Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,601
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    ArlyDude
    Newest Member
    ArlyDude
    Joined

March 13-14, The Blizzard of 2017: Obs


Rtd208

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

Yeah it's rock sold in wantagh but only about 2". There is a solid 10" here on 120th and broadway about 3 miles north west of where they take the parks measurments. Some of the piles in the shade are going to take a very long time to melt with all the cold air upcoming. Thy aren't really piles more like blocks of ice 

There have been cold March days before, but this one seems more like January than most.  Between the temps well below freezing and the very solid snow cover along with limited sunshine, the sun hasn't done much to melt anything today, even on blacktop.  It's 24 with a light snowshower here at the moment.  Its been flurrying off and on very lightly for hours, much of it with the sun shining through.

Our snow depth is less than half as deep as on 120th and Broadway.  Feels strange saying that :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1.3k
  • Created
  • Last Reply
2 hours ago, NorthShoreWx said:

There have been cold March days before, but this one seems more like January than most.  Between the temps well below freezing and the very solid snow cover along with limited sunshine, the sun hasn't done much to melt anything today, even on blacktop.  It's 24 with a light snowshower here at the moment.  Its been flurrying off and on very lightly for hours, much of it with the sun shining through.

Our snow depth is less than half as deep as on 120th and Broadway.  Feels strange saying that :)

I was in Upper Manhattan today (116th Street), and it definitely looked like a bit more than the 7.6" Central Park reported. The snowbanks were absolutely huge. I know the sleet and cold temps make it more impressive, but I still think it's possible Upper Manhattan received 9-10".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, nzucker said:

I was in Upper Manhattan today (116th Street), and it definitely looked like a bit more than the 7.6" Central Park reported. The snowbanks were absolutely huge. I know the sleet and cold temps make it more impressive, but I still think it's possible Upper Manhattan received 9-10".

I live near there, and I would guess we got 8. Slightly less than we got in the February storm, except this one piles up higher due to the sleet. But assuming we got 8, I think that would mean we got 4 inches of sleet? Is that possible? We flipped over about 7 am, same time as rest of the city. And I would say we only got 4 inches of snow before the flip. It did briefly turn to snow again about 9 am, for a half hour or so where those huge flakes were falling, but that didn't seem to accumulate well, and if it did at all, maybe a half inch.. It poured sleet though for hours. Does 4 inches  of sleet in less than 12 hours sound reasonable/possible?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, nzucker said:

I was in Upper Manhattan today (116th Street), and it definitely looked like a bit more than the 7.6" Central Park reported. The snowbanks were absolutely huge. I know the sleet and cold temps make it more impressive, but I still think it's possible Upper Manhattan received 9-10".

Dude I measured 10" at 118th and broadway! And yes the pikes make it look like a 18" storm 

still never heard RJAY JM's totals to see what I got at home

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

Dude I measured 10" at 118th and broadway! And yes the pikes make it look like a 18" storm 

still never heard RJAY JM's totals to see what I got at home

Yea, I think Central Park may have been a tad low. It was hard to measure with the compaction from sleet. I wouldn't be surprised if they had 9-10".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, nzucker said:

I was in Upper Manhattan today (116th Street), and it definitely looked like a bit more than the 7.6" Central Park reported. The snowbanks were absolutely huge. I know the sleet and cold temps make it more impressive, but I still think it's possible Upper Manhattan received 9-10".

I work in Harlem and was there today... It looks like a good 8-10".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, nzucker said:

I was in Upper Manhattan today (116th Street), and it definitely looked like a bit more than the 7.6" Central Park reported. The snowbanks were absolutely huge. I know the sleet and cold temps make it more impressive, but I still think it's possible Upper Manhattan received 9-10".

Driving around here, it looks like we had a rather large snowstorm, much larger than the 4 or 5 inches that accumulated.  You can't judge that book by it's cover.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, nzucker said:

Yea, I think Central Park may have been a tad low. It was hard to measure with the compaction from sleet. I wouldn't be surprised if they had 9-10".

