1/21-1/22 Winter Storm OBS Thread

[GaWx]

 Update: Surprisingly, I measured way up at ~1.3” of melted liquid equivalent!

 Whereas I measured 2.9” of sleet and snow and many in the city were similar, the KSAV official “snowfall” is only 1.1”! That looks too low.  For one thing, their sleet changed to snow much earlier than mine did. Don even posted about them changing to snow. Also, it turns out that the melted liquid equivalent for the wintry precip came in significantly higher than earlier expected: ~1.33” per a CHS WSO met. It’s an ASOS and it had earlier reported only 0.71” per the hourlies. And they had only minimal ZR. That leaves sleet and snow.

 How can 1.33” of wintry precip liquid equivalent with little ZR produce only 1.1” of snowfall? I asked a KCHS WSO met. and he admitted the 1.1” looked highly suspect as being too low. He said it is an ASOS run by the FAA, which NWS has no control over. This is highly disappointing and cheapens the value of “official” records. How can that be the case with our current technology?
 Any thoughts?

 By the way, that same ASOS froze up in the 1/2018 storm and caused it to severely underreport liquid equivalent at only 0.23”. I measured 0.75! There was nothing they could do to correct it.

@donsutherland1

[dsaur]

6 hours ago, GaWx said:

 When I learned about the difficulty in dealing with dry ice, I decided that wasn’t worthwhile. Also, no semi-reliable recent model had anything close to danger level of ZR for outages here. If they did, I would have gone with plan A of buying bags of ice. But I still charged up the 2 power packs just in case because why not since I had them. I have 30 days to return them.

 What are you referring to about pattern wanting to bomb us with ZR?

It looked like goofy was showing zr in the long range.

[dsaur]

35 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 Update: Surprisingly, I measured way up at ~1.3” of melted liquid equivalent!

 Whereas I measured 2.9” of sleet and snow and many in the city were similar, the KSAV official “snowfall” is only 1.1”! That looks too low.  For one thing, their sleet changed to snow much earlier than mine did. Don even posted about them changing to snow. Also, it turns out that the melted liquid equivalent for the wintry precip came in significantly higher than earlier expected: ~1.33” per a CHS WSO met. It’s an ASOS and it had earlier reported only 0.71” per the hourlies. And they had only minimal ZR. That leaves sleet and snow.

 How can 1.33” of wintry precip liquid equivalent produce only 1.1” of snowfall? I asked a KCHS WSO met. and he admitted the 1.1” looked highly suspect as being too low. He said it is an ASOS run by the FAA, which NWS has no control over. This is highly disappointing and cheapens the value of “official” records. How can that be the case with our current technology?
 Any thoughts?

 By the way, that same ASOS froze up in the 1/2018 storm and caused it to severely underreport liquid equivalent at only 0.23”. I measured 0.75! There was nothing they could do to correct it.

@donsutherland1

Same reason the airport rarely represents what the rest of us experience.  I'd much rather see a variety of reports from around the area, but that's not practical, I guess.  I get a much better idea of a system via obs on weather boards.

[dsaur]

Hey, El K.  Hope you got more than I did!  Seems like Perry was in the good band.

[Daniel Boone]

1 hour ago, GaWx said:

 Update: Surprisingly, I measured way up at ~1.3” of melted liquid equivalent!

 Whereas I measured 2.9” of sleet and snow and many in the city were similar, the KSAV official “snowfall” is only 1.1”! That looks too low.  For one thing, their sleet changed to snow much earlier than mine did. Don even posted about them changing to snow. Also, it turns out that the melted liquid equivalent for the wintry precip came in significantly higher than earlier expected: ~1.33” per a CHS WSO met. It’s an ASOS and it had earlier reported only 0.71” per the hourlies. And they had only minimal ZR. That leaves sleet and snow.

 How can 1.33” of wintry precip liquid equivalent produce only 1.1” of snowfall? I asked a KCHS WSO met. and he admitted the 1.1” looked highly suspect as being too low. He said it is an ASOS run by the FAA, which NWS has no control over. This is highly disappointing and cheapens the value of “official” records. How can that be the case with our current technology?
 Any thoughts?

 By the way, that same ASOS froze up in the 1/2018 storm and caused it to severely underreport liquid equivalent at only 0.23”. I measured 0.75! There was nothing they could do to correct it.

@donsutherland1

Larry, there's alot of bad Data that is being used unfortunately. I spoke with the Chief Met at KMRX a few years back regarding the Issues. He said the FAA does govern the Official Airport Station's used by the NWS and that their Quality Criteria is not par with the NWS Standard Guidelines. Ie., they allow 4 degrees either side of actual for the Temperature Calibration.