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January 4-6 Coastal Bomb Observations/Nowcast


Baroclinic Zone

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At 05z pressure of 950 on land now, Point Lepreau NB west of St John. Actual center from radar is over northern Bay of Fundy about to slide across southeast NB towards northern Gulf of St Lawrence. Has probably reached its lowest pressure now.

I think that radar activity moving in from west is the remains of the Ontario low being absorbed by the larger circulation. Could give a further 1-3" in a few spots overnight. Might be hard to distinguish falling snow from drifting and blowing snow.

As a purely theoretical point, would say keep an eye on late January when this energy peak returns in two more separated portions than this time around, one or both of those could be another big coastal storm. (28th-29th, and 31st into 1st Feb). 

 

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24 minutes ago, sbos_wx said:

If that wasn't a blizzard, then definition is broken. 

I believe they should go back to the old definition and include cold (under 20). That rarifies them reducing their frequency to the extreme events they actually are.  78 would not qualify but 1888 in NYC and elsewhere would.

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41 minutes ago, sbos_wx said:

If that wasn't a blizzard, then definition is broken. 

Thats what BOX said in their statement... that only Block Island (BID) met criteria for blizzard conditions

Quote

Public Information Statement 
National Weather Service Taunton MA 
513 PM EST Thu Jan 4 2018

...ONLY ONE STATION REPORTED BLIZZARD CONDITIONS TODAY IN SOUTHERN 
NEW ENGLAND...

The National Weather Service in Taunton has reviewed the 
observations from the winter storm that affected our region today. 
We have determined that the only official reporting site that met 
blizzard criteria was Block Island, RI (BID).

The definition of a blizzard is that falling and/or blowing snow 
reduces visibility to below 1/4 mile along with sustained winds or 
winds that frequently gust to 35 mph or more, and that these are 
the predominant reported conditions for 3 consecutive hours.

When reviewing whether a particular observation location had 
blizzard conditions, we counted visibilities equal to 1/4 mile since 
that is often quite low for an automated visibility sensor to detect.

At Block Island, blizzard conditions occurred between 830 AM and 
1205 PM. In that 3 hour and 35 minute period, there were only a few 
short gaps in which there was a brief lull in the winds, totaling 
18 minutes. Blizzard conditions were predominant. 

Six stations had near-blizzard criteria, but fell short either 
because of too many lull periods, or because of the length of time.
These near-blizzard sites included Boston, MA (BOS), 
Worcester, MA (ORH), Plymouth, MA (PYM), Providence, RI (PVD), 
Newport, RI (UUU), and North Smithfield, RI (SFZ).

$$
Field
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5 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

While this isn't one of my more memorable snow events, the shear meteorological awe of this storm earns it honorable mention in my book.

You aren't going to see many storms that do everything this one did. Widespread double digits, wind, minimum pressure, coastal flooding, blizzard conditions for 2 hours and 59 minutes at BOS. 

3 hours ago, 25thamendmentfan said:

Harvey said this immediately. This is why it pays to have a broadcast veteran instead of trucking in this pretty young faces every 2-3 years who don't have the brains or the historical knowledge of a Don Kent or Bob Copeland.

@CT Rain is so much more than a pretty face to us.

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36 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

You aren't going to see many storms that do everything this one did. Widespread double digits, wind, minimum pressure, coastal flooding, blizzard conditions for 2 hours and 59 minutes at BOS. 

@CT Rain is so much more than a pretty face to us.

Ryan does a great job! And a belated congratulations for his promotion to chief met at the Connecticut nbc owned and operated. Local tv news stations don't get the numbers they used to get because we all have 200 Channels and millions of websites but whenever there's a big weather event local tv news remains very viable and Ryan is one of the hardest working tv Mets in tv's top 30 markets.

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1 hour ago, bboughton said:

So I wasn’t crazy earlier. Nowhere in MA verified Blizzard. 

I am curious how “frequent gusts” is defined as it appears BOS met that definition. 

Genuine kudos. All too frequently on this site people are taking unpopular positions, getting hammered for it, and then ultimately proven right.

 

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Harvey Leonard did a great job with this storm. 44 years on tv and still getting it done at a time when all his peers from the late 70s except for Barry Burbank are either retired, fired, or 6 feet under. When dick Albert died I checked out Mark Rosenthal's Twitter feed and video forecast. He's certainly let his hair down lol.

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5 hours ago, Roger Smith said:

At 05z pressure of 950 on land now, Point Lepreau NB west of St John. Actual center from radar is over northern Bay of Fundy about to slide across southeast NB towards northern Gulf of St Lawrence. Has probably reached its lowest pressure now.

I think that radar activity moving in from west is the remains of the Ontario low being absorbed by the larger circulation. Could give a further 1-3" in a few spots overnight. Might be hard to distinguish falling snow from drifting and blowing snow.

As a purely theoretical point, would say keep an eye on late January when this energy peak returns in two more separated portions than this time around, one or both of those could be another big coastal storm. (28th-29th, and 31st into 1st Feb). 

 

Do you have any literature you would recommend on the influence of the sun, moon, etc on the weather? Interesting stuff. Enjoy your posts.

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4 hours ago, 25thamendmentfan said:

Genuine kudos. All too frequently on this site people are taking unpopular positions, getting hammered for it, and then ultimately proven right.

 

Eh.

I didn’t think I was right or wrong. I am just curious about the definition as it seems to change. Every obs between 1:33pm and 4:54pm has gusts > 35mph in BOS and I didn’t see the 1:33 one in there yesterday (the previous ob was 31mph) so it might have verified after all. I just want to know how “frequent gusts” are determined. 

You were pretty rude to folks yesterday so I don’t want to be lumped in to prove your point about unpopular opinions. 

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For any BOX mets that lurk, I’d like to add kudos for a great aggressive forecast. I still think the blizz criteria determination needs work though. Yesterday should’ve counted. You can’t subjectively take 1/4sm obs because ASOS low vis blows and then nit pick 5min wind obs where maybe a couple of obs fell a few mph short. This was hours of near 0SM vis with high impact winds. If this doesn’t count just toss the warning option to the curb then. Everything just becomes a WSW. 

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8 minutes ago, dendrite said:

For any BOX mets that lurk, I’d like to add kudos for a great aggressive forecast. I still think the blizz criteria determination needs work though. Yesterday should’ve counted. You can’t subjectively take 1/4sm obs because ASOS low vis blows and then nit pick 5min wind obs where maybe a couple of obs fell a few mph short. This was hours of near 0SM vis with high impact winds. If this doesn’t count just toss the warning option to the curb then. Everything just becomes a WSW. 

No kidding. So why did we count  last year? And also, did we not have 1/4SM for 3 hrs after the 1 min lull of winds 3mph below criteria?

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7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

No kidding. So why did we count  last year? And also, did we not have 1/4SM for 3 hrs after the 1 min lull of winds 3mph below criteria?

I looked back at the 2/9/17 obs. You’re right, that shouldn’t have counted either.

http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/meso_base_dyn.cgi?stn=KBOS&time=GMT

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