Compaction doesn't make it hard to measure.  If they were doing it right, they just took the maximum depth for the day.  Not sure why this comes up every storm on a weather board.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, NorthShoreWx said:

Compaction doesn't make it hard to measure.  If they were doing it right, they just took the maximum depth for the day.  Not sure why this comes up every storm on a weather board.

It depends when you measure though. If you wait until sleet compacts the snow, you get a lower total.

I think we should really be clearing the board every time precip type changes. To me, that would be the most accurate way of determining what really FELL. If we get 6" of snow, then 1" sleet, then 2" snow….the maximum depth will never attain 9", but we did get 9" of frozen precipitation. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, nzucker said:

It depends when you measure though. If you wait until sleet compacts the snow, you get a lower total.

I think we should really be clearing the board every time precip type changes. To me, that would be the most accurate way of determining what really FELL. If we get 6" of snow, then 1" sleet, then 2" snow….the maximum depth will never attain 9", but we did get 9" of frozen precipitation. 

That's what I'm talking about.  I had 14" before the flip then ~4" of frozen grains and then another 2" of snow on top of that.  As far as I'm concerned I had 20" of accumulated frozen precip.  By the time it stopped falling the max depth I could come up with around my property was 15" (other than in drifts) and that was down to 12" today.  The crust is about 3" thick everywhere and what's underneath it has been compacted to a super dense pack rather than the fluff that fell.  Part of that is that the ground underneath is still mush so is melting from underneath but the weight on top is significant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Up in greatneck right now where it looks closer to Upper Manhattan then the south shore. So the coastal front was definitely orientated NE to SW. I would say about 6" left here. The biggest jump seemed to be up around Hempstead turnpike about 5 miles north of me where the pack quickly doubled from 2-4".  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, nzucker said:

It depends when you measure though. If you wait until sleet compacts the snow, you get a lower total.

I think we should really be clearing the board every time precip type changes. To me, that would be the most accurate way of determining what really FELL. If we get 6" of snow, then 1" sleet, then 2" snow….the maximum depth will never attain 9", but we did get 9" of frozen precipitation. 

I agree with you, but I don't make the rules. Presumably the Central Park folks have been trained to follow the rules.  It is a reflex around here to bash the Central Park totals before they are even released.  7.6 at Central Park isn't materially different from 9 or 10" a couple of miles north in Harlem in this storm.  40 miles north of me had about 20".  That's almost a half inch per mile more.  I wouldn't assume it's a straight line increase either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, Morris said:

How about from Feb-March 2015 to the May torch, nevermind December?

 

13 minutes ago, NorthShoreWx said:

The step up from 94-95 to 95-96 might be a little bit closer analogy in terms of direction.

 

11 minutes ago, Stormlover74 said:

Or 01-02 to 02-03 from a percentage standpoint. 3.5" to 49.3"

 

It looks like BGM snowfall only goes back to 1950 on the local NWS website. But it's still impressive to have the least snowy year followed by the snowiest during a nearly 60 interval.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

Up in greatneck right now where it looks closer to Upper Manhattan then the south shore. So the coastal front was definitely orientated NE to SW. I would say about 6" left here. The biggest jump seemed to be up around Hempstead turnpike about 5 miles north of me where the pack quickly doubled from 2-4".  

To answer your question earlier I estimated 3.5", which melted and refroze to a couple of inches the next morning. When I woke up around 9am, we were already mixing to rain. I wasn't in the mood to go out and get soaked that morning to measure-I was done with it at that point and whatever happened happened. I napped through a good chunk of the storm that morning. Probably the worst bust I've been part of since 3/01 (I missed Juno in 2015 and that wasn't this bad of a bust in Nassau County). Quite a cliff dive from the 16" likely total given by Upton to what we ended up with. I know it was great for many others, but this will be another shafting I curse about like 2/13/14. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...