Millennial kid of April Fools obs and pics

[Typhoon Tip]

We had close to 3" of ...plastered grits on the ground at sun-up this morning.  Now nearing 4 pm and having been flogged by April insolation nearly unabated all day long, we are 55 F and 1" with bear patches.  

Nice!

I was just glancing at GFS MOS and it is some 5 to 7 F over climo for days 5,6 and 7... That's not bad -  Also, NAM is now nearing 60 for tomorrow at KFIT and BED... Probably completes the removal in a lot of places...  Obviously N of the border with NH they got more snow and so forth so they may hold onto what this storm gave longer -

[40/70 Benchmark]

Recap of what went wrong, for those interested:

http://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2017/04/verification-or-lack-thereof-of-april.html

Sneak peek:

The reason that this did not work out, and we did not see over 1' of snow is because we here at Eastern Mass Weather failed to fully appreciate and account for just how much the hours of sleet and rain due to the "skunked" mid levels would impair the ability of the lower levels to remain cold. Then subsequently how long it would then take the "skunked" lower levels to recover from this, and cool off again once the snowfall resumed.

• This is why the forecast busted, NOT because of the east winds off of the ocean...had the mid levels NOT warmed, then the snow would have gone on all night and day, which in conjunction with the sufficiently cold H925 temps would have kept the surface near freezing. Effectively negating the east to northeast flow off of the relatively mild ocean.

[TalcottWx]

Fell asleep at 8-9am and woke up shocked on Saturday. Was running late for a trip to the Cape. Was so shocked, disappointed I didn't even bother looking at what happened.

Good lord. Major fail by modeling. Sorry for anyone I mislead. 

[Dan]

On 4/1/2017 at 9:28 AM, HoarfrostHubb said:

Enjoy your cruise.      

Moderate snow here.   Might get a couple of inches out of this as it pivots in and out

Thanks.  Looking forward to some 80s and warm tropical breezes and of course a touch of Disney.

 

We ended up with 5.5 here.  Snowed heavy all day, but it just wouldn't accumulate, we were around 35-36 through much of it.  Most of it has vaporized today.

 

 

[Amped]

11 hours ago, Amped said:

Models have been way overdone on the southeast side of every storm this year.  If they were showing marginal PTYPE for an area, every  model map was too high by a factor of 2 except storm vistas 32f enforcement maps.  Either this has been the year that sneaky warm layers defeated dynamic cooling,  or models have improved and they are no longer too strong with mid level warmth like the good old days.  The GFS has been particularly useless..

The 3 other storms that were busts on the southern end.

January 6-7   Raleigh area sleet

February 9th  Southern PA, Central NJ  didn't cool off fast enough.

March  14th   DC PHL NYC  a lot of sleet and rain.   Under-performer in Boston also, but still a big mess.

 

[jbenedet]

On 4/1/2017 at 3:06 PM, CoastalWx said:

I'm confused. You were arguing boundary layer? I was saying it wasn't the real issue verbatim. Even now I was 31.8 in the snow. But I also was meh on Boston and even that was overplayed lol. I admit not studying other areas...just somewhat happy Boston didn't get like 10" when we had 2-4. 

My reply was suppose to go to winterwolf.

Anyway, the BL mattered significantly for most of the subforum throughout the event. You can parse this if you like -- part 1 (WAA snows) and part 2 of the storm (CCB). The entire first half of the storm's accums for most of the subforum were strictly limited by warm BL temps, as the mid levels were cold enough to produce snow all the way down to SE MA. The first half of the event was largely white rain (on warm surfaces) all the way to SNH and SVT until 0z. A significant amount of the frozen qpf was lost to puddles in the first half. Warm BL temps were still a problem for many areas that remained all snow, even with moderate snowfall rates during the CCB. Closer to Boston where rates were heavier the mid levels were more problematic for part 2, as dynamic cooling couldn't get going until the storm was pulling away.

