OT: Major Winter Storm for Philly-NJ-NYC Area (12-24" very likely) for late Sun (1/31) into Tues (2/2)
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In Cleveland we used to pay $300 for the year (4" or more), whether it snowed at all or not. Not in NJ, lol.
Yeah. Bravo to some of the Montgomery plow idiots who took out many mailboxes (and a street sign) on my street as they couldn’t bother to be more caferful and slow down a bit as they plowed.
I think it is mostly hype. Was reading on AmericanWx this morning that some models have it missing to the south. Maybe just some rain here. It is still early yet though
We had little snow here (4-5"?) but did have strong winds and flooding. I was outside yesterday watching CBS do a report about the flooding a block or two way from me. This is from the Asbury Park press....
Brielle Road in Manasquan flooded (app.com)
Brielle Road in Manasquan flooded (app.com)
Spike strips would probably be effective also, along with the threat of large bore projectile weapons.
haha looks like Sunday is DOA, I am old enough to remember someone here mentioning 6-12 Euro totals for Sunday less than 24 hours ago
BOOM! +1
Roads have been perfect since yesterday morning. We had a wonderful dinner from Genteel's last night and the little one is back in school. Thank you WeatherWorks for being accurate once again and allowing local DPWs to plan for the snow.
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Another +1
The storm wasn't a bust, the bust was the asinine forecast being pushed on this board by some folks.
You do realize when they plow its to the right side of the road. You know how far 20 inches of snow travels to side when plowed? In your case the road would be only 1 car width if it didn't make the road totally open.. If I see a plow that just plows straight I'll tell him to hit your street but that would be one big mountain when it stops.
They still cindered/gravelled here in our town up to a few years ago. They would have come around with a street sweeper/cleaner after the snow melted to clean up all of the gravel off the edges of the road.
You do realize that if the storm didn't do a drunken 15-25 mile wobble west while it was stalled CNJ (especially Somerset county) wouldn't have changed to sleet/ZR and we likely wouldve made a run to 24-34 inches. It really was that close. I weighed in at 19" here in Raritan, 10 miles north and west got 30+, 10 miles south and east got less than a foot.
We were right on the line but WW is nice because they start with reasonable totals rather than going for the moonshot like Mt Holly usually does.
And we got another 1/2" of very light fluffy snow from late evening through the overnight, so that brings me to 18.0' for this storm. That last 1/2" was gone by 10 am though and I think the storm is finally over after 2 days of major snow and 2 more days of lingering light snow, as the storm stalled.
One of the best forecasted major storms in a long time, especially for the NWS, looking at the map below (which went through Tues 7 am, so 1-2" needs to be added for most locations on that map; we got about 1" since then) vs. the forecast map right at the start of the event.
We look to have a minor event for areas NW of 95 with 1-2" of snow possible, especially N and W of the 80/287 intersection, but the 1" line could be as far south as 78 (and even a bit south of 78 out west, along 202).
The Sunday threat is looking unlikely now, as most models are showing suppression of the storm to our south, but it's 4+ days away and some models are close, so it still needs to be watched.
The colder than normal pattern will continue, likely through at least next week, as per the CPC graphic below, with some very cold weather looking likely next week (some models show it staying on longer, but I don't think pattern forecasts are very good beyond about 2 weeks), with multiple chances of snow, but too far out to bank on anything.
So much for WW prediction of 9-15" for all of Somerset County. The only measurement less than 15" was the one from the DPW employee you made enter 11" for Skillman.
...Somerset County...
Somerville 23.0 in 0229 PM 02/02 Trained Spotter
Bridgewater 22.4 in 1200 PM 02/02 Trained Spotter
Bedminster Twp 21.2 in 0852 AM 02/02 Trained Spotter
Basking Ridge 21.0 in 0551 PM 02/02 Trained Spotter
2 SSW South Bound Brook 20.9 in 0730 AM 02/02 Cocorahs
Manville 20.5 in 0200 PM 02/02 Trained Spotter
Hillsborough Twp 20.0 in 0515 PM 02/02 Trained Spotter
Neshanic Station 18.0 in 0330 PM 02/02 Public
Belle Mead 16.4 in 0200 PM 02/02 Trained Spotter
Skillman 11.0 in 0553 PM 02/02 Public
https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?afos=xxxpnsphi&wfo=phi&font=120&new=1&version=0
Actually the wobbles and the sleet had very little to do with parts of CNJ missing out on 24"+ - it was more the major deformation bands setting up for hours and hours from E PA up through NW NJ, while many of us got intermittent light snow for hours. I got about 2" from 5 pm Monday to 8 am Tuesday, when many of those locations got 6-10" (or more). Very hard to predict where those bands will hit and there's almost always a dearth of precip to the SE of the major bands, due to subsidence. 6" more and I'm at 24"
we were in Hillsborough plowing and I can tell you we didnt encounter 20 inches.
