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The Valentine's Day Massacre Obs--A snow job or does it only blow?


moneypitmike

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i think, for us back here, you did the best analysis and even though it wasnt what we wanted to hear you were 100 pct spot on with calling gfs bluff on the high qpf amts nw with convective feedback issues...i respect you for that.

 

The problem is and always has been I speak in general and everyone thinks I'm taking their snow away.  I don't really care that much about MBY.  I don't think I ever said what I thought would fall ANYWHERE in SNE aside of MBY.  I gave water equivalents that's it.  Will be light on that in some areas.  Not defending that other than saying I did definitely speak of lolli's and banding above that and that's what happened.

 

I was down on this storm from the standpoint that I didn't see it as the epic house breaking tempest the media AND NOAA were proclaiming.  There are few reports of major coastal damage, few reports of structural damage caused by wind, almost no power outages.   Out of 1.2 million in the blizzard zone 1,000 have no power.  Far cry from what was plastered all over the media etc.  There were no hurricane gusts.  If we hadn't made the regulations so that a major storm is now a blizzard, this wouldn't have come close to meeting old blizzard standards, period.

 

The two bands of snow that moved through here were the two heaviest of my season.  I ended up being light here by maybe 2" - those that know me know I was saying 4-8" here NOAA came in at 10.5" and I got 12" on 20 to 1 which is never something I would assume in this location.

 

Much of the animus comes from me definitively saying the GFS was a failure and would cave.  There are probably some here that think the earlier GFS runs were right because of what fell, not realizing it's solution was totally wrong.  As Scott and Will have pointed out no model did well.  

 

I will post the NOAA snowfall maps.  I think many missed the 4am update that chopped totals just before that band ramped way up.   Everyone struggled.

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It was atrocious.  People are acting like a widespread 1.5" of QPF fell, it pretty much fell within the .4 to .7/.8 with probably 10-15% of all stations falling above that.    A couple of stations got jackpotted in those bands.   But that's a possibility with every/any storm and was stated multiple times even by me in this case.

 

Nobody mentions that winds busted way low.  Or that the storm busted horribly low north and also west versus many model runs. 

 

Here's the WE, not all data is checked yet and some are clearly contaminated high and will be QC'd.  Ratios appear to have been widespread 20 to 1, and pushing 30 to 1 in some areas.  Actually based on the official reports it looks like 25/30 to 1 was pretty widespread.

 

Based on the 100 or so stations on this grid about 5 went over .8 and 1 is clearly bogus (Falmouth).  Models were probably 25% light on QPF on average in EMA, but I don't see the epic bust unless we're expecting models to nail narrow, intense fast moving bands.

 

 

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A lot of those will climb a bit more with the snow that fell after 6-8am. I think most of interior Mass will be around 0.65-0.85" with more in coastal NE MA. Newburyport was pushing 1.00" at this AM's ob.

 

I just added everything up...the final tally here was 13.2" snow and 0.56" liquid.

 

The local cocorahs sites were..

 

Date  Time Station Number Station Name Total Precip in. New Snow in. Total Snow in. State County

2/15/2015   7:45 AM   NH-BK-1   Tilton Northfield 3.3 NE  0.53 9.8 30.0 NH Belknap

2/15/2015   5:21 AM   NH-MR-45   Northfield 2.8 E  0.75 9.5 32.0 NH Merrimack  

 

 

BK-1 looks more realistic given my liquid and accounting for compaction. I've tossed the 0.75"...there's no way we had that much liquid.

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Ripping wind now. Great drifting. Snow flying off the roof tops. This gives me new respect for the hardiness of Puritans. Even with all our modern equipment, hundreds of plows, borrowed assets from other states etc., this is proving a monumental challenge. Can't even imagine what privation this event 298 years ago must have caused.

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Lots of stations in SE MA likely have 1" QPF or a bit greater. You don't have TSSN from arctic fluff. Ratios were good but TSSN means you have the juice too.

 

 

Mid-levels delievered...the models that were touting 0.15-0.20 QPF in 6 hour periods for this morning were garbage. The whole underlying theme of those models was that we'd have a "meh" deformation band in the morning that snows OK for a couple hours and that's it. Far from the ground truth of extremely intense snow bands and 3-4" per hour rates. 

 

That was about as dynamic as you'll see for a 4-6 hour period this morning outside of a much warmer storm like in the spring.

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I'm going with 18" as my final.  This was a better "Blizzard" than the last one for me.  That one has a denser snow so it did not drift as much.  The winds in that were higher too.  This was came in 2 distinct yet powerful punches.  The first was a bit more dense of a snow that fell with little wind but efficiently.  The 2nd batch was ridiculous.  Convective in nature, but powdery, dropping 2-4"/hr.  Winds have not been ridiculous but have been gusting over 30mph since 8am.  This is as deep as I've seen the snow here in my almost 11 years.  Stupified.

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Mid-levels delievered...the models that were touting 0.15-0.20 QPF in 6 hour periods for this morning were garbage. The whole underlying theme of those models was that we'd have a "meh" deformation band in the morning that snows OK for a couple hours and that's it. Far from the ground truth of extremely intense snow bands and 3-4" per hour rates. 

 

That was about as dynamic as you'll see for a 4-6 hour period this morning outside of a much warmer storm like in the spring.

 

Serious question...when you look at a model like the RGEM which had .7 to 1" about 20-30 miles too far east where it clearly had the best mid level support sliding just off the beaches....   was it just bad placement?  It's not like that snow existed in both places..the banding was over EMA, not 20 miles off the beach...but it did have it.

 

Others..not so much.

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Mid-levels delievered...the models that were touting 0.15-0.20 QPF in 6 hour periods for this morning were garbage. The whole underlying theme of those models was that we'd have a "meh" deformation band in the morning that snows OK for a couple hours and that's it. Far from the ground truth of extremely intense snow bands and 3-4" per hour rates. 

 

That was about as dynamic as you'll see for a 4-6 hour period this morning outside of a much warmer storm like in the spring.

 

The Jim Cantore thundersnow clips from this morning are hilarious... man he gets pumped, haha.

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