[nzucker]

12 hours ago, Amped said:

The 3 other storms that were busts on the southern end.

January 6-7   Raleigh area sleet

February 9th  Southern PA, Central NJ  didn't cool off fast enough.

March  14th   DC PHL NYC  a lot of sleet and rain.   Under-performer in Boston also, but still a big mess.

 

Yeah that 1/6-1/7 storm was supposed to kill Atlanta, but ended up mixing all the way to RDU. Epic bust for the Southeast on the only storm this winter.

[40/70 Benchmark]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 9:30 AM, jbenedet said:

My reply was suppose to go to winterwolf.

Anyway, the BL mattered significantly for most of the subforum throughout the event. You can parse this if you like -- part 1 (WAA snows) and part 2 of the storm (CCB). The entire first half of the storm's accums for most of the subforum were strictly limited by warm BL temps, as the mid levels were cold enough to produce snow all the way down to SE MA. The first half of the event was largely white rain (on warm surfaces) all the way to SNH and SVT until 0z. A significant amount of the frozen qpf was lost to puddles in the first half. Warm BL temps were still a problem for many areas that remained all snow, even with moderate snowfall rates during the CCB. Closer to Boston where rates were heavier the mid levels were more problematic for part 2, as dynamic cooling couldn't get going until the storm was pulling away.

Because the mid layers went to crap.....even discounting that, I was cold enough for snow in the boundary  layer all throughout Friday night, as my temp was pinned near freezing.

It sleeted all Friday night with 2m temp near freezing....the  mid levels were the issue.

I'm not sure what laws of physics you are adhering to.

The temp began to rise early Saturday morning, after many hours of sleet had reduced the capacity of the latent cooling...then by the time the mid levels had cooled enough for snow, the solar insolation was in place.

[ORH_wxman]

26 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Because the mid layers went to crap.....even discounting that, I was cold enough for snow in the boundary  layer all throughout Friday night, as my temp was pinned near freezing.

It sleeted all Friday night with 2m temp near freezing....the  mid levels were the issue.

I'm not sure what laws of physics you are adhering to.

The temp began to rise early Thursday morning, after many hours of sleet had reduced the capacity of the latent cooling...then by the time the mid levels had cooled enough for snow, the solar insolation was in place.

Yeah, Friday night is where the mid-level issues really showed up big time. Friday during the day, accums were pretty light because the precip was light...the BL "mattered", but it always does in late March if the precip is not heavy and falling during the day, with maybe a few very rare exceptions. If we had Friday night's precip rates during Friday afternoon when the mid-levels were still cold, we would have seen very rapid accumulations. This point should not be lost in the post mortem. Precip rates were not heavy Friday afternoon and this is precisely why I said the front end could under perform. I kept saying in the 24 hours leading into it that I could see this under performing on the front end because precip was not going to be heavy. It wasn't this big wall of WCB precip like we saw on March 14th. It was a gradual light but steady snow that really didn't intensify into moderate snow until the evening and then we flipped to sleet shortly after.

 

It's actually an interesting storm to analyze just how important the mid-levels are to keeping the surface and near-surface colder. A lot of times in mid-winter, it doesn't matter as much because we're pinned in the 20s underneath that warm layer and we're sleeting with dry pixie dust mixed in...or more likely, we're just snowing like crazy because a mid-level track like that would rarely produce a sleet sounding the mid-winter. But in this case, we were using the melting snowflakes as a way to cool the surface and near-surface. Once we lost that on Friday night, it allowed temps to start creeping up above freezing and making the sleet "wetter" until in some areas, it just changed to rain as we lost that latent cooling....it actually turned into latent heating when we lost the snow. The melted snow refreezing into sleet pellets actually would help warm the lower levels with latent heat release. Basically a similar process to ZR self-destructing into 33F rain if we aren't getting an offsetting cooling mechanism to the latent heat release of ZR.

