12-26 East Coast Winter Storm

[Andy Jackson]

Looks like the East Coast is getting a pounding with winter weather.
Here's a webcam to get an idea of whats going on:
Wired WebCam

 

[Michael Riedl]

Yea and to think that like three days ago there was still extreme doubt on where this storm would go.

 

[Chip Redmond]

Yea and to think that like three days ago there was still extreme doubt on where this storm would go.

That is almost guaranteed to happen when there is great spread in the models. It has been on for the last 48 hours or so however, which is considered reasonably good for a system of this magnitude and there was plenty of lead time/warning for the East Coast.

Chip

 

[Jordan Hartley]

Very powerful blizzard shuts down the northeast while record low temps slam the south.
20" in central park, 24" in Brooklyn, 16.5" in Newark, 31.8" in Elizabeth, NJ. Those are some big snowfall totals.

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/43555/blizzard-paralyzes-new-york-ci.asp

 

[Stephen Levine]

Did any one experience lightning and thunder? If so, how frequent and in what form did the lightning discharges take?
On the evening satellite loop yesterday at one point before significant dry slotting, the low appeared to have a hole in the middle.

 

[Jordan Hartley]

"People are exhausted. They want to get home," sighed Eric Schorr, marooned at New York's Kennedy Airport since Sunday afternoon by the storm, which worked its way up the coast from the Carolinas to Maine with winds up to 80 mph that whirled the snow into deep drifts across streets, railroad tracks and runways.

Getting around cities in the Northeast was an adventure. In one Brooklyn neighborhood, cars drove the wrong way up a one-way street because it was the only plowed thoroughfare in the area. In Philadelphia, pedestrians dodged chunks of ice blown off skyscrapers. New York taxi driver Shafqat Hayat spent the night in his cab on 33rd Street in Manhattan, unable to move his vehicle down the unplowed road. "I've seen a lot of snow before, but on the roads, I've never seen so many cars stuck in 22 years," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_winter_weather

Save the data on this one. This was big!

 

[Andrew Ryan]

Did any one experience lightning and thunder? If so, how frequent and in what form did the lightning discharges take?
On the evening satellite loop yesterday at one point before significant dry slotting, the low appeared to have a hole in the middle.

During the height of the storm, I think 8 strikes were reported in Manhattan with at least one of them being a cg.

You have to remember this was a dynamically driven storm. There was no overrunning. So next to the strong forcing was also strong subsidence.

 

[B Ozanne]

Just got back to SW CT after missing the storm while on vacation in Vermont. Looks like we got 15-20". Easily the worst storm since the blizzard of 1996. We've had higher snow totals (25" in 2006), but nothing with this much wind. Any areas exposed to the wind are scoured to the ground.

Up in the Champlain Valley in Vermont we had almost no snow, but the wind created a ground blizzard for over 24 hours. We had six foot drifts with maybe 2-3" of new snowfall.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Check out this awesome video I found on the blizzard:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/jamie-stuarts-short-film-idiot-with-a