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Jan 8th, 2020 Coastal - little critter


Baroclinic Zone
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51 minutes ago, dendrite said:

People love to report snow intensity, but usually it gets a bit overestimated. None of us have vis sensors so it's always just an educated guess. I think a lot of mod reports here are actually light and a lot of heavy are just moderate. Not accusing anyone of overestimating...just throwing it out there. I haven't looked at much down there.

Always good to know your distance to landmarks in the neighborhood. I have a ridge line I can see from my back pretty clearly in winter that is 0.75 miles away as measured on google maps in a straight line. I have a bank of trees looking a different direction that are 0.18 miles away...so I know I'm heavy snow if they are obscured or nearly obscured. I don't have a good landmark that is close to a half mile, but I can usually estimate pretty good based on if the ridge line is gone and the bank of trees is starting to get pretty cloudy looking...then I know I'm prob under a half mile.

But I'd def recommend other posters here measure their landmarks so they have an objective/empirical source of visibility. Of course, if you live really close to an ASOS station, you probably don't need to do this. But most of us don't.

 

This is a good site to use:

https://www.mapdevelopers.com/distance_finder.php

Just convert the map to satellite mode if you want to see different houses/landmarks while zoomed in on your street and then click from your house to whatever landmark you are measuring and it gives straight line distances.

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Good luck to those in SE MA and RI....doesn't look terrible on radar....still hard to believe though that this storm is tracking near or even just inside the BM while intensifying rapidly and this is all we're getting on the radar.

 

Jan7_1015pmRadar.gif

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1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Ha you barely beat me to that one.  

Ripping and pounding as all ASOS are 1.5 miles...but it is a very steady snow.  I think folks think of moderate not in terms of visibility but just that it’s snowing hard enough to accumulate quickly on roads.  

Its almost like another scale from the human perspective (not visibility related)...

Light snow is flurries or non accumulating stuff. Moderate is when it’s steady enough to accumulate and heavy snow is like 0.5-1” per hour regardless of visibility (can often get up to 1” in an hour from 0.75 or 1.0 vis)

Asos are the worst though.  I get your point but how many times do you see ASOS with light snow for 4 hours and then all of a sudden the observer is reporting 8 inches. I mapped out landmarks years ago. Cant tell you how many times I was 1/4 mile and area ASOS never fell under one half. 

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5 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Asos are the worst though.  I get your point but how many times do you see ASOS with light snow for 4 hours and then all of a sudden the observer is reporting 8 inches. I mapped out landmarks years ago. Cant tell you how many times I was 1/4 mile and area ASOS never fell under one half. 

Exactly, I believe SOME of our obs are more accurate.... 

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28 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Always good to know your distance to landmarks in the neighborhood. I have a ridge line I can see from my back pretty clearly in winter that is 0.75 miles away as measured on google maps in a straight line. I have a bank of trees looking a different direction that are 0.18 miles away...so I know I'm heavy snow if they are obscured or nearly obscured. I don't have a good landmark that is close to a half mile, but I can usually estimate pretty good based on if the ridge line is gone and the bank of trees is starting to get pretty cloudy looking...then I know I'm prob under a half mile.

But I'd def recommend other posters here measure their landmarks so they have an objective/empirical source of visibility. Of course, if you live really close to an ASOS station, you probably don't need to do this. But most of us don't.

 

This is a good site to use:

https://www.mapdevelopers.com/distance_finder.php

Just convert the map to satellite mode if you want to see different houses/landmarks while zoomed in on your street and then click from your house to whatever landmark you are measuring and it gives straight line distances.

Google maps also allows distance measurements now too.

It's funny that I remember one of the first things I learned in Ithaca was that it was a half mile from Bradfield to the Clock Tower. And if you lost sight of the American flag on Barton it was 1/4SM  +SN.

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Just now, OceanStWx said:

Google maps also allows distance measurements now too.

It's funny that I remember one of the first things I learned in Ithaca was that it was a half mile from Bradfield to the Clock Tower. And if you lost sight of the American flag on Barton it was 1/4SM  +SN.

Google maps have had distance since they came out, trick was knowing it.

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3 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Asos are the worst though.  I get your point but how many times do you see ASOS with light snow for 4 hours and then all of a sudden the observer is reporting 8 inches. I mapped out landmarks years ago. Cant tell you how many times I was 1/4 mile and area ASOS never fell under one half. 

ASOS is really good with visibility, but vis is only a proxy to snow rates. 

I've definitely seen 1 1/2SM -SN that was 1"/hr because it was perfect aggregates. Those events are exceptions not the rule though. 

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3 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

ASOS is really good with visibility, but vis is only a proxy to snow rates. 

I've definitely seen 1 1/2SM -SN that was 1"/hr because it was perfect aggregates. Those events are exceptions not the rule though. 

Yeah if we're getting hooked dendrite aggregates at 25F, we can go 1 inch per hour with 1+ mile vis easily....meanwhile, I've had arctic sand with half mile vis that is struggling to do better than a half inch per hour.

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