March 12th - 13th The It's Not Coming Storm Part 2

[Brian5671]

2 minutes ago, psv88 said:

I still have snow cover lol. Ground has been covered in snow for a week and it was 27 this morning 

I'm not saying you can't have snow cover, I'm saying that the depth of it is affected by warm ground.     We still have patchy cover here, but after last Wednesday's storm it was amazing how quick 10 inches of snow shrank before the sun even rose...

Once you get a below freezing night, the composition of the snow changes to more of an icy texture which is easier to maintain than wet slop.

[psv88]

1 minute ago, Brian5671 said:

I'm not saying you can't have snow cover, I'm saying that the depth of it is affected by warm ground.     We still have patchy cover here, but after last Wednesday's storm it was amazing how quick 10 inches of snow shrank before the sun even rose...

If there is literally snow on the ground the ground temp won’t affect the new snow...

[EastonSN+]

31 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

it's too bad this -NAO block trapped a crappy airmass instead of an arctic one-we would have had a far different outcome on these 3 storms...lots wasted to white rain or plain rain with the marginal airmass in place.

Fairfield got 10 in the last storm. That's nit bad at all.

[Stormlover74]

I've been amazed at how long my snow has lasted with 5 straight days of 40s in March. It hasn't exactly been sunny and it's been below freezing at night though

[Juliancolton]

Just now, psv88 said:

If there is literally snow on the ground the ground temp won’t affect the new snow...

Why wouldn't the warm/ripe old snow conduct warmth to the new snow? 

[Dan76]

Most of LI does not have snow otg

[weatherlogix]

20 minutes ago, weatherpruf said:

Still cool to take a walk in, and you don't have to shovel it. 

agreed.

but people thinking they are going to have a january like 2-4" are greatly mistaken

[Brian5671]

Just now, EastonSN+ said:

Fairfield got 10 in the last storm. That's nit bad at all.

Got lucky with that weenie band that came in at 4pm.   10 inches in about 3.5 hrs.  Most of the day was white rain before that and even after the weenie band we went back to light rain/snow mix.   The 1st storm on 3/2 would have been an epic white monster had their been an arctic airmass in place-an easy 1-2 feet for a good chunk of the area.    10 inches is not bad for March but it could have been 30.

[SnowGoose69]

7 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

it's amazing how some continue to over look this fact.   It's a big reason why latest storms have been a let down to many.    Unless it's puking snow, alot of it gets wasted.  (and even last week, we got 10 inches here in about 3-4 hrs and within hours it had compacted and melted to about 6 or 7)

Both events the dewpoints were just too high.  The air mass was only marginally better last storm than the one prior and models overestimated the degree of cooling potential 24 hours out somewhat.   That was about as wet of a snow as you’ll ever see in this area.  This event has a sufficiently cold air mass.  If you can snow at 1 mile or less visibility you should accumulate fairly well in this at around a 8-10:1 ratio 

[Ericjcrash]

1 minute ago, Stormlover74 said:

I've been amazed at how long my snow has lasted with 5 straight days of 40s in March. It hasn't exactly been sunny and it's been below freezing at night though

Cause it was cement.

[EastonSN+]

1 minute ago, SnowGoose69 said:

Both events the dewpoints were just too high.  The air mass was only marginally better last storm than the one prior and models overestimated the degree of cooling potential 24 hours out somewhat.   That was about as wet of a snow as you’ll ever see in this area.  This event has a sufficiently cold air mass.  If you can snow at 1 mile or less visibility you should accumulate fairly well in this at around a 8-10:1 ratio 

The 10 inches in Easton causes havoc. Lost power for 2.5 days.

[sferic]

What would we like to see in the OOZ Nam?

[CPcantmeasuresnow]

6 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

I'm not saying you can't have snow cover, I'm saying that the depth of it is affected by warm ground.     We still have patchy cover here, but after last Wednesday's storm it was amazing how quick 10 inches of snow shrank before the sun even rose...

Once you get a below freezing night, the composition of the snow changes to more of an icy texture which is easier to maintain than wet slop.

I was near or below freezing the whole day of the storm and in the 20's the night the storm ended and went to bed with 26.5 inches on the ground and compressed to 23.5 inches by morning. That was just the weight of the snow itself compressing IMO.

[weatherlogix]

16 minutes ago, Snow88 said:

SREF are a general 3-6 for NYC

Boston sees 20 inches on the SREF

for NYC: those are skewed by a few members spitting out 15-20". The majority are under the mean. Which means the odds favor a but low, not high

[gravitylover]

15 minutes ago, CPcantmeasuresnow said:

You are suppose to record your maximum depth from the storm for that day. BY NOAA rules you should have recorded 12 inches, but it's your house you can record what you want.

I used to measure every couple of hours when we were using the every 6 hour method and was constantly getting called out for being too high. Sometimes I like to get out and shovel just as the storm is winding down so I tend to hit it at max depth. That's how I know I was at a foot or more in the first one and 16-18 in the second but none of the post storm measurements that got recorded and published were that high.

6 minutes ago, psv88 said:

I still have snow cover lol. Ground has been covered in snow for a week and it was 27 this morning 

But the ground underneath is well above freezing. That air space I mentioned is insulating the snow above, it most likely even has a thin layer of ice on the bottom of it after the last couple of cold mornings.

