Snow bomb obs March 21

[powderfreak]

I'd give this winter an average grade... C+ to B-.

I think I'm around 115-120" but haven't tallied it since the last big storm, which is spot on average.  The one thing that strikes me is we never fully melted out and fully lost snow cover all winter long.  There was at least white on the ground for three solid months now.

Mountain is at 253", tracking a touch below the 20-year average of 306".  Last year's 375" though was the best winter I ever experienced here, so this has felt a bit tame.  

[Damage In Tolland]

B-

[CoastalWx]

Solid B I think. Feb really sucked so it goes down a notch. The Jan blizzard was pretty epic here. Solid 6 hrs where I could not see anything. The March event 10 days ago was special too.

[codfishsnowman]

C-        objectively

D-         emotionally

[CoastalWx]

4 minutes ago, codfishsnowman said:

C-        objectively

D-         emotionally

Feb 2001 will come. You’ve been rather patient and somehow stable the last few years. Beers on us should you ever come to next gtg. 

[mreaves]

46 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I'd give this winter an average grade... C+ to B-.

I think I'm around 115-120" but haven't tallied it since the last big storm, which is spot on average.  The one thing that strikes me is we never fully melted out and fully lost snow cover all winter long.  There was at least white on the ground for three solid months now.

Mountain is at 253", tracking a touch below the 20-year average of 306".  Last year's 375" though was the best winter I ever experienced here, so this has felt a bit tame.  

I'm leaning more towards the C to C+.  As you say, we never completely melted out but any winter that contains a three week stretch like we had in February is hard to rate above average.

[OceanStWx]

5 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Feb 2001 will come. You’ve been rather patient and somehow stable the last few years. Beers on us should you ever come to next gtg. 

Will you put him at a more western barstool and only send him a 12 oz beer while you crush pints farther east down the bar?

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, OceanStWx said:

Will you put him at a more western barstool and only send him a 12 oz beer while you crush pints farther east down the bar?

We’ll give him those 10oz glasses you get when you order a strong beer while we have yard glasses like we’re walking down Bourbon street. 

[Damage In Tolland]

Feb was basically ruined so that month negates an A other than a good week we had. And getting all the snow in Morch also lowers the grade rather than having it in winter .

[CoastalWx]

11 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Feb was basically ruined so that month negates an A other than a good week we had. And getting all the snow in Morch also lowers the grade rather than having it in winter .

Feb is the month that really can ramp up a good winter. We had none, but at least we saw that coming other than Ginx and Snow88.

[tunafish]

I'll give it a B+, maybe A-. 

For MBY in I had 93.5", with 91.1" at the PWM ASOS proper a few miles away.  

There was full coverage from 12/9 - 2/28, and then again from 3/8 - present.  Three storms of 12"+

Would love to break 100", but that's a tall ask moving forward.

[OceanStWx]

It's been a pretty impressive run since my move to GYX.

The long term average at PWM is 66.1" and the winters beginning with my first full in 2011-2012 have gone 43.9", 98", 83.4", 94.5", 51.8", 95.2" and at least 91.1"

So that almost makes this winter seem meh, but it did have extreme cold, a big (30+) snow month, and consistent snow cover. 

[Damage In Tolland]

26 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Feb is the month that really can ramp up a good winter. We had none, but at least we saw that coming other than Ginx and Snow88.

Yeah Ginx was def alone in the weeds at a massive Feb 

[henry1978]

Tip O'Neill famously said all politics is local. All weather is local.  In terms of densely populated areas, Southern New Hampshire had a great winter. Extreme northern Massachusetts east of Worcester had a great winter. Foxwoods, the sub base in New London county had a great winter and benefitted from being in narrow snow bands.  Vermont and Maine did great but for purposed of discussion related to the majority of posters on this site I'm focusing on Greenwich, Connecticut on up into Nashua and Dover, NH.

