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New England snowstorm memories.


CoastalWx
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I'm convinced my town is just about the worst in all of CT for the shadow / dry air channeling down the valley effects. I've seen the HFD area do slightly better than here in those situations. My latitude makes up for it so I probably still average about 3-4 inches more per year than HFD.

 

BDL still averages 49" so you're probably the same. That's not bad. 

 

I'm just under 45" in WeHa.

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BDL still averages 49" so you're probably the same. That's not bad.

I'm just under 45" in WeHa.

Last year I did slightly better than BDL. The blizzard gave me a couple inches more being east of the river and I think I had about 6 inches more for the season but that was a big time longitude situation. The drive east on state route 190 was a bigtime gradient,probably like 70-75 inches in Enfield. 75-88 in Somers, 88-103 in Stafford in like a 20 mile drive east.

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lol - who would possibly be skeptical about a 72 hour forecast for record shattering snows??????

And jeez... 1 comment about OES and you get all bent out of shape.

lol yeah just one comment, except it happened, either take my word for it or don't. Oddly I don't make jokes about things you report
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The only thing I can think of, is SE winds aloft and a coastal front? What day was this? I honestly can't picture the setup, Steve. Just asking.

extreme Artic cold with a 10 mile per hour wind. I am not making it up, believe me. I just can't remember the exact date. If I can I will find it. And I was joking with you before.
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You sure the wind wasn't SW?

 

I feel like Westerly could get something on a perfect setup with a WSW flow off LI sound. Their version of BUF off Lake Erie. I do recall an event I think in 1994 where parts of the south coast of MA got a few inches on OES from WSW wind.

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You sure the wind wasn't SW?

I feel like Westerly could get something on a perfect setup with a WSW flow off LI sound. Their version of BUF off Lake Erie. I do recall an event I think in 1994 where parts of the south coast of MA got a few inches on OES from WSW wind.

think like early 80s
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You sure the wind wasn't SW?

 

I feel like Westerly could get something on a perfect setup with a WSW flow off LI sound. Their version of BUF off Lake Erie. I do recall an event I think in 1994 where parts of the south coast of MA got a few inches on OES from WSW wind.

 

Yeah I recall an event in the late 90s where we had accumulating fluff just east of HVN on a WSW wind. 

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The effects of upslope are almost nil where he is except for a wind with a good southerly component. He's pretty much neutral on an E wind and mild downslope on a NE and NNE wind.

We've shown this map before...you can see the black circle is where Tolland is and how the terrain looks to the northeast. The real upslope that occurs in the central hills is clearly in ORH county and NW RI...Union, CT does ok too...esp on an ENE wind. You can see how he needs a southerly component to the wind to really get any meaningful upslope:

SNETopo_Tolland.png

Yeah you want that look of what is going on from ORH northward...uniform topographic rises that can force a whole bunch of air up and over. The barrier needs to be sufficiently long to stop air from just going around the barrier, too.

Looking at where he is, on a more isolated bump at the edge of the chain, there's really nothing there that would indicate even on a southerly/SE/SW flow it would make much difference. There's still not a "wall" big enough to do anything appreciable in enhancing QPF in any way. You can see the "purple" areas on that map are probably the spots where any enhancement occurs.

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I actually most commonly see the orographic effects in ORH county during icing events more than snow events....since icing events often have pretty low mid-level forcing components and the BL is usually out of the northeast and capped fairly low below 3,000 feet...so we see that orographic "collecting" of cold/dry air on the east side of the ORH hills.

Yeah the thing with orographics and relatively small uplift (say 1,000ft of terrain change) is that you need to have a way for the air to "pile up" to reap the benefits. With such a small terrain change, it's not hard for air to flow freely over the "barrier." You need to block it up with an inversion and/or veering winds...like you said with a cap around 3,000ft.

I would imagine the best effects are with ENE winds at the SFC up to 900mb, but veering SW to SE flow above that...to really get that air to "pile up" on the windward facing slopes. Up here I get screwed on the east side when the veering winds are too low in the atmosphere as its blocked on the west side. I want my inversion and wind shift more at like 7,000ft...enough to pile up air but also let it get over the 4,000ft spine.

Often in a deep layer uniform flow the orographic effects are much less....I'm not sure what the profile looked like for March 2013 storm, but that set up didn't scream orographics to me. More like deep layer firehose and synoptic screw zones, not upslope/downslope.

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I actually most commonly see the orographic effects in ORH county during icing events more than snow events....since icing events often have pretty low mid-level forcing components and the BL is usually out of the northeast and capped fairly low below 3,000 feet...so we see that orographic "collecting" of cold/dry air on the east side of the ORH hills.

Yeah the thing with orographics and relatively small uplift (say 1,000ft of terrain change) is that you need to have a way for the air to "pile up" to reap the benefits. With such a small terrain change, it's not hard for air to flow freely over the "barrier." You need to block it up with an inversion and/or veering winds...like you said with a cap around 3,000ft.

I would imagine the best effects are with ENE winds at the SFC up to 900mb, but veering SW to SE flow above that...to really get that air to "pile up" on the windward facing slopes. Up here I get screwed on the east side when the veering winds are too low in the atmosphere as its blocked on the west side. I want my inversion more at like 7,000ft...enough to pile up air but also let it get over the 4,000ft spine.

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Yeah you want that look of what is going on from ORH northward...uniform topographic rises that can force a whole bunch of air up and over. The barrier needs to be sufficiently long to stop air from just going around the barrier, too.

Looking at where he is, on a more isolated bump at the edge of the chain, there's really nothing there that would indicate even on a southerly/SE/SW flow it would make much difference. There's still not a "wall" big enough to do anything appreciable in enhancing QPF in any way. You can see the "purple" areas on that map are probably the spots where any enhancement occurs.

I'm north of 84

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