Busting at the seams lol...what is your most memorable storm where you were promised the world and got royally boned?

[Hailstoned]

Washington's Birthday "blizzard" of 1962. Even the OFA had it in their "forecast". I recall being excited as the public works department where I lived just west of Boston, cleaned snow from the hydrants and drains in anticipation, and the milky high overcast giving it that look. Forecasters were gung ho for a major event. The result? A bit of ice and a lot of drizzle and mist. Quite the downer after the epic winter of 60/61.

[tamarack]

thats pretty wild about the 93 superstorm..i wonder why those things happen like that in storms...seems like you should have had at least a foot and a half

 

Most Maine locations from SFM to CAR landed in the 15-20" range.  In looking jsut now, I actually did find a station with less snow than I measured.  BHB had 10.0" on 2.29" LE, temps 37/19 - obviously switched to rain for a significant part of the storm.  Another weird obs (actually a pair of obs) came at 8 AM that Sunday, when BGR had flat calm with pressure about 968 while at Mt. Desert Rock, 55 miles SE, the wind was gusting over 60 knots.

[IntenseBlizzard2014]

I have one. March 5th-6th, 2001. Mets were going for 1-2' for SE NY, ended up having <10".

[CapturedNature]

I was thinking about this the other day and there was a storm back in the mid-80s where the BDL WSO issued a Blizzard Warning starting the next day and we wound up with high clouds or smoking cirrus as the younger folks say.  I can't recall larger blown forecase but I remember being excited about it and then feeling let down when it never materialized.  I remember talking to one of the forecasters down there and he said that they would never issue something like that again.  I think like 5 or 6 years later they did away with the local offices and went regional.

[HalloweenGale]

I've got two:

 

December 27-28, 1997. On the 26th, local mets started talking about a sure thing that there would be 5-10" for Cape Cod and the islands. My grandparents and I were in Waltham, Mass for Christmas (I got to experience 12/23 first hand.) We were driving back to HYA to catch the ferry back to the island. We went to this restaurant called The Black Cat on Ocean Street in Hyannis. Inside they had all the TV's onto The Weather Channel. I don't think Kocin was on, but their other winter expert was calling for 5 to 10 inches and isolated 15 inches in some places. The ride back to ACK was choppy. Midway through ACK Sound it started to rain. The rain mixed with flakes that night, and I awoke to a dusting the morning.

 

December 30, 2000. I knew going in that this was going to screw us on the front end. Pure blowtorch. Gusts as high as 50mph and driving rain. We did have a *brief* period of light snow on NYE on the back side.

[N. OF PIKE]

93 superstorm was depressing to go to hvy rain in se mass, but no shock. This year had two wonderful positive busts. Well the fire hose that could and did and the blizzard that didnt trend se ots but crush'd! That blizzard was the beginning of the end for the crap pattern in east coastal sne, i recall euro did shift 50 or so miles se on two runs prior to hitting and i thought it would shift more but it never did, and gfs shat the bed!

[eyewall]

March Superstorm 1993, and March 2001.

[ORH_wxman]

I've got two:

 

December 27-28, 1997. On the 26th, local mets started talking about a sure thing that there would be 5-10" for Cape Cod and the islands. My grandparents and I were in Waltham, Mass for Christmas (I got to experience 12/23 first hand.) We were driving back to HYA to catch the ferry back to the island. We went to this restaurant called The Black Cat on Ocean Street in Hyannis. Inside they had all the TV's onto The Weather Channel. I don't think Kocin was on, but their other winter expert was calling for 5 to 10 inches and isolated 15 inches in some places. The ride back to ACK was choppy. Midway through ACK Sound it started to rain. The rain mixed with flakes that night, and I awoke to a dusting the morning.

 

December 30, 2000. I knew going in that this was going to screw us on the front end. Pure blowtorch. Gusts as high as 50mph and driving rain. We did have a *brief* period of light snow on NYE on the back side.

 

 

I remember the 1997 storm. We were down on the Cape for a couple of days after Christmas at my grandparents. I was pretty pumped up to be there as the call was for 6" or so..maybe up to 8". ACK was going to get it the best. I had just experienced the massive positive bust of 12/23/97 in ORH so I was riding high at that point.

