DeltaT13

I've been telling my friend down there to watch out for a surprise snow event tonight even though the NWS isn't really feeling it. He told me that no one is talking about any chance of snow and they freak out for any amount so I expect some people might be quite shocked to wake up to some white tomorrow. Temps are in the 50's right now though so accumulation will be difficult.

Out around 10 days or so, the GFS continually hints at some sort of Miller A. It really wants to pop something nice out of the DEEP south...down near South Texas/Mexico. It's been way too long since we had a classic Miller A. Is this the year we make the comeback?!

Here’s some nice roll convection setting up in the wake of that 850, albeit on a much longer fetch. Still bodes well for us.

Yes it does. Would be nice to add a few inches on Friday then another 6 next week. It would be like legit winter!

I measured 2” at 530 but it’s certainly very dense stuff. Not surprisingly my depth on the ground sits a 4” even though I started the day at 3.5” and added 2”. It’s such heavy dense stuff that it’s compacting the antecedent layers efficiently.

How much can we eek out on the backend? You can see a little something over the Niagara peninsula and if you trust the high res NAM then snow should redevelop area wide anytime now....which seems like a stretch. Lolz.

Light Freezing drizzle/rain in Webster. Temp is 28. What a slop fest bust. I should know better. Tracking a storm as it’s in its death throes is always a risky bet. It’s just unwinding and falling apart. Oh well. It came down fast and furious for a couple hours and wrecked the roads, so that was worth the price of admission I guess.

NWS just bumped up my point and click and added heavy snow right as the snow tapers off. What in the world is going on....

Radarscope is amazing and I use it everyday, but it lacks a composite regional view. If it had that, it would be perfect.

This radar composite is a good replacement for the now defunct national weather service radar. Gives a good regional view https://www.wunderground.com/maps/radar/current/bgm

Was just looking through old weather bookmarks and found this link for Meteograms. They only have one for Buffalo, but this is just such a clever and intuitive way to lay out an incredible amount of information. You can see how all three systems during the next week will system pass through the atmosphere in that top graph (via temp profiles and moisture). Of particular interest is that tiny window where extremely deep arctic air intersects a little blob of moisture on Friday Morning (Thickness lines flirting with sub 5000dm). That seems like the window for the best lake effect. Anyway I can't get over just how useful that one image is. I'm definitely going to be coming back to it more often. Wish they would crunch one for KROC. Looking further ahead you can see the next system and the thermal profile concerns that we will be dealing with.... http://wxmaps.org/meteograms.php

I looked more closely at the Thursday Friday timeframe and there is actually a little more meat on that bone than I realized. Still no slam dunk...but something to keep an eye on for sure.

Pretty dramatic turn in some places these last couple of weeks! I miss the days of having huge piles along my street from the plows. It's been a couple years now. Did you ski Snow Ridge?

I like 4 inches in ROC (6 inches if the stars align and we eek out some enhancement on the backend). We stay below freezing from the surface all the way up so hopefully zero mixing. Kind of sucks this storm hits during peak diurnal warming, so that might eat up an inch. On the other hand, daytime storms are nice because you get to watch every flake fall (if you so choose), plus it has the highest impact on society which is always a fun aspect to storms.

Roc's yearly snowfall (on a good year) in two days. And great point BW, November 2014 is one of the most impressive snow events anywhere in North America IMO. Accurate measurements were truly impossible in the heaviest bands, I think places made a run at 100"

In happier news, that next noteworthy storm (Feb 1st) continues to want to slide just south of our Area keeping us mostly snow or a mix at worst. However, that follow up storm next week seems like its going to be the cutter to end all cutters. The trough digging in way out West means serious business and will really amplify the Eastern Ridge. I don't see a way out of that disaster.

That is also the year that Rochester set there all time record low snowfall. What a nightmare of a year. It did happen right during the great depression...is it plausible that the horrible economic conditions somehow prevented accurate measurements from being taken that year? Like the guy measuring was probably starving to death and was like "**** this, I'm not wasting time measuring snow, I gotta find some damn food"

I see only about a 12 hour window when vertical profiles will be supportive for lake effect; 7pm Thursday through about 7am Friday. Factors working in our favor are super cold surface temps and almost a due northerly flow. After that, low level moisture is pretty scarce and a strong subsidence inversion lowers our equilibrium levels to about 900mb, which doesnt allow much vertical growth at all. Looks like a 1-2 inch kind of thing depending on where you are. Fluff factor will be huge, so I guess you could inflate those numbers to 2-4 in the best case scenario. Personally I'm not expecting more than some passing snow showers. That high pressure is going to squash the shit out of anything that trys to form .

2-4 on top of an existing snowpack without a rainstorm in between sounds like heaven to me, haha. I just want to build a base and hold it. The conditions off piste at the local resorts are actually getting really nice. A couple more small storms like this and the woods will all be in play!

Seems like the rain should hold off for this game. Appears to come in around midnight on the latest model so that works in our favor. Now we just need our defense to knock around Mahomes and show him what a real hit is, not that Nancy boy shit he faked his injury on last week.

Before we get too far past this somewhat awesome past week (depending where you live). I think its a good time to point out what others around here often say, specifically BW. A clipper pattern is really the best bet for us. Some subtle low level moisture, arctic air, and the right winds and almost everyone around here wins. Case in point, this past week featured two relatively benign looking systems (at least from a synoptic standpoint) which just barely clipped our area, yet many places ended up with their best snowfalls of the season. It doesnt take much... Good stuff. I call this gif, 2 clippers 1 week.

Look at this 16 day forecast for the Sierras. Just a casual 5-16 feet of snow......Even cut in half, those numbers would still be pretty impressive.

Come on man. Are my measurement garbage or something? 5.5 storm total with 5 on the ground as of 6pm in gates.

The airport seems to have tuned up their game this year. I cleared 3” off the board at 11pm last night. Then this morning there was another 2.5. So I measured about 5.5 from this event and they measured 5.6. Pretty stunning considering the localized nature of these bands. Currently 6” on the ground as we came into this event with about an 1”. Deepest snowpack of the year and we should hold it for at least 5-6 days!

Looks like a nice band consolidating over Ontario in Wayne county. They really look well positioned going into the overnight. I hit some nice snow but its hard to chase these transient multibands. Hard to stay locked into a good spot for long. Still a great time getting out there and always fun when its closer to home.