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Thundersnow caught on vid near Buffalo


Ian

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Jim Cantore had an experience like that while doing a live sequence on TWC some time back. My best thundersnow was in January 1992 when we had a severe boomer with whiteout snow in Sierra Vista (gusts over 70 mph). Not snow but another interesting thunder blast was that recorded by Jim Leonard during the eyewall of Typhoon Omar on Guam.

Steve

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I had thundersnow during the Blizzard of '96 that lasted about 5-10 minutes in NJ. My whole family woke up in the middle of the night and just watched in awe. We had no power and it was really cool. We couldn't even see our neighbor's house and they were about 25 feet away. The snow muffled the thunder too.

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Wow, that woman did a pretty good job explaining lake effect snow. I wonder if she's actually a meteorologist.

No she is not an actual Met....she worked for News 12 Long Island in the late 90s and early 2000s and at the time was very disliked by most of the audience and staff alike....she has improved though drastically since that time, I've been very impressed with her overall on air performance during her time at CNN so far.

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I'm used to seeing residents of Buffalo take feet of snow in stride. Yet this time the videos make give the impression everyone was caught off guard. Could it just be a result of the first major LES event of the year?

Blame the thruway authority,happened last year too at the end of December :devilsmiley:

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I'm used to seeing residents of Buffalo take feet of snow in stride. Yet this time the videos make give the impression everyone was caught off guard. Could it just be a result of the first major LES event of the year?

It was probably a combination of that, the fact that I-90 has a lot of non-locals on it, and it's pretty hard for any place to deal with 30-40" of snow in as many hours. It could have been handled much better by the people sitting in offices in Albany/NYSTA, but the locals didn't seem to take it too bad. November 2000 really changed the reaction and preparation for LES in the Buffalo metro. Events like Dec 2001 and Dec 1995 occurred on during the holidays or the weekend, compared to midweek for this storm, so the impacts were much different.

Of course, I wasn't in Buffalo, so I'm just relying on what I've heard.

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I'm used to seeing residents of Buffalo take feet of snow in stride. Yet this time the videos make give the impression everyone was caught off guard. Could it just be a result of the first major LES event of the year?

From my experience, it's usually "no big deal" up to about 24 inches. Once we hit that mark in a 24-hour period, there's usually problems with road closures, stranded travelers, etc. For this event, there was also some mismanagement by the state thruway authority, resulting in hundreds of people being stuck on a major highway for 12-18 hours. Still, areas that received 30-40" are now back to normal after a couple days.

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I had no idea this much of a lake storm hit parts of upstate NY. How sad is it that my mom has to ask me, the one who knows weather, did you hear about all that lake effect snow in Buffalo? I will randomly check Great Lakes cities f-6 or climo summaries in skimming, and I saw KBUF had 6" on the ground, didnt think anything of it. Had NO idea parts of the area had 3 feet of snow. The last thing you should do is check the climate summary in a lake belt city and think that it summarizes what happened in that whole region. :lol:

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From my experience, it's usually "no big deal" up to about 24 inches. Once we hit that mark in a 24-hour period, there's usually problems with road closures, stranded travelers, etc. For this event, there was also some mismanagement by the state thruway authority, resulting in hundreds of people being stuck on a major highway for 12-18 hours. Still, areas that received 30-40" are now back to normal after a couple days.

I heard the same...they got lucky is warm with very little wind...otherwise people could have died stuck on the thruway. While the snowfall totals were huge in this event, the snowfall rates weren't completely unmanageable. 1-2"/hr during the majority of the event is a solid heavy snow..but not the blinding snowfall rates that Buffalo saw during Nov. 20, 2000, or Dec. 10, 1995.

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When I moved to NM last March we got some Thundersnow the very first weekend I was here. I believe the NWS office here actually considered issuing a severe warning for the county but opted just to issue a special weather statement if I remember correctly. Pretty fantastic stuff watching bolts of lighting while the snow was falling at an exceptional rate.

EDIT:

Found the text of the advisory they put out in my email.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ALBUQUERQUE NM

259 PM MDT SUN MAR 14 2010

NMZ518-142130-

SANTA FE METRO AREA-

259 PM MDT SUN MAR 14 2010

...SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY FOR EASTERN SANDOVAL AND WESTERN

SANTA FE COUNTIES THROUGH 330 PM MDT...

AT 255 PM MDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A

STRONG THUNDERSTORM NEAR LA BAJADA...OR ABOUT 20 MILES SOUTHWEST OF

SANTA FE...MOVING NORTHEAST AT 20 MPH.

EXPECT HAIL STONES AND/OR SLEET BETWEEN PEA SIZED TO HALF AN INCH IN

DIAMETER DURING A SHORT PERIOD WITHIN THE STORM. ALSO EXPECTED

VISIBLITIES TO BE REDUCED DOWN TO NEAR ZERO DUE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL.

AREAS AFFECTED BY THIS STORM INCLUDE...LA BAJADA AND LA CIENEGA.

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