 

When we finally flipped back to snow on Friday morning, it was later than we needed it to be and occurred in an environment with mid-level temps about 1-2C warmer than what we had hoped for. This also made the snow growth zone a bit thinner than it would have been and of course it also caused us to waste several hours of 0.10-0.20" per hour type precip rates on just flipping it back to snow rather than hammering at 1-2 inches per hour between 5am and 9am. That was the biggest difference....if you get those 4 hours of heavier snow when precip rates were still very high, we would have been able to still manage 4-8" additional Friday morning. But by the time we flipped, the CCB was just starting to lose some of its muster, so we only saw an additional 1-2" in most areas...with some people only seeing an additional coating.

 

Before the storm, I said my two biggest fears were precip rates and mid-level temps...those two are exactly the biggest reason this underperformed. Part 1 was precip rates...as explained above. We had light precip on Friday afternoon despite plenty cold mid-level temps. So we snowed, but accumulations were pretty light. Maybe an inch or two over 6 hours. By the time precipitation was heavy, the mid-level temps had warmed...so we sleeted. Some areas even flipped to straight rain as they lost that additional latent cooling from the snow to offset any flow from the east. The mid-levels stubbornly stayed just warm enough through the critical 09z-13z timeframe to prevent us from racking up additional snow accumulations. It was a close call, but we ended up on the wrong side of it.

[CoastalWx]

The whole thing was about 20-30NM from being where many expected it. It's been gone over numerous times and the same topic covered over and over. I'm not sure why some aren't grasping it, but as Will nicely put...it's all interrelated. Precip rates and mid level temps. The boundary layer was sufficient if the mid levels cooperated. This is a fact. The temps just off the deck were still cold on Saturday morning. If we had temps a bit cooler near 800-850mb..it would have been one of those widespread 32.1F snows. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah, Friday night is where the mid-level issues really showed up big time. Friday during the day, accums were pretty light because the precip was light...the BL "mattered", but it always does in late March if the precip is not heavy and falling during the day, with maybe a few very rare exceptions. If we had Friday night's precip rates during Friday afternoon when the mid-levels were still cold, we would have seen very rapid accumulations. This point should not be lost in the post mortem. Precip rates were not heavy Friday afternoon and this is precisely why I said the front end could under perform. I kept saying in the 24 hours leading into it that I could see this under performing on the front end because precip was not going to be heavy. It wasn't this big wall of WCB precip like we saw on March 14th. It was a gradual light but steady snow that really didn't intensify into moderate snow until the evening and then we flipped to sleet shortly after.

 

It's actually an interesting storm to analyze just how important the mid-levels are to keeping the surface and near-surface colder. A lot of times in mid-winter, it doesn't matter as much because we're pinned in the 20s underneath that warm layer and we're sleeting with dry pixie dust mixed in...or more likely, we're just snowing like crazy because a mid-level track like that would rarely produce a sleet sounding the mid-winter. But in this case, we were using the melting snowflakes as a way to cool the surface and near-surface. Once we lost that on Friday night, it allowed temps to start creeping up above freezing and making the sleet "wetter" until in some areas, it just changed to rain as we lost that latent cooling....it actually turned into latent heating when we lost the snow. The melted snow refreezing into sleet pellets actually would help warm the lower levels with latent heat release. Basically a similar process to ZR self-destructing into 33F rain if we aren't getting an offsetting cooling mechanism to the latent heat release of ZR.

 

When we finally flipped back to snow on Friday morning, it was later than we needed it to be and occurred in an environment with mid-level temps about 1-2C warmer than what we had hoped for. This also made the snow growth zone a bit thinner than it would have been and of course it also caused us to waste several hours of 0.10-0.20" per hour type precip rates on just flipping it back to snow rather than hammering at 1-2 inches per hour between 5am and 9am. That was the biggest difference....if you get those 4 hours of heavier snow when precip rates were still very high, we would have been able to still manage 4-8" additional Friday morning. But by the time we flipped, the CCB was just starting to lose some of its muster, so we only saw an additional 1-2" in most areas...with some people only seeing an additional coating.

