Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:17:18
Speaker 1
Of our capacity. So welcome to today’s visit Satellite Chat. We’re really happy to have Rich Graham, present for us today. He’s the Sue at, the WFO and State College, Pennsylvania. And without further ado, we’ll turn it over to Rich.

00:00:17:21 – 00:00:30:09
Speaker 2
Good morning. Thanks, everybody, for attending. Of course, this is a really fun storm for everybody in the eastern states. And and to watch in the news. I want to thank Scott and Dan and Brian for arranging this.

00:00:30:19 – 00:00:51:26
Speaker 2
So we’re going to talk about kind of like where it snowed and the extreme sharp edge of this event. It was really a tough forecast challenge for those of us on the northern edge of the storm. I know our county warning area and, okay. And the southern New England area has had a lot of issues because they’re on the edge of the storm and the edge of the storm created like issues, plotting and really finding where the precipitation of snow really fell.

00:00:51:26 – 00:01:09:06
Speaker 2
That was very difficult when you get to the data, the storm evolution, we’ll look at it, from kind of the her reflectivity surface plots to get a first guess of how the storm evolved and how that relate it back to some satellite imagery. We’ll look at the anomalies in the role they may have played in identifying an historic storm.

00:01:09:09 – 00:01:26:08
Speaker 2
And then we’ll hit on some of these, forecast issues. I already mentioned here. But with, you know, the main threat area was pretty well predicted with about 4 to 5 days of really good predictability. But on the northern edge of the storm from the Ohio Valley all the way across central Pennsylvania into northern, so I should say southern New England, it was kind of problematic.

00:01:26:08 – 00:01:43:27
Speaker 2
So this is what the modus image looked like of the snow. You can see the extremely sharp edge, actually, the snow end up getting into the Boston area, which people said it but wouldn’t initially. But you can see the really good swath of heavy snow and the intense, heavy snow and, Maryland and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

00:01:44:00 – 00:02:01:15
Speaker 2
And this is a first guest snow analysis that took a lot of time to really, I call it the hanger analysis. At least I was an intern in our office who did this. And we a lot of people spent a lot of time and effort trying to refine what the snow look like as some of the grid data, some of these features, you see these darker red with the snowfall exceeding 30in.

00:02:01:15 – 00:02:21:27
Speaker 2
They were really hard, and there was actually a couple of places down in West Virginia with this. Snow was over 40in. It was really hard to get a good solid analysis. And some of the snow was, showing the analysis. And I analyze products too far north. Here’s an example of the, this is the stage four data, and it has, you know, two millimeters of qpf in areas where really there was no measurable qpf.

00:02:21:27 – 00:02:42:22
Speaker 2
We know that was just mostly traces in some of these areas. And that affected the some of the snowfall analysis. This is the national snow site, and it had snow in areas on the northern fringes that we know really didn’t happen. And so, like here locally, we had an intense gradient of snowfall in our valley, ranging from about eight and a half to ten inches, pushed up against the mountains in the southern part of our county.

00:02:42:25 – 00:02:59:02
Speaker 2
And you moved in about 8 or 9 miles, and snow fell to about 6 to 8in. And then you move that ten miles and snowfall was three. And if you go much further north in our county, even the southern half, our county should say snowfall dropped off to almost the trace. So we can see that just to keep it from the snow is slightly exaggerated.

00:02:59:02 – 00:03:15:28
Speaker 2
Most of the tools we use so from an observation is the mode is really an awesome tool to see at the end of the event. Just with a sharp northern edge of this event looks like, our tools to get in the ground. Truth, I think a little bit difficult. And we ended up using Lisa’s analysis to get a first cut of this.

00:03:15:28 – 00:03:41:27
Speaker 2
And, basically there was some issues with some of the satellite weather radar estimated Qpf and CuPy fields. We had. So it was really difficult just to get what the real ground truth was. And a lot of places we try to try to plot the text data from all the different sites. And it was prohibitive because clearly social media, and, and the historic nature of the event led to impressive amounts of observations, which it really was hard to just look at text products without some tools to zoom in regionally.

00:03:42:00 – 00:04:02:17
Speaker 2
It was prohibitive to show on a regional scale. So this is kind of a large scale evolution. From the her. I use the zero hour forecast for the her. And I actually used the the first guesstimate radar reflectivity that the her has is and it was a pretty impressive evolution. The storm probably the feature of note that a lot of people latched onto during the event was this little coastal low that tucked in here.