 

We had rain mixing with snow early that evening and I started getting excited. Then it finalyl went to all wet snow but it was having trouble sticking. Finally it started to stick to bushes and grassy surfaces but then it lightened up and never got much better. The next morning I think we had an inch of slop or less. Really disappointing.

[free_man]

6/13/13

[tamarack]

 

thats pretty wild about the 93 superstorm..i wonder why those things happen like that in storms...seems like you should have had at least a foot and a half

That storm was so huge and so powerful that it probably sucked in maritime air from out over the Gulf Stream, such that BHB had a load of RA and Gardiner had mid-level warming that rimed the dendrites and killed ratios. 35 miles NW, Farmington had 18" of 9:1 snow (prob some riming there, too) to build their snowpack to 56", tied for their 2nd highest.

[weathafella]

12/30/00

Without a doubt.

[CoastalWx]

AT least the day before we knew our goose was cooked on the CP for 12/30/00.

[Brian5671]

AT least the day before we knew our goose was cooked on the CP for 12/30/00.

Not on this part of the coastal plain....I remember mass confusion for this storm-we were supposed to change to rain, never did and 17 inches later....

[CT Rain]

Boxing Day

[N. OF PIKE]

Boxing Day

i have boxing day as one of the biggest positive busts given 36 hours out the nhc was throwing away any nam and gfs runs that show'd us great hits. What did hfd finish with? I recall ray being piss'd w this storm but i was treating anything more than 6 as a bonus given what modeling was showing 48 hrs out.

[joey2002]

i have boxing day as one of the biggest positive busts given 36 hours out the nhc was throwing away any nam and gfs runs that show'd us great hits. What did hfd finish with? I recall ray being piss'd w this storm but i was treating anything more than 6 as a bonus given what modeling was showing 48 hrs out.

 

NYC, coastal NJ, and Western CT got buried, while Central and Eastern CT ended up with only 5-8 inches...

 

 

 

A death band set up where you see that dark blue streak above, and it just blasted the same area all night.

 

 

 

[powderfreak]

i have boxing day as one of the biggest positive busts given 36 hours out the nhc was throwing away any nam and gfs runs that show'd us great hits. What did hfd finish with? I recall ray being piss'd w this storm but i was treating anything more than 6 as a bonus given what modeling was showing 48 hrs out.

Yeah wasn't that not even supposed to happen like 72 hours out? That was when some had epic melt-downs when the storm was shown at like day 7-10, then disappeared all together at days like 3-6. Blizz was going to hang himself.

Then there was the Xmas miracle model runs that brought it back. I know what Ryan is saying why it was a bust, but considering that like 3 days out it wasn't even supposed to snow at all in CT...

Some could put that in a great positive bust too for that reason.

[N. OF PIKE]

Pfreak that is my number 1 or 2 positive bust. Models lost it, then when they brought it back against all odds and then like a slap to weenies rejoicing everywhere, the nhc was tossing g those runs due to initialization issues lmao. So it was the impossible weenie dream against all odds (and nhc) against that back drop u gotta be happy imo that u get ez warning snows, but we are all capable of getting snow greedy and when its snows double or more 25 miles from you, (when more is forecast) i guess i can see it as both a positive and negative bust, which is extremely difficult to create.

[Allsnow]

January 2008 the famous "heavy snow warning"

I still toss and turn about it! Ugh

[HalloweenGale]

Positive busts:

 

Christmas Eve 1995. 1" of snow.

 

December 27th, 1995. 1" of snow.

[tamarack]

Never expect to see a positive bust to beat April 1982 for N.Maine.  Six hr before the snow began, CAR was forecasting flurries and 20s with wind.  They got 26.4" to set a new simgle-storm (and 24 hr) record for the station, though it was eclipsed in 3/1984 and pushed to 3rd in 12/2005.  In Ft. Kent I measured "only" 17", but with winds gusting near 60 and huge drifts already in place from a long snowy winter, it was the highest impact snowstorm I've experienced.  The forecast sharp right turn evidently occurred a couple hundred miles farther north than expected.

