SouthBuffaloSteve

It would... I have noticed a few times now on nights were it has been rainy that KBUF falls right in line with the nearby stations with very little variance. I'm still not sold on the UHI impact though as I have seen more than a few night were KBUF doesn't spike until a point randomly in the middle of the overnight, hours after sunset. I would assume the UHI effects would start to take hold immediately after sunset and we would see KBUF holding at a slower temperature decline, with the impacts possibly lessening or just being a non factor after a few hours of dark. I'll have to check my notes but I'm pretty sure I had at least one day where it was cloudy and rainy all day then cleared up at night but we still saw the warm temp variance which again would not support the UHI.

I’ll play with the numbers more later but KBUF briefly made it down to 38. Other stations I have spot checked so far made it down to 33-34. Even for me right by the lake went low enough to get a very light frosty coat. Telling you it’s going to end up snowing with a KBUF temp at 38 and no one will know why.

Looks like it frosted across most of Erie County except on the KBUF property... Come on man! Somethings wrong here!

So last night it was rainy at 10pm and all the stations were within a half degree of each other. Tonight at 10pm its clear so yeah KBUF running 4-8 degrees warmer that surrounding sites, seems about right? This is just crazy...

Has anyone visited any of these NY shops yet? Just saw the little sheds that popped up on the Seneca Reservation featured on the news couple weeks ago. Places seemed a bit sketchy but still wanted to check it out. But then I heard that these two CBD shops in SB and Depew just said F it started dispensing 2-3 weeks ago. Stopped in today to check it out. Won’t lie I felt nervous and it was very awkward with the whole “stickers” act. I bought two $25 “stickers” and got a free goodie bag that will keep me busy for at least a month. Just goes to show how much NY government drags it feet to get anything done. They could have realistically set a board with rules and regulations within 6 months (about now) and then have a 60 day roll out period before going live Jan 1. It could be mid next year or longer before anything is moving. A billion dollar industry with a huge windfall for the state and local governments and Albany is sitting on their hands doing nothing!

So on rainy/misty/damp nights KBUF temp is... perfectly fine. All stations reporting within half a degree of each other, now that consistency. Wonder why other nights KBUF temp varies wildly warmer by several degrees? This really leads me to believe the sensor is fine. Instead there must be a localized intermittent environmental factor causing the departure. Question would be is this factor newly created or has it always been present and just never really noticed? side note: even in being generous KBUF is still the warmest location.

Wait a minute… I’ve seen this movie before! And… it cuts wide west! Gotta admit this is fun watching these runs for enjoyment purposes. Eventually one of them is going to a stick.

2000-2001 was statistically our best winter ever. Check out the snow depth climo segments. Ranks as the season that saw the most ever days with at least 1" of snow on the ground at 114 days! That would be the same as having snow on the ground from Nov 1st - Feb 22nd... Every day during that period! Yes there were thaws in there so not sure how continuous it was but still 114 days is 1/3rd of the entire calendar year that we had snow on the ground. That is impressive, it even beat out both the winters of 76-77 and 77-78 which were brutally cold and snowy. But then things get weird as days with 6"+ on the ground was only average at only 48 days. Then looking at 12"+ days there was only 6? Seems like the bigger Nov snows melted down pretty quickly but still held a more minimal snow pack for a longer period of time. Graph directly below, (1"+ of snow on the ground) I would classify a "traditional" winter in the 80-90 days range. Would you guys agree? More or Less?

Taking the mid range with a grain of salt on the details specific to storm tracks... the big take away is a cold shot is coming mid next week, question is how cold? Might be a little bit early but we just had that pretty decent veterans day snow storm maybe 3-4 years ago? Think we saw 10-12" of general snow across the area? We are still a good 2-3 days away from getting a clearer picture on possible storm tracks. Would love for some early season snow, but kinda hope we get away with a chilly lake effect rain event followed by a season ending hard freeze. Not sure how everyone else is looking but the trees are freaking me out down on the lake plain area. I'm old enough to remember when every year by Halloween the leaves were 75% down for the season. It was a thing every year we wold get the big pumpkin and ghost lawn and leaf bags and i would spend the whole month trying to fill as many as i could to line the yard in front of our street. This was late 80s early 90s in West Seneca area, had a pretty big lot with tons of huge silver maples so we always had so many leaves in the fall. I vividly remember the pumpkin bags though as the one Halloween while we were walking home after getting candy we hear the sirens going and fire truck comes flying up the road, can see the fire a few blocks up, looks like our house, we go running up and ends up being a group of kids tried pulling them into a pile in the street and lit them on fire and went running into the woods. Nothing happened just some burnt up crap in the road. Sorry getting off topic but just how I remember the trees always being pretty much done dropping by time November hit. Flash forward to now and I finished packing up the yard on Sunday. Still have some garden plants like my hosta a bright healthy green. My strawberry pots are blooming again and I actually have another round of berries trying to grow. I swear the one maple tree the leaves are getting bigger. I would have noticed this thing before, it covers my whole hand! And look at how bright green that is for the end of October. Notice a few oak trees showing some color and dropping, but most of the maples are either bright green or if they are dropping its just truning brown and drying up. If we do end up getting snowfall in that Nov2-Nov5 time frame could be some issues.