[SnowGoose69]

Just now, gravitylover said:

I used to measure every couple of hours when we were using the every 6 hour method and was constantly getting called out for being too high. Sometimes I like to get out and shovel just as the storm is winding down so I tend to hit it at max depth. That's how I know I was at a foot or more in the first one and 16-18 in the second but none of the post storm measurements that got recorded and published were that high.

But the ground underneath is well above freezing. That air space I mentioned is insulating the snow above, it most likely even has a thin layer of ice on the bottom of it after the last couple of cold mornings.

When you are snowing at a 5-7:1 ratio or something around that the measurements are going to be iffy

[gravitylover]

Just now, SnowGoose69 said:

When you are snowing at a 5-7:1 ratio or something around that the measurements are going to be iffy

That's for sure.

[weatherpruf]

15 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

it's amazing how some continue to over look this fact.   It's a big reason why latest storms have been a let down to many.    Unless it's puking snow, alot of it gets wasted.  (and even last week, we got 10 inches here in about 3-4 hrs and within hours it had compacted and melted to about 6 or 7)

That's probably why I had 4 and change, it snowed all day and even snowed decently but we lacked the heavy bands, so I may have had 6-7. And the ground was full of standing water to boot.

[weatherlogix]

2 minutes ago, sferic said:

Weatherlogix, there are members that spit out 15-20 for nyc ?

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/srefplumes/

[Brian5671]

2 minutes ago, SnowGoose69 said:

When you are snowing at a 5-7:1 ratio or something around that the measurements are going to be iffy

I never thought 5 to 1 ratios were possible here until last Wed.  I've never seen a snowfall with that high of a water content.

[weatherlogix]

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/srefplumes/

 

look at JFK

[RU848789]

9 minutes ago, gravitylover said:

The ground isn't frozen at any depth and hasn't been for about 3-4 weeks depending on exposure and soil composition. The warmth just radiates out from it even hours after a storm starts and in the case of the last storm it continued right through the storm. 

Fair point, thanks for highlighting it.  I completely forgot about the incredible mid/late February warmth we had - normally in early March the soil would be frozen or close to it in this part of the world, and certainly in yours.  NJ soil temps are largely in the mid-30s right now anywhere there was snow cover for the past several days, but were probably several degrees higher prior to the 3/2 and 3/7 storms; given them being in the mid-30s (and I still have 1-2" of snow on my lawn, so I assume this isn't an issue for this storm for me, as the snow will accumulate easily on existing snow), I would think the melting impact will be much less than it was for 3/2.  I probably underestimated that element in why we didn't accumulate on 3/2, although a big part was also intensity, as areas well to my SW and SE, with presumably warmer soils, did accumulate well on 3/2.  On 3/7, we accumulated immediately with good intensity.  Also probably why 2/17 accumulated easily - presumably soils were much colder then before the big warm-up.  

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

28 minutes ago, sferic said:

My final guess for this not coming storm:

Central Park  1 inch

LGA  1 inches

JFK  2 inches

Long Beach  2 inches

Massepequa  4 inches

Hauppague : 4 inches

Islip : 8 inches

Newark: 1 inch

White Plains 2 Inches

Morristown NJ  1 inch

Middletown NY   3 inches

Boston  18 inches

borrowed your format and put my guess

[MJO812]

Nam is more amped

Wow eastern LI gets crushed

[Dan76]

3 minutes ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

borrowed your format and put my guess

Grass or pavement

[EastonSN+]

NAM is the same back here. 

[snow1]

1 minute ago, Snow88 said:

Nam is more amped

Wow eastern LI gets crushed

Looks great for LI. Won’t really make a difference for us

[Ericjcrash]

1 minute ago, Snow88 said:

Nam is more amped

Wow eastern LI gets crushed

But we see less snow, well less white rain.

[CPcantmeasuresnow]

13 minutes ago, gravitylover said:

I used to measure every couple of hours when we were using the every 6 hour method and was constantly getting called out for being too high. Sometimes I like to get out and shovel just as the storm is winding down so I tend to hit it at max depth. That's how I know I was at a foot or more in the first one and 16-18 in the second but none of the post storm measurements that got recorded and published were that high.

But the ground underneath is well above freezing. That air space I mentioned is insulating the snow above, it most likely even has a thin layer of ice on the bottom of it after the last couple of cold mornings.

Yeah a lot of that is just ignorance. Most people don't know how quickly a heavy wet snow compresses. I received 24.2 inches in the last storm, measured when I went out for my last snowblowing session that night . If I waited till morning I would have measured 21.2. That's what I think a lot of people end up doing.

[RU848789]

14 minutes ago, Juliancolton said:

Why wouldn't the warm/ripe old snow conduct warmth to the new snow? 

Any snow on the ground is, by definition, frozen water at less than or equal to 32F - if it's melting it's 32F (when ice melts to form water, the temperature doesn't change, just the phase changes - the heat goes into melting the ice), whereas if it's been below 32F, the snow can cool down proportionally to the air temp.  Anywhere there is snow on the ground, it's at most 32F and any snow falling on existing snow will not melt at all, when it's dark (except for very minor melting if the air temp is above 32F).  And I'm still skeptical that the ground would remain above 32F for very long with a snowpack on top of it - would think that heat would melt some snow initially and equilibrate at 32F fairly quickly, as it's in contact with 32F snow.