00:04:02:17 – 00:04:18:27
Speaker 2
And we’ll see in some of the satellite imagery late in the event. And, the precept shield obviously gets up further north into parts of Pennsylvania and, into southern New England than people initially had thought it. It was a really close call, a lot of edge issues and conflicts with this rapid GFS and that you see better.

00:04:18:29 – 00:04:35:24
Speaker 2
It was an interesting case where consensus was your best tool. So this a little low. It’s going to disappear. It’ll come back. But this is the evolution of the cyclone from the hurricane every hour showing the evolution of the cyclone and the snow bands roughly on the East Coast. This little impressive little tight little cyclone really was an issue.

00:04:35:24 – 00:04:57:17
Speaker 2
An issue to, I think for forecasters and. Well, I we live right about here and I we got a little bit into the moderate snow briefly. I ended up with just under six inches in my house, but you go about 20 miles south and people have 19. They go about 20 miles north. And if you people had like 2 or 3in to zero inches of snow, really sharp cutoff.

00:04:57:19 – 00:05:17:24
Speaker 2
And there’s that little tucked in low there, you know, probably enhanced some of the inflow in the Delmarva and then probably into the, into parts of Maryland. And there were some intense bands in the strong easterly flow that moved into New York City, went to their 10th list and their all time record snowfall. And, this is what the CFR this is 32 climate data.

00:05:17:26 – 00:05:33:20
Speaker 2
It really never captured that little feature off the Delmarva. Well had a much broader cyclone. But you can see how two things of interest that had a and a cyclone to the north was, was pretty strong, slightly above normal. They’ve got the the rise anomalies here are slightly above normal surface pressures and a really deep cyclone.

00:05:33:22 – 00:05:49:29
Speaker 2
And if you look at this in the heard any see the cyclone was you know much more intense. So we what we now say to you it was kind of dictates what your scenario will look like. And this is the 850 witnessed in the CFS. And then you can see the the mint green frosting colors. Here are six sigma we winds.

00:05:49:29 – 00:06:11:26
Speaker 2
And you don’t see those a lot, but we clearly saw them with Sandy over, over a broad area. Just kind of one of the first times as far north, we saw, six Sigma U wins. Over the years, we’ve come to know that we get about minus four sigma, easterly flow. Is that the Rocky Mountains in the winter, storms usually get a, you know, a meteorologically, sometimes a climatological, a significant snow or a winter storm event.

00:06:11:26 – 00:06:31:21
Speaker 2
And it clearly this one places have like a, a season to a seasons and a half worth of snow in one day. It’s clearly both meteorological and climatological significant. So and this is the GFS forecasts. This is the ensemble mean. And you can see the GFS that sort of a closer was forecasting six single wins. And it did the same thing in Sandy.

00:06:31:24 – 00:06:49:10
Speaker 2
And it really strong flow is forecast aimed right at the Mid-Atlantic region. You can see it this is from the 19th. This is from the 20th. And then this is from the 12 on the 20th. And we move to the 21st. And then we get to the 12 the on the 21st. These really come the area at least with high confidence where the water was going to be.

00:06:49:10 – 00:07:17:02
Speaker 2
This potential meteorological and climate to the significant event. And this just shows the 850, temperature field from the, CFS and you can see that there was a little Arctic boundary stuck, just to the north of the region that fed into the, system. And it was a warm intrusion. So it was kind of a classic marathon development, and it actually created abnormally cold conditions, actually, in the southeast United States, as the storm wound up.

00:07:17:04 – 00:07:39:25
Speaker 2
And you can see there was some incredibly sharp error clinics on which the satellite imagery will kind of make clear to us. So kind of an interim thing. This clearly was a climatological significant event where we had many sites that had at least one season’s worth of snowfall in a day. The strong cyclone flow, it’s kind of something we kind of used to seeing, and we know that it’s usually an indicator of a significant event.

00:07:40:03 – 00:07:57:19
Speaker 2
The CFS, but the analysis wasn’t as defined and sharp as the three kilometer. So the resolution for data use always matters, whether it’s forecasting or analyzing. And I think, you know, as we saw, the already the anomalies kind of did provide some context to forecasters. They helped with the intensity and the extreme potential of this event.

