Continous Snow Cover Day Stretches

[RU848789]

In our area (Edison/Metuchen), the only bare spots are south facing hills on the highway, where they probably get a lot of salt splash, and of course, most paved surfaces, except where the snow was piled up from plows/shoveling. My front and back yards, which are about 1/4 of an acre, total, have a solid 5-10" everywhere, except where the snow blew away when drifting. The front and back yards are somewhat shady, but not completely shaded. Across the street, where there's a small pond and a hill the kids sled on (and it's wide open, with limited shade), I'd estimate more like 3-6", as it gets more sun. This snowpack has so much moisture content (I'd guess at least 3" of liquid per foot of snow) that it's going to be pretty slow to melt - probably only lost an inch or so today - and it might last even until the end of the week - will be a very close call as to whether we make it to 2/21 (the magic day 58 days in a row record for Central Park - best comparison for me). I'm guessing my property will survive to 2/21 with an inch or two of cement, but wide open, not-so-shaded areas, such as the field across the street will be mostly brown - and since I imagine CPK is much like the field across the street from me, I'd guess it will make it to day 56 or 57 with 1" of snowcover, but not 58. It's going to be close...

Just wanted to reiterate what I think is a very important point that most people calling for a fast melt don't realize. The water content of the snowpack is way higher than we usually have after a single storm and the melting rate in inches per day is inversely proportional to the moisture content of the snow, for a given heat (temp) input. I haven't measured it, but I know we've had continuous snowcover for 50+ days and there's been a lot of compression, plus a fair amount of absorption of rainfall in the past few weeks, such that I'm pretty sure we at least have 2-3X the moisture content we have for freshly fallen snow, i.e., about a 3-5:1 ratio of snow to liquid instead of the usual 10:1 ratio. If we assume it's a 4:1 ratio, this would be 2.5X as much water as usual encased in this glacier per inch of depth. And the melting rate would then be 2.5X slower than it would usually be for a given depth of fresh snow. So while we've all seen times where maybe 7-8" of a 12" snowfall disappears in 2 days of 50-55F temperatures, I think we'll only see about 3-4" of a snowpack like ours disappearing in 2 days of 50-55F temps, since the melting rate in inches of depth that disappear is inversely proportional to the moisture content, i.e., it takes the same amount of heat energy (proportional to the temperature integrated over time) to melt 1" of a 4:1 ratio snowpack as it would take to melt 2.5" of a 10:1 ratio snowpack. And given that I have 7-8" on average (measured more closely last night) of dense, high moisture snowpack, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict I'll still have >1" of snowpack come Monday, Day 58. Of course, I could be wrong...

[Bluescat1]

Just wanted to reiterate what I think is a very important point that most people calling for a fast melt don't realize. The water content of the snowpack is way higher than we usually have after a single storm and the melting rate in inches per day is inversely proportional to the moisture content of the snow, for a given heat (temp) input. I haven't measured it, but I know we've had continuous snowcover for 50+ days and there's been a lot of compression, plus a fair amount of absorption of rainfall in the past few weeks, such that I'm pretty sure we at least have 2-3X the moisture content we have for freshly fallen snow, i.e., about a 3-5:1 ratio of snow to liquid instead of the usual 10:1 ratio. If we assume it's a 4:1 ratio, this would be 2.5X as much water as usual encased in this glacier per inch of depth. And the melting rate would then be 2.5X slower than it would usually be for a given depth of fresh snow. So while we've all seen times where maybe 7-8" of a 12" snowfall disappears in 2 days of 50-55F temperatures, I think we'll only see about 3-4" of a snowpack like ours disappearing in 2 days of 50-55F temps, since the melting rate in inches of depth that disappear is inversely proportional to the moisture content, i.e., it takes the same amount of heat energy (proportional to the temperature integrated over time) to melt 1" of a 4:1 ratio snowpack as it would take to melt 2.5" of a 10:1 ratio snowpack. And given that I have 7-8" on average (measured more closely last night) of dense, high moisture snowpack, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict I'll still have >1" of snowpack come Monday, Day 58. Of course, I could be wrong...

My remaining snow is more like glacier ice after the freeze this morning.

[JBG]

My remaining snow is more like glacier ice after the freeze this morning.

Same here.

[NorthShoreWx]

This is my 16th winter at the current location (going back to 1995). It is possible that there was longer snow cover in '94, but I wasn't here.

It's interesting to note that the top three longest periods of snowcover started in December, but that probably shouldn't be a surprise given the much weaker the sun angle is in December vs February.

Here are the top 10 longest stretches of snowcover I've recorded in the past 15 winters plus this year's new record (which is first by a lot):

12/27/2010 - 2/18/2011 + (54+ days)

12/30/2000 - 2/10/2001 (43 days)

12/14/1995 - 1/23/1996 (41 days)

1/14 - 2/20/2004 (38 days)

2/7 - 3/16/2003 (38 days)

1/10 - 2/8/2009 (30 days)

2/10 - 3/6/2010 (25 days)

1/17 - 2/10/2005 (25 days)

2/20 - 3/15/2005 (24 days)

1/20 - 2/12/2000 (24 days)

1/31 - 2/21/1996 (22 days)

Criteria: more than 50% coverage by an inch or more. Anything over a half inch gets rounded up to the next inch. Although, if there was ever a time when there was a half inch dusting temporarily covering half of the gound, I wouldn't have counted it. Thats a judgement call. Some of these streaks were longer if you count "trace" amounts laying on the ground (which can include fairly deep snow with less than 50% coverge). For example, in 2005 we made it almost to April with lingering patches, some quite deep.

One other caveat, the past two years I've adopted the standard of measuring snowcover at a regular time. This year there was no snow on the ground the morning of 12/26, so I have zero recorded snowcover for that day. In previous years I would have counted 12/26 as having had snow cover because of the snow that fell before midnight. It's fair to assume that some of the previous streaks might not have been as long if I had been using the same standard.