RU848789

I couldn't disagree more. If you like snow, you want it to snow all winter long. We're only on this planet so long and every snowfall is a good one that should be appreciated. I don't care at all about how quickly it melts - I love to track it and watch it snow and enjoy it while it's falling. I also have followed some bad teams in my day (I'm a Rutgers fan and 30+ year season ticket holder in football and hoops, so I know from failure, lol), but I always want them to win, even if they've done badly for awhile. It's called loyalty.

That last nice little band brought me to 2.4". Don't think I'm going to make my 2.75" prediction for my house, though, unless we get one last band to come through before the sleet, as we're now up to 30F and not much time left.

Have had intermittent light to moderate snow the last 90 minutes and we now have 2.1" of snow on the ground, as of 2:30 pm (0.6" in 90 minutes isn't great, but it's not zero either). Radar looks dried up for the next hour or so, will be interesting to see if the precip builds back up or not, while we still have enough cold air for snow/sleet. Most models are showing sleet by 6 pm in the Edison area and then maybe a bit of ZR before the plain rain comes. Let's see if we can eke out 3" total.

Had 3/4" in Rahway when I went outside to go home around 12:30 pm and Ijust got home to Metuchen and we have 1.5" of snow OTG as of 1 pm. Snow has definitely decreased in intensity, but another band looks close, but might slide just to our south. After that, the NWS is expecting lighter precip for much of the afternoon, then an increase in intensity again. Question then will be how much snow do we get before the change to sleet (late afternoon here, likely) and then how much sleet and freezing rain we get before ~1/2" of plain rain falls later tonight for most locations, except well N/W. Local roads are snow-covered and slippery and even Route 1 was slushy in many spots, so travel is not going to be easy this afternoon (unless the current lull lasts longer than expected). Hoping I make it to my 2.75" prediction for my house - NWS seems to think the 2-4" forecast for most will verify, as per the updated discussion below. 27F here. National Weather Service Mount Holly NJ 1238 PM EST Wed Feb 20 2019 NEAR TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/... 1230 PM: The morning round of enhanced frontogenesis lift is winding down. Expect that we will see a period of relatively light precipitation through the afternoon, before we have another round of moderate to heavy precipitation this evening. As for precipitation type, sleet is beginning to mix in in southern Delaware. As warm air aloft continues to advect in, we should see the line of a sleet mix move further north. Later this afternoon, as the elevated warm layer becomes deeper and the bottom of the layer gets closer to the surface, freezing rain becomes more of a threat for areas that may still be below freezing. For Delmarva and southeastern NJ, expect the change over to wintry mix to continue for the next few hours, followed by a change over to all rain mid afternoon. For much of the I95 corridor, the transition is expected to occur mid afternoon to early evening (unfortunately not likely to see a change over to all rain in these locations before the start of the evening commute). The southern Poconos and NW NJ will be the last to see the change over to all rain, which may not come until well after midnight tonight. Snow and ice amounts: With this update, adjusted snow amounts up slightly primarily near the MD/PA/DE border which has been the prime location for frontogenesis lift for the last few hours. Now have storm total amounts of 4 to 6 inches; already 2 to 3 inches has fallen in some locations. No changes to the ice amounts with this update. For much of the rest of the area, it still looks like a general 2 to 4 inches. Areas south of here will see amounts mostly in the 1 to 3 inch range. Additional concern is freezing rain. A light glaze up to a few hundredths of an inch of ice accretion is likely over the northern Delmarva N/E along the I-95 corridor while upwards of one to two tenths of an inch of ice is expected over portions of eastern PA from western Chester County north through Berks County, the Lehigh Valley into the southern Poconos. Impacts: Regardless of the exact snow and ice amounts, we remain very concerned that much of the region could be seeing the greatest impacts coincident with the evening commute. The one exception is much of the Delmarva and SE NJ which should see the change over to all rain before this time. Even if the snow and ice amounts are lower, the potential for ice on top of snow, could result in very slippery conditions.

Snowing steadily at a moderate clip in Rahway for the past 30 minutes - roads already snow covered - looks like 1/4-1/2" OTG already. 28/23F. Didn't expect any snow before noon and the radar looks very healthy, so I'll take those as good signs.

same here in Rahway...

According to the 12Z NAM it might be game over for snow, but not for sleet/ZR. It's certainly warmer/wetter for the NYC Metro than 6Z or other models, but it still has 0.1" LE as sleet for EWR as per the precip type comparison below for EWR for the NCEP models, and 6Z had quite a bit of ZR.

