56 replies to this topic

[icehater]

This storm moved into the teeth of arctic air. Storms are supposed to ride boundaries. This one pushed a primary into an arctic high (remembers Storm's unimaginable meteorological solution that the models advertised and none of us could buy) and look how that Ohio precip shriveled last night as a result of doing that. Now it's pushing a secondary into arctic air and only high ratios will produce big snows as the arctic air is drying out the snow and the ocean conveyor belt never really gets established properly. JB posted that folks complained that everytime it started snowing hard the precip cut back. Arctic air issue was the cause. There are certainly no 2-4" QPF amounts like models anticipated from our area to State College and then thru much of NYS into southern Maine. I'd bet most areas got 1" or less QPF. The other thing that destroyed this storm's potential was the 850MB Low. It destroyed the upper atmosphere cold and gave us sleet and freezing rain at temps that would have supported a historical blizzard. The storm never really came together. Had the 850MB Low gone further south and the coastal taken a Benchmark route this storm would have been huge. That's what threw off a forecaster like OKC weatherman on Eastern. It was the most logical route and should have been a textbook solution. But strange things were going on with this storm and the shape of the arctic airmass. Had it been a real traditional banana arctic airmass it would have force the right solution. It wasn't. Too much of it stayed back over the Great Lakes and too little of it nose dived south into our area. It wasn't strong enough to suppress the 850MB low so we got surface cold instead, hence 8-10 degree sleet.

Now had the secondary died earlier (which it should have) and had the 850MB Low gotten suppressed (arctic airmass was not properly contoured to do that, in fact one Nam map had 6 HPs in Canada the other day instead of one mamoth HP with a banana shape) then the surface storm would have been a powder keg moving NE. Lesson learned here. The surface storm had to move to the BM for anyone in the east to really get a monster storm and that would have been the coast, or the surface storm needed to be an inland runner - anywhere from just inland to the Ohio valley - and then you'd have gotten lollipops further west. Think back to the Ohio valley storm just before Christmas two years ago, the January blizzard that buried Ithaca in Jan 1996, the Chtristmas 2002 Abany blizzard or even the superstorm 93 scenario. This storm's only real potential to be a megabomb was if it was captured (1978 type storm) or if it ran up the coast the way it was depicted last Friday. 

[yankee2274]

Nice analysis, and thanks for all the updates over the last few days. Great job, you too storm and robbbs.

[Virgaman]

i enjoyed reading this .

Boy getting a perfect storm here is like playing the lottery, you have to wait until you win.

it seems like everything really has to come together like a perfect puzzle, who knows when this chance will come again.

[icehater]

Quote

i enjoyed reading this .

Boy getting a perfect storm here is like playing the lottery, you have to wait until you win.

it seems like everything really has to come together like a perfect puzzle, who knows when this chance will come again.

It's much easier if you have a singular storm like 83, 93 and 96. Redevelopments aren't easy. 

[yankee2274]

Ice, can this storm now stall? Looks like precip has been staying in same spot for a bit now.

[weathergeek87]

Quote

Ice, can this storm now stall? Looks like precip has been staying in same spot for a bit now.

It won't stall. It's scooting north..you will be lucky to see backlash snow showers.

[yankee2274]

Still snowing here at a decent clip weathergeek. More than snow showers.

[devilsfan0405]

Quote

i enjoyed reading this .

Boy getting a perfect storm here is like playing the lottery, you have to wait until you win.

it seems like everything really has to come together like a perfect puzzle, who knows when this chance will come again.

It happens more often than you might think.  We've had a big storm each of the last four years and five out of six.  We get the opportunities...we've just been spoiled recently.

