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March 12/13/14 Blizzard/Winter Storm/WWA etc


Bostonseminole
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1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

18" was the last reading at 9am on the mountain.

I got about 13" at home and it's down to flurries while we wait for stronger NW flow.  Figure the mountain is good for another 8-12" while 3-6" here at home.

Mreaves got like over two feet or something like that near Montpelier. 

That's an interesting setup with the flow out of the northeast in the mid levels while you have NW flow below 6000ft or so. 

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3 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I guess we are all ignorant to the sniff test these days.

The ratios are one of the first things I look at on cocorahs. When I see a 7:1 when the location was rotting under a 3”/hr deformation band I don’t even try to figure it out. Tossed like a salad. 

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7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

That's an interesting setup with the flow out of the northeast in the mid levels while you have NW flow below 6000ft or so. 

I was surprised with how much snow that produced yesterday.  Not often we can get this much snow out of a system tracking east of the Benchmark.  Good spread the wealth system.

It was almost like an inverted trough last night though on radar.  Weird look.

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6 minutes ago, dendrite said:

The ratios are one of the first things I look at on cocorahs. When I see a 7:1 when the location was rotting under a 3”/hr deformation band I don’t even try to figure it out. Tossed like a salad. 

Well, usually.  Last March I had 10" of 7.5-to-1 snow in 5 hours, temp near 20 and no taint - probably a 3" hour during that span.  Of course the wind was gusting into the 40s, which might have had an effect.  ;) 

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2 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

It's pretty hard to slant stick a rain gauge, but people do it.

I mean, he prob didn't do it on purpose....but it's clearly an error. Maybe he cut a biscuit where a snow avalanche off the roof happened so he was slicing through packed snow or something. There is a zero percent chance he had like 7 to 1 ratios up there.

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24 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Some of it may be removing it for the final snow map purposes. Even if your report is accurate, if it sticks out enough from surrounding obs you'll get a pretty ugly bullseye with the mapping and it helps to smooth things to remove it. The only way to do that is by taking it out of the PNS (because the software pulls the metadata at the bottom to create the map). 

It may not necessarily be a commentary on your reporting.

Hopefully.

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Just now, ORH_wxman said:

I mean, he prob didn't do it on purpose....but it's clearly an error. Maybe he cut a biscuit where a snow avalanche off the roof happened so he was slicing through packed snow or something. There is a zero percent chance he had like 7 to 1 ratios up there.

Even if it was an accident...use common sense and correct it.

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

I mean, he prob didn't do it on purpose....but it's clearly an error. Maybe he cut a biscuit where a snow avalanche off the roof happened so he was slicing through packed snow or something. There is a zero percent chance he had like 7 to 1 ratios up there.

Or he cut a biscuit into existing snowpack from that paste bomb last week....that might do it.

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2 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I agree...that 24 hours is too long to wait, particularly if it snows for 6 hours and one intends to/has to wait 18 hours for that measurement.  

However, I suggest that when the snow stops, and it is systemically clear that it's really the end of the event, then the measurement is taken.  

However, during the event, I disagree (if perhaps this is a strawman argument) that 6-hour clear should be done, because as I was just describing, storm circumstancial melting/settling/or even sublimation - though that would rarefied, should be considered part of the event. 

Its so hard in certain areas though that often don't have a like real end point... up here its going to snow for 2-3 days in the end.  I had a foot this morning, then it snows today, tonight and tomorrow.  Its hard to do in storms that have drips and drabs that go on for a long time after the main meat of the event.

I think 6 hours can be a bit too often but it depends on what you've been doing to keep your personal records consistent.  I like a morning and an evening reading.  That's what we do at the ski resort, regardless of when it starts or stops snowing... the count gets reset in the early morning and at the end of the operational day.  That's also because skiers want to know that information... what fell while people were skiing and what fell when people weren't skiing (ie how much fresh will be on trails in the morning).

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1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

Or he cut a biscuit into existing snowpack from that paste bomb last week....that might do it.

3.20” from one core would be a real pita to melt down. Maybe the guy did multiple cores, but the measuring area kept filling back in. When he had 48”/3.20” he realizdd something was off, kept the w.e., and stuck the yardstick into the ground. 

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2 hours ago, Isotherm said:

 

Agree, and I'd argue the once per day observation is the least accurate of all for sure. The clearing/vs maximum depth should be fairly similar in most storms that aren't > 32F at the surface.

Less than 32 is not the only way to lose snow to settling compacting...the high ratio snow compacts and sublimated a good deal in high ratio, protracted events.

Sell that to the LES guys who "get" 50, but measure 35.

This was a case like that, Tom.

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3 hours ago, Isotherm said:

Just as an FYI, the latest NWS/COOP guidelines for measuring snowfall are to take the maximum accumulation of new snow in a 24 hour period. The 6 hour clearing method is no longer in effect, unless specifically instructed to by a NWS office (airports sometimes).

 

 

5 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Why do you advocate for it if it's least accurate?

I don't believe he is as per the response above.  The one measurement refers to the max accumulation that day, not the one measurement at a set time each day that COOP follows.

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