Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Buffalo to Get Even More

- Steve Casimiro, Editor, Powder Magazine, 1987-1998

The quote above is one of my favorites and one that I often think of during major snow events.  It came to mind this morning as I examined the snowfall totals for the Buffalo area so far, with maximum storm-total accumulations of more than 60 inches.  


At the moment, it's actually not snowing in Buffalo.  The camera image below shows the New York State Thruway near West Seneca, near the heart of the most intense snowfall.  This is a major thoroughfare and one of the best maintained highways in America.  They have finally carved a trough through the snow, but there's a lot of work still to do.  


A few miles to the north accumulations are much lower and the road looks fine.  


Although Buffalo can exhale this morning, more snow is expected later today, tonight, and tomorrow.   At first, the snow will be of the widespread "garden variety" type, but later tonight, the lake-effect will return with another raging lake band possible.  Below is the 4-km NAM forecast for 1200 UTC (0700 EST) tomorrow).


Bets on maximum total snowfall?  

5 comments:

  1. Jim, from your field work last year, do you know if there a large diurnal influence on lake effect snow in Western New York State, as there is in the Great Salt Lake? Or, is it more dominated by Atmospheric Dynamics?

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    1. We are about to submit a paper on this. The answer to your question is yes, there is a diurnal modulation of lake-effect in NY, especially of the LLAP bands, but it is less pronounced than found over the GSL and non-existent during the heart of winter. In a raging event like this weeks, I would expect the modulation to be weak.

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  2. 82 inches in 5 days on the Keweenaw...what's the big deal? Oh yeah nobody lives here.

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    1. That's decent storm total, but the snow in Buffalo also fell in about a day. I've seen unofficial reports of at least one location with 60 inches in 24 hours. That would be amongst the biggest 24-hour totals in history and it will be interesting to see what the final number looks like. The record for Utah is 55 inches in 24 hours.

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  3. Kind of ironic that the airport where the official weather stats are taken got less than 9 inches when 12 miles away Lancaster got 60. At the whim of the breeze, a five foot differential. The Buffalo area usually moderates over the course of the winter as the wind changes from west south west to north west as the season goes along. Where is it all going to go when it gets into the 50's through the weekend and early next week.

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