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Snow bomb obs March 21


Damage In Tolland

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4 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Feels like there have been plenty of those positive busts over the years lately... the funny thing is I think these types of busts have happened plenty of time in NNE and WNE over the past 5 years.  It's just rare for it to be the BOS/ORH/HFD zone.  I mean I can remember plenty of events where various models had 1" or more QPF as snow, even within 24 hours, only to end up with 0.2" or something in reality.  The south or east tracking lows seem to bust a lot more than the north and west tracking lows... almost like models have a bias that if something will go wrong, it's going south and/or east with track off the coast.

Heck January 2015 the EURO had 1.2" of QPF up here 24 hours prior and we ended up with like a quarter inch and 2-3" of sand.  It happens quite a bit on the northern and western edges of storms, this one just happened to put SNE in that zone.

I’m curious if that has anything to do with favored storm track. Obviously, we are much closer to the coast here... so generally we don’t have an issue being fringed on a regular basis.

I think your area might be kind of a natural fringe area for Coastal storms given your location relative to the ocean? Might mean your subject to larger errors. As a shift of 25-50 miles can take you out of good snow and higher QPF totals, where a shift of that size here usually doesn’t do that.

Just a thought.

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Just now, OceanStWx said:

We (GYX) just had one in early Feb where places had 9” where as the snow started flying they had no headline.

And the flip side is we just had a similar bust to SNE a couple weeks ago (and plenty others like it over the last few years) when a BTV forecaster tossed the Euro only to have it end up right.  GFS and NAM were arguing 12"+ and the Euro thought 2-6". 

Naturally, the northern or western regions of a coastal low are the most uncertain areas to forecast.  You can have a big positive bust if mid-level banding goes nuts or the low tracks a bit further NW, snowfall can ramp up quickly.  But if it tracks E/SE and you don't have that far outer banding, it can bust hard very quickly.

Certainly the biggest risk/reward zone for forecasting is on that northern edge of a coastal storm.

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9 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Feels like there have been plenty of those positive busts over the years lately... the funny thing is I think these types of busts have happened plenty of time in NNE and WNE over the past 5 years.  It's just rare for it to be the BOS/ORH/HFD zone.  I mean I can remember plenty of events where various models had 1" or more QPF as snow, even within 24 hours, only to end up with 0.2" or something in reality.  The south or east tracking lows seem to bust a lot more than the north and west tracking lows... almost like models have a bias that if something will go wrong, it's going south and/or east with track off the coast.

Heck January 2015 the EURO had 1.2" of QPF up here 24 hours prior and we ended up with like a quarter inch and 2-3" of sand.  It happens quite a bit on the northern and western edges of storms, this one just happened to put SNE in that zone.

Well… Yeah but I did ask "of equal magnitude"-in other words getting a foot of snow with zero forecasted

which I dunno maybe that's not possible given the current state of the art of the technology maybe it's always just gonna be variations within something over nothing

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18 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

 

 

This was the best post of the entire storm...

 

The King is back it seems.  If the EURO doesn't jump fully on board for multiple run cycles... look out.  There was really only one EURO run that went wild.  The rest were proceed with caution.

12z ECM was nail in coffin for many.  When it has Long Island in good banding with 1.0-1.5" QPF but only 0.3" at IJD... time to take notice.

EURO the "KING" had 6 to 8 for me. I am probably at 1.5 inches now. Its just as bad as the other models.

Can't complain the previous 2 storms of 10 and 9.5 were great.

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What I don't understand is all these public school system cancellations.  Boston decided to cancel this evening.  It was clear by late this afternoon this could bust to some degree.  Much more apparent this evening.  Why wouldn't schools wait till 4 or 5am like they did in the old days?  Boston public must have a Met or a hotline to the NWS??  

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1 minute ago, wxeyeNH said:

What I don't understand is all these public school system cancellations.  Boston decided to cancel this evening.  It was clear by late this afternoon this could bust to some degree.  Much more apparent this evening.  Why wouldn't schools wait till 4 or 5am like they did in the old days?  Boston public must have a Met or a hotline to the NWS??  

