Obs and nowcast Major Nor'easter near blizzard Sunday afternoon Jan 31 - Sunrise Wednesday Feb 3

[LibertyBell]

Something underreported was the storm surge with this.  I heard that a snow plow almost got swept out to see when the waters from Jamaica Bay came in near Far Rockaway.

 

[Intensewind002]

Forgot to post to this board, but picked up another 0.4" from the snow showers last night and tonight last night bringing my snow total in Lindenhurst to 15.3" for the whole event, including sleet it would be 15.8" of frozen precip. Could be off a little since there was a lot of drifts as well as low spots, but it was definitely at least within the 12-16" range

[LibertyBell]

13 minutes ago, Intensewind002 said:

Forgot to post to this board, but picked up another 0.4" from the snow showers last night and tonight last night bringing my snow total in Lindenhurst to 15.3" for the whole event, including sleet it would be 15.8" of frozen precip. Could be off a little since there was a lot of drifts as well as low spots, but it was definitely at least within the 12-16" range

a half inch of sleet, when was this?

 

[Intensewind002]

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

a half inch of sleet, when was this?

 

Monday night, sleet was decently coming down for a time around between 6pm - 8pm when i was shoveling, it definitely stung pretty bad with the wind so I'm sure it was sleet and not blowing snow. After i finished there was about a half inch or so of new slush on the part of the driveway that I started out with, which I figured was the remnants of the sleet, there was snow mixed in too which probably partially make up some of that half inch, should have specified on that. By that time the snow was already pretty compacted so I don't think it was from the wind blowing it around.

[lee59]

3 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

how do we know that the Cape May figure from 1899 is correct?

 

Good point, we may never know. I suppose you could say that about almost any measurement from years ago and some from today.

[bluewave]

4 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

how do we know that the Cape May figure from 1899 is correct?

 

Snowfall from earlier eras was undercounted by about 15-20%. So we need to increase the pre 1980s totals by about that much. But we do know that the big snowfall increases since the 1980s are legit since we have used the new measurement standards since then. So we need a snowfall reanalysis project for earlier snowstorms like they do with hurricanes.

https://news.ucar.edu/14009/snowfall-measurement-flaky-history

That can make quite a significant difference. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the snow on the ground at the end of a storm to be 15 to 20 percent less than the total that would be derived from multiple snowboard measurements.  As the cooperative climate observer for Boulder, Colorado, I examined the 15 biggest snowfalls of the last two decades, all measured at the NOAA campus in Boulder. The sum of the snowboard measurements averaged 17 percent greater than the maximum depth on the ground at the end of the storm. For a 20-inch snowfall, that would be a boost of 3.4 inches—enough to dethrone many close rivals on the top-10 snowstorm list that were not necessarily lesser storms!

[uncle W]

4 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Snowfall from earlier eras was undercounted by about 15-20%. So we need to increase the pre 1980s totals by about that much. But we do know that the big snowfall increases since the 1980s are legit since we have used the new measurement standards since then. So we need a snowfall reanalysis project for earlier snowstorms like they do with hurricanes.

https://news.ucar.edu/14009/snowfall-measurement-flaky-history

That can make quite a significant difference. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the snow on the ground at the end of a storm to be 15 to 20 percent less than the total that would be derived from multiple snowboard measurements.  As the cooperative climate observer for Boulder, Colorado, I examined the 15 biggest snowfalls of the last two decades, all measured at the NOAA campus in Boulder. The sum of the snowboard measurements averaged 17 percent greater than the maximum depth on the ground at the end of the storm. For a 20-inch snowfall, that would be a boost of 3.4 inches—enough to dethrone many close rivals on the top-10 snowstorm list that were not necessarily lesser storms!

if you look at snowfalls from before 1980 it seems they made a measurment when the storm ended...example ...Jan 12-14tgh 1964...A long duration blizzard that measured 12.5"...Snow depth reported as 13"...no snow on the ground before the storm...Same with the 1947 storm...they measured 26" and that was the depth when the storm ended...

[lee59]

1 minute ago, uncle W said:

if you look at snowfalls from before 1980 it seems they made a measurment when the storm ended...example ...Jan 12-14tgh 1964...A long duration blizzard that measured 12.5"...Snow depth reported as 13"...no snow on the ground before the storm...Same with the 1947 storm...they measured 26" and that was the depth when the storm ended...

This is a little off topic but it can be argued for the amount of recorded hurricanes today compared to years ago.  Today they include storms that would not have been named years ago, one prime example is this past season when a sub tropical low was given a name and it was off the coast of Portugal.

