OBS-NOWCAST for potential significant 6 hour Thursday morning (1/20/22) commute impact general 1-3" snowfall.

[winterwx21]

Just a light coating on colder surfaces here. Good job by RGEM yesterday saying this would be only a coating to an inch for most. I often talk about what a good model RGEM is, and it showed it again. Terrible job by GFS, NAM and HRRR with the higher amounts they showed.

[Yanksfan]

Overall it’s another bust. It’s been the theme thus far this winter.

[bluewave]

34° and light snow here in SW Suffolk.

[psv88]

24 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

Coming down at a decent clip and radar looks okay for the next hour or so. We did waste precip as rain and temps near 40 and it seems like the precip in general is lighter than thought a couple days ago so hopefully we walk away with 1-2. It’ll freeze solid on whatever does get accums. 

2"? lol, this will go down as 1/2", radar looks awful. 

[justinj]

2 minutes ago, psv88 said:

2"? lol, this will go down as 1/2", radar looks awful. 

Yup it’s over

[the_other_guy]

Pretty. This is a N and W storm, an elevation storm, a grass and tree storm due to marginal temps.

[sussexcountyobs]

Snow is over. Blue skies peaking thru clouds. 1.3" total

[psv88]

Just now, the_other_guy said:

Pretty. This is a N and W storm, and elevation storm, a grass and tree storm due to marginal temps.

this is not a "Storm"

[the_other_guy]

1 minute ago, psv88 said:

this is not a "Storm"

This January, it is

[MJO812]

3 minutes ago, the_other_guy said:

This January, it is

We had a storm last week

[Snowlover11]

white rain in Yonkers.

[RU848789]

41 minutes ago, RU848789 said:

As of 10 am, 3/16" OTG (yes, a very careful measurement, lol) and moderate snowfall at 32F; snow accumulating on all surfaces

Intensity let up a bit and as of 10:30 am,we have a whole 1/4" and the radar looks weak to our SW, so I think it's time to officially declare this a bust...

The 1/4" did bring my seasonal snowfall up to 7.0".  

[bluewave]

22 minutes ago, winterwx21 said:

Just a light coating on colder surfaces here. Good job by RGEM yesterday saying this would be only a coating to an inch for most. I often talk about what a good model RGEM is, and it showed it again. Terrible job by GFS, NAM and HRRR with the higher amounts they showed.

The RGEM has really been improving in recent years with continued upgrades. Unfortunately, there have been no NAM upgrades since 2017 when they decided to move toward developing a FV3 based CAM. But we have seen several problems with the the FV3 GFS changes. So we are stuck with an older version of the NAM until a replacement is ready. If the FV3 issues with the GFS are any indication, it may take a while for a suitable NAM replacement. Meanwhile,  models like the RGEM will continue to pull ahead. The HRRR is often hit or miss in these situations with too much of a cold bias. 
 

https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/environmental-modeling-center/fv3-convective-allowing-forecast-system

NAM development was frozen after the March 2017 upgrade, and RAP/HRRR development with the WRF-ARW model will cease after the RAPv5/HRRRv4 upgrade in 2020. However, operational execution of these modeling and associated DA systems will continue until comparable FV3-based systems are able to give similar performance.

 

[Volcanic Winter]

Heaviest precipitation now where it's still raining, and the back edge looks pretty rough. 

[winterwx21]

8 minutes ago, RU848789 said:

Intensity let up a bit and as of 10:30 am,we have a whole 1/4" and the radar looks weak to our SW, so I think it's time to officially declare this a bust...

A little frustrating, but certainly not a shock. We've seen this many times before where rain changing to snow behind a cold front doesn't work out. Last night's RGEM gave our area only a quarter to half inch of snow, so the writing was on the wall. GFS not surprisingly did a horrendous job with the snow amounts, and NAM did a bad job too.