Excellent posts about sleet. One of my favorite topics and this storm, once again, showed the impact of sleet is as great as snow, since impact is largely due to frozen mass and not depth and the 3/4" of snow and 1" of sleet we got has 0.4" of frozen LE in it, which is 4" of "snow equivalent" (at 10:1). Far more impactful than the 1.7" of depth would be if it had only been snow - and the pics of traffic impacts around the region said it all. And sleet is much slower to melt than snow, due to its much lower surface area to volume ratio (spheres vs. dendrites - no contest on SA/V), which is really important initially when the frozen precip is trying to accumulate. People calling this storm a "nothingburger" are meteorological morons. Sorry, had to be said.

Yep...from NWS-NYC... High pres builds in Mon night/Tue and there is surprisingly decent agreement amongst the guidance for a midweek storm next week, however am leery on the details due to the uncertainty with the Sun night/Mon system. Thus confidence is low. Could have a similar situation to what occurred this past Tue, but will need a few more days to iron the details out.

The 0Z runs weren't good for this subforum. For the Saturday event only the CMC brings 1-2" of snow to the Philly-NYC corridor (and 2-4" S of 276/195), with the Euro, FV3, and GFS all confining measurable snow to south of Balt-AC. For the Monday event, things look slightly better for N of 276/195, as the GFS has an inch or so generally N of 195/276, the FV3 has <1" N of that line, and the CMC has 1-3" N of 276/195, while the Euro has nada. I think we're almost out of time for the Saturday event to be meaningful north of Philly-Toms River (unless the CMC scores a major unexpected coup) and the Monday event looks minor, but this winter most of us would kill for minor. Next Wednesday is looking better than Sat/Mon, but things often look better 6-7 days out. Have not seen the UK.

Not even sure what to call it - it's not a squall line, like a few weeks ago - Mesoscale Snow Event? They didn't say how much snow, but the radar looks juicy for some. Special Weather Statement National Weather Service Mount Holly NJ 252 PM EST WED FEB 13 2019 NJZ007>010-012-013-015-PAZ061-062-103>106-132030- Mercer-Morris-Hunterdon-Western Monmouth-Somerset-Middlesex-Warren-Lower Bucks-Lehigh-Eastern Montgomery-Northampton-Upper Bucks-Western Montgomery- 252 PM EST WED FEB 13 2019 ...AN AREA OF HEAVY SNOW WILL AFFECT SOUTHWESTERN MORRIS... HUNTERDON...SOUTHWESTERN WARREN...MERCER...SOMERSET...CENTRAL MONMOUTH...MIDDLESEX...NORTH CENTRAL MONTGOMERY...SOUTHEASTERN LEHIGH...BUCKS AND SOUTHEASTERN NORTHAMPTON COUNTIES... At 249 PM EST, an area of heavy snow was centered over Northern Bucks and Hunterdon counties, moving east at 45 mph. This snow will result in a period of low visibilities and hazardous travel conditions. Locations impacted include... Allentown, New Brunswick, Easton, Somerville, Somerset, Bethlehem, Old Bridge, East Brunswick, Bridgewater, South Brunswick, North Brunswick, Manalapan, Ewing, Lansdale, Forks, Middlesex, Princeton, Bound Brook, Manville and Quakertown.

3-5" isn't so light, IMO...

CMC is all frozen from about New Brunswick to NYC through 7 pm Tuesday, when about 1" of LE has fallen (then another 0.7" of LE or so, mostly as rain, is my guess, as surface temps are in the upper 30s by 1 am Weds, the next timepoint and are just at or slightly above 32F at 7 pm, so the changeover appears imminent). This is several inches of snow, as per the first map, then a couple of inches of sleet (~6" worth of snow at 10:1) for the precip through 7 pm.

I actually like sleet almost as much as snow, since, well, it's frozen, lol. So I like diving in and trying to figure out how much sleet. Would be nice to have free source maps that showed, better, both snow and sleet. And the impact of 3" of snow then 2" of sleet (6-7" of snow equiv) is similar to the impact of 9-10" of snow, at least for shoveling, plowing, driving (except for visibility) and people will underestimate the impact if they only look at "just snow" maps.