[Stormchaser]

Good read, Ice. The main problem with this storm was in fact the orientation of high pressure to our north. Typically one would want a HP centered in eastern/southern Quebec, or near northern new england, for an ideal I-95 winter storm. Models hinted at this coming to fruition several days prior -- but then dropped that notion 36hrs ago placing the high much further west in central canada. A high that far west does absolutely nothing for us. With the trough axis in the Plains, there's room for more ridging along the east coast -- hence, the piece of the Polar Vortex was able to fully phase with the sub-tropical jet system. Remember my thread from Sunday I described the three scenarios -- full phase, partial phase, and suppression. At that time it appeared the partial phase was the way to go -- big time snow for I-95. However, it's amazing how the models shifted from a mid-atlantic snowstorm 5 days ago, a Northeast corridor snowstorm 3 days ago, to an interior NE blizzard now. Most folks fell short on accumulations NW of NYC as the 850mb low ended up stronger the progged. It remained dominant through early last night -- and even after the development of the secondary low -- the upper atmosphere was too warm. Not until just a couple hrs ago did the coastal low intensify enough to scour out the 850mb warm layer and change everyone back to snow.The sleet made it up into central NYS due to this. Note the map below:


http://weather.unisy...ce/sfc_map.html

Dual high pressure too far west to completely block the primary low from shooting nwd into the ohio valley. Once again -- recap -- lessons learned: 1)Cannot trust medium/long range guidance with storm details 2) High pressure needs to be in SE Canada for major I-95 snow. 3) Icing is he biggest concern with an 850mb low riding NE as CAD occurs down the appalachains. A further east track towards the benchmark would have occured if not for the poor HP placement. That was key here. I am pleased though with my call on no liquid precipitation from central NJ northward. It was obvious to me by yesterday morning this would be all frozen. The NAM-WRF is a much better model than the GFS as of late.

[icehater]

And here's your classic situation where Boston gets rain,maybe even 40 degrees plus while NYC does no better than 25 or 26. If the storm were more traditional and about 40-50 miles east it would have been shades of December 2000 with 12-18" in NYC and heavy rain in Boston. It does happen.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/recreation/...om=recentsearch

[Stormchaser]

By the way, it is not easy to get an ice storm right to the Monmouth county coastline. Another factor coming into play was the ocean temperatures -- barely above 32 degrees off the NJ shore. Thus, even powerful 20-30mph ENELY winds did not change us to plain rain. This would not have been a major icing event for Monmouth had ocean temps been > 40 i.e, a month ago. Low-level cold drainage very impressive. I started the day off at 28.2 degrees 7am Tuesday -- that was the high for the day -- temps were 25-26 by 5pm, lower 20s by 10pm. Surface temps weren't the problem -- it was the mid-levels. You need the entire column sub 32 for snow accumulation--most of the time. Pesky warm layer prevented this from being a major 12"+ snowstorm for NW NJ.

[winterbird04]

Quote

This storm moved into the teeth of arctic air. Storms are supposed to ride boundaries. This one pushed a primary into an arctic high (remembers Storm's unimaginable meteorological solution that the models advertised and none of us could buy) and look how that Ohio precip shriveled last night as a result of doing that. Now it's pushing a secondary into arctic air and only high ratios will produce big snows as the arctic air is drying out the snow and the ocean conveyor belt never really gets established properly. JB posted that folks complained that everytime it started snowing hard the precip cut back. Arctic air issue was the cause. There are certainly no 2-4" QPF amounts like models anticipated from our area to State College and then thru much of NYS into southern Maine. I'd bet most areas got 1" or less QPF. The other thing that destroyed this storm's potential was the 850MB Low. It destroyed the upper atmosphere cold and gave us sleet and freezing rain at temps that would have supported a historical blizzard. The storm never really came together. Had the 850MB Low gone further south and the coastal taken a Benchmark route this storm would have been huge. That's what threw off a forecaster like OKC weatherman on Eastern. It was the most logical route and should have been a textbook solution. But strange things were going on with this storm and the shape of the arctic airmass. Had it been a real traditional banana arctic airmass it would have force the right solution. It wasn't. Too much of it stayed back over the Great Lakes and too little of it nose dived south into our area. It wasn't strong enough to suppress the 850MB low so we got surface cold instead, hence 8-10 degree sleet.