00:07:57:19 – 00:08:17:12
Speaker 2
And, I think the you win is kind of a feature we’ve become used to identifying with Meteorologically. I climb a lot of the significant events. So this is just shows the evolution of the early part of the storm based on our neck of the woods. When the storm came out of the Ohio Valley, the evolution of the infrared clouds, you can see the snow band, the evolution of the storm, and the enhanced convection over.

00:08:17:14 – 00:08:38:05
Speaker 2
Hence cloudiness out on deeper, clouds off the coast and we’ll move forward. And this is the this is kind of the big deal in the United States. And it’s the intense bands moved, you know, in certain the New York City metropolitan up into New York. And there was some wraparound precip. And clearly this mesoscale structure that was off the coast here.

00:08:38:07 – 00:08:57:27
Speaker 2
And then this is a kind of a high resolution satellite imagery. And you can really see the features along this edge of this strong flow and this nice, cyclone. It was tucked in off the Delmarva. Just incredible resolution. You can see this really nice feature down here. I’m assuming you can see my mouse when I’m pointing it.

00:08:58:04 – 00:08:59:13
Speaker 1
There’s some like.

00:08:59:21 – 00:09:08:26
Speaker 2
So it’s it’s really, really nice down in here. Really impressive satellite imagery for, you know, short term and near term forecasting.

00:09:08:29 – 00:09:27:09
Speaker 2
And then this is just an evolution of the radar over, over the United States. And as the bands of snow moved in and you can see that really intense snow, New York City area, I guess JFK has 30.5in of snow, which was their record snow. And these these bands just kind of pivoted over the just north east northwest of Washington DC.

00:09:27:11 – 00:09:41:09
Speaker 2
And we were lucky here in our part of the woods in the beginning of this, event, there was a little fan to the north, and, it kind of brought some of the snow early on in the metropolitan area. And so we got an early, early band of snow that helped keep our snowfall close to warning criteria.

00:09:41:10 – 00:10:09:06
Speaker 2
Snow over the southern part of our county and some of the forecast issues the ensembles had, the storm and the big snow potential in the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic region. At least five days out, you probably would say there were issues with the northern edge. And that GFS forecast significant you with anomalies. And no matter what model you looked at, whether it’s the threat or the name of the GFC, every, every, every system, we had the extreme nature of the storm as it was being developed.

00:10:09:09 – 00:10:29:02
Speaker 2
So the anomalies really were useful. Identifying extreme events. I could have shown a lot of I couldn’t, I did not, but I did not show a lot of different kind of anomalous data that would have kind of indicated this. This red had more qpf and more shifts for the North in the form of snow. And so it was the furthest north, in about a day to day and a half out relative to other models.

00:10:29:03 – 00:10:44:27
Speaker 2
I think it was a little bit overdone, but it gave sense that the northern edge might be further north. And I think people who forecast on the East Coast from New York City to Boston, think the threat was, you know, had a coup if you would. But if in central Pennsylvania, the threat was way to where because it was kind of indicating 12 to 30in of snow here in State College.

00:10:44:27 – 00:11:01:06
Speaker 2
And we didn’t get that. We didn’t quite even get to the 12 and our highest areas right here in our county. But most systems had this initial heavy snow. They had this sharp gradient, and the gradients were really a serious forecast concern. And I guess it was easier to be in the middle of the storm than it was on the edge of the storm.

00:11:01:13 – 00:11:21:00
Speaker 2
Just always sharp. You always cut yourself on them, I guess. And I’m not going to show the, climate change here, but the the GFS was forecasting a record qpf event in the Mid-Atlantic region with about 4 to 5 days, lead time saying it was going to be like the all time largest qpf event to affect the Mid-Atlantic region in the, mid part of January.

00:11:21:06 – 00:11:38:20
Speaker 2
So it’s a pretty impressive thing. And the situational page, unless the region is worth your time to examine to see how anomalous that was. And there was this clear issue with uncertainty and predictability horizons on the edge of this event, which are always problematic. And I guess I know my office here in State College and the people had to deal with these uncertainty issues.

