January 4-6 Coastal Bomb Observations/Nowcast

[Damage In Tolland]

2 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Residual effects tonight with more blowing and drifting snow in parts of SNE?

The low level jet on the WRF is insane with 70kts at 850mb moving through the Berkshires and ORH Hills into NE CT. 

With CAA and downsloping WNW flow... man that could rip tonight.

 

It has been roaring today. Gust after gust 45-50. Snow blowing into mini tornado swirls.  What time is that valid for?

[JC-CT]

1 minute ago, Damage In Tolland said:

It has been roaring today. Gust after gust 45-50. Snow blowing into mini tornado swirls.  What time is that valid for?

Dude...it even has EST right on there for you.

[Ginx snewx]

6 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Residual effects tonight with more blowing and drifting snow in parts of SNE?

The low level jet on the WRF is insane with 70kts at 850mb moving through the Berkshires and ORH Hills into NE CT. 

With CAA and downsloping WNW flow... man that could rip tonight.

 

About an epic a winter night as it gets here.  Huge drifts, blowing snow, snownados. Took a walk down to the lake under moonlit sky, total Antartica look and feel.

[ORH_wxman]

17 minutes ago, bboughton said:

Was that the only lull? I don't think they allow repeated lulls of 20 minutes especially close together. 

There was another of exactly 20 minutes and maybe one more of around 15. They weren't close together though. 

The 5 minute criteria is definitely more stringent. That isn't a bad thing. It's just they have not seemed to use that more stringent criteria in the past. It makes for inconsistencies. 

[CoastalWx]

Some nice pics from the storm. The last one was at my parents. More man snow there.

 

 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

 Wind gusted to 32mph here today, that may be my highest recorded gust outside of a thunderstorm since I moved here 10 years ago. (Very sheltered location) 

[Ginx snewx]

Nice pics Scott. Drift on the roof outside my office window

[Jebman]

12 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Some nice pics from the storm. The last one was at my parents. More man snow there.

 

 

Great pics, CoastalWx! Congrats on your snow! Niiiiiice drifts!

Only one thing though -- wags finger at CoastalWx like Morpheus --- That walkway you used a snow blower to clear like Old Man Weathafella, that SHALL NOT PASS muster. You can barely walk thru that tiny passage! This aint spelunking!

Get your fat azz off of that deep warm couch, quit stuffing all of those jelly doughnuts into your fat face - and get out there in the snow and USE A SHOVEL! Use a shovel and dig that snow properly! I had better see at least 30 inches wide on that sorry excuse you call a path! You consider yourself a New Englander? Well dig snow like a New Englander!

Don't make me have to come up there and show you how to shovel snow properly like a New Englander! Show some effin Pride! Represent, for a change!

[CoastalWx]

12 minutes ago, Jebman said:

Great pics, CoastalWx! Congrats on your snow! Niiiiiice drifts!

Only one thing though -- wags finger at CoastalWx like Morpheus --- That walkway you used a snow blower to clear like Old Man Weathafella, that SHALL NOT PASS muster. You can barely walk thru that tiny passage! This aint spelunking!

Get your fat azz off of that deep warm couch, quit stuffing all of those jelly doughnuts into your fat face - and get out there in the snow and USE A SHOVEL! Use a shovel and dig that snow properly! I had better see at least 30 inches wide on that sorry excuse you call a path! You consider yourself a New Englander? Well dig snow like a New Englander!

Don't make me have to come up there and show you how to shovel snow properly like a New Englander! Show some effin Pride! Represent, for a change!

Dude I’m not 500lbs. It works lol.

[Jebman]

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

Dude I’m not 500lbs. It works lol.

I was just kidding lol. I am just joshing y'all because you got tons of snow and we are about to have 50s for highs for a time lol. Enjoy the snow.

That passage could be a bit wider, though lol. You got the snow, shovel it.

Can. You. Dig. It?

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

19 minutes ago, Jebman said:

I was just kidding lol. I am just joshing y'all because you got tons of snow and we are about to have 50s for highs for a time lol. Enjoy the snow.