But for a lot of folks the above average snowfall totals are misleading. Fluffjob snow events pad stats and create picturesque scenes for a few hours, but that's about it. The models did a poor job this winter and the professionals and weather enthusiasts didn't always do a great job interpreting them.  There were lots of busted forecasts and a helluva lot more snow was predicted than actually fell and everyone who put out a forecast map this winter is guilty of this.  Except for the late January fluff job that landed a bullseye right up New London's fanny every event this winter had snow events where more was predicted than actually fell. Snowfall forecast amounts I must say inside of 24 hours on January 4 were very good.

But way too many times I was reading preposterous snow forecast maps on this site from professionals and hobbyists alike that were absolutely wacko. More wacko than Winona Ryder at a 40% sale at Saks Fifth Avenue.  

NWS has to be more judicious with winter storm watches and warnings in marginal areas like western Massachusetts, and immediate coastal areas from Middlesex County, Connecticut east to CAPE COD, MA on up into Coastal Plymouth.  The Vineyard too.  Hundreds of thousands of people live along the south coast of new England in these three states and the forecast snow maps are always overdone and have been forever because these areas get so much less snow than areas just 10 miles north of them. The snow maps never account for this.  (ironically the forecasts this winter for Nantucket were excellent because Nantucket was so far outside the realm of significant snow in just about every event this winter.) I'll credit the NWS in one regard.  In recent years they have been painting in their snow maps the gradients for coastal areas compared to several miles inland a lot better than local tv stations.

The winter storm warning, winter storm watch and winter weather advisory verification scores presumably in these areas is absolutely terrible.  Jimmy and Diane had lots of warnings shoved up their fannies this winter unnecessarily. Suggestion" winter storm warning Barnstable county Cape Cod Canal east to Hyannis. Winter weather advisory east of Hyannis. 

How do we remedy this? Forecasters need to start going lower than higher. Be more conservative in snow prediction maps. The vast majority of the time snow maps will bust too high as opposed to too low. On air METS will tell you people more often than not complain about snow prediction maps being too high as opposed to being too low. What's the volume of calls of people calling tv stations saying they forecasted 6 inches, but 9 inches fell?  Not as many as forecasting upwards of a foot and only getting an inch. It's moments like this when they call you up, complaining that "I've been training my son his whole life to perform one day at the metropolitan opera.  I even bought an apartment in Lincoln Center. Because of a busted forecast my boy couldn't perform at the vfw hall in Wallingford this week. The concert was cancelled because of a forecast of upwards of a foot of snow.  A talent scout had planned to be in attendance.  The dream has died.  Now my son has to apply to wal mart."

[CoastalWx]

6 minutes ago, henry1978 said:

Tip O'Neill famously said all politics is local. All weather is local.  In terms of densely populated areas, Southern New Hampshire had a great winter. Extreme northern Massachusetts east of Worcester had a great winter. Foxwoods, the sub base in New London county had a great winter and benefitted from being in narrow snow bands.  Vermont and Maine did great but for purposed of discussion related to the majority of posters on this site I'm focusing on Greenwich, Connecticut on up into Nashua and Dover, NH.

But for a lot of folks the above average snowfall totals are misleading. Fluffjob snow events pad stats and create picturesque scenes for a few hours, but that's about it. The models did a poor job this winter and the professionals and weather enthusiasts didn't always do a great job interpreting them.  There were lots of busted forecasts and a helluva lot more snow was predicted than actually fell and everyone who put out a forecast map this winter is guilty of this.  Except for the late January fluff job that landed a bullseye right up New London's fanny every event this winter had snow events where more was predicted than actually fell. Snowfall forecast amounts I must say inside of 24 hours on January 4 were very good.

But way too many times I was reading preposterous snow forecast maps on this site from professionals and hobbyists alike that were absolutely wacko. More wacko than Winona Ryder at a 40% sale at Saks Fifth Avenue.  