everywhere we went yesterday was in the 12-16 range
we already have report from trained spotters yesterday morning from that area
you always are going to find varied storm reports especially with such a difficult storm to measure,
your continued bickering with T2k and then crying about it is a lesson you need in selfawareness and that is why you get blow back...i saw you trolling on 33andrain or americanwx for rocky hill/skillman reports..why? so you can try and prove T2k wrong.
very odd, everyone just needs to own their behavior, I will admit I am troll here at times, t2k is, and so is Numbers
everywhere we went yesterday was in the 12-16 range
we already have report from trained spotters yesterday morning from that area
you always are going to find varied storm reports especially with such a difficult storm to measure,
your continued bickering with T2k and then crying about it is a lesson you need in selfawareness and that is why you get blow back...i saw you trolling on 33andrain or americanwx for rocky hill/skillman reports..why? so you can try and prove T2k wrong.
very odd, everyone just needs to own their behavior, I will admit I am troll here at times, t2k is, and so is Numbers
The 20" report I posted above from Hillsborough was from a trained spotter and my guess is you weren't plowing 20" yesterday, because the snowpack had settled a few inches by then, but that's "snow depth" not "snow fall" so both can be right.
And you're simply wrong and a bit out of line on my question on snowfall in the Skilman area on the weather board, as my wife's father who died 2 years ago lived in a retirement community in Skilman, as does a very good elderly friend of his, who we became friends with over the years on our many visits there, too, and he knows I'm a bit of a weather nut, but isn't able to get out and measure, so he called my wife to ask me how much they got. Hence my request on the weather boards for that. Never did get an answer and don't need that piece of data to prove T wrong - already have - that's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Can you explain why snowfall amount and snow depth are different?
I get that spotters use what you have described as a "board" method, were you add up multiple snowfall measurements throughout a storm, but if that method typically ends up with a number higher than anyone can measure on the ground, then why is it used? What benefit does such a measurement practice serve? IMO it's a bad practice that only serves to inflate observed snow depth totals. Seems like something that was devised by a grop of wishcasters to satisfy their craving for higher snow measurements.
If you cant measure it on the ground then it didn't happen.
complete layman here, but my guess is that the board method allows meteorologists to better calculate the QPF so that data can be fed into future forecasts to come up with more accurate predictions. compaction happens differently depending on all sorts of other factors. it's just a data point.
One of my top 5 all-time comedies and same for my wife and son - we love that show...
It's a great question and if you talk to pros they're not unanimous on this one either. It's mostly what evolution said, i.e., wanting to know exactly how much snow truly fell and accumulated, somewhat ignoring compaction. Compaction varies hugely depending on the snow type and if other precip falls, so it can give a very misleading idea of how much snow actually fell and knowing that is key for calibrating models/forecasts. What the pros/modelers really need more than either of those is total liquid equivalent that falls, which is why I always argue for reporting total snow mass (which would make sleet essentially equivalent to 10:1 ratio snow), as total mass is far more important than depth for shoveling/snow removal/driving (and emergency management), but that's much harder to measure. Using the snowboard method is at least going to get closer to the precip that fell than just measuring on the ground does.
and probably all our storms back more than 50 years ago were not accuratedly measured and likely underdone
Ouch ... That's like an entire scrambled egg buffet on bac's face.
Oh well, not the first time ...or first time today, even
I moved a total of 19" off my driveway across three clearings in Hillsborough. If I left it all until the end of the storm, it would have been fewer inches but much much harder to move.
The first 5" the first night was very fluffy and would have certainly compacted a lot had I left it until morning.
What you did wasn't far off from the snowboard method of clearing the snow every 6 hours, so your 19" is probably a decent measurement, unless a lot of snow blew into the depression created by shoveling. Also, as I mentioned in my treatise on snow measurement, I only saw about a 0.5-1.0" difference between snow measured over 2 measurements (I only cleared the board when it started sleeting around 1 pm on Monday, which reduced compaction by the sleet) vs. snow depth measured on the ground as of about 1 am Tuesday. We've had about 1.5" since then for a total of 18.0", but the snow depth as of this afternoon was down to about 14-15", due mostly to compaction and a little melting.
3 W Belle Mead 14.0 in 0746 AM 02/03 Trained Spotter
Millstone 3 S 13.0 in 0551 AM 02/03 COOP
Skillman 11.0 in 0553 PM 02/02 Public
Millstone 3 S 13.0 in 0551 AM 02/03 COOP
Skillman 11.0 in 0553 PM 02/02 Public
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