Definitely one of those storms where one needs to look at multiple graphics to get the full story. For the 12Z NAM, the Pivotal map shows the snow through Tuesday early morning (more to the S of 195/276 due to the Monday system) and then the snow changes to sleet for most of CNJ/NNJ until early afternoon (where soundings from Trenton to NYC looks like sleet, changing to rain somewhere around 1-2 pm Tues), where one can estimate the amount of sleet by subtracting the Pivotal snow from the Tidbits "snow" (which is snow + sleet, all at a 10:1 ratio). Kind of tedious, but no single map can really work. This can work for the NAM, GFS and FV3; pretty sure the CMC/Euro/UK maps are just snow, but not 100% sure on that and if that's right not sure if they show sleet some other way or if one has to count precip under sleet soundings manually - I'm sure there are better ways to do this - might be time to start paying for this kind of info, lol. Might not be worth this effort yet, 3 days out, since much will likely change, but it helps me, at least. Isn't it about time for a storm thread? In my head when the NAM covers just about the whole storm, that's time...

Sweet - thanks!

FV3 looks like it might have backed off a bit from the 18Z run from the NCEP site. Looks like about maybe 3/4" frozen (snow and sleet) vs. close to 1" at 18Z, then a lot of rain. Hard to read those maps, though, so I could be off on that. UK holds course with a helluva nice snow thump of 6-10" for most - looks nearly identical to 12Z.

Thanks for confirming. What's the "color loop?"

CMC looks like 3-4" of snow for the immediate NYC metro (including my house, lol), followed by another 0.6" of LE as sleet (as per soundings through 0Z Weds/96 hours, which show a definite sleet signature until at least that time, as per below (for Edison - NYC was very similar - Trenton was warmer, so less sleet likely), with a warm nose above 32F from 700 to 900 mbar and with the bottom ~2500 feet of the column at or below 32F), followed by another 1" of rain to be conservative, as the soundings 6 hours later are definitely rain (surface at 38F). In that case, the ~1" of frozen LE would likely simply absorb the 1" of pure rain, with minimal to modest melting, since surface temps just barely make it above 40F by early Weds morning, although they stay above 32F through Wednesday, so melting will occur (and not a hard freeze, as modeled). I bet the TT map would look just like the FV3 map if the CMC TT map showed sleet.

Simulated radar and estimated snowfall maps are nearly identical...

Looks about the same as 18Z to me, which is not great, but it doesn't seem worse than that.

I understand the pessimism, given the disappointments this winter, but each event should generally be an independent event, and right now, apart from the GFS, every model is showing at least 3-5" of snow/sleet (at least in frozen mass, if not depth) for NB to NYC. We have not been in that situation 3.5 days out for any of the other storms that "missed" us this year (they generally had 1 or 2 models showing decent snow, but others showing much less). Of course, that may all go into the crapper in future model runs, but right now things at least look decent.

Nice shot. What's your thinking on this? I'm not a met, but when I look at 11/15, where the CAD clearly overperformed (vs. forecasts; the models actually were bullish on snow for that one, despite being in the face of 50F+ ocean temps) vs. 1/20, where the CAD was eroded very quickly and there was far less frozen precip than most models (and forecasters) predicted, it makes me wonder how anyone can be confident in the outcome on this one. I know the setups were quite different, but the basic issue of how the hell do we really have a strong clue about what's going to happen in 3+ days is daunting. At least to me.

Revisiting a topic I've discussed before on the board (and maybe people are tired of, lol), which is what I think is a really interesting comparison between how model output services can differ widely when sharing what should be identical information. The first graphic shows the 18Z GFS-FV3 from Tropical Tidbits, which shows about ~9" of snow for the Philly-NYC corridor (I'm using 9" for illustration purposes), but it includes sleet and counts it the same way it counts snow, i.e., as 10:1 ratio snow, which is flawed, as sleet is usually about 3" of sleet per 1" of liquid (but has the same frozen mass as the snow, just not the same depth). Second is the 12Z GFS-FV3 from Pivotal Weather, which only shows pure snow at 10" snow per 1" of liquid, but excludes sleet entirely. This is also highly flawed, as the map makes it look like a minor ~2" snowfall for Philly-NYC (I'm using 2" for illustration purposes), when in reality, we're really talking about ~2" of snow + about 2" of sleet, which is equivalent to ~7" of regular snow, for a total of 9" of "10:1 equivalent snow" as per the TT map. Personally, I think the TT maps are better, as they at least are truly showing the total mass of frozen precip, which is equivalent to 9" worth of 10:1 snow (or 0.9" of liquid equivalent), while the PW maps probably would cause people to significantly underestimate the impact of the frozen precip that is expected to fall. At least for shoveling, plowing and driving (apart from visibility), mass is the far more important number, not depth. As if predicting "snowfall" isn't hard enough, lol. As an aside, it would be nice if the FV3 scores a coup here (it did quite well on 11/15, but not so well since).

Thanks - sorry to be a pain, but do you happen to have one that shows all of NJ?