RU848789

Oh well, the RGEM didn't move and the GFS got worse...

And a decent jump NW by the ICON. Ok, now I have to watch the rest of the 12Z suite, lol.

Fixed it thanks - read the right one, pasted the wrong one, lol. Same message though.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

It's fascinating that the NWS Philly is still hugging the NBM (model blend), below, which is an outrageously snowy outlier right now (as is the NWS-Boston), but not the NWS-NYC, which is favoring the rest of the models showing little to no snow outside of eastern LI. See the discussions below from the NWS-Philly and NYC. I think the NBM can be a good tool, but it is time lagged (it includes current and previous runs of over a dozen models), which is good for not bouncing all over the place, but I don't understand relying on it when it's this much of an outlier.Area Forecast DiscussionNational Weather Service Mount Holly NJ 246 AM EST Thu Jan 29 2026 In terms of impacts to our forecast area, this hinges on the exact track the storm takes which still remains uncertain at this time. Generally speaking, the latest 00z deterministic guidance has our forecast area near the N/W fringe of the storm`s precip (snow) shield. The GFS has shifted slightly farther N/W with the storm track and precip shield compared to the 12z run. It offers light QPF for extreme E/SE NJ and south Delaware. The CMC has moved its QPF sharply S/E and now barely has any QPF for our area. The ECMWF has remained steady with some light totals for NJ/DE. It offers a few inches of snow for DE and 1 to 2 for Eastern NJ. Our present forecast will have some of this in our (ending 12Z Sunday) snow fcst. More snow could fall after 12Z Sunday. A decent amount of uncertainity remains. When compared to Wednesday, the latest (01Z) NBM probabilistic data has remained steady near the shore but trended down for places close to the Delaware Valley. For snow amounts greater than 2 inches (plowable), the range remains around 60-70 percent near the coast to 25-35 percent near the I-95 corridor with lower probabilities N/W of the urban corridor. For 6+ inches, these probs have dropped and are now around 20 percent near I-95 up to 35-50 percent near the coast.Area Forecast DiscussionNational Weather Service New York NY 632 AM EST Thu Jan 29 2026 Regarding the potential for a coastal storm for this upcoming weekend, if any impacts were to occur it appears that the timing would be late Saturday night and into Sunday, and possibly Sunday evening for some eastern sections. Most of the dynamic modeling continues to show the storm being the nearest of misses, or, with the NYC metro not experiencing any snow impacts. The longwave pattern does amplify, but the mean eastern trough also begins to progress east while amplifying. A good rule of thumb is whether the 500 mb vorticity maximum or the 850 mb low gets north / south of Cape Hatteras. Just about all the dynamic and AI modeling has the vort max / 500 mb low going just south of Cape Hatteras. Climatologically that is a miss with respect to big snow for our area. In some cases far eastern areas get brushed. Therefore, at this point in the modeling / forecast process the most likely scenario is the nearest of misses. However, some impacts cannot be completely ruled out, especially further east as there remains some room for the modeling to wobble slightly further west which would bring eastern portions of the region in play for some minor to moderate impacts. Some coastal impacts remain a possibility in terms of minor coastal flooding. Stay tuned to subsequent forecasts for any changes.

And the cheese stands alone. The 6Z EPS ensemble mean is the last model of any I know of (to be fair I didn't check the Tanzanian - that's an inside joke on the weather boards) to still show appreciable snow inland from the coast (due to a few western hits) and just about all other models aren't even showing snow at the coast anymore (not counting Montauk). The CMC and GFS ensembles have finally thrown in the towel also. Yes, we're still 3+ days out so it's still possible for significant shifts west, but that's not the way to bet, especially in the time of AI models, which I don't recall making big shifts inside 3 days (but could be wrong on that).