We brief them, but they get too much pressure from parents having to scramble for child care if they wait too long. We don’t make the call for them, but I find they usually err well on the side of caution.

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 In any case trying to get into something like analytics here… I think part of the problem with this is that it's just too weak in the deep layer mechanics.

This was off and on suggested this week and actually the euro/Ukmet shallowed out the 500 mbar closed low over the last 36 hours worth of runs... going from once as low as almost 528 dam all the way to barely below 540. 

 Here we are and the cyclostrophic motion of this thing is slow on radar. The things creeping into rotation

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3 minutes ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

I’m curious if that has anything to do with favored storm track. Obviously, we are much closer to the coast here... so generally we don’t have an issue being fringed on a regular basis.

I think your area might be kind of a natural fringe area for Coastal storms given your location relative to the ocean? Might mean your subject to larger errors. As a shift of 25-50 miles can take you out of good snow and higher QPF totals, where a shift of that size here usually doesn’t do that.

Just a thought.

Yeah we are without a doubt a fringe area for coastal storms.  I think that's why this one probably stings more in SNE because it doesn't happen that often.  Suppression depression is a very real thing in NNE...but SNE, not so much.  You guys worry about temps, not whether you get into the best lift and QPF.  That's why this is interesting as its something that seems to happen quite often in the ALB-BTV region and also in NH/ME when storms take an unexpected hard right turn. 

Storms like this and in 2010 are much more uncommon it seems where SNE gets the northern fringe job from a near-term jog east.

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My friend is in charge of snow removal for staples in framingham. He, and all his equipment, and 15 shovelers have been sitting in the parking lot since 3pm. 

At this point he is beyond frustrated, and put his shovelers up in a hotel room. If he let's them go he can't get them back.

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5 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Well… Yeah but I did ask "of equal magnitude"-in other words getting a foot of snow with zero forecasted

which I dunno maybe that's not possible given the current state of the art of the technology maybe it's always just gonna be variations within something over nothing

Are there places that were really forecast to get a foot of snow that will get zero though?

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2 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah we are without a doubt a fringe area for coastal storms.  I think that's why this one probably stings more in SNE because it doesn't happen that often.  Suppression depression is a very real thing in NNE...but SNE, not so much.  You guys worry about temps, not whether you get into the best lift and QPF.  That's why this is interesting as its something that seems to happen quite often in the ALB-BTV region and also in NH/ME when storms take an unexpected hard right turn. 

Storms like this and in 2010 are much more uncommon it seems where SNE gets the northern fringe job from a near-term jog east.

This is why it’s a premier region to be a met. Forecasts ride on a degree. High uncertainty on the NW side of frequent lows. Will your ceiling be 200 or 300 feet in misery mist. 

Well maybe not that last one.

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2 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Man stuff

Wonder if they are getting under-catch... 0.11" in the bucket for 4" of snow last hour.

Would imagine it's under-catch but also must be great snow growth as it's hard to get 4" of 8:1 man snow in an hour.

Crazy stationary banding.

opYyHVY.gif

 

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1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

Wonder if they are getting under-catch... 0.11" in the bucket for 4" of snow last hour.

Would imagine it's under-catch but also must be great snow growth as it's hard to get 4" of 8:1 man snow in an hour.

Gusting to 29KT, probably. It’s also possible it’s snowing too hard to keep up with (accumulating on sensor).

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11 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Are there places that were really forecast to get a foot of snow that will get zero though?

 Dude all right 8 inches of snow whatever.

 Depends what you mean by forecasted too because most of those snow map products y'all keep posting were showing amounts between 10 and 16 frequently enough.  And we had a winter storm watch up yesterday where I live they were forecasting amounts up to 11 inches I remember reading the text. 

But like I already said I'm not totally certain this actually qualifies as a bust for a lot of philosophical reasons.  

The point was the bust in the less direction always seem to out number those in the other direction. 

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