 

Before the storm, I said my two biggest fears were precip rates and mid-level temps...those two are exactly the biggest reason this underperformed. Part 1 was precip rates...as explained above. We had light precip on Friday afternoon despite plenty cold mid-level temps. So we snowed, but accumulations were pretty light. Maybe an inch or two over 6 hours. By the time precipitation was heavy, the mid-level temps had warmed...so we sleeted. Some areas even flipped to straight rain as they lost that additional latent cooling from the snow to offset any flow from the east. The mid-levels stubbornly stayed just warm enough through the critical 09z-13z timeframe to prevent us from racking up additional snow accumulations. It was a close call, but we ended up on the wrong side of it.

Yes.

That is actually the analogy that I drew in my mind....the ZR.

The 2m temps were sufficiently cold given a serviceable mid level mid envt.

Some just don't understand this.

[40/70 Benchmark]

I think the issue is that some are using the fact that we didn't end up with much snow as a faux means of validation.

Right for the wrong reason is worse than simply being wrong because at least the latter implies an imminent capacity to appreciate and learn from errors.

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yes.

That is actually the analogy that I drew in my mind....the ZR.

The 2m temps were sufficiently cold given a serviceable mid level mid envt.

Some just don't understand this.

Yeah you can't treat them as independent variables. There is definitely a covariance relation to those things. You could say the easterly surface and boundary layer flow was an issue...but it was really only an "issue" if you were trying to accumulate 3 inches of sleet on Friday night instead of 1 inch of sleet/rain. Either way, you were still getting sleet and/or rain with or without the easterly BL flow because the mid-levels we're too warm for snow.

[40/70 Benchmark]

30 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

The whole thing was about 20-30NM from being where many expected it. It's been gone over numerous times and the same topic covered over and over. I'm not sure why some aren't grasping it, but as Will nicely put...it's all interrelated. Precip rates and mid level temps. The boundary layer was sufficient if the mid levels cooperated. This is a fact. The temps just off the deck were still cold on Saturday morning. If we had temps a bit cooler near 800-850mb..it would have been one of those widespread 32.1F snows. 

Yes, Amesbury got what I expected to get at  my place....10".

[jbenedet]

33 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yes, Amesbury got what I expected to get at  my place....10".

I mentioned SNH and SVT as well as other areas in SNE. The mid level and dynamic cooling via high rates was most relevant in eastern MA, in explaining the bust. I'm not in disagreement with that. You made forecasts for all of SNE--correct? Outside of that area BL temps were a serious issue, in terms of impact. Significant amounts of the QPF was lost on warm surfaces throughout the ENTIRE storm in these areas --that's a fact. Additionally, it was widely agreed that leading up to the storm it would be tenuous to rely strictly on CCB accums to result in significant snowfall. It was well modeled on guidance that the CCB would contain heavy rates ONLY in eastern MA. So I'm not sure how you arrived at your forecast maps (outside of eastern MA) if you thought part 1 would not have BL issues. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

16 minutes ago, jbenedet said:

I mentioned SNH and SVT as well as other areas in SNE. The mid level and dynamic cooling via high rates was most relevant in eastern MA, in explaining the bust. You made forecasts for all of SNE--correct? Outside of that area BL temps were a serious issue, in terms of impact. Significant amounts of the QPF was lost on warm surfaces throughout the ENTIRE storm in these areas --that's a fact. Additionally, it was widely agreed that leading up to the storm it would be tenuous to rely strictly on CCB accums to result in significant snowfall. It was well modeled on guidance that the CCB would contain heavy rates ONLY in eastern MA. So I'm not sure how you arrived at your forecast maps (outside of eastern MA) if you thought part 1 would not have BL issues. 

What the hell is your point?

The whole set up was tenuous.