00:11:38:21 – 00:11:52:21
Speaker 2
They did really well. And I’m sure the people in New York City, the New York State and Ireland office, have the same issues. And and then the end it turned out that people in Boston had the same issues to deal with as a problematic issue on the edges of the storms, gradients that were all the uncertainty really manifests itself.

00:11:52:24 – 00:12:16:28
Speaker 2
So this shows the qpf from the GFS. This is the this is the mean from the GFS, and then it’s the probability. Well, actually it’s a 50 millimeter contour, where it exists. And you can see right in central Pennsylvania, the gradient was unbelievable. That dotted the approximate location of State College. So we were we were literally on the edge of getting like, you know, 2 or 3in of snow and just you move a little bit further south.

00:12:16:28 – 00:12:37:22
Speaker 2
And if you just we had about 13 to 1 ratio in a lot of places. And the I mentioned some places that higher. But we were just a few million a few miles, I should say, away from looking at maybe 25mm of qpf. And if sometimes the line shifts south and sometimes it shifted north. But we were always struck by this gradient in the Boston area.

00:12:37:22 – 00:12:52:12
Speaker 2
And parts of the New York City forecaster was really stuck in this gradient. It was pretty good to be forecasting this area, because it was a pretty consistent hit that you were going to get to. It is a qpf and it was going to be mostly snow. There were some models that did show some sleet. I won’t go into those issues.

00:12:52:15 – 00:13:10:24
Speaker 2
So this is the probability of that. And you can see we were in a real low probability here in State College. But we weren’t zero initially at least. And then the forms part of the shift a little bit to the south. And then we kind of like to come down these low, apparently the heaviest qpf kind of slid, you know, to our south, suggesting that it’s a real big record.

00:13:10:24 – 00:13:27:13
Speaker 2
Snow and Qpf would be kind of along the Mason-Dixon line or for the South. And they were they were pretty much out of the woods, at least for 50mm of qpf. And if we shift to 75, you know, it was it was showing at times as a probability of nearly three inches of, qpf in the Washington, DC area.

00:13:27:16 – 00:13:50:04
Speaker 2
This was pretty close, though, to, you know, just shift this a little bit further, one of the areas that had the extreme snowfall. So these forecasts were good if you leverage the uncertainty and sometimes we forget these are, calibrated qpf. But I think overall these were fantastic forecasts. But but, you know, just on the northern and western fringes, there were some serious forecast issues and you could do the same diagnosis in the Ohio and the Ohio Valley and see how Louisville was on the edge.

00:13:50:04 – 00:14:08:28
Speaker 2
And they kind of over predicted the snow in Louisville. But just to the south of Lexington, they had well over a foot of snow that these adjusters presented with a storm throughout its history. And, this is the sheriff. I just changed models. And, you can see an event in here. And it actually started pushing things further north, and the one inch was even further north of this.

00:14:09:00 – 00:14:27:24
Speaker 2
And, it was pretty impressive. This is the this I have two FS plumes here. One of them is and I chose State College because we were on the edge of the storm. This is 20 18th of January, and there was some hints that we were going to have, you know, 2.7in of liquid fall and snow. You know, it’s a 10 to 1 and a guess.

00:14:27:24 – 00:14:47:04
Speaker 2
We’re looking at 27in of snow. Of course, our snow ratios were more like about, 13 at least the mine was at about 13 to 1 when I melted my precipitation down. But because of a huge spread, you know, which, you know, this is sort of been under dispersive, forecast system. But in this case, it was pretty had a pretty big dispersion.

00:14:47:06 – 00:15:19:13
Speaker 2
But you can see the summit, the snowfall ranged from about 0.07 from this event to, two, six, six. So big range, you know. So you probably going to have the, you know, 0 to 20, 30 to the snow. So then late at the event near the impact shield shifted south and you can see, the at very this is the event that it basically on the 21st of January, it started to give up on the event and I had I actually did the math discussion at Penn State, at noon that day and before the 12, you guys came in.

00:15:19:13 – 00:15:37:18
Speaker 2
So looking like it was we were going to be just on the northern edge and miss it in this model. And then this is just shows up on the 12 on the 20s, the GFS began to show an increased chance at least of a an advisory category. Snow and our office originally put the warnings one county south of here and they put advisories here.

