The Not Really A Blizzard Blizzard

Basically there was so much wind the snow was blown into drifts which had the effect of compacting the snow.

I am bushed! I know my job isn’t physical labor, but today it was very draining. I started around 1:00 PM and went until 11:35 PM.

A lot of people do a whole lot more. How do you do that?

From a meteorologist’s standpoint today was very interesting. I know now there’s no way I could have predicted snow accumulations accurately. I think most people caught on to that viscerally. Basically there was so much wind the snow was blown into drifts which had the effect of compacting the total.

This is one of those cases where one plus one doesn’t equal two! It was possible to have an inch of snow one hour, an additional inch the next and end up with under an inch of snow!

How many feathers does it take to fill a bag? Similar quandary.

The wind was… still is at this hour… crazy. We seldom get 50 or 60 mph winds, but we did tonight and they were widespread.

I spent the my time on the air telling people to stay off the roads, but by the time I left the building the snow had temporarily let up and I made a dash for the house in Helaine’s 4WD SUV.

I took city streets instead of my usual missile flight up I-91. The main streets were plowed but very slippery. Once I turned onto the squiggly road that climbs my hill things became a little more dicey. The last half mile to my house had no visible tire tracks!

By the way, I stopped the car to take these photos. With all of you at home stopping in-the-middle of the road was no problem. Thanks.

Actually, I take that back. At one stop I had a little difficulty regaining my traction. A quick shift to reverse and a few feet of rollback solved the problem.

We had blizzard warnings tonight and certifiably rotten conditions. What we didn’t have (as I warned in a post a few days ago) was a blizzard! The official parameters are so stringent I’m not sure we ever could!

Maybe blizzard needs to be redefined.

The Buffalo Snowmap

Here’s a map from the Weather Service recounting this storm. The 1-3 foot area is only 12 miles wide! It’s not much more than 6-7 miles from three feet of snow to zero.

Earlier today I posted my Lake Effect snow story. If you read it one of the points I tried to bring home was how narrow these bands really are. Now documentary proof!

Here’s a map from the Weather Service recounting this storm. The 1-3 foot area is only 12 miles wide! It’s not much more than 6-7 miles from three feet of snow to zero.

Click the map to see a larger view.

My Lake Effect Snow Story

The best way to explain Buffalo’s lake effect snow is with a little story. It was the day Helaine and I got our marriage license. Because we were getting married in Pennsylvania we had to drive to Erie, PA.

This evening at 4:45 the Weather Service office in Buffalo relayed a report from West Seneca, NY. A volunteer observer measured 32″ of snow from Thursday’s persistent lake effect snowband.

I wasn’t surprised.

Winter weather in the Buffalo area is brutal. The city itself gets ‘only’ around 80″ of snow per year. The snow belt south of town can get as much as 150″. East of Lake Ontario, closer to Syracuse, it’s even worse.

The area east of Lake Ontario is the “snow capital” of the east. The higher elevations between Watertown and Syracuse, commonly known as the Tug Hill Plateau, receives of more than 200 inches a year. In fact, the town of Hooker, located in Lewis county, recorded 466 inches of snow during the winter of 1976-77! – source: National Weather Service Buffalo Forecast Office

I lived in Buffalo from 1980 through 1984. I will never forget those winters. It seemed to snow nearly every day even if only flurries.

The best way to explain Buffalo’s Lake Effect snow is with a little story. It was the day Helaine and I got our marriage license. We were living in Buffalo. We were getting married in Pennsylvania. The closest place to get a license was Erie, PA, about 100 miles away.

As we left our apartment skies were cloudy. By South Buffalo there were flurries. We paid our toll and got on the New York State Thruway. We passed West Seneca in heavy snow.

I was used to Western New York driving conditions so we continued southwest on the Thruway paralleling Lake Erie’s shoreline. By Dunkirk the snow was back down to flurries. Soon we were in bright sunshine. I remember the skies over Erie being blue and cloud free!

We paid our money, showed our blood tests (another story for another day–blood tests almost kept us from getting married) and got our license.

As we headed back to Buffalo every bit of weather was in the exact same place we left it!

From Erie’s sunshine we hit flurries in Dunkirk. Over the course of a few miles the snow ramped up in intensity. It was snowing heavily as we passed through West Seneca then back to flurries by South Buffalo. I parked under cloudy skies back at our Gates Circle apartment where there was no sign any new snow had fallen.

That’s the power of Lake Effect snow: Persistence!

Lake Effect snow bands are often just a few miles wide, but within those few miles snowfall rates of 4 or 5 inches per hour are possible. The strength of cold air aloft and alignment of wind decides where the snow goes and its intensity. The wind needs a long ‘fetch’ over Lake Erie to be effective as a snow maker. That limits where Lake Effect snow can fall.

As long as the cold wind blows the snow can fall for hours or even days! A few miles often decides whether you get feet of snow or just a dusting.

There are only a handful of places in the world where this setup of cold air and properly aligned body of water exist. Buffalo and Syracuse just got lucky I guess.

A Storm Unlike Any Other

I called and told him I was confused because I’d never seen this particular setup before. Neither had he!

dot greenwich camera.jpgEarlier tonight I took a quick look at one of the CT DOT traffic cameras on I-95 and gasped. The camera was in Greenwich-adjacent to the New York State line. While the rest of Connecticut was seeing moderate to heavy rain with temperatures mostly in the 40&#176s Greenwich had limited visibility with heavy snow. The snow had begun to accumulate!

dot westport camera.jpgA few miles up the road in Stamford there was nothing but rain! Even now, hours later, only the communities in Lower Fairfield are seeing the snow stick.

In retrospect the Greenwich blitz doesn’t change my forecast. It was scary to see–sure. The weather had done a rapid about face. It was all part of the forecast, but it happened so quickly and with such fury I was originally taken aback.

Let me qualify this because it’s easy to lose sight of what I’m talking about.

Something’s been falling from the sky since early Tuesday. One storm came and went. This is Part B of Storm 2. However, this unnamed¹ winter storm is so unusual scholarly papers will be written about it!

Thursday while Atlantic City was seeing snow Albany, NY was getting rain. Friday morning New Haven, CT will see snow while Bangor, ME gets the rain! Crazy.

90fbw.gifThe barometer is so low it’s approaching the range usually seen in hurricanes and tropical storms. We get pressure readings this low every decade or so.
Tonight, as the wind in New London shifted from east to southwest the temperature dropped 9&#176 in one hour! Cold air advection from the southwest! Isn’t that where warm air comes from?

Seriously–that’s nuts.

I called my weather colleague Dr. Mel Goldstein this afternoon. I’d developed my forecast but was unsure about one aspect. He’s a great weather historian so I called and told him I was confused because I’d never seen this particular setup before. Neither had he!

My concern was how much warm air would remain and how much water would stay on roads as the snow fell? How would this affect Friday? My guess is a great deal of the storm will just melt as it hits the pavement–not all of it. What does accumulate will be wet and sloppy and very heavy to move.

After Friday I’ll know better how my speculation comports with the real world. I am working totally in a theoretical world right now.
I am exhausted. This week has been a killer. There’s been no forecast where I could let up because they all were jammed with critical information.

Bring on the weekend.

¹ – As long as I’ve been in Connecticut WFSB has been naming storms. It’s probably a good promotional tool for them, but on those occasions when people refer to a storm by the WFSB given name I gag. These are people who also call the Fiesta Bowl the FedEx Fiesta Bowl.