NWS has to be more judicious with winter storm watches and warnings in marginal areas like western Massachusetts, and immediate coastal areas from Middlesex County, Connecticut east to CAPE COD, MA on up into Coastal Plymouth.  The Vineyard too.  Hundreds of thousands of people live along the south coast of new England in these three states and the forecast snow maps are always overdone and have been forever because these areas get so much less snow than areas just 10 miles north of them. The snow maps never account for this.  (ironically the forecasts this winter for Nantucket were excellent because Nantucket was so far outside the realm of significant snow in just about every event this winter.) I'll credit the NWS in one regard.  In recent years they have been painting in their snow maps the gradients for coastal areas compared to several miles inland a lot better than local tv stations.

The winter storm warning, winter storm watch and winter weather advisory verification scores presumably in these areas is absolutely terrible.  Jimmy and Diane had lots of warnings shoved up their fannies this winter unnecessarily. Suggestion" winter storm warning Barnstable county Cape Cod Canal east to Hyannis. Winter weather advisory east of Hyannis. 

How do we remedy this? Forecasters need to start going lower than higher. Be more conservative in snow prediction maps. The vast majority of the time snow maps will bust too high as opposed to too low. On air METS will tell you people more often than not complain about snow prediction maps being too high as opposed to being too low. What's the volume of calls of people calling tv stations saying they forecasted 6 inches, but 9 inches fell?  Not as many as forecasting upwards of a foot and only getting an inch. It's moments like this when they call you up, complaining that "I've been training my son his whole life to perform one day at the metropolitan opera.  I even bought an apartment in Lincoln Center. Because of a busted forecast my boy couldn't perform at the vfw hall in Wallingford this week. The concert was cancelled because of a forecast of upwards of a foot of snow.  A talent scout had planned to be in attendance.  The dream has died.  Now my son has to apply to wal mart."

Basically,

[TauntonBlizzard2013]

Solid B

[henry1978]

8 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Basically,

Your shoulders must be stiff after that long swim across Long Island Sound. Do they sell weenies at the Mountauk Point Lighthouse?

[codfishsnowman]

17 minutes ago, henry1978 said:

Tip O'Neill famously said all politics is local. All weather is local.  In terms of densely populated areas, Southern New Hampshire had a great winter. Extreme northern Massachusetts east of Worcester had a great winter. Foxwoods, the sub base in New London county had a great winter and benefitted from being in narrow snow bands.  Vermont and Maine did great but for purposed of discussion related to the majority of posters on this site I'm focusing on Greenwich, Connecticut on up into Nashua and Dover, NH.

But for a lot of folks the above average snowfall totals are misleading. Fluffjob snow events pad stats and create picturesque scenes for a few hours, but that's about it. The models did a poor job this winter and the professionals and weather enthusiasts didn't always do a great job interpreting them.  There were lots of busted forecasts and a helluva lot more snow was predicted than actually fell and everyone who put out a forecast map this winter is guilty of this.  Except for the late January fluff job that landed a bullseye right up New London's fanny every event this winter had snow events where more was predicted than actually fell. Snowfall forecast amounts I must say inside of 24 hours on January 4 were very good.

But way too many times I was reading preposterous snow forecast maps on this site from professionals and hobbyists alike that were absolutely wacko. More wacko than Winona Ryder at a 40% sale at Saks Fifth Avenue.  

NWS has to be more judicious with winter storm watches and warnings in marginal areas like western Massachusetts, and immediate coastal areas from Middlesex County, Connecticut east to CAPE COD, MA on up into Coastal Plymouth.  The Vineyard too.  Hundreds of thousands of people live along the south coast of new England in these three states and the forecast snow maps are always overdone and have been forever because these areas get so much less snow than areas just 10 miles north of them. The snow maps never account for this.  (ironically the forecasts this winter for Nantucket were excellent because Nantucket was so far outside the realm of significant snow in just about every event this winter.) I'll credit the NWS in one regard.  In recent years they have been painting in their snow maps the gradients for coastal areas compared to several miles inland a lot better than local tv stations.

