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Historic Lake Effect Snowstorm


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The asymmetry of this band is very cool.  The northern edge is intense with a very sharp cut-off...the southern edge just gradually diffuses out. 

 

The airport would have had a shot at the 24 hr record had this been another 5-10 miles north.  

 

That's what I was thinking. Seems like this event will easily exceed 38"/24 hours in the immediate Southtowns based on spotter reports. Any idea what gives it that intense northern edge?

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The asymmetry of this band is very cool.  The northern edge is intense with a very sharp cut-off...the southern edge just gradually diffuses out. 

 

The airport would have had a shot at the 24 hr record had this been another 5-10 miles north.  

 

Coastal over on the New england forums was inquiring about this same thought. Any idea why the strongest is on the northern edge of a band off of Erie, yet in the middle of the band off the Tug.

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0.25" 1 hr water equivalent is showing up near Elma/OP/Lackawanna.  That's probably 5"/hr.

 

Who would have thought a November 18th heavy LES event was actually too cold to generate major thunder and lightning?  The -10C isotherm is too close to the ground and there probably isn't a ton of graupel in the cloud.  

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I think I found my new sig. Look at this picture! OMG

 

10468663_10152953179442259_4599852626150

 

Just commented to my wife, "Hey, we just drove that last month and saw a hockey game at the First Niagara Center".  lol.  The pictures have been stunning!!  Thought yesterday's NWS BTV 4 km WRF was overdone in it's forecast of 5 feet of snow in the southtowns.  Now, I think it was onto something.  Also, I didn't think that the northern cutoff line would be so sharp.  (yep, I'm just starting to learn how to forecast LES - what a challenge, but I'm love it!!)  

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0.25" 1 hr water equivalent is showing up near Elma/OP/Lackawanna.  That's probably 5"/hr.

 

Who would have thought a November 18th heavy LES event was actually too cold to generate major thunder and lightning?  The -10C isotherm is too close to the ground and there probably isn't a ton of graupel in the cloud.  

Just beautiful, how much ya have down there so far?

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0.25" 1 hr water equivalent is showing up near Elma/OP/Lackawanna.  That's probably 5"/hr.

 

Who would have thought a November 18th heavy LES event was actually too cold to generate major thunder and lightning?  The -10C isotherm is too close to the ground and there probably isn't a ton of graupel in the cloud.  

 

Part of me wishes this also hit KBuf. Literally everything was set-up to break 24 hour snow records.

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850's are more aligned with the surface over Lake Ontario, not as much over Erie?

idk.  When I was at SUNY Oswego, we saw the same thing happen when the Ontario band sank south toward the shoreline on a 280 flow.  The southern edge would be sharp and intense, and the opposite for the northern part of the band.  The additional frictional convergence seemed to aid that.  

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As for the sharpness, I wonder if it has something to do with the Boston Hills causing further ageostrophic convergent flow toward Buffalo.  

 

I've seen that asymmetric structure off of Lake Ontario as well. There was a case back in December 2010 we observed with the DOW radar where the northern edge had a much sharper gradient in reflectivity than the southern edge.

 

Here's a recent scan from KBUF.

 

post-869-0-95773500-1416320983_thumb.png

 

You can see the highest reflectivity and low ZDR near the northern edge collocated with the convergence zone implied by the radial velocity (pink next to blue colors). My guess is that there is a land breeze from the northern shore of the lake that has a rather horizontally-uniform structure. At the southern shore of the lake, winds increase in speed going from the land to the lake due to friction, leading to low-level divergence. This offsets the general low-level convergence due to the diabatic heating from the less organized part of the band. On the northern edge of the band, the greatest low-level convergence occurs where both the well-organized land breeze and diabatic heating effects contribute.

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Nice Pics, I am in awe, never experienced anything like that, it makes my two feet look like two inches lol. Why can't Lake Michigan be about 500 miles longer. :)

 

I bet some areas will see 6 feet total, plus Thursday looks like another outbreak wnw up this way again not sure about Western NY though.

 

It's legit insane! There is another lake effect snow watch for Thurs...

...LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM ESTWEDNESDAY......LAKE EFFECT SNOW WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM LATE WEDNESDAYNIGHT THROUGH LATE THURSDAY NIGHT...* LOCATIONS...ERIE...GENESEE...AND WYOMING COUNTIES INCLUDING THE  BUFFALO METRO AREA. NORTHERN EXTENT OF THE SNOW BAND FROM  ROUGHLY A LINE FROM DOWNTOWN BUFFALO TO DEPEW AND BATAVIA.* TIMING...WARNING THROUGH MIDDAY WEDNESDAY. WATCH FROM LATE  WEDNESDAY NIGHT THROUGH LATE THURSDAY NIGHT.* ACCUMULATIONS...SNOWFALL RATES OF 3 TO 5 INCHES PER HOUR IN THE  MOST INTENSE PORTION OF THE BAND. THIS WILL BRING STORM TOTALS  TO 5 TO 6 FEET IN THE MOST PERSISTENT SNOWS.* WINDS...SOUTHWEST 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 40 MPH PRODUCING  LOCALIZED BLIZZARD CONDITIONS AT TIMES WITH SIGNIFICANT BLOWING  AND DRIFTING SNOW.

This might be my all time favorite Lake effect storm.

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