of the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) which NCDC began producing operationally in 2005. While NESIS was developed for storms that had a major impact in the Northeast, it includes the impact of snow on other regions as well. It can be thought of as a quasi-national index that is calibrated to Northeast snowstorms. By contrast, the RSI is a regional index; a separate index is produced for each of the six NCDC climate regions in the eastern two-thirds of the nation.

The indices are calculated in a similar fashion to NESIS, but our experience has led us to propose a change in the methodology. The new indices require region-specific parameters and thresholds for the calculations. For details on how RSI is calculated, see Squires et al. 2011.

 

The RSI is important because of the need to place snowstorms and their societal impacts into a historical perspective on a regional scale. For example in February 1973, a major snowstorm hit the Southeast affecting areas not prone to snow. The storm stretched from the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf coasts northeastward to the Carolinas. Over 11 million people received more than 5" of snow and three quarters of a million people in Georgia and South Carolina experienced over 15" of snow. This is currently the 10th highest ranked storm for the Southeast region. This storm would not even be ranked in NESIS. This example illustrates why it is important to discriminate impacts between regions.

 

NCDC has analyzed and assigned RSI values to over 500 storms going as far back as 1900. New storms are added operationally. As such, RSI puts the regional impacts of snowstorms into a century-scale historical perspective. The index is useful for the media, emergency managers, the public and others who wish to compare regional impacts between different snowstorms. The RSI and Societal Impacts Section allows one to see the regional RSI values for particular storms as well as the area and population of snowfall for those storms. The area and population are cumulative values above regional specific thresholds. For example, the thresholds for the Southeast are 2", 5", 10", and 15" of snowfall while the thresholds for the Northeast are 4", 10", 20", and 30" of snowfall.

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/rsi/overview

 

 

 

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/snow-and-ice/rsi/regional-snowfall-impact-scale-27th-iips-v3a.pdf

[burgertime]

I'm guessing CAT 4 with a score (?) of 14.5

 

 

snow for CLT - 14 inches ( go big or go home!)

[Jon]

Cat 4 13.4

[ncskywarn]

Cat 4 12.75

[knee deep to a grasshopper]

Cat 4 16.2

MWK 19 inches