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Nesis rating.


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High 2 at best...limited impact to New England. Richmond to NYC was a yawn.

Eh, I think to a certain extent the population from Little Rock to Columbia SC, including Memphis, Birmingham, Jackson, and Atlanta will counter-balance the lack of snowfall from Charlotte to Philly. Obviously, nothing can counteract NYC, as we learned comparing NESIS scores between last year and this year.

Because of this, I would expect a score slightly lower than the Boxing Day blizzard, but still a low 3.

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High 2 at best...limited impact to New England. Richmond to NYC was a yawn.

Yeah, Well I don't know about yawn. I mean Philly and NYC saw 7 and 9 inches respectively. All of pa basically all the way back to the Midwest will be in that 4-10 range with higher amounts in the plains. Deep south is the same deal with some isolated 10+ totals. New england is going to be buried by 10-25 inches of snow.

Yeah, it didn't have the highest totals ever, but the system isn't completely centered around dc and baltimoe, and if the storm misses them it isn't an automatic 2 or lower.

This storm had impacts on Atlanta, Dallas, Birmingham, Memphis, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and cincy, which all get factored in...it is one of the largest areas I remember getting 4+ inches of snow.

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Yeah, Well I don't know about yawn. I mean Philly and NYC saw 7 and 9 inches respectively. All of pa basically all the way back to the Midwest will be in that 4-10 range with higher amounts in the plains. Deep south is the same deal with some isolated 10+ totals. New england is going to be buried by 10-25 inches of snow.

Yeah, it didn't have the highest totals ever, but the system isn't completely centered around dc and baltimoe, and if the storm misses them it isn't an automatic 2 or lower.

This storm had impacts on Atlanta, Dallas, Birmingham, Memphis, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and cincy, which all get factored in...it is one of the largest areas I remember getting 4+ inches of snow.

Why again would a northeast-specific rating system take into account what happened in Memphis or even Atlanta?

Personally, if we feel the need to rate snowstorms (and that's a decent idea in differentiating the difference between a fairly minor event with just an very short-term impact versus a major event that could cause disruptions for a week or more)....I like the system that Beau Dodson suggested on his site.

Here's the link (also includes a very good looking ice storm rating system):

Snowstorm and Ice Storm Ratings

The only caveat that I might personally add is that impacts be slightly adjusted for region, preparedness, and post-storm conditions. In other words, I think they should be rated objectively (regardless of population) but for the level of disruption. For instance, the Category 5 snowstorm requires 16" or more. I think that it should be based on a severe disruption of 5 days or more. A severe disruption on the order of 2-4 days should warrant a category 4 designation.

So, in NYC, a Category 5 event occurs with 18" accumulation. The rating would depend on how snowfall rates affect any cleanup and the post-storm temperatures. In a normal event, it would be a 4, even with subfreezing air for days on end in the system's wake. The impact would be much different than an 18" event occurring in Memphis with a week-long deep freeze behind it. A March snowstorm (one of the two 18+ events recorded in Memphis occurred in March) in the South would generally be of much less impact than a January one because one could expect a rapid thaw to begin because cold air masses are moderated much faster and any type of southerly wind will make the temperatures soar. It is unlikely that such an event would drop below a Category 4, however, it would be unlikely to achieve the long-term disruption that a Category 5 event would require (2 to 4 days versus 5 days or more).

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Feb 8-10 1969, IMO, is fairly close to what final snowfalls in new England will look like...maybe a bit more in NYC than in this storm. That storm was a 2.

When you add in the south to that and the midwest, I would think that it would jump to a 3.

Just my opinion

I agree with this. If NCDC decides to lump the various stages of the event into one "storm", mid- or high-end Cat 3 seems reasonable to me.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the NESIS calculation only incorporates snowfall north of the VA/NC border, so the accumulations over the south wouldn't affect the score.

I think this will end up a low end cat 3

I remember looking at data points used for ratings from a storm, and there were points on the map in nc, so I would assume that those are included....also, I would think that 96 woul be higher than 93 if they didn't use further south points.

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Why do people lump in the midwest and SE to a North East Snowstorm Impact Scale?? The snow in Atlanta is irrelavvent.

I'd saw low 2...huge storm over New England-- not much elsewhere.