00:15:37:20 – 00:15:53:28
Speaker 2
And it wasn’t until the the realm of the her that they began to realize the potential threat was shifting a little further north. And based on the combination of radar on the her the people locally here actually upgraded our county to a warning in the evening hours of Friday. So they had a short lead time, but they hit it pretty good.

00:15:54:00 – 00:16:10:10
Speaker 2
And it was a really difficult forecast for that for our office. But I think they did really spectacular. I was impressed personally, but us, the sheriff and the sheriff was showing, you know, in the mean, you know, we will probably going to have warning criteria snow here, especially as it got down until it close to the event. It was like 25 millimeter.

00:16:10:10 – 00:16:29:04
Speaker 2
The qpf came right through our area and was 50 millimeter to our south. And so it was it was forecasting an impressive snow storm. But if you look at the gradient, the gradient in itself was a great for, for north and you know, had the snow well in to New York and it didn’t even there was no precipitation much north of us, let alone into New York State.

00:16:29:06 – 00:16:45:04
Speaker 2
But it also it gave people an alert that New York City and Boston will probably get more qpf. And I think on the coast, the people probably thought this rapidly, scored a Cougar and I needed some threat plumes. And again, I picked a college you can pick anywhere you want. I have an A link here you can go through.

00:16:45:11 – 00:17:01:11
Speaker 2
Charles Ruffo did a great job. He summarized about five days worth of plumes from the GFS and a couple days from the threat. And you can just see the evolution of the storm. But, I mean, the threat was forecasting an incredible event here. You know, that kind of one. We’re talking almost 14 to 30 to the snow here in State College.

00:17:01:11 – 00:17:24:26
Speaker 2
And that was just an unbelievable forecast that if you’re a snow crow including your feathers. But it didn’t happen. And then this just shows another forecast. And of course the forecasts were one of the issues the threat was to it was over disperse. And you can see the range was just incredible. This is from 90 on the 22nd and you got to make a forecast, you know, winter storm warning or not, if you’re using the threat, it probably said, I have to.

00:17:24:26 – 00:17:39:20
Speaker 2
I have no choice. But the ranges are an inch to 35in and no big deal, a little bit over dispersed. And I think we have over dispersive that some of that create some issues with your forecast. So so there was a lot of uncertainty on the edges of the storm. There were many issues we could allude to there.

00:17:39:20 – 00:18:02:17
Speaker 2
Just it’s unbelievable. It’s a high probability of the storm is quite consistent. At least our southern county warning area. We were confident looking at heavy snow. We also are confident that our south west mountains were going to get pounded in with places that had 36in of snow down there. We didn’t quite get the 42 and 40 inch a measurement that occurred in, in West Virginia, but there was a lot of uncertainty in the gradients and along the gradients and the edge of these storms.

00:18:02:17 – 00:18:18:10
Speaker 2
And I think we have a lot to learn about how to deal with uncertain ingredients. But it was a I think, I think a lot of us did fantastic despite these gradients. And I think this report probably had some value. It’s keeping people from completely giving up the ghost. So I I’ve given up on the fact that we’re gonna get heavy snow here on Friday afternoon.

00:18:18:10 – 00:18:34:10
Speaker 2
I thought we were just going to get a nice 3 to 5 ish snowfall. And if you lived in North Side, the valley was perfect. If you live in the south side of the valley, we got people got about 8.5in. I got almost just under six of my house. But so the threat from the GFS, the, they kind of like show different scenarios with the gradients.

00:18:34:14 – 00:18:52:20
Speaker 2
I think the GFS had a sharper gradient problem, was more realistic in its appearance, but had some errors. Then the entire three kilometer ensemble came in on on Friday and said hey, it looks like the GFS with a sharp southern edge to the south, and this is what the probability of six inches of greater of snow for the entire event look like in the end.

00:18:52:20 – 00:19:11:16
Speaker 2
Car three quarter on final say. Well, well, we know this wrap must be off foliage because look at this high resolution cooler than a three kilometer ensemble. Right. And then this is the probability of, 24in of snow. And it was it actually with a little bit it did pretty good. It was probably you could have shifted this whole thing, probably a 100 miles or 80 miles further north and probably would’ve been better.