[eyewall]

If you want to go positive bust I would say January 25th, 2000 in NC for me (The Carolina Crusher). Forecast was 3-5" (Already significant for central NC) and the result was 21". Still some of the heaviest rates I have seen north or south. People were trapped in cars on I-85 for up to 36 hours before help arrived.

 

 

[tamarack]

If you want to go positive bust I would say January 25th, 2000 in NC for me (The Carolina Crusher). Forecast was 3-5" (Already significant for central NC) and the result was 21". Still some of the heaviest rates I have seen north or south. People were trapped in cars on I-85 for up to 36 hours before help arrived.

 

Love the pic.

Two classic ++ busts, hard to compare which busted worse.  Tools were a lot better in 2000 than 18 yr earlier, so (in theory) mega-busta should've been less likely, and as bad as things were in N.Maine, they know a bit about snow there; not so in NC piedmont.  Still, hearing a "flurries" forecast at 10 PM then waking up at 1:30 AM to see +SN was pretty dramatic.

[uncle W]

The first big bust I remember was a week after the March 1960 blizzard...It did snow just to the south but the heavy snow that was predicted the night before went out to sea...probably the biggest bust of all time for me is 1/7/1970...there was a heavy snow warning up for NYC and snow was falling at a good clip but not for long...I was working in lower Manhattan and walked down to the battery near the water...The Sun was starting to peak thru the clouds and the snow ended a few hours later...only 2" fell and it got very cold...back in January 1962 I woke up to a heavy snow warning...When I looked out the window the Sun was out...in February 1964 a heavy snow warning brought us a half inch....That's right up there with 1970...January 1968 had a bust late in the month...heavy snow was predicted at one point but no snow fell at all...In later years late February 1989 and February 5th,  2010...March 2001 wasn't a bust for me because I thought at the time it wasn't going to be a major event for NYC...

[Brian5671]

January 2008 the famous "heavy snow warning"

I still toss and turn about it! Ugh

That was pretty nasty-there was no cold air anywhere and we were relying on the storm to manufacture it's own.  We  know how that usually works out-ended with a slushy 2 inches here despite calls for 6-12.

[IsentropicLift]

March 2001, nothing else even comes close. It really gave a lot of the local mets down here a bad name for awhile.

[Brian5671]

March 2001, nothing else even comes close. It really gave a lot of the local mets down here a bad name for awhile.

That storm set back the field 5 years in NYC and Philly.   Close to nothing after calls for 2 feet plus....ended on the edge here-eeked out 10 inches or so which was still a bust given the calls from 1-2 days prior--still had something to plow/shovel though

[H2Otown_WX]

Boxing Day

It looked like a "here we go again" after 2009-10. For some reason 2/10/10 is more disappointing to me than Boxing Day. I think we were forecast to get like 10-15" and I got about 3 or 3.5"...that just seems worse than getting the 7" I got in Boxing Day when we were expected to get well over a foot. I'm not sure what you got though so maybe you had less? 12/19/09 was pretty bad too.

[Brian5671]

It looked like a "here we go again" after 2009-10. For some reason 2/10/10 is more disappointing to me than Boxing Day. I think we were forecast to get like 10-15" and I got about 3 or 3.5"...that just seems worse than getting the 7" I got in Boxing Day when we were expected to get well over a foot. I'm not sure what you got though so maybe you had less? 12/19/09 was pretty bad too.

Wow-only 7 inches up there in Boxing Day?  I think we had 17 or so down here just 30 miles to your south.  12/19/09 had a similar cutoff, but it was more north to south-Danbury had half of what we had

[H2Otown_WX]

Wow-only 7 inches up there in Boxing Day?  I think we had 17 or so down here just 30 miles to your south.  12/19/09 had a similar cutoff, but it was more north to south-Danbury had half of what we had

Boxing Day was an east-west cut-off so you are probably 15 or so miles west of me and it made a big difference. I also measure depth and it was a long-duration event so my total got deflated a bit I'm sure.