Now had the secondary died earlier (which it should have) and had the 850MB Low gotten suppressed (arctic airmass was not properly contoured to do that, in fact one Nam map had 6 HPs in Canada the other day instead of one mamoth HP with a banana shape) then the surface storm would have been a powder keg moving NE. Lesson learned here. The surface storm had to move to the BM for anyone in the east to really get a monster storm and that would have been the coast, or the surface storm needed to be an inland runner - anywhere from just inland to the Ohio valley - and then you'd have gotten lollipops further west. Think back to the Ohio valley storm just before Christmas two years ago, the January blizzard that buried Ithaca in Jan 1996, the Chtristmas 2002 Abany blizzard or even the superstorm 93 scenario. This storm's only real potential to be a megabomb was if it was captured (1978 type storm) or if it ran up the coast the way it was depicted last Friday.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Nice wite up Ice thanks!!!!!!!

[Stormchaser]

Very interesting differences here in Monmouth county. Just to my north around northern Manalapan/Englishtown it was a mostly sleet storm. Very fine line -- followed it ENE down cr 537 towards Lincroft. The sleet/freezing rain line seemed to be right around Thomson Park back west to Englishtown/Rt.9.

[icehater]

Quote

Very interesting differences here in Monmouth county. Just to my north around northern Manalapan/Englishtown it was a mostly sleet storm. Very fine line -- followed it ENE down cr 537 towards Lincroft. The sleet/freezing rain line seemed to be right around Thomson Park back west to Englishtown/Rt.9.

Storm - even in the pix that RGW posted of Colts Neck there's a big difference. That pix is probably down toward the southern end of town because I have double that here. I'm as far north as Rt 520 which is as north as you can go in Colts Neck. So if you drove around I have about what you'd see at Rt 9/520 intersection.  BTW - light snow now and 24 and I never had freezing rain. No glaze anywhere.

[robbbs]

I can't add anything that hasn't been said. Talk about a difficult storm to forecast. A number of posters had said this would be a nowcast with tremendous variety of results over both georgraphy and time, and that's precisely what happened.  If anyone believes this was a bust, perhaps as a dissapointment of what could have been, but not as a forecast by anyone on this board. While the board posted the comments that DT, JB, LC, and others made, as well as the NWS forecasts of 20" for Sussex County, and the interpretations of the various model flip/flops , that's called information. In fact, I would argue this board questioned and had more accuracy in commenting about the storm than the pros. Anyway, we still have moderate snow in West Milford. Additional wrap around precip of varying intensity should continue.

[Stormchaser]

Rough sketch here of where I think the sleet/freezing line was, based on reports and driving around earlier today:

[Virgaman]

good to see you robbbs, its snowing to beat the band up here in poughkeepsie

[yankee2274]

Robbbs, lets not get crazy. Guys here, including yourself and storm were saying totals would be much higher, just as the mets did. The guys on channel 7 and channel 4 basically had it nailed. We have to admit that. The pros were much closer. Saying that, you guys did a great job updating us and telling us about the various possibilities. But not better than the real METS. Lets be fair.

[Stormchaser]

Quote

Robbbs, lets not get crazy. Guys here, including yourself and storm were saying totals would be much higher, just as the mets did. The guys on channel 7 and channel 4 basically had it nailed. We have to admit that. The pros were much closer. Saying that, you guys did a great job updating us and telling us about the various possibilities. But not better than the real METS. Lets be fair.

What? Most meteorologists had the poconos and catkills in the 12"+ range as of last night, and 6-12" for NW NJ. I don't understand your point. I think it's fair to say NO ONE forecasted this storm well -- fooled everyone. Lee Goldberg as well as Bolaris had NYC/CNJ/LI changing to windswept rain by morning -- couldn't be further off. I've always thought it was all frozen precip from Monmouth northward.

[robbbs]

Quote

Robbbs, lets not get crazy. Guys here, including yourself and storm were saying totals would be much higher, just as the mets did. The guys on channel 7 and channel 4 basically had it nailed. We have to admit that. The pros were much closer. Saying that, you guys did a great job updating us and telling us about the various possibilities. But not better than the real METS. Lets be fair.

Yankee, not to sound defensive, but show me one post where I said it would be much higher totals. Again, please don't confuse information with forecasts -- case in point, the NWS forecast of 20" for Sussex County. If we pass that info on, that's not our bust but theirs. Nearly all my posts said it's going to be a nowcast and results vary tremendously. As for the "guys on channel 7", I won't even respond to your comment because it's so off. BTW, approaching 6" of sleet and snow here now and snowing heavily again.