I hedged on late cold trends among guidance, and it didn't work.

I'm not sure what plant you are living, on but there was plenty of guidance that was implying a general 6-10" snowfall.

Not my problem that you were right for the wrong reason, and don't understand why.

Boundary layer issues were an issue whenever, and wherever they are BECAUSE THE PRECIP LACKED THE INTENSITY INCITE LATENT COOLING.

 

 

 

[jbenedet]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

What the hell is your point?

The whole set up was tenuous.

I hedged on late cold trends among guidance, and it didn't work.

I'm not sure what plant you are living, on but there was plenty of guidance that was implying a general 6-10" snowfall.

Not my problem that you were right for the wrong reason, and don't understand why.

My problem is group think and professing absolutes in science, "it's all about the mid levels." Explain to me how most areas that snowed throughout still busted way low on snowfall totals.

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 minutes ago, jbenedet said:

My problem is group think and professing absolutes in science, "it's all about the mid levels." Explain to me how most areas that snowed throughout still busted way low on snowfall totals.

Because by the time the heavy precip got here with sufficiently cool mid levels, the low levels were already torched because the mid levels were skunked for so long...it took time to cool, and snowgrowth sucked because -10-16C is the optimal range in that zone.

Replacing latent cooling with latent heating for about 20 hours is costly.

[jbenedet]

18 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Because by the time the heavy precip got here with sufficiently coo mid levels, the low levels were already torched because the mid levels were skunked for so long...it took time to cool, and snowgrowth sucked because -10-16C is the optimal range in that zone.

Lol. Whatever. This is BS. 

Most areas that stayed all snow still busted way low on totals. Period.

I agree with east MA being a bust primarily due to mid level issues. Outside of there, it was largely the BL. Even at sunrise on Saturday with moderate snow falling, in SENH we had largely wet paved surfaces. We had zero mid level issues throughout.

I'll agree to disagree. 

[CoastalWx]

40 minutes ago, jbenedet said:

Lol. Whatever. This is BS. 

Most areas that stayed all snow still busted way low on totals. Period.

I agree with east MA being a bust primarily due to mid level issues. Outside of there, it was largely the BL. Even at sunrise on Saturday with moderate snow falling, in SENH we had largely wet paved surfaces. We had zero mid level issues throughout.

I'll agree to disagree. 

To be fair, we are mostly talking about Eastern mass area.

[ORH_wxman]

17 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

To be fair, we are mostly talking about Eastern mass area.

There really wasn't a big bust in Rockingham county NH either...most snowfall totals there were in the 8-12" range. Slightly lower than pre-storm forecasts but not like the bust in E and NE MA.

[Damage In Tolland]

So much anger and venom spewing from this thread. Sad to see it 

[DomNH]

20 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

There really wasn't a big bust in Rockingham county NH either...most snowfall totals there were in the 8-12" range. Slightly lower than pre-storm forecasts but not like the bust in E and NE MA.

Yes. I didn't see any forecasts for more than that out there. It llooked to me like most people were pretty reasonable in their forecasts for this one except maybe some BOX GW on Friday afternoon.

The reason I saw like 6'' on the grass and mostly wet pavement rather than 10-12'' was because the ML warmth punched through at sunset and we didn't cool the column until after sunrise so we never were able to maximize nighttime snow accumulations. I said I wanted to flip by 7z or 8z if I was going to see 8''+ amounts. I didn't and we didn't, but those to my N and E who stayed snow did. I agree that if it was 2C colder between H7 and H85 ORH/ASH/LWM/Ray's area, etc. easily see 8-12'' amounts. 

[ORH_wxman]

3 minutes ago, DomNH said:

Yes. I didn't see any forecasts for more than that out there. It llooked to me like most people were pretty reasonable in their forecasts for this one except maybe some BOX GW on Friday afternoon.