The winter storm warning, winter storm watch and winter weather advisory verification scores presumably in these areas is absolutely terrible.  Jimmy and Diane had lots of warnings shoved up their fannies this winter unnecessarily. Suggestion" winter storm warning Barnstable county Cape Cod Canal east to Hyannis. Winter weather advisory east of Hyannis. 

How do we remedy this? Forecasters need to start going lower than higher. Be more conservative in snow prediction maps. The vast majority of the time snow maps will bust too high as opposed to too low. On air METS will tell you people more often than not complain about snow prediction maps being too high as opposed to being too low. What's the volume of calls of people calling tv stations saying they forecasted 6 inches, but 9 inches fell?  Not as many as forecasting upwards of a foot and only getting an inch. It's moments like this when they call you up, complaining that "I've been training my son his whole life to perform one day at the metropolitan opera.  I even bought an apartment in Lincoln Center. Because of a busted forecast my boy couldn't perform at the vfw hall in Wallingford this week. The concert was cancelled because of a forecast of upwards of a foot of snow.  A talent scout had planned to be in attendance.  The dream has died.  Now my son has to apply to wal mart."

you do make some good points about ctrv, outer cape etc and in general for these places there was a lot more snow forecast than fell

I have been a hobbyist for many years now and the modeling made me long for the 90's when it seemed like events were far more stable from a prediction stand point

there really was too much flip flopping no matter how one wants to spin it, the only takeaway really was that despite some imperfections to always pay attention to the euro

 

 

[henry1978]

Just now, codfishsnowman said:

you do make some good points about ctrv, outer cape etc and in general for these places there was a lot more snow forecast than fell

I have been a hobbyist for many years now and the modeling made me long for the 90's when it seemed like events were far more stable from a prediction stand point

there really was too much flip flopping no matter how one wants to spin it, the only takeaway really was that despite some imperfections to always pay attention to the euro

 

 

springfield gets shi t on a lot in more ways than weather.  It's like the forgotten city in Massachusetts. It's the New Bedford of western Massachusetts. I like the hall of fame though and encourage people to visit it.

[weathafella]

4 minutes ago, henry1978 said:

springfield gets shi t on a lot in more ways than weather.  It's like the forgotten city in Massachusetts. It's the New Bedford of western Massachusetts. I like the hall of fame though and encourage people to visit it.

It’s hard to get great snow when the mechanism that delivers enhancement gets stuffed by mountains to the east AND west.

[henry1978]

22 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Basically,

I just checked Zillow.  Home prices are high in Suffolk county but there are some good deals close to MacArthur airport, home to 5 inch an hour snowfall rates.

[SouthCoastMA]

Here's how mby fared for the 4 Noreasters in March. 1 out of 4..it was quite disappointing given the opportunities to really clean up. 3 out of the 4 were too close and too warm. The one that hit on 3/13 was great, though still fell short of forecast. Still, can't complain about that one. 

 

	2018-03-21	1.0
	2018-03-13	14.00	Blizzard
	2018-03-07	1.50
	2018-03-01	0.10

[Hazey]

As it stands now winter here gets a solid D-. Reasons are

-No storm greater than 9" (lots of pennies and nickels)

-Green Christmas

-combined 6 weeks worth of no snow otg (only 2 weeks in January had solid snow cover)

-February torch.

-70% of normal (66" vs 83")

Regression to the mean.

[ORH_wxman]

The 1990s were way worse for forecasting than now...way worse, and it isn't even close....the only reason it seems more stable is because all the weenies couldn't see every run and every off hour run or ensembles like they can see now and they were probably only tuning into maybe 3 outlets for weather...TWC and a couple local channels.