Interesting to see Lee Goldberg's first "guess" (he said it was a model run he agreed with, but his first forecast will be out tomorrow), which I think is reasonable and WxRisk's first guess which seems very aggressive and based heavily on the 18Z Euro. I'm also still stunned by the NBM being so high - and it has been cut down significantly since 18Z (maybe from the ensembles being still snowier than their Ops). With the 0Z Op models all showing very little snow in our region, except for far E LI (and except for the stubborn Euro still showing an inch for the NJ coast and a few inches for E LI), I wonder if we'll finally see the NBM really come down and DT cut back on his totals (and maybe even Lee). Same thing with the probabilities for 4" from the storm in the NWS graphic below, which seem very hight. Sucks to see so much potential likely being unrealized, but I did just get 19" worth of "snow" (as frozen snow/sleet mass), so it's hard to complain too much. On the other hand, we're still 3.5 days out, and it wouldn't take a monumental shift to at least bring a few inches to 95, so you never know.

Hey @mgerb- curious if you have any feedback from NWS folks or any comments on my long post above outlining my rationale. TIA.

And the NBM got a little snowier over the last 3 runs and is still way snowier than any model for reasons I don't understand given the inputs - maybe someone here has hacked it?

Don - as you know, the NBM is time lagged and in the last 24 hours there were some bigger runs of models that show little to no snow now, like the Euro/AIFS. I don't know how far back they go, though, but it sure looks like a blend of all the models most look at wouldn't be showing more than an inch or two for 95 vs. 6" in the NBM. I recall last week the NBM was consistently showing 12-18" for our whole region through 48 hours before the storm (when most models were showing less and decreasing), which informed the NWS-Philly's 12-18" forecasts at that point - but then the NBM dropped a decent amount over the next few runs, such that the NWS stepped down several times from 12-18" to the 7-11" amounts they had for most right before the storm. It's hard for me to imagine, right now what is causing the NBM to currently be so high. I'm not saying the models can't shift back in such a highly volatile setup, though, especially as we saw a shift north of about 150-200 miles from about Day 5 to Day 3 last week (and it kept going north).

Yes, I know that's what CoCoRaHS recommends, which I disagree with and I'd rather follow the recommendations of Bill Syrett, head of PSU's esteemed weather observatory for decades. For me the issue with sleet, in particular, is that when it falls on top of snow it will always compact that snow. I had 11.8" of snow/sleet combining my separate measurements of 3.5" of sleet and 8.3" of snow before that, but that was 10.8" just measuring depth which is significant compaction, whereas if they fell in reverse order I likely would've had about 11.8". I'd rather have a system that gives the same measurement independent of order. Furthermore, IMO, the meteorological community has always wrongly been focused on snow depth with forecasts/outcome, when their job is to convey impact and risk and frozen mass does a much better job of that than measured depth. As a result, sleet, which has the same mass as snow for a given QPF, is greatly underestimated for impact based on depth. For example, 3" of sleet at 3:1 has the same mass as 9" of 10:1 snow and i would argue they have the same impact with regard to transportation/driving and shoveling/plowing, where anyone who removes snow knows that mass is the key, not depth. In addition, sleet melts far more slowly than snow, given its much lower surface area to volume ratio (as melting only occurs at the surface not in the interior). Given all of that, I'd rather not discount sleet even further by reporting a compacted depth which doesn't convey the true impact of that precipitation and going further, I think a way needs to be found to use frozen mass as the measure of impact not depth, but I know I'm probably just howling at the moon. At the very least, though, the NWS and media mets could do a much better job of conveying the impacts from sleet, educating the public that sleet is ~3X more dense than snow, such that each inch of sleet has the same mass as 3" of snow. One more point. While the NWS recommends the public to only measure once every 24 hours, that kind of makes no sense to me, since their instructions for measuring snow at NWS sites is to measure every 6 hours, clearing the board after each measurement and summing the 4 totals for the final total. I think they only ask for one measurement per day from the general public so they don't turn everyone off from measuring snow (who wants to measure 4X a day other than weenies like folks on weather boards or those paid to do so). And if every 6 hours is good enough for the NWS sites, it's good enough for me - and note that in yesterday's case, using the NWS approach, I would've measured 2" of snow at 7 am, 8.3" of snow at 1 pm, when it changed to sleet, so I would've cleared the board, and at 7 pm I would've measured 2.9" of sleet and another 0.6" of sleet at 1 am for a total of 11.8" snow/sleet, which is what I got by simply clearing the board once around 1 pm when the sleet started. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.weather.gov/media/coop/Snow_Measurement_Guidelines-2014.pdf

