Saturday, March 9, 2013

Saturday, March 9th, 2013- Morning Weather Discussion



I still can’t get over how much snow Northeastern New Jersey got yesterday.  It was truly amazing.  I guess that I did say many days ago that we would get somewhere between nothing and a blizzard, and this is exactly what we got, nothing the first night, and then nearly a blizzard the second night, and I outlined this possibility of a slow moving and intense multi-day storm 19 days before it happened.  You are never going to get these things exactly correct, especially on such a minute scale, such as my forecast end time of around noon.  The snow ended at 12:30 at my location but went on until around 3:00-3:30 in Northeastern New Jersey as that band just would not budge, and western sections of New Jersey only received as little as 3.5 inches while other locations received almost a foot.  Sure, I wish I could have guessed the snowfall totals a bit better, but honestly at my location I was saying 2-4 inches a few days in advance while the major networks were saying nothing and we got 5 inches here, and the day when they were saying 6-12 inches and I was saying an inch, we got nothing.  So, overall I definitely got the idea right, I just missed on the very small-scale feature of that band setting up over Northeastern New Jersey and then simply not moving and more important, the intensity of that band, which no model was showing except the model that had already completely busted the night before.  Oh well, no one is perfect.  Anyway, moving forward, it will be beautiful through Monday with highs reaching the 50’s, then on Tuesday a cold front will move through our area, bringing with it some rain on Tuesday, and colder air behind it for the rest of the week.  Wednesday there will be a chance of rain or snow showers and a chance of snow showers on Thursday as showers are likely to develop off the Great Lakes.  Then on Friday we will have a chance of snow as a weak storm system approaches from the west.  This system has the potential to give us a dusting to an inch or two of snow during the day on Friday and possibly into Friday evening.  Then another weak storm system will approach on Saturday night, again bringing a chance of snow for Saturday night and Sunday.  Then, yet another storm system will approach for the following Tuesday night through Friday.  This is the potential storm system that I have been talking about for a few days now.  This storm system could be a repeat of what we just experienced, as it could form into a quite intense and slow moving Nor’easter and there should be plenty of cold air to work with, so someone along the East Coast is likely to get yet another major snowstorm. 

4 comments:

  1. Mark, Good work on a tough storm!!

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  2. Jim,

    Thank you. I appreciate that. I wish I could have nailed it perfectly and honestly, this one was really difficult. The way that band set up over you guys there and did not let up was really something amazing. The European model did not indicate anything even remotely like that as far as precipitation amounts and even the short-range American model that I say nailed it, had backed down a bit at the last minute and did not have those amounts, so well, what can I say?

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  3. Yo Edge- No Meteorologist get's them all perfectly right. That's how mother nature puts a wrench into all the science. The evolution of these storms over a week is the fun part. You never know what they are going to do. We all love following you for what you do. Keep up the good work!

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  4. Thanks Mike. That storm was fun, but difficult to try and predict.

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