00:19:11:19 – 00:19:34:21
Speaker 2
So even the entire ensemble, which we’ve come to use had some difficulties with the storm. So there were there’s clearly something, you know, there’s intrinsic, issues with uncertainty and predictability, and they clearly manifest themselves in this event because this high resolution ensemble was too far south, had the idea of a big snowfall event that just had it too far south, and it looked like New York City was mostly out of the woods, 300 on Sunday.

00:19:34:28 – 00:19:56:00
Speaker 2
And, that proved not to be true. So so during the event, I think the Herve showed it to have a, higher GPA for the North on Friday evening, which I think came into use and came into play, and it helped our county morning area, our staff, upgraded advisories. And the her actually proved to be too wet if you did, it actually had about 0.7, liquid here.

00:19:56:07 – 00:20:17:10
Speaker 2
For the event on Friday evening. We I but most people have thought to look at the rain gauges. Most people had about 0.47 of snow, water equivalent. Some people at about .0.58. I’ve seen numbers at 5.58. So we did issue some water for the South. And I think our ensemble showed that like Lancaster County and Southeast PA had the best probability of blizzards.

00:20:17:19 – 00:20:34:08
Speaker 2
But they tended to be a bust. We had blizzard conditions or we had blizzard warnings. And, the her 24 hours length would be very, very valuable to us. The limited 15 hour day to kind of was an issue, because you kept seeing the qpf with this event unfold. But it didn’t cover the whole event.

00:20:34:08 – 00:20:50:29
Speaker 2
You know, it’s tough to get it to cover the whole mesoscale event. So and clearly, large ensembles with this event would help us some days, I think I think the Her has had great promise. I think it helped our office and I’d better help New York City and Boston. But if it was just like it was just like, you know, nine hours longer.

00:20:51:01 – 00:21:10:16
Speaker 2
So this is a great carve into the carbon copy of the image showing the metro side step in blizzard conditions, and you can see the big winner, it was, JFK coming in at nine hours. And you can see in our county one of our, most of our radar sites have difficulty sustaining blizzard conditions through blizzard conditions for more than an hour.

00:21:10:22 – 00:21:24:00
Speaker 2
And the DC area had a couple of points that it at least met the three hours. So they had clearly had a blizzard. So some of the mornings, worked out in the DC metropolitan area. And clearly this is up in the area where they got the 42in of snow. So I guess that’s despite the intense snowfall rate.

00:21:24:00 – 00:21:41:24
Speaker 2
They didn’t have the winds apparently, but it was a pretty impressive storm. And they were clearly with a blizzard in portions of new Jersey right across Long Island. And on the coast. You always could struggle in some. It’s tough to be in a blizzard. So. So I think in the summary, I think this was a numerical weather prediction success story similar to 1993.

00:21:41:27 – 00:21:58:02
Speaker 2
And there’s lots to learn about uncertainty. And, we did I think we all did pretty well. And I will stop here and pass it on to Scott, but I left him a couple of minutes.

00:21:58:05 – 00:22:19:14
Speaker 2
Does anyone have any quick comments? This is a I have a quick comment for Rich or question. Yes. Hey, Rich, did you guys use the her ex on line at all or just the operational? Her I just use the operational her and I was texting one of our lead forecasters that evening, with John le court, and we were basically just using the her.

00:22:19:14 – 00:22:37:09
Speaker 2
We I only mentioned it because it does, you know, go out to 24 hours if it’s running. But, you know, we I you know, your sentiment though is Ben repeated a lot about the 24 hours. And when things are calm and normally go look at her ex and compare, I guess the excitement factor was too high. Maybe we forgot.

00:22:37:11 – 00:23:03:02
Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. So nice job. Thank you. I, I have the this is short course. We’ll send, just a couple comments. I guess satellite wise, I did a comparison with the the beginning of. February 2010. And, it looked like on the front end of this storm, there was a lot less moisture, with, the the storm that occurred a few days ago.

00:23:03:04 – 00:23:25:10
Speaker 2
But, there was a lot, of lot of deep moisture in the eastern Gulf, and especially over the western Atlantic. That got tend to get really sucked up. That the Friday, Friday night, Saturday into the storm, which I guess really, jacked up the, the, the the liquid, totals, as the storm got going along the coast.