That passage could be a bit wider, though lol. You got the snow, shovel it.

Can. You. Dig. It?

When a dood has two young ones and the entire fam is vomitting and scooter sh*t streaking around the house....i don’t think precision shoveling is at the forefront. Just a hunch. 

[Ginx snewx]

We drift

 

[dendrite]

1 hour ago, bboughton said:

 

Gets you closer but not quite there.

Yeah I knew it wouldn’t be enough...I just wanted to see the difference graphically. I’m starting to lean toward not caring if the obs are consecutive or not in the definition. Maybe up it to 5hrs and wherever the obs fall they fall? Impact wise, does it really matter if there’s 5hrs worth of blizz criteria, but it’s broken up by 30 mins of only 1/2SM instead of 1/4SM? Basically keep using the 5 min obs...there’s 12 of them in an hour. So make it so you need 60 qualifying obs over the course of the storm in order to meet criteria.

[Ginx snewx]

1 hour ago, Jebman said:

Great pics, CoastalWx! Congrats on your snow! Niiiiiice drifts!

Only one thing though -- wags finger at CoastalWx like Morpheus --- That walkway you used a snow blower to clear like Old Man Weathafella, that SHALL NOT PASS muster. You can barely walk thru that tiny passage! This aint spelunking!

Get your fat azz off of that deep warm couch, quit stuffing all of those jelly doughnuts into your fat face - and get out there in the snow and USE A SHOVEL! Use a shovel and dig that snow properly! I had better see at least 30 inches wide on that sorry excuse you call a path! You consider yourself a New Englander? Well dig snow like a New Englander!

Don't make me have to come up there and show you how to shovel snow properly like a New Englander! Show some effin Pride! Represent, for a change!

You tell him Jeb, took a Jeb walk in Antarctic tonight. AWESOME

[kdxken]

2 hours ago, Damage In Tolland said:

It has been roaring today. Gust after gust 45-50. Snow blowing into mini tornado swirls.  What time is that valid for?

 The winds have been incredible.  Not sure I ever remember two days of nonstop roaring winds.

[Cold Miser]

2 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

About an epic a winter night as it gets here.  Huge drifts, blowing snow, snownados. Took a walk down to the lake under moonlit sky, total Antartica look and feel.

Same observations. Just came back after driving down 169 through Canterbury.  Drifts upon drifts halfway into the road. Great stuff.

[HoarfrostHubb]

This has been about a winterlike as we get here in New England, the last 36 hours.

The blowing snow and vortexes add a bitter appeal to the landscape.  

Wind roaring, already below zero here, headed to -6...

The dog hates it though

[Ginx snewx]

47 minutes ago, Cold Miser said:

Same observations. Just came back after driving down 169 through Canterbury.  Drifts upon drifts halfway into the road. Great stuff.

Was on 49 when you texted me

 Epic

[40/70 Benchmark]

Verification analysis:

http://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2018/01/blizzard-of-2018-verification.html

 

 

[tunafish]

24 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Verification analysis:

http://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2018/01/blizzard-of-2018-verification.html

 

 

Excellent write-ups and analysis.  You just about nailed eastern and central areas; western areas nasomuch.  Not sure anyone did, though.  Good stuff much appreciated! 

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 minutes ago, tunafish said:

Excellent write-ups and analysis.  You just about nailed eastern and central areas; western areas nasomuch.  Not sure anyone did, though.  Good stuff much appreciated! 

Thanks.

Yea, I'm disappointed with my effort out west and on to a lesser extent on the cape....I don't know why I just assumed that there was an arctic high in place after all of the cold we have had....careless mistake that turned what would have been an exceptional forecast into a merely a serviceable one.

[ROOSTA]

 

[Jebman]

3 hours ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

When a dood has two young ones and the entire fam is vomitting and scooter sh*t streaking around the house....i don’t think precision shoveling is at the forefront. Just a hunch. 

I hope they get better soon, I see your point about the shoveling.

[40/70 Benchmark]

[OceanStWx]

13 hours ago, OSUmetstud said:

East Scotia slope buoy had 56.1 ft significant seas this morning. 