The reason I saw like 6'' on the grass and mostly wet pavement rather than 10-12'' was because the ML warmth punched through at sunset and we didn't cool the column until after sunrise so we never were able to maximize nighttime snow accumulations. I said I wanted to flip by 7z or 8z if I was going to see 8''+ amounts. I didn't and we didn't, but those to my N and E who stayed snow did. I agree that if it was 2C colder between H7 and H85 ORH/ASH/LWM/Ray's area, etc. easily see 8-12'' amounts. 

Yeah you actually got hindered by the mid-levels too...just to your northeast where they avoided it there was like 9-12". So the mid-levels were definitely the dominant factor.

 

I can agree that the relatively mild BL warmth played a role...but it was a minor role. If we had some ridiculously anomalous low level airmass in place before the storm, perhaps we could have seen more like 3-4" in mid-afternoon Friday versus 1-2". But that only explains a small portion of the bust in MA. It's not like we would have seen 6-10" on Friday afternoon...the QPF simply was not there. It was a steady light snow.

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 hours ago, jbenedet said:

Lol. Whatever. This is BS. 

Most areas that stayed all snow still busted way low on totals. Period.

I agree with east MA being a bust primarily due to mid level issues. Outside of there, it was largely the BL. Even at sunrise on Saturday with moderate snow falling, in SENH we had largely wet paved surfaces. We had zero mid level issues throughout.

I'll agree to disagree. 

Because snow growth was shot when mid level temps warmed in the snow growth region.

This is why ratios were like 7 or 8:1

I'm done here...if you don't understand that now, then you never will.

Will, Scott and I are all wrong...pope knows best; go it.

[Great Snow 1717]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 9:30 AM, jbenedet said:

My reply was suppose to go to winterwolf.

Anyway, the BL mattered significantly for most of the subforum throughout the event. You can parse this if you like -- part 1 (WAA snows) and part 2 of the storm (CCB). The entire first half of the storm's accums for most of the subforum were strictly limited by warm BL temps, as the mid levels were cold enough to produce snow all the way down to SE MA. The first half of the event was largely white rain (on warm surfaces) all the way to SNH and SVT until 0z. A significant amount of the frozen qpf was lost to puddles in the first half. Warm BL temps were still a problem for many areas that remained all snow, even with moderate snowfall rates during the CCB. Closer to Boston where rates were heavier the mid levels were more problematic for part 2, as dynamic cooling couldn't get going until the storm was pulling away.

You are 100 percent correct regarding the BL. Some people have debated this with you, but in the end you are correct. I live in Methuen. The snow started at around 9 AM. At times the snow mixed with sleet and/or changed to sleet, but for the most part it was snowing. The snow did not even begin to accumulate on the grass until around 3:30 that afternoon.  Which means the first 6-6.5 hours accounted for no accumulation at all. The snow/sleet that fell during those hours melted quickly once it contacted the ground. And at times the snow fell at a pretty good clip. Probably 2-3 inches of accumulation was lost during those hours.

During Saturday morning the sleet changed back to snow. Despite it snowing moderate to heavy for 2-3  hours I only recorded 2 additional inches of snow.  And most of that fell between 9-11 AM. Once beyond that it continued to snow for several hours, but there wasn't  any additional accumulation.

I measured 4 inches of snow/sleet at 7 AM on Saturday. Add in 2 additional inches on Saturday for a storm total of 6 inches. During both Friday and Saturday many hours of snowfall added up to zero accumulation.

Eric Fisher and Barry Burbank did a great job of forecasting for my area. They predicted 3-6 inches. They were on the low end of predictions for my area, but their reasoning was sound for their prediction/forecast. 

 

 

 

 

 

[ORH_wxman]

27 minutes ago, Great Snow 1717 said:

You are 100 percent correct regarding the BL. Some people have debated this with you, but in the end you are correct. I live in Methuen. The snow started at around 9 AM. At times the snow mixed with sleet and/or changed to sleet, but for the most part it was snowing. The snow did not even begin to accumulate on the grass until around 3:30 that afternoon.  Which means the first 6-6.5 hours accounted for no accumulation at all. The snow/sleet that fell during those hours melted quickly once it contacted the ground. And at times the snow fell at a pretty good clip. Probably 2-3 inches of accumulation was lost during those hours.