[winterwx21]

5 minutes ago, bluewave said:

The RGEM has really been improving in recent years with continued upgrades. Unfortunately, there have been no NAM upgrades since 2017 when they decided to move toward developing a FV3 based CAM. But we have seen several problems with the the FV3 GFS changes. So we are stuck with an older version of the NAM until a replacement is ready. If the FV3 issues with the GFS are any indication, it may take a while for a suitable NAM replacement. Meanwhile,  models like the RGEM will continue to pull ahead. The HRRR is often hit or miss in these situations with too much of a cold bias. 
 

https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/environmental-modeling-center/fv3-convective-allowing-forecast-system

NAM development was frozen after the March 2017 upgrade, and RAP/HRRR development with the WRF-ARW model will cease after the RAPv5/HRRRv4 upgrade in 2020. However, operational execution of these modeling and associated DA systems will continue until comparable FV3-based systems are able to give similar performance.

 

Thanks for posting this .... great info. I've noticed that RGEM has been excellent the last several years. It's usually the model I trust the most with snow amounts.

[terrapin8100]

About 1.25" here. I'll take it. Still snowing lightly. 32°

[nycwinter]

24 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

We had a storm last week

great rain and wind storm probably will be the highlight of the winter for nyc..

[HeadInTheClouds]

It was all snow here, not a lot but looks nice. Picked up .5 inch for a whopping 7 for the season. 31 right now with some sun. 

[stemwinder]

6 minutes ago, terrapin8100 said:

About 1.25" here. I'll take it. Still snowing lightly. 32°

Nice picture.  Down here in W Windsor NJ, it was nice to see flakes fly, but NADA, as far as any snow sticking.  Not even on the trees.  Enjoy your pittance, up there, since it's more than most of us got, I'll warrant.

[kat5hurricane]

Looks like a mid March storm. White rain. The real story will be when the ponding freezes up later, it's going to be slippery out there this evening.

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

Just a coating on colder surfaces on the uws, and that’s mostly out on the lawns on campus, if you walked around the rest of the uws it doesn’t even look like it snowed 

[terrapin8100]

4 minutes ago, stemwinder said:

Nice picture.  Down here in W Windsor NJ, it was nice to see flakes fly, but NADA, as far as any snow sticking.  Not even on the trees.  Enjoy your pittance, up there, since it's more than most of us got, I'll warrant.

Hopefully we can get another storm or two this winter that the whole area cashes in on.

[Brian5671]

24 minutes ago, winterwx21 said:

A little frustrating, but certainly not a shock. We've seen this many times before where rain changing to snow behind a cold front doesn't work out. Last night's RGEM gave our area only a quarter to half inch of snow, so the writing was on the wall. GFS not surprisingly did a horrendous job with the snow amounts, and NAM did a bad job too.

the NAM did bail last evening on the 0z runs

[Maureen]

A thin layer of frosting on the grass here in Carteret.  Not much, but still nice.

[hooralph]

Not all busts are created equal - we could still beat downtown Boston's total from the 12/30/00 storm.

[jaquanweb]

Absolutely nothing barely any snow even on grass all i want is some good plowable snow

[winterwx21]

11 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

the NAM did bail last evening on the 0z runs

It did finally bail, although even last night's 0z Nam did give central NJ close to 2 inches of snow. RGEM actually correctly picked up that areas to the north would get slightly more than areas to the south due to the colder temps. RGEM outperformed NAM big-time with this event.

[kat5hurricane]

30 minutes ago, nycwinter said:

great rain and wind storm probably will be the highlight of the winter for nyc..

We had a 6-8 inch storm locally just a few weeks ago which is almost a third of NYC's annual snowfall average and is close to the January average. Some perspective is indeed for what a NYC winter should look like.

[HVSnowLover]

This storm was definitely very dissaponting, less snow than snow squalls or the recent inland runner storm. The writing was sort of on the wall with this one once we could see how warm it was and how long the rain would hang on. However I don't really agree with the sentiment that every storm this winter has been a bust.