As I had mentioned, I was way too pessimistic here, as we had a decent amount of heavy sleet and heavy freezing rain in the ~90 minutes after this post, so when I went out to shovel around 12:30 am, after the precip had stopped, I measured 1.6" of slop, which probably contained 0.5-0.6" of QPF (I didn't do a ratio, but saw a radar estimate in that range). If I had to guess it was 0.5" of snow (0.05" QPF), which I saw early, plus 1.1" of 2.5:1 sleet (0.44" QPF) and 0.1" ZR for 0.59" QPF. That's a guess, but I can absolutely tell you that this slop kicked my ass (and shoulder, lol) as it felt like a 5-6" of snow shoveling, as it took almost 2 hours. But on the plus side, I did get to meet allsnow from AmericanWx, who lives in Metuchen and plows on the side; he was plowing our street and saw me out there in my RU gear and asked if I was RU#s, so we chatted for a bit which was nice and then we both went back to work. The 1.6" was also probably more, but had compacted with the alternating sleet and rain, but anyway, it brings my seasonal total up to 12.8". Could be more next week.
Recap of 2/8 Event: As per the actual snowfall (which includes sleet) map, below, it turns out that the NAM/GFS models were right with the idea of more sleet and freezing rain for areas south of 78 and especially towards Philly/SNJ where they only got sleet and a fair amount of freezing rain/rain with 0.2-0.3” of freezing rain being reported (don’t have a map for it), but they were wrong for areas along/N of 78 (and west of 287) and for the 95 corridor north of about New Brunswick, where a mix of snow and sleet fell (0.3-0.6” of liquid as snow/sleet, compressing down to 1.5-2” of dense slush, which is more than those models forecasted). And most of NENJ (Union up to Bergen), NYC, LI, and the Hudson Valley/CT saw mostly snow and some sleet with 3-6” falling including 3-4” for EWR, CPK, LGA, and JFK. So, overall, the Euro model probably had it best for snow and precip (the NAM/GFS were also too dry) and certainly the NWS forecast was quite good, except for areas SW of a New Hope to Long Branch line, where almost no snow fell and more freezing rain/rain fell than expected.
For our house in Metuchen (and much of eastern CNJ), we had started off as sleet, but quickly changed to heavy snow, getting about ½” of snow but then changed to heavy sleet for a couple of hours, putting down about 1.6” of snow/sleet. This was followed by about 2 hours of alternating heavy sleet and freezing rain; unfortunately, my 1.6” measurement was after this period and I’m sure we must’ve had ~2” before that, but it compacted with the freezing rain falling, so my official report is 1.6”. As an aside, I measured again early the next morning and it was down to about 1.3" after compacting more, which aligns well with another Metuchen observation of 1.2" at 7 am - just goes to show how important it is to measure as close as possible to the end of the event, especially when there's mixed precip and/or temps likely to be above 32F either of which can lead to compaction/melting before making a final measurement.
Anyway, that 1.6” contained an estimated ~0.6" of total QPF/liquid (I didn't do a formal meltdown to get the liquid amount and ratio, but the NWS radar estimate of total precip was in that range for Metuchen, as per the map below. If I had to guess I had 0.5" of snow (0.05" QPF), which I saw early, plus 1.1" of 2.5:1 sleet (0.44" QPF) and 0.1" freezing rain (and our trees had about 0.1” of ice accretion on them) for 0.6" QPF. That's a guess, but I can absolutely tell you that this slop kicked my ass (and shoulder, lol) as it felt like a 5-6" of snow shoveling, as it took almost 2 hours. The 1.6” brings my seasonal total up to 12.8".
The next morning I also went over to the Oak Ridge Disc Golf course in Clark (I play there a lot and am on the Board) and shoveled all 30 tees (18 holes, but 12 of them have long and short tees), which have about the same area as my driveway/sidewalk, but it only took an hour, because all I had to do was push the crusty 1.5" off to the side unilke at home where I had to throw each shovel full of mass a few feet. I then played a round and tied my personal best at the course, which was cool: got a lot of extra distance on some drives that just kept skipping/sliding and putted well. which was key as missing a 30' putt likely meant the disc sliding 25' past the hole.