00:23:26:10 – 00:23:56:21
Speaker 2
That’s just two observations I have compared with, the Snowmageddon and February of 2010. So I’m showing that that part of your PowerPoint, Sheldon. It does. And this is from the most recent blizzard. And if you look, you do see there is a lot of moisture in the Gulf that comes up the East coast. And compared to the oops compared to the one from the, February 5th six storm in 2010, which clearly had a link to the subtropics.

00:23:57:01 – 00:24:11:09
Speaker 2
You can see the plume coming up from the Eastern Pacific. So yeah, that’s a that’s a nice image. I just wanted to show a couple of things from the satellite perspective.

00:24:11:12 – 00:24:32:07
Speaker 2
So one of the things I put together, as I, I’m sure you’ve all seen this chart of blizzard warnings, but, shows a large scale regions of heavy of high winds. And I thought it Kirk, connect that to the satellite image. So this is a gray scale water vapor. So you can actually see the surface plots of wind gusts.

00:24:32:10 – 00:24:48:13
Speaker 2
So this is going to be cycling through where at the end of the storm and are starting at the beginning now. So the strong wind gusts start down in the Tidewater. And you’re going to see a real nice dry slot come up in the water vapor imagery. And the strongest wind gusts are right as that dry slot is coming through.

00:24:48:13 – 00:25:08:06
Speaker 2
So it’s 60 knots. On the on the Delmarva just as the dry slot goes through. And you can, you can actually follow that all the way up the East Coast. So as that dry slot in the water vapor is coming through, then you have the very strong wind gusts down at the surface, which you should expect, because that’s where the strongest thinking motion is going to happen.

00:25:08:08 – 00:25:32:11
Speaker 2
There are lots of nice animations on the since satellite blog. This is one that Scott Brockmire put together. It’s just the RSA imagery. So the, goes 13 was an or so for this entire entire event, so you can really see some nice animations. I’m not certain if this is streaming very clear, very crisply to all offices due to the bandwidth issues.

00:25:32:13 – 00:25:52:08
Speaker 2
But one of the things that this does show is the development of that 13 little low pressure system. Right? You know, between, the Delmarva and Cape Hatteras, it just kind of got stuck in there, which I’m sure helped with the, snow totals or the, the, snow in the deformation zone on the back edge of the storm.

00:25:52:08 – 00:26:11:03
Speaker 2
So really nice, animations that you kind of look at if you, if you’re unable to see them, in this go to meeting which, which sometimes happens so that again you do see this development of the system, which I don’t know if how well that was captured in the numerical models. It was hinted at, of course.

00:26:11:26 – 00:26:34:27
Speaker 2
But it was a very what, to my mind, looked like a very significant system. And holding the storm back, I mean, the think the whole thing didn’t propagate off to the northeast. It seems to have been shunted off to the shunted more off to the east. And you have this low pressure system, kind of, this low pressure system formed, see if I can stop it.

00:26:34:28 – 00:26:41:23
Speaker 2
Oops. I’m.

00:26:41:25 – 00:27:01:18
Speaker 2
So I’ll stop it here. So the low pressure system that forms in here, I think really helped keep the snow falling, along the immediate. If coast. This is another image. This is, it’s not often that you have a Landsat path right after a snow storm. So this is just showing the snow over the DC area.

00:27:01:20 – 00:27:21:09
Speaker 2
And I like how National’s, one runway has been plowed and part of another, but but not the entire region. So that’s just, some of the imagery that’s available on the blog post storm analysis. If you want to look at the, taking a look ahead for those are when there’s going to be a 1.61.

00:27:21:09 – 00:27:55:10
Speaker 2
If you compare the visible and the 1.61, of course, 1.61 is in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum where radiation is absorbed, it’s not reflected. So where so ice crystals absorb it, water crystals scatter it. So if you compare the visible where all the way to scattering, and you compare the 1.61 where the ice crystals are absorbing and not scouting, it really does pick out the, the, the it picks up very nicely the, the snow edge through, through southern New England.

00:27:55:13 – 00:28:23:29
Speaker 2
And then you can also, of course, make a RGB image that where the ice features are shaded red and the water cloud features are shaded white. So, I didn’t put a lot of imagery on here because it is all on the same satellite blog if you want to look at it. And a lot of them are animations and animations don’t stream very well and go to a meeting just to kind of give you a flavor of some of the things that are available to see, from a satellite perspective.