Damn. That's just the mean of the top 1/3 of waves.

That means roughly 1 out of every 100 waves could have been higher than 84 feet, and theoretically the highest waves out there (1 in a 1000ish) could have been as high as 112 ft.

[OceanStWx]

3 hours ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I knew it wouldn’t be enough...I just wanted to see the difference graphically. I’m starting to lean toward not caring if the obs are consecutive or not in the definition. Maybe up it to 5hrs and wherever the obs fall they fall? Impact wise, does it really matter if there’s 5hrs worth of blizz criteria, but it’s broken up by 30 mins of only 1/2SM instead of 1/4SM? Basically keep using the 5 min obs...there’s 12 of them in an hour. So make it so you need 60 qualifying obs over the course of the storm in order to meet criteria.

Someday I'll be the one making these calls, but that day is not today.

I look at that and say, wouldn't blizzard conditions be predominate from 2:25 until 5:25? But whatever, it's not my CWA (Yet. Until they roll us all up into the New England regional office).

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Someday I'll be the one making these calls, but that day is not today.

I look at that and say, wouldn't blizzard conditions be predominate from 2:25 until 5:25? But whatever, it's not my CWA (Yet. Until they roll us all up into the New England regional office).

Is that in the works, Chris?

[OceanStWx]

5 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Is that in the works, Chris?

Someday probably, not anytime soon though.

Immediate future (5, 10 years?) might be to have two offices handle New England. BOX south and GYX north, and the other counties/states that aren't part of those two offices get cannibalized from CAR, BTV, OKX, ALY.

[S&P]

i have a local drift video i posted to youtube and twitter, trying to figure out how to embed here, need help ,LOL TIA

[bboughton]

11 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

There was another of exactly 20 minutes and maybe one more of around 15. They weren't close together though. 

The 5 minute criteria is definitely more stringent. That isn't a bad thing. It's just they have not seemed to use that more stringent criteria in the past. It makes for inconsistencies. 

For sure. To me the definition always seemed a little capricious. In terms of visibility and impact this was one of the worst storms I’ve seen in greater Boston since I’ve lived here (8 years total, 10 if you count my two year hiatus living northwest of Providence which gets similar outcomes on most storms), and I have seen several verified blizzards  

And I grew up in the New Haven CT area and again can remember several “verified” blizzards from OKX that were not as bad as this one. 

I think the rigid definition is misleading and causes confusion. Kind of the same way Sandy didn’t get a tropical storm warning in NYC. People judge impact by the severity of the watch/warning and in New England, IMO, don’t take it seriously until it’s a Blizzard. 

I remember on Tuesday morning telling my coworkers it was going to warm up just in time for a blizzard and they thought I was nuts because “winter storm warning” or watch doesn’t have the same impact on them. Regardless of what the actual product says. 

A 14” snowfall isn’t weird for Boston and is usually not all that impactful. A 14” snowstorm in 6-7 hours on the other hand is a whole different matter. And in fairness I think the meteorologists tried to convey this but unless something says 20”+ or blizzard I tend not to see the same preparedness response kick in. 

I also wonder about how it effects public officials in their decision making, since it seemed folks were unprepared to make the decisions necessary to keep people off the roads (e.g., travel restrictions, curtailed MBTA Service). Lots of business didn’t close absent the state of emergency warning which poses safety concerns as well as logistical concerns in terms of snow removal. 

I don’t know what the solution is that doesn’t sacrifice the science. But there needs to be something explicit that identifies storms as qualitatively different based on impact IMO. Most people don’t even know that Blizzard Watches aren’t s thing anymore. I tend to follow this board in the winter and I didn’t know it until a day or two before the storm. Folks used to take Blizzard Watches more seriously than Winter Storm Warnings, so that word has substantial meaning to folks beyond technical criteria. 

I had actually made a bet with my boss’s boss’s boss that we would have a Blizzard. And as I walked in to give her the $5 (petty bet) she was ready to give me $5. We called it a draw. But people will call things a blizzard based on impact to travel and property (and maybe snow totals), and so they think it’s what it means.