But wait, there's more. We got 1/4" of snow overnight, bringing our total up to 12.0". I feel beat up after yesterday after shoveling ~18" worth of snow (3.5" of sleet has the mass of 10.5" of 10:1 snow and we had 8.3" of snow that was probably about 12:1 or ~7" of 10:1 snow). And driving wise, as I showed last night, driving on sleet is probably worse than on snow as it slides more easily, plus it melts more slowly. My 12.0" is higher than most in my area, but that's because I followed meteorologist Bill Syrett's (from PSU's renowned weather lab) guidance to measure the sleet separately to avoid compaction (would've been 11.0" just measuring depth); until this storm I've been lower than folks in Metuchen and Edison this winter.https://theconversation.com/how-is-...-how-volunteers-tally-up-winter-storms-175628

Sleet finished up around 9:15 pm and we added 0.2" more sleet for 3.5" total sleet + 8.3" snow for a grand total of 11.8" (unless we get some light snow overnight, which is possible), exceeding my 10.1" guess which I actually thought was aggressive yesterday morning, lol. Season total is up to 29.3", which is more than an average winter (about 28" in NB) and we have a lot more winter to go with plenty of cold air over the next 2 weeks and a few chances for more snow. Just reached our high temp for the day of 20F. My 4th and last shovel of the last 2" of dense sleet was tough - gonna sleep well tonight.

Sleet finished up around 9:15 pm and we added 0.2" more sleet for 3.5" total sleet + 8.3" snow for a grand total of 11.8" (unless we get some light snow overnight, which is possible), exceeding my 10.1" guess which I actually thought was aggressive yesterday morning, lol. Season total is up to 29.3", which is more than an average winter (about 28" in NB) and we have a lot more winter to go with plenty of cold air over the next 2 weeks and a few chances for more snow. Just reached our high temp for the day of 20F. My 4th and last shovel of the last 2" of dense sleet was tough - gonna sleep well tonight.

As of 8 pm, we have 3.3" of sleet since 1 pm (0.8" the past 2 hours, which is 2.4" worth of snow - still under heavy bands), which brings our total up to 11.6" of snow/sleet, so I think we're going to hit a foot, which I didn't think would happen once it changed to sleet with 8.3" of snow o the ground. It's up to 19F.And here's the embarrassing but life affirming thing that happened afterwards. In every storm, once the local roads are plowed I like to drive around a little just to see how the roads are and maybe to pick up something to eat. So I stopped at Wawa and then, when Mickey D's was closed, the lights at Popeye's were on, so I pulled in without realizing their parking lot hadn't been plowed, but with my Forester, I was going through it fine until I was about to merge onto Old Post Rd (Edison) and got stuck in a plowed bank I couldn't see well. D'oh!I went across the street to a gas station to ask for a shovel to borrow/buy and luckily the man working there (an Indian gentleman about my age) said he didn't have a shovel, but said we could use the windshield squeegee thing and came with me to help try to get me out which was fantastic. He and I dug the wheels out for 5-10 minutes and then I rocked it back and forth a few times and got free. I thanked him profusely and offered him $50, but he declined and said we all need good karma (he was Indian) and enjoys helping people and I said how I've done the same thing many times and he smiled and said the world needs more people who just help each other. So a ****** situation became a very nice moment. And I need to get shovels for our cars, lol.