[HVSnowLover]

5 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Yeah but that wouldn't happen at JFK because JFK is tucked in.  JFK often does better than NYC in snowstorms here are some examples :  Feb 1961, Feb 1969, Feb 1983, PD2 Feb 2003, Dec 2009, Jan 2016.....also notable is the fact that even in changeover storms like March 1993 and February 1994, JFK either did better than NYC or had about the same amount of snow, another one is the Millenium storm where there wasn't a changeover even though the storm bisected Long Island.  Also the amount of any nonsnow precip from this storm was insignificant, basically just drizzle or a few sleet pellets when we were between bands.

 

 

Yes definitely there are setups that favor jfk getting more than NYC but I imagine there are storms where NYC or especially Bronx did way better than JFK but still like you said above 18 inches vs 1.2 I don’t think has ever happened across the city 

[donsutherland1]

5 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

do you think SW Nassau may have experienced a similar increase in snowfall, Don?

This kind of reminds me of the middle storm in the 2010-2011 winter (the one between Boxing Day 2010 and late Jan 2011) that dumped 9.2 inches in NYC but up to 20" across central parts of the north shore of Long Island.

 

Yes. Flushing in Queens reported 13.5”. So, east of there a lot of snow also fell. Out at the Twin Forks, there was less snow e.g., Cutchogue on the North Fork picked up 8.0”.

[donsutherland1]

5 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

remember the changes made after the Jan 2016 storm lol

Yes, I recall them. While snow depth can shrink much faster that what was described in my message, typically one would see similar changes throughout the region. When one location is reporting a much bigger change in snow cover relative to another part in the same broad area, but there are no variables to explain the difference (including mesoscale factors such as localized rain), that is often an indication of a bad measurement. 

[NorthShoreWx]

7 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

403. That’s an error.

Your client does not have permission to get URL /proxy/sUx058h1M2XHGVbPCXat7r9p6qhhSmxiL-tXRY0VUG9_gRGS48f436gXHuwgL_3okwZmPB7mDt2b3oC_kBXpedwRtpLRxobJuimJgD6QCT5mmIAbw0zwxgA7UeW8XRTvGelAWVmq9pmS2qiov_ya1urda8OPIpVKxPrmmRyfDzTM0w from this server. (Client IP address: 69.124.252.182)

Forbidden That’s all we know.

It was a map of the area around Logan.  I tested the link before I posted it and it worked at the time, maybe because it was cached on my machine.  

[LibertyBell]

On 2/4/2021 at 7:42 AM, bluewave said:

Snowfall from earlier eras was undercounted by about 15-20%. So we need to increase the pre 1980s totals by about that much. But we do know that the big snowfall increases since the 1980s are legit since we have used the new measurement standards since then. So we need a snowfall reanalysis project for earlier snowstorms like they do with hurricanes.

https://news.ucar.edu/14009/snowfall-measurement-flaky-history

That can make quite a significant difference. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the snow on the ground at the end of a storm to be 15 to 20 percent less than the total that would be derived from multiple snowboard measurements.  As the cooperative climate observer for Boulder, Colorado, I examined the 15 biggest snowfalls of the last two decades, all measured at the NOAA campus in Boulder. The sum of the snowboard measurements averaged 17 percent greater than the maximum depth on the ground at the end of the storm. For a 20-inch snowfall, that would be a boost of 3.4 inches—enough to dethrone many close rivals on the top-10 snowstorm list that were not necessarily lesser storms!

thats very interesting Chris.....let's take the Jan 2016 storm at JFK as an example....how much of a difference was there between final storm total and the max snowfall depth at any point during the storm or immediately after it ended?

 

[LibertyBell]

On 2/4/2021 at 7:42 AM, bluewave said:

Snowfall from earlier eras was undercounted by about 15-20%. So we need to increase the pre 1980s totals by about that much. But we do know that the big snowfall increases since the 1980s are legit since we have used the new measurement standards since then. So we need a snowfall reanalysis project for earlier snowstorms like they do with hurricanes.

https://news.ucar.edu/14009/snowfall-measurement-flaky-history

That can make quite a significant difference. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the snow on the ground at the end of a storm to be 15 to 20 percent less than the total that would be derived from multiple snowboard measurements.  As the cooperative climate observer for Boulder, Colorado, I examined the 15 biggest snowfalls of the last two decades, all measured at the NOAA campus in Boulder. The sum of the snowboard measurements averaged 17 percent greater than the maximum depth on the ground at the end of the storm. For a 20-inch snowfall, that would be a boost of 3.4 inches—enough to dethrone many close rivals on the top-10 snowstorm list that were not necessarily lesser storms!

hmmm that might have carried the famous Dec 1947 storm over 30"