00:28:24:05 – 00:28:54:20
Speaker 2
And I’ll just add one more thing. So this is the blog post. Scroll up. So the first thing that the first thing on the blog post is a animation of the, of the moisture beforehand. And again, as Sheldon mentioned, the moisture is mostly in the Gulf. So there is moisture pooling in the Gulf, and that’s some of the moisture that got pulled out along the East Coast as the storm started to develop.

00:28:54:20 – 00:29:15:21
Speaker 2
So not a, it speaks to the forcing of the storm that was able to wring out all that moisture. Compared to the Snowmageddon storm, which had a lot stronger moisture source from the subtropics. So that’s really all I have to talk about today. If there are any questions, I’ll take them or any comments on, I’m I’m a native of central Pennsylvania.

00:29:15:21 – 00:29:36:10
Speaker 2
So the, gradient in this I was talking to Rich yesterday about to drive from Williamsport, where there was nothing 35 miles south and Ceilings Grove, there was a foot. So that kind of speaks to the challenge of this, of of this forecast problem. And if you go, you know, 60 miles south of Ceilings Grove with a foot, you get to 30in in Harrisburg.

00:29:36:10 – 00:30:03:12
Speaker 2
So, really interesting, strong to watch from afar. I’m not a big fan of shoveling, so I’m just just as happy to see it happening somewhere else. Yes. And I live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, and, I had a very difficult time about, quantifying the snow liquid equivalent to this storm. Just because I had a hard time getting my rain gauge and and doing a core sample, but, from cocoa was looking at cocoa rises.

00:30:03:24 – 00:30:27:00
Speaker 2
They were, sites that had had anywhere from, like, 2.8 to as much as 3.4in of liquid content, to the snow. So and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much, liquid content to a, a winter snow storm. At least while I lived in the DC area.

00:30:27:02 – 00:30:48:19
Speaker 2
And was this was the snow wet. I mean, that speaks to a fairly that that’s the interesting thing because I did go out and sweep away one with my wife, working Friday evening, and it was easy to sweep away and it, it seemed a lot drier than and it was a little heavy with much wetter, type of content of the snow.

00:30:49:01 – 00:31:13:06
Speaker 2
Or and probably on Saturday and, and certainly Sunday after everything was gone, shoveling. It was a very, very wetter content. And I don’t believe the sleet got up to me in the, Maryland suburbs of a DC. But I do know that there was some sleet, reported, either south of DC or from DC southward with this storm.

00:31:13:12 – 00:31:42:05
Speaker 2
And also, I heard at least one clap of thunder at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning. And that’s probably when there was a very, very intense period of snow. And that could have had had a little bit of sleet with it, on early Saturday morning. But, I don’t think there was very much sleet with the storm, at least from, DC or north, certainly north of, DC.

00:31:42:08 – 00:32:14:27
Speaker 2
This is the Silverberg from the Aviation Weather Center. I have a question to ask about, your principal Principal Waters diagram. Did anybody notice during the developing stages of the storm on Friday, the coastal front off the Carolinas, it it because that coastal front know had air ingesting into the system with 20 Celsius dew points. And so a lot of the a lot of the moisture was not from the Gulf, it was from air coming from around the east and picked up off the Atlantic and crossing the Gulf Stream.

00:32:15:00 – 00:32:40:03
Speaker 2
You’re right. You’re absolutely right. And, a lot of that moisture was coming on the the western Atlantic. And that as that frontal boundary that was, just off the coast and down to the Carolinas. But it was also a very high, intense blob of very high moisture in the east, the southeast portion of the Gulf of Mexico, that, the 700 to 500 millibar level cut got picked up and sucked up.

00:32:40:03 – 00:33:06:03
Speaker 2
Also, on, late Friday night and Saturday. And, I think that that also helped as well. Yeah, I agree with you. I just wanted to point that out because I think that Coastal Front’s feature helped keep the storm closer to the coast. Yeah, and pushed things further north. So just wanted to add that in. Yeah, that’s very good.

00:33:06:06 – 00:33:14:26
Speaker 2
Are there any other comments?

00:33:14:29 – 00:33:25:11
Speaker 2
If not, I guess I said thank you to Rich for presenting. Enjoy the melt, I guess. And thanks for coming in and listening.