During Saturday morning the sleet changed back to snow. Despite it snowing moderate to heavy for 2-3  hours I only recorded 2 additional inches of snow.  And most of that fell between 9-11 AM. Once beyond that it continued to snow for several hours, but there wasn't  any additional accumulation.

I measured 4 inches of snow/sleet at 7 AM on Saturday. Add in 2 additional inches on Saturday for a storm total of 6 inches. During both Friday and Saturday many hours of snowfall added up to zero accumulation.

Eric Fisher and Barry Burbank did a great job of forecasting for my area. They predicted 3-6 inches. They were on the low end of predictions for my area, but their reasoning was sound for their prediction/forecast. 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the reason you fell short of many forecasts aside from the ones you quoted was not because of the lack of snow on Friday or late morning Saturday...but because you weren't snowing late Friday night or early Saturday morning. You lost a ton of accumulation to sleet in that period...it also coincided with the period of heaviest precipitation. The periods in which you were snowing had notably lighter precip rates. So while you could have had a couple inches extra if it had been colder on Friday, you probably lost something like 6-8" of snow because the mid-levels were too warm late Friday evening and then again in the 09z to 13z timeframe on Saturday morning.

 

That is where the "midlevels made a bigger difference than sfc temps" argument comes from. Losing 2 inches of accumulation Friday afternoon is probably more memorable to you because you watched it snow and not stick very well, but it's what you couldn't see (the mid-level warmth) that cost you much more.

[Great Snow 1717]

5 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Most of the reason you fell short of many forecasts aside from the ones you quoted was not because of the lack of snow on Friday or late morning Saturday...but because you weren't snowing late Friday night or early Saturday morning. You lost a ton of accumulation to sleet in that period...it also coincided with the period of heaviest precipitation. The periods in which you were snowing had notably lighter precip rates. So while you could have had a couple inches extra if it had been colder on Friday, you probably lost something like 6-8" of snow because the mid-levels were too warm late Friday evening and then again in the 09z to 13z timeframe on Saturday morning.

 

That is where the "midlevels made a bigger difference than sfc temps" argument comes from.

Actually it snowed at a good clip during the day on Friday, but it melted as soon as it contacted the ground. In fact it snowed heavier during times of non accumulation than it did when  the snow began to accumulate. I did lose some accumulation to sleet, but I also lost a lot of sleet/snow accumulation to melting once it hit the ground on both Friday and Saturday.

[40/70 Benchmark]

39 minutes ago, Great Snow 1717 said:

Actually it snowed at a good clip during the day on Friday, but it melted as soon as it contacted the ground. In fact it snowed heavier during times of non accumulation than it did when  the snow began to accumulate. I did lose some accumulation to sleet, but I also lost a lot of sleet/snow accumulation to melting once it hit the ground on both Friday and Saturday.

It did not snow hard for very long.

You're wrong.

Do we need to extract airport obs to mull over vis reports?

 

I don't know why this concept is so difficult, but its a good sign that its probably time to leap into my seasonal hiatus.

[40/70 Benchmark]

I know there is most certainly an element of hypocrisy accompanying what I am about to say....but people are just so quick to use anecdotal BS to construct a connection between the low snow totals and BL temps because its the easy way out.

They don't care to dig further.

Affix a neat little bow, offer each other a congratulatory tug in the circle jerk O' celebration, and ride off into the sunset.

It doesn't work that way...at least if you possess a modicum of ambition to hone your skills.

Jesus....I remember that I pretty much nailed the death winter of 2015 on paper, but spent most of my outlook verification post explaining why I was lucky BC I based my forecast largely on the SAI.

The AO was positive.