Now we have discussions about every model run and how much it shifted. Back in the 1990s, the Euro didn't even run twice a day...it was one 12z run per day (didn't even start running at 00z until 2002-2003) and it didn't come out until evening. You had the ETA that went to 48 hours and the AVN that went to 72 hours....the extended AVN was called the MRF back then and it sucked 100 times worse than the current GFS beyond day 5. If you go back to our largest events of the 1990s, they were forecasted pretty terribly save for a handful. Jan 1996 was forecasted to be a whiff 36 hours out. Dec 1992 was forecasted to be 2-4 inches of paste in ORH 24 hours before the event started...maybe they meant 2-4 feet and got the units mixed up? April 1997 was a half-decent forecast but still underestimated by a lot even after the event was underway. February 1998 was one of the worst busts ever in interior SNE...the coast was never in the game, but we had a winter storm warning in ORH and a 12-18 inch forecast as the storm was already started...we then got 3" of snow and then a flip to rain which never flipped back and washed it all away....all the way out to Albany. I can't imagine the epic meltdowns that would occur now on here if that happened. December 20, 1995 had a blizzard warning out 24 hours before the storm and a 1-2 feet forecast....most of the area got single digits and about 4 hours of moderate to heavy snow. People would melt down worse than boxing day if that happened again.  December 23, 1997 had a forecast of 1-3/2-4" of snow as the event started. Much of interior MA got 12-20 inches in a span of 6 hours and even BOS got 7-10" after hours of rain in the beginning. Nice forecast that was. Feb 16, 1996 had a forecast of 10-16 inches as the event was going on...most of SNE got dryslotted horrendously and finished with less than 7" save an area of OES enhancement on the south shore. Another one that would make Boxing day blush.

 

We tend to forget the inaccuracies and the negatives as time goes on. The above are just examples off the top of my head that affected a huge portion of SNE...but empirically, every model parameter and every NWS forecast parameter has come a long way since those days. We are way more accurate now. It doesn't mean it's perfect obviously...there is still plenty of uncertainty. We haven't pinned down mesoscale snow very well yet....might be decades before we do.

[henry1978]

eastern Massachusetts gets more fun snow events but snowpack retention is better in springfield.

[SouthCoastMA]

I think a safe rule of thumb for se coastal Mass/ Cape is..unless you have a frigid artic airmass in place, you need the storm to be southeast of the benchmark to really cleanup. Obviously, there are exceptions. 

[henry1978]

48 hours in advance of February 1994 forecasts were for zero inches of snow in SNE. By Friday evening a good portion of SNE had over a foot of snow.

The Saturday morning before January 1996 there were forecasts of minimal snow in SNE. I don't believe anyone was calling for anything that Friday night.  Snow began sunday morning in Connecticut, sunday midday in RI and southern MA, and 12-20 inches fell regionwide. Busts like this are a thing of the past.

[TauntonBlizzard2013]

1 minute ago, SouthCoastMA said:

I think a safe rule of thumb for se coastal Mass/ Cape is..unless you have a frigid artic airmass in place, you need the storm to be southeast of the benchmark to really cleanup. Obviously, there are exceptions. 

The gradient through SE Mass is pretty impressive this year, and shows how from down by the canal to up towards Taunton and Easton can basically be two different worlds in winter time.

I’d say we cashed in on 1 of the 4 storms as well. Even though we did a bit better with the second one it was still a good deal of rain.

[henry1978]

7 minutes ago, henry1978 said:

eastern Massachusetts gets more fun snow events but snowpack retention is better in springfield.

the bust rate is much higher in these areas. It doesn't get discussed much.  Heads don't roll during bad forecasts because the population there is lower and fewer people bitchin.

[henry1978]

3 minutes ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

The gradient through SE Mass is pretty impressive this year, and shows how from down by the canal to up towards Taunton and Easton can basically be two different worlds in winter time.

I’d say we cashed in on 1 of the 4 storms as well. Even though we did a bit better with the second one it was still a good deal of rain.

25 years ago this week a sneaky snowstorm dumped 6-10 inches on the city of Boston.  I don't think anything fell of any consequence south of Brockton. It takes a real anomaly to get a good snowstorm from mid march on south of Hartford, providence and taunton.