ORH_wxman

The downslope definitely had an impact because low elevations to the east of ORH hills got big snow (until you got to SE MA). So it was not purely elevation-driven R/S line. If you were on the leeward side of the hills in a valley, the extra drying and warming prevented the snowfall totals that the coastal plain of MA got.

QPF amounts were generally 2-4" but some areas in the east had over 6". There was no cap or much turning of winds or anything. This was a vertically stacked firehouse out of the ENE. The BL was at like 50 knots. Lol. The combo of the strength of the BL winds (from a perfect direction) and marginal temps produced the huge snowfall gradients.

I didn't do the ALB area...but here is my map of the December 1992 snowfall

Parts of the CT River Valley had a trace...esp up toward CEF.

I have one for SNE that I made...but it's on my home computer. I'll have to post it later when I get back. I couldn't seem to find it doing a quick search.

You sure the wind wasn't SW? I feel like Westerly could get something on a perfect setup with a WSW flow off LI sound. Their version of BUF off Lake Erie. I do recall an event I think in 1994 where parts of the south coast of MA got a few inches on OES from WSW wind.

Your car back in the day...I could definitely see you driving one of these:

Ginx drove up to Tolland in his 1975 Malibu to take pics of drifts back during that event.

Yeah agreed. HFD needs to rip out of the ENE to really downslope. The shadow is more prominent on a regular basis up in CEF/BAF region where a NE wind comes off N ORH county and Monadnocks....even a NNE wind there is kind of nasty whereas it isn't that bad at all in HFD. The orographic components in SNE as a whole are not nearly pronounced anyway as they are further north except maybe the spine of the Berkshires and Taconics. So you normally need the right conditions to really bring them out to a noticeable level in the central regions. I actually most commonly see the orographic effects in ORH county during icing events more than snow events....since icing events often have pretty low mid-level forcing components and the BL is usually out of the northeast and capped fairly low below 3,000 feet...so we see that orographic "collecting" of cold/dry air on the east side of the ORH hills. You're right about that dry ageostrophic component from the N or NNW in some of those storms that try and "compress" a bit to the southeast. The hills can sometimes be more protected from that advection.

He cleans up in the Lakes Cutters.

The effects of upslope are almost nil where he is except for a wind with a good southerly component. He's pretty much neutral on an E wind and mild downslope on a NE and NNE wind. We've shown this map before...you can see the black circle is where Tolland is and how the terrain looks to the northeast. The real upslope that occurs in the central hills is clearly in ORH county and NW RI...Union, CT does ok too...esp on an ENE wind. You can see how he needs a southerly component to the wind to really get any meaningful upslope:

Yep, his area had nothing to do with upslope (esp since he wouldn't get any with that wind direction)...any areas that received low level enhancement were east of him or northeast of him. But you can see that there is basically a hole in parts of RI where the terrain is already rising. The band and subsidence zone there was almost entirely due to some sort of mid-level process. The CT River shadow was probably more influenced by terrain than what happened further east.

It was like -4 to -6 at 900mb too...the warm forecasts were looking too much at surface outputs. Overlay a firehose on those 900mb temps and it's gonna be hard to get mostly rain or non-accumulating snow. You are hoping the rates will be pretty light in that type of forecast which is a dubious thing to pin your hopes on when we have that type of fetch in the mid-levels. It was kind of the inverse scenario of what happened to DC in that storm...they had plenty of cold aloft at 850mb, but once down to like 900-925mb, it was getting pretty warm. So they got a white rainstorm at 36F.

A huge positive bust on Christmas Day is pretty tough to beat in my book. I remember even in NYC they had rain for much of the morning/midday but they flipped to wet snow and got a quick 5-6" on the deformation to end it. Parts of SW CT flipped over and recived like 10" in just a few hours at the end. Pretty dynamic storm. The storm itself here was pretty routine as far as Nor' Easters go, but happening on Christmas Day made it special. Waking up to steady light snow was like you see in the movies.

That was the storm where the NAM brought the 0C 850 line all the way back to like Pittsfield. Some mets were saying mostly rain for BOS up until nearly start time.

Yeah that was a bad forecast by a lot of people. Models weren't too good...but once we got within 24 hours, it was becoming obvious that at least the ORH hills and interior SE MA would get hammered pretty good, and a lot of mets didn't bite. I had 10-14" for ORH hills and ended up waytoo conservative...and I was the most bullish at the time. Respect the firehose.

That was the event we often refer to as the "Firehose Event". This is the tail end of the event, but you can see how it was just pouring snow in from off the atlantic...it went like that all night long leading up to that too

You would have flipped back to snow...there was a decent CCB ending in that storm.

It's almost certainly March 7-8, 2013. You were in Windham County CT right? Unless you were thinking of Feb 8, 2013 blizzard, but the timeframe doesn't line up as that was in early February and the peak snow there would have been in mid evening and not overnight.

Xmas '02 was a great storm. We didn't get the jackpot in ORH like further NW did, but we had 13.5" of snow...started around 6-7am and went all day into the night ending in the overnight hours. There was actually a lot of sleet not too far SE...down in NE CT, N RI, and up near metro-southwest Boston.

It must have just missed SYR and north with the best stuff. We had about 16" in Ithaca in the 1/3/03 storm.

There has definitely been a drought for big nor Easter snowstorms hitting interior NY State. Esp west of about Oneonta. They used to be more common for sure. I'm sure you will get a good one again soon enough. At my time at Cornell in Ithaca, I was lucky to be there during the 1/3/03 storm. Great deformation job in central NY. I was doing a winter session class...was kind of eerie given that the campus and collegetown was like 90% empty. But a great way to experience our best synoptic snowstorm in my time there.

I remember that 12/28/97 storm. Was supposed to be like 3-6/4-8" on the Cape...a rain/snow mix changing to heavy snow. I think it ended up as a sloppy coating to an inch. I was down at grandparents in Yarmouth for that one on Christmas break in highschool. Parts of SE MA off the Cape though managed 3-4". I remember seeing the snow through Taunton, Franklin, etc before it fizzled to nothing by the time I was back up in ORH. Then the monster 12/29-30/97 storm hit...we were supposed to get all rain in ORH in that as it was a Hudson Valley runner, but we got like 4" on the front end of total paste and then it flipped to marginal ZR for a while before finally turning to like 33F rain before the dryslot...we never actually got warm sectored at the surface...and ended up with a net gain in that storm somehow...we already had a lot of snow on the ground from the 12/23/97 surprise.

No, there's a feature on this forum called the "search function" and it can find older threads quickly. Then when you find a thread and associated images, there's a feature on the mouse called "right click" and you choose "copy image location" and then you return to this thread and click "paste" in the image url and those pictures will show up. It's pretty neat.