Another overnight top of the hour temp check and no surprise here... KBUF is running 2-3 degrees warmer than all the surrounding PWS locations yet again. Should be interesting once we get our first "marginal temp" mix event. KBUF will be showing 37 with snow, maybe they'll check out the issue then...

Still has the Lake Effect idea prior to that as well. Nov 2 - Nov 5 time frame. The magic 8 ball knows a big storm of some kind is coming our way!

stayed up to watch that play out seeing it wind up the way it did. somethings coming in that time frame.

The magic 8 ball says watch Nov 2 - Nov 5.

I just don't get it... screenshot from 1003pm. KBUF update on site at 1002pm and all other stations reported between 955 and 1002pm, so data is live time within 7 minutes of any other station. Yet again once the sun goes down the KBUF site is staying 1.5-3.5 degrees warmers that its closest surrounding stations. Somethings just not right about it. Even taking into account the micro climate with that "ridge" the airport sits on 266 and 190 would be control stations as they are both roughly 1-1.25 miles from the KBUF ASOS site on similar terrain. Only difference is these temps are in a residential setting vs an open field in the middle of an airport. Even these two sites will run several degrees colder at some point of the night than KBUF.

Soon!!!

RGEMs early take on our next big system SUN PM into MON AM. Seem like these keep getting stronger and stronger every week if this verifies. Can’t find the post now but someone was saying to keep an eye on the amount of moisture coming out of the GOM and tropics. Whatever metric he was using showed this unusually massive amount of moisture being pulled up into the US fueling bigger storms. Was a plausible thought and now seeing this… can see the streamers feeding into that storm. We’re going to see some kind of massive storm around our area in the next 10 day period. Pretty good agreement with all the models we see a fairly consistent pattern of a storm system passing every 3-4 days. Heaps of moisture from the south, cold air slowly building to the north. The west coast is getting slammed with the atmospheric river thing adding even more juice. Just need one of the storms to hit a kink and bam. Maybe early snow? More like high winds, severe storms, heavy rain. There’s just too much energy floating across the country for something big not to happen in the next week or two.

This is normal for late October right? That line has had back to back tornado warnings for hours now! And SPC carried a 0% tornado risk for those storms for the first half of the day…

It was a waterspout prior to that over Lake Erie and then briefly touched back down over West Seneca. If it came down in a forest or field it probably would have went unnoticed but instead it ripped the roof off that apartment building. Second loop on the radar zooms in pretty close.

Mostly Sunny my ass. Morning was perfect but that quick shower is turning into a bit of a dreary afternoon. Got the breezy part right! And when I see everyone talking about these outlooks weeks and months down the road… can’t even make today’s call accurate.

Temp graph from this morning. Again not a huge variance but just such a consistent one. Either ALL of these surrounding PWS are reading 2.0-3.5 degrees colder all at the same times OR there is an issue with just the one KBUF sensor reading too warm. Isolated to the overnight hours and seems to show the largest variance between the hours of 12am - 5am.

KBUF sits on a hill, like literally when you zoom in. Roughly 30 meters, just shy of a 100 foot increase in elevation from the area just north and south.

First Nov 14 event would have fit perfectly into that pocket. Not exactly to scale but you get the idea. That small lift in elevation from downtown to the airport could aid in the stalling process and stronger storm dynamics, snowfall rates seen on the extreme northern edge of the snow.

The crappy user friendliness of the NWS site is all software related and really has nothing to do with the radar itself. This repair is more of a hardware fix to keep the radar mechanically functioning. As far as I know nothing else would be changing. It is amazing just how much better the “free” radars are compared to the NWS site. Feed from the same doppler data and it’s just hands down how bad the NWS radar site is.

Interesting interactive topographic mapping I found. Never realized there was a small elevated "plateau" that comes down the 90 corridor and runs right into downtown.

Ohio shoreline seems to be a good spot for some nice spout catches lately. I can't get anything more than a partial funnel on our end of the lake.