I think the goal of the kocin/uccellini system is to track northeast snowfalls, but also how those storms impacted the rest of the country.

That is why I think this is a three...and honestly, I think it has a CHANCE to be higher than boxing day the more I look at it.

Now, if you wanted to debate whether we need a new system to track storms in a better way than aerial and population impact, I think that's a legit debate.

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I remember looking at data points used for ratings from a storm, and there were points on the map in nc, so I would assume that those are included....also, I would think that 96 woul be higher than 93 if they didn't use further south points.

No, if you go to the NESIS paper, it only includes the 13 Northeast states: ME/NH/VT/MA/RI/CT/NY/PA/WV/MD/NJ/DE/VA. Having said that, though, they do include the snowfall contours for states outside of those 13, so maybe they get included somehow, but it doesn't make sense if you read the paper. Anyway, given that only 1 of the 4 major metro areas (DC/Balt, Philly, NYC and Boston) was impacted severely (more than 10" - NYC proper, at least, didn't reach that - I imagine it might've made a significant difference if the NYC stations reported as much as many ot)her places in the 5 boroughs), I'd be hard pressed to think this is more than a cat 2 - in some ways it bears some similarity to Feb 1969, a mid-2 storm.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/docs/squires.pdf

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/snow/nesis/19690208-19690210-3.51.jpg

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/nesis.php

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No, if you go to the NESIS paper, it only includes the 13 Northeast states: ME/NH/VT/MA/RI/CT/NY/PA/WV/MD/NJ/DE/VA. Having said that, though, they do include the snowfall contours for states outside of those 13, so maybe they get included somehow, but it doesn't make sense if you read the paper. Anyway, given that only 1 of the 4 major metro areas (DC/Balt, Philly, NYC and Boston) was impacted severely (more than 10" - NYC proper, at least, didn't reach that - I imagine it might've made a significant difference if the NYC stations reported as much as many ot)her places in the 5 boroughs), I'd be hard pressed to think this is more than a cat 2 - in some ways it bears some similarity to Feb 1969, a mid-2 storm.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/docs/squires.pdf

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/snow/nesis/19690208-19690210-3.51.jpg

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/nesis.php

Well as I said, it does look like the feb 69 storm, but it will include way more aerial coverage due to Midwest snows.

I think the system is designed to gauge NE storms, but also takes into account where else those storms impact.

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Well as I said, it does look like the feb 69 storm, but it will include way more aerial coverage due to Midwest snows.

I think the system is designed to gauge NE storms, but also takes into account where else those storms impact.

Didn't notice your earlier comment in the thread about Feb 69 - it's actually pretty cool that we both came to that same comparison independently.

With regard to the 13 states, you made a comment earlier about page 180 of some paper; do you have a link? The paper I linked is only 7 pages, athough oddly, in the text on page two they discuss snowfall data quality in North Carolina (talking about Mt. Mitchell), which implies that maybe they look at other states (or maybe they're considering NC one of the 13 and not WV - they never spell out the states). Would be interesting to get someone who knows for sure to comment.

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Didn't notice your earlier comment in the thread about Feb 69 - it's actually pretty cool that we both came to that same comparison independently.

With regard to the 13 states, you made a comment earlier about page 180 of some paper; do you have a link? The paper I linked is only 7 pages, athough oddly, in the text on page two they discuss snowfall data quality in North Carolina (talking about Mt. Mitchell), which implies that maybe they look at other states (or maybe they're considering NC one of the 13 and not WV - they never spell out the states). Would be interesting to get someone who knows for sure to comment.

I'm on an iPod so linking is hard on it...search nesis on google and go to the site and click on the big blue link that says kocin/ucellinni. That's where I found it.

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Haha, me too. I mean, I see people call call 96 the storm of the century, and I just don't understand how anyone could say 96 was more dynamic meteorologically than 93.

Its subjective, because you have to define what you mean by "dynamic." My most dynamic storm in terms of incredible winds and long duration (3 days!) was December 1992. Neither March 1993 nor January 1996 comes close to touching it. I also dont like the term "superstorm" because there have been several superstorms over the past century-- and, honestly, I think for overall impact, both November 1950 and January 1978 (midwest bomb) were FAR superior to the so-called "superstorm."

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