Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,586
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    LopezElliana
    Newest Member
    LopezElliana
    Joined

25th anniversary of the great one.


CoastalWx
 Share

Recommended Posts

Such an amazing storm. Rain was forecasted to change to snow around early to mid afternoon in ORH. When we started mixing around 930 and flipped completely by 10am, I figured it was going to overperform. But I had no idea just how much it would eventually dump. 
 

april97scaledown.jpg.dcb17dd1d889ee8aa084fe3562c2de25.jpg
April1997_1.thumb.jpg.850f5c51915bc44783df31b7eb3643c8.jpg

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

Such an amazing storm. Rain was forecasted to change to snow around early to mid afternoon in ORH. When we started mixing around 930 and flipped completely by 10am, I figured it was going to overperform. But I had no idea just how much it would eventually dump. 
 

april97scaledown.jpg.dcb17dd1d889ee8aa084fe3562c2de25.jpg
April1997_1.thumb.jpg.850f5c51915bc44783df31b7eb3643c8.jpg

The Mighty Mac jacket with the T bar zippers! The one you still wear! Love it 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This place would be wild right now if we had this haha. I always wondered how the modern day mesos would perform in this. 
 

The forecast I remember was for 6 to 12 inches even in the Boston area. With that in mind, the decision was made after school to stay at my grandmother’s in Hyde Park because we knew they heavy wet snow would be too much for her to handle. And I figured they would be no school. It really wasn’t supposed to change to snow until around midnight if I recall correctly. I went to high school in Taunton at the time and we just moved to Marshfield earlier in March 1997. It was last period, when I looked out the window and the rain changed  to heavy wet sleet and snow. I couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t supposed to happen until midnight. I didn’t know if this was kind of fluky thing, because I was old enough to understand that sometimes when precip came down heavier, it “brought down the cold air” as we were told. I left the school shortly after 3p and it was still heavy wet sleet and snow mix. Driving up route 24, this changed to all snow shortly after I got north of Bridgewater. By the time I hit Brockton, it was just absolutely pounding heavy wet snow to the point where I had to pull over because it was just caking on my wipers and the visibility was below a quarter mile. It was like this all the way I got to Hyde Park. By time I got to my grandmothers it was about 4p with already probably 3 inches or more on the ground roads were snow-covered and there’s already tree damage LOL. By the time dusk came, it became a wind blowing snow and it just started stacking and stacking. I do remember talking to my folks and it was still sleet mixed in Marshfield even at dinner time. It changed shortly after. 
By about 9p there was TSSN and probably close to a foot already. We lost power around that time. There was OCNL LTG through midnight when I finally passed out. I woke up around 5am and it was chaos still. Someone who attempted to plow the road got stuck and left their Jeep there. Even at mid morning it was still coming down heavy. I went to shovel after and I couldn’t  believe how much snow fell. It was well over 30”. I had no yard stick so I gauged it with a piece of strapping about 4’ long haha. 
 

They finally plowed us out the next day with a front end loader. I’m pretty sure that area just SW of the city was a local max. I was at 200’ in elevation on the SW side of the city in the firehose. Still to this day it’s my biggest storm.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Bruins pull-over starter jacket is epic. LOL

 

Yeah, I wish we had the more modern-looking radar, but even on that loop you can see a ton of 30+ dbz just destroying eastern/central MA and RI for long periods of time....it doesn't take long to add up when you have dbz over 30. We had TSSN when I was getting out of school around 2:15pm....the light was almost a purplish tint likely due to how heavy the snow was and being near peak sun angle...the thunder was only about 4-5 seconds behind so it was less than a mile away.

We actually got into a sucker hole for about 90 minutes to 2 hours between roughly 4pm and 6pm. But even at the time I wasn't worried about it because you could see the firehose starting to set up on radar...just ripping out of the ESE from SE MA and RI. What an epic storm that was.

I agree that would be crazy on the forums nowadays with the real-time obs of rain flipping to snow. My guess is modern NWP would predict the change-over better than back then. It would still probably happen faster than model guidance predicts though because when you have heights crashing like that, often the model guidance just can't latently cool the atmosphere fast enough compared to reality.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

In some of those pics, like the one looking at the house from the street, and also the one with my car and a coke can for perspective, you can see the depth. I honestly thought my car was going to have suspension problems with all the snow. 

Awesome pics Scott

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We had 7.5" in Gardiner but not from the big dog IIRC, but from a much lesser and northerly system running 12-18 hours ahead of the monster.  Worst commute in my 2 years of Gardiner-Farmington travel, took 1:45 instead of the usual 50-55 minutes.  Can recall listening to the bombs-away forecast for SNE while muddling along at 15-20 mph in a seemingly endless line of vehicles.  Scott's during-the-storm pics remain my favorite snow pics ever on the forum. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, tamarack said:

We had 7.5" in Gardiner but not from the big dog IIRC, but from a much lesser and northerly system running 12-18 hours ahead of the monster.  Worst commute in my 2 years of Gardiner-Farmington travel, took 1:45 instead of the usual 50-55 minutes.  Can recall listening to the bombs-away forecast for SNE while muddling along at 15-20 mph in a seemingly endless line of vehicles.  Scott's during-the-storm pics remain my favorite snow pics ever on the forum. 

Thanks man. Good ole-fashioned camera haha. I had to scan those so that they can be digital. There are a few missing as the original pics are somewhere buried...but good enough. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, tamarack said:

We had 7.5" in Gardiner but not from the big dog IIRC, but from a much lesser and northerly system running 12-18 hours ahead of the monster.  Worst commute in my 2 years of Gardiner-Farmington travel, took 1:45 instead of the usual 50-55 minutes.  Can recall listening to the bombs-away forecast for SNE while muddling along at 15-20 mph in a seemingly endless line of vehicles.  Scott's during-the-storm pics remain my favorite snow pics ever on the forum. 

That front-running system is the reason the big one was as good as it was. It kept the trailing larger 3/31 shortwave south enough to close off in a great spot for SNE.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...