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Flaking Our Way Into MLK Weekend 1/17-1/18


Clinch Leatherwood

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based on the dual pole I think I got about 7 OES flakes last night, and most of the Cape was the same.  The OES portion was mainly not a big deal, the snow that fell came in from the SW, it wasn't OES.

 

Nah, I was wrong about that - I just looked at the rad history from Ucar and that was definitely just barely clipped by synoptic activity.   If that was what all the hubbub was about - good call.  I kept reading all these thread contributions about bombs and how close this was to a big deal and frankly, that part of it was off-putting and not really clad in meteorology.  I didn't think we pinned threads for the purpose of entertainment alone - if so, so be it.  

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The best I could have seen this being was a couple of inches from Duxbury down to about New Bedford/Fall River with an almost immediate drop there, 3-6" or so here, and 4-8 or so for out by Phil and ACK.  That's if the timing had been just a bit better allowing the southern system to lift more  before getting pushed out.  That just didn't happen, the southern system shot out ahead a little bit - as modeled  The more optimistic models got that 50 or so miles further north.  It's one of those things where I think the probabilities NOAA had for the larger totals were about spot on...by later yesterday the chances of a significant event even on the cape were down to about 5%.   Radar and water vapor pretty well confirmed early evening last night that the southern system had mainly escaped and there would be no 5%....but there was always a chance.

 

The most interesting part of this to me was the modeling.  Why does NCEP guidance tend to overamp things while the UK absolutely refused until about the last minute to even give the Cape much of anything on the other extreme.  Weird math behind the models.

 

One thing I'll be interested to see next Tuesday is the old .1" rule.  Bitter cold, dry airmass....are we going to see the expansive snow shield later in the GFS and others that gets chewed in ground truth some.

Theoretically, models should vacillate on both sides of the eventual result, with a gradual dampening of the error.  Of course it rarely works out that way.  But I'm ok with the NCEP overshooting.  An intermodel or intramodel averaging usually works out best.  But sometimes we tend to remember the more favorable overshoots most accutely, because they produce the most disappointment.

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Nah, I was wrong about that - I just looked at the rad history from Ucar and that was definitely just barely clipped by synoptic activity.   If that was what all the hubbub was about - good call.  I kept reading all these thread contributions about bombs and how close this was to a big deal and frankly, that part of it was off-putting and not really clad in meteorology.  I didn't think we pinned threads for the purpose of entertainment alone - if so, so be it.  

 

Tip ACK got 5" per WHDH, 4" on the islands from the PNS, 3+ over a lot of the Cape east of Exit 4-5.   This was about 50 miles from being a 1-3" even up to the south short and SE RI, 3-6/4-8 on Cape Cod and maybe more on the islands. As it was, it's probably the biggest event on the lower cape/islands or among the biggest in several years. 

 

The problem in that thread was the blurring between what might have been a more significant system SE of the brick wall, versus it being something for more people.  IE, if it had timed out right the same areas that got accumulating snow could have done better by a decent amount but the NW edge of meaningful snow was always going to be Duxbury New Bedford SE for the most part.    That's to be expected, I tried to break the thread out and highlight where the threat was but it gets  muddied.

 

Also, you focus on specific words too much.  This isn't a doctoral candidate level class on meteorology, it's a bunch of people having fun.   When I speak of literal bombs I usually mention the pressure requirements or actually note the specific drop over a period of time.  I can understand why you harped on that, but again in the context of what I was saying....

 

For a short time I thought this had the potential to be a bigger deal for the Cape.  It ended up 50-100 miles too far SE.   Ackwaves probably thought it was a pretty cool storm as did the Vineyard, but I was hoping for better.  Is what it is.

 

Onto the pattern ahead, just wanted to clarify.

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