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New England snowstorm memories.


CoastalWx
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Dec 9th 2005 takes the cake for me as my favorite storm. I left Brockton high at 2 pm that day. It was raining when I walked out of the building. By the time I got to my bus a minute later it was sleeting. By the time we left the parking lot 5 mins later snow was mixing in. Three mins after leaving parking lot it was a whiteout. Got off the bus at around 220 and had to walk in the middle of the road to try to get home. The walk home was the craziest thing I have ever seen. We couldn't see cars coming at us that were 15 feet in front of us. The best part was all the cloud to ground lightning that was striking around us. This went on for about an hour and I probably picked up a good 4 inches in that hour. My favorite winter memory here and it is going to take something insane to top it.

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Dec 9th 2005 takes the cake for me as my favorite storm. I left Brockton high at 2 pm that day. It was raining when I walked out of the building. By the time I got to my bus a minute later it was sleeting. By the time we left the parking lot 5 mins later snow was mixing in. Three mins after leaving parking lot it was a whiteout. Got off the bus at around 220 and had to walk in the middle of the road to try to get home. The walk home was the craziest thing I have ever seen. We couldn't see cars coming at us that were 15 feet in front of us. The best part was all the cloud to ground lightning that was striking around us. This went on for about an hour and I probably picked up a good 4 inches in that hour. My favorite winter memory here and it is going to take something insane to top it.

Back on eastern, my favorite part of that storm was everyone reporting thundersnow at the same time in the obs thread. The way that CCB intensified was something I haven't seen before or since.

The funny part was that the obs thread for that storm was like 23 pages long. I think that would only get us through about 1-2 hours of another storm like that nowadays....how times have changed. :lol:

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Back on eastern, my favorite part of that storm was everyone reporting thundersnow at the same time in the obs thread. The way that CCB intensified was something I haven't seen before or since.

The funny part was that the obs thread for that storm was like 23 pages long. I think that would only get us through about 1-2 hours of another storm like that nowadays....how times have changed. :lol:

The 12 th came close hundreds of posts between 1 am and 4, lots of simultaneous. Tsnow obs.

The severe storm on 2 feet of snow was a lifetime achievement for me, crazy Epic six week stretch, let's do this again!

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The 12 th came close hundreds of posts between 1 am and 4, lots of simultaneous. Tsnow obs.

The severe storm on 2 feet of snow was a lifetime achievement for me, crazy Epic six week stretch, let's do this again!

Oh yeah, there were a ton of thunder snow obs in the 1/12 storm. That was crazy. 12/9/05 was amazing for its time though because there were far fewer posters back then. That storm still had the most impressive CCB intensification I've seen...but 1/12 came close. I remember commenting how that 1/12 inflow was the best since 12/9/05.

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Oh yeah, there were a ton of thunder snow obs in the 1/12 storm. That was crazy. 12/9/05 was amazing for its time though because there were far fewer posters back then. That storm still had the most impressive CCB intensification I've seen...but 1/12 came close. I remember commenting how that 1/12 inflow was the best since 12/9/05.

The way that ML consolidated was sick, vortex like, as it spun up there were insane snow amounts, when the dude in East Greenwich RI reported 7 per hour I scoffed then he posted pics, my draw dropped then it was my turn in the MCS. Looking at all the loops there almost seems to be a merry go around effect with spokes of energy rotating around with insane rates. The final totals are pretty uniform but I remember the very large hourly reports seemed scattered around a center. Cool stuff for winter.

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Unbelievable shots, Will, telling the story of the Dec 2008 storm that ended tragically for parts of elevated SNE. Impact was minimal in Middlebury as the trace of ice on top of the 7" snow was the only sign of the destruction further south, but I was delayed for quite a few days trying to take Amtrak home...the train had to cross some of the harder-hit terrain north of ALB. Really incredible what some of those areas went through, rivals Quebec in Jan 1998.

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Unbelievable shots, Will, telling the story of the Dec 2008 storm that ended tragically for parts of elevated SNE. Impact was minimal in Middlebury as the trace of ice on top of the 7" snow was the only sign of the destruction further south, but I was delayed for quite a few days trying to take Amtrak home...the train had to cross some of the harder-hit terrain north of ALB. Really incredible what some of those areas went through, rivals Quebec in Jan 1998.

Thats a stretch as they had upwards of 3-4 times as much ice as we did in Dec 2008. But on the whole you are correct, it was an absolutely devastating ice storm. Inside the city limits here we had no power for 3 days and outside the city limits there were people who were without power for 2 weeks. Just a disaster.

Going back and reading the threads on eastern is hilarious. Many people were canceling the event as bad because we hadn't cooled to below 30F by midday on the 11th. Even I didn't think it would be that terrible by late the 11th. But we got completely smoked with temps around 30-31F because we had exceptional cold air drain with marginal temps. The lower dewpoints offset the latent heat release. Very rare to see those types of winds in an ice storm. That's why that one pic I showed has the icicles at like a 30 degree angle on the tree. You hardly ever see that in an ice storm. It was a perfect storm of events to get big ice with that setup. The low tracked nearly over BOS. The obs thread had people in CT/RI/SE MA with temps in the mid to upper 60s at 8am on the 12th while we were 30F and icing with no power.

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I found pics of the Oct 18, 2009 storm...while I was driving around early in the storm

That event, like 5/9/77, 10/10/79, and the NNJ snows of late April '83/'86, showed how climo-capricious the very early/very late snows can be. Nary a flake in my Maine foothills BY, but as we headed to IL (granddaughter #3 arrival) on the 19th we saw snow OG at both ends of I-84, shady shoulders in N.CT and the hills east of Scranton, PA. Then, 2nd day after the snowfall, we saw considerable snow in the woods along I-80 in W.PA, along with some trees broken by leaf-on accum.

Edit: Wonderful pics of 12/08; wish I some like it for 1/98 in Gardiner/AUG. THAT event was the most impactful wx of any kind I've experienced, and #2 just might be the NNJ ice storm exactly 45 years earlier. At least that 1953 storm is partly responsible for my lifelong interest in wx and trees.

12/08: I'm still not quite sure how/why MBY had the same rain (2", albeit after 4" snow) at the same 2m temps as ORH, yet escaped with 0.2" ice accretion and lots of cold puddles, but your dewpoint comment offers another clue - perhaps higher over MBY. I already think we had a thinner, if equally cold, sub-32 surface layer, so that the raindrops splashed in at less cool temps than down your way.

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That event, like 5/9/77, 10/10/79, and the NNJ snows of late April '83/'86, showed how climo-capricious the very early/very late snows can be. Nary a flake in my Maine foothills BY, but as we headed to IL (granddaughter #3 arrival) on the 19th we saw snow OG at both ends of I-84, shady shoulders in N.CT and the hills east of Scranton, PA. Then, 2nd day after the snowfall, we saw considerable snow in the woods along I-80 in W.PA, along with some trees broken by leaf-on accum.

Edit: Wonderful pics of 12/08; wish I some like it for 1/98 in Gardiner/AUG. THAT event was the most impactful wx of any kind I've experienced, and #2 just might be the NNJ ice storm exactly 45 years earlier. At least that 1953 storm is partly responsible for my lifelong interest in wx and trees.

12/08: I'm still not quite sure how/why MBY had the same rain (2", albeit after 4" snow) at the same 2m temps as ORH, yet escaped with 0.2" ice accretion and lots of cold puddles, but your dewpoint comment offers another clue - perhaps higher over MBY. I already think we had a thinner, if equally cold, sub-32 surface layer, so that the raindrops splashed in at less cool temps than down your way.

How did you do in late April 1983? We got a couple of inches of snow here on the 19th-20th, and it was my latest accumulating snow ever. N NJ got close to 20 inches I think-- I know the Poconos did. Albany was crushed!

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November 8th actually. I was kind of bummed because I just missed getting a couple inches. The best was in CT.

We even had some snow here but it didnt stick-- still, it's the first time I've seen even snow in the air in November in over 15 years!

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  • 1 month later...

We got 20" of absolute cement in Middlebury VT from the 2/24 event, but the snowpack was devastated quickly by the heavy rain that followed in the 2/25 retrograde Snowicane.

Yeah that was a sick couple of days, even with the mixed crap that fell after the 24th... the summit of Mansfield had like 5-6" of liquid in a 72 hour period, with a net gain of 3 feet of snowpack. We got over 30" on the 23-24th (due to colder temps up high, better ratios, only 22-24" of cement down lower) followed by another 10" on the 25th then like 2" of freezing rain. It was like a storm cycle out of the Cascades or Sierra with tight snow levels and mixed precip but generally just a very moist flow.

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fun reading the discussion before the storm

http://www.easternus...n/page__st__180

Thanks for posting that... that smoked a lot of folks in a very surprising way. There was no indication that much of the interior was going to get 1-2 feet and some higher terrain spots more. That was when the Catskills, Logan11, and Southern VT got like 5 feet in a couple days.

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Thanks for posting that... that smoked a lot of folks in a very surprising way. There was no indication that much of the interior was going to get 1-2 feet and some higher terrain spots more. That was when the Catskills, Logan11, and Southern VT got like 5 feet in a couple days.

The TV forecasts were awful

http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?/topic/225781-sne-22210-waiting-for-the-wheels-to-turn/page__view__findpost__p__4691496

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What did you wind up getting from the first storm? 10-12"? We got 14" before the turn to rain iirc

The Friday night storm was much better for me. Did not expect that much and WaWa was awesome in the falling snow

I had 11.5" I think in the first storm. It could have been a hell of a lot more too. It really wasn't supposed to change to rain until after noon, but it changed over in mid-morning.

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The TV forecasts were awful

http://www.easternus...ost__p__4691496

What did you end up with in that after all those 2-4" or 3-5" TV forecasts?

Up here I remember no one talking about that... I don't even think I was really paying attention until later that evening when I started seeing 1.5" QPF amounts showing up but still didn't believe it. Even that was a little low though as like NZucker I had around 20" of absolute tree breaking, power-out cement. I still remember trees down scattered all along RT 2 between Burlington and Waterbury. The evergreens took a beating in that storm.

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I had 11.5" I think in the first storm. It could have been a hell of a lot more too. It really wasn't supposed to change to rain until after noon, but it changed over in mid-morning.

You called it pretty well...

That could have been a great storm if it hadn't changed over. Potentially 20"er... but whatever.

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