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Upstate NY/North Country + adjacent ON, QC, VT: Middle of Winter


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This is going to end up being a solid 6-10" storm for MBY anyway.  About 3" new in the last couple hours as snow has been enhanced ahead of the approaching arctic FROPA.  Looks like it will be winding down here shortly.  Hopefully you guys in CNY will cash in later with the lake effect.  Upstream radars off Superior and Michigan look nice right now with the WNW flow.  

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PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
SPOTTER REPORTS
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BUFFALO NY
637 PM EST SAT JAN 25 2014

********************STORM TOTAL SNOWFALL********************

LOCATION STORM TOTAL TIME/DATE COMMENTS
SNOWFALL OF
/INCHES/ MEASUREMENT

NEW YORK

...CATTARAUGUS COUNTY...
PERRYSBURG 6.5 628 PM 1/25 COCORAHS

...ERIE COUNTY...
MILLGROVE 8.0 628 PM 1/25 COCORAHS
EAST AURORA 8.0 627 PM 1/25 COCORAHS
SWORMVILLE 7.2 633 PM 1/25 TRAINED SPOTTER
BUFFALO INTL ARPT 6.3 636 PM 1/25 NWS OFFICE

...NIAGARA COUNTY...
SANBORN 7.0 627 PM 1/25 COCORAHS
LOCKPORT 6.0 632 PM 1/25 SOCIAL MEDIA
NORTH TONAWANDA 3.2 600 PM 1/25 COCORAHS

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We have a decent chance of seeing Wind Chill Warning type wind chills in the Niagara Frontier on Tuesday Morning.  Temperatures below zero with sustained winds near 20 kt.  The NAM has a wind chill of -34F in BUF at 8 am on Tuesday ugh.  The graphical forecast has a wind chill of -28 in BUF at 7 am on Tuesday.  

 

The lowest wind chill in the blizzard in BUF was -28F.  

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We have a decent chance of seeing Wind Chill Warning type wind chills in the Niagara Frontier on Tuesday Morning.  Temperatures below zero with sustained winds near 20 kt.  The NAM has a wind chill of -34F in BUF at 8 am on Tuesday ugh.  The graphical forecast has a wind chill of -28 in BUF at 7 am on Tuesday.  

 

The lowest wind chill in the blizzard in BUF was -28F.  

I'll be visiting Niagara Falls on Wednesday to take some pictures of the icy wonderland on Goat Island...as well as the falls themselves of course.

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...MEMORABLE COLD WEATHER SO FAR THIS WINTER SEASON...

TEMPERATURES FOR EACH OF THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THIS WINTER

(NOVEMBER THROUGH TODAY) HAVE AVERAGED BELOW NORMAL FOR THE FIRST

TIME IN AT LEAST 20 YEARS.

THE MOST IMPRESSIVE NUMBERS ARE BEING FOUND AT BUFFALO. TEMPERATURES

AT THE BUFFALO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT HAVE AVERAGED AT LEAST 2

DEGREES F BELOW NORMAL FOR EACH WINTER MONTH (-3.1 NOV...-2.1 DEC

AND SO FAR FOR THIS MONTH...-3.4 DEG F). THE LAST TIME MERCURY

LEVELS WERE THIS COLD FOR THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF WINTER WAS

DURING THE INFAMOUS WINTER OF 1976-77...WHEN TEMPERATURES AVERAGED

AT LEAST 5.5 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL FOR THE SAME CALENDAR PERIOD.

IN ROCHESTER...WHILE TEMPERATURES HAVE AVERAGED BELOW NORMAL FOR THE

FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THIS WINTER...THE DEPARTURES HAVE NOT BEEN

QUITE AS SIGNIFICANT. NEVERTHELESS...THIS HAS NOT OCCURRED SINCE THE

WINTER OF 1980-81.

Pretty impressive..

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It's hard to believe that Buffalo couldn't string together a November, December, and January this cold until now.  The actual monthly departures haven't been extreme.  January will take the cake and should end up 6 or 7 degrees below normal, and the coldest since January 2004.  February 1934, as hard as it is to believe, had a mean 7 degrees or so colder than the projected departure this month.  

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It's hard to believe that Buffalo couldn't string together a November, December, and January this cold until now.  The actual monthly departures haven't been extreme.  January will take the cake and should end up 6 or 7 degrees below normal, and the coldest since January 2004.  February 1934, as hard as it is to believe, had a mean 7 degrees or so colder than the projected departure this month.  

And i thought the '76-77 winter was cold, holy smokes! :o

 

50fc526e0818f.image.jpg

 

The winter of 1933-34 started out cold and mostly stayed that way through early March. The first sub-zero reading was Dec. 29, 1933, when temperatures fell to minus 11 degrees.

Frigid conditions continued through January but things really got serious in early February, when a huge cold air mass migrated from Canada and blanketed much of the eastern United States. It didn't leave anytime soon.

On Feb. 8, Lake Ontario was reportedly frozen across its entire length and breadth for the first time in 60 years of record-keeping. A State Forest Rangers School in the Adirondacks recorded a low temperature of minus 58 degrees. Residents of New York City, Philadelphia and other major cities suffered in record-breaking cold.

In Batavia, temperatures hit 15 degrees below zero on Feb. 8, but that was only a prelude of things to come.

Henry Lambert was the U.S. government's official weather observer for the Batavia area at the time. He knew something extraordinary was happening as he recorded hourly temperatures at the city sewage disposal plant behind the State School for the Blind early on Feb. 9.

Temperatures were falling rapidly and by 4 a.m. Lambert recorded an astonishing minus 28 degrees. That reading remained steady through 7 a.m.

It shattered Batavia temperature records by several degrees. Some areas near Batavia went even lower than that.

John Evans of the Rose Road recorded minus 42 degrees on the thermometer outside his house. A reading of minus 39 degrees was picked up outside the Rose Garden Restaurant in Bergen.

Pavilion and the hamlet of Linden both reported minus 40 degrees. Corfu hit minus 30. Le Roy and North Java were slightly better off at minus 26 degrees each.

Fortunately there was little wind and no snow falling from the sky, or the situation would have been completely intolerable.

As you might expect, there were numerous reports of stalled cars and frozen water pipes in Batavia that morning.

''Such automobiles as could be started moved through the streets today sending forth clouds of steam and vapor with drivers hunched over the wheels peering through the thin places in the frost on the windshield,'' The Daily News reported.

Local taxi services were receiving more calls than they could handle. Area trains were running on uneven schedules, as were buses to Buffalo and Rochester. 

Incredibly all area schools were open and many children walked to school in the bitter conditions.

Batavia High School called off classes at noon (By then, temperatures had risen to a balmy minus 10 degrees!) Many students living outside the city were taken home by bus. But the grade schools and parochial schools remained open for a full day.

The record-breaking cold did not appear to cause any local deaths or severe injuries. The same could not be said for the area's trees.

Many peach and sweet cherry trees were killed by the extreme cold, including those in the Niagara and Orleans County fruit belt.

John Johnson, operator of a large fruit farm just south of Le Roy, told The Daily News that he believed all his peach and cherry trees had been killed. Some of his pear trees also died.

Experts said buds on surviving peach and pear trees were damaged, which would reduce crop yields the following fall.

Many shade trees in Batavia were also affected by the extraordinary cold.

''Cracking of shade trees in Batavia last evening and early today... was continuous,'' The Daily News reported. ''The reports sounded like muffled cap pistols as pedestrians hurried by.''

At least one person found humor in the freakish weather.

''This should keep my father quiet,'' one citizen remarked. ''He's always talking that we don't have cold weather like we used to back in the (18)80s and (18)90s. They can't find anyone around old enough to remember when it was ever as cold as this.''

Conditions gradually improved in the days after Feb. 9, but the month still holds the record as the coldest in Batavia weather annals.

Below-zero temperatures were recorded on 17 of the month's 28 days and the average daily high temperature was only 19.8 degrees, by far the lowest on record.

It was a month to remember — and forget.

*******

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yeah, it's the coldest month in BUF's history by more than 2 degrees.  It's when we hit -21F.  It's the coldest month in many areas.  Lots of the northeast big cities hit their all-time record lows.  It was below -20F in Long Island, etc.  

What was the overall pattern setup?

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3.5" for Phoenix too. I am not seeing the wind direction needed for Onondaga County. Not sure what Bing. is looking at. No lake effect watches for Wayne and Northern Cayuga either. Not much snow this week south of Oswego County. Tuesday morning looks nasty with wind chills again. Be interesting to see what schools do with regents tests. I could see 25 to 30 below again especially if a band sets up just to our north and gets winds really cranking on south side.

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3.5" for Phoenix too. I am not seeing the wind direction needed for Onondaga County. Not sure what Bing. is looking at. No lake effect watches for Wayne and Northern Cayuga either. Not much snow this week south of Oswego County. Tuesday morning looks nasty with wind chills again. Be interesting to see what schools do with regents tests. I could see 25 to 30 below again especially if a band sets up just to our north and gets winds really cranking on south side.

.

Looks like another Tug Hill / Watertown LES event for the most part. Wouldn't be surprised to see the LE Watch for Onondaga/Madison taken down after another model run or two. Surprised one was even issued. I forget how many "snow days" Phoenix has used thusfar...was thinking 3...not sure how many are scheduled into the school year. Much simpler in states with no Regents system (which is like...all of them?).

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.

Looks like another Tug Hill / Watertown LES event for the most part. Wouldn't be surprised to see the LE Watch for Onondaga/Madison taken down after another model run or two. Surprised one was even issued. I forget how many "snow days" Phoenix has used thusfar...was thinking 3...not sure how many are scheduled into the school year. Much simpler in states with no Regents system (which is like...all of them?).

Yupper. My kids go to Phoenix. Three days off so far. Another boring stretch of weather unless you like cold. Still waiting for the Hudson valley bomb. I think they start taking away from Memorial break if they use one more but not 100%.

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What was the overall pattern setup?

I know there was a monster sprawling high pressure in the northeast for a good part of the time.  I'd guess that the month was excellent for radiational cooling...whereas a month like 77 was driven by the PV being in the Great Lakes with very cold 850mb temps and strong winds.  Unfortunately, there is going to be no upper level charts from that far back.  

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Received around 5 inches from that arctic front/lake enhancement. My parents in Amherst said they got around 9. Not including today's snowfall here are the totals from the major reporting agencies so far this year. Buffalo is 20 inches above normal for this time of year.

 

Buffalo: 76.8″
Syracuse: 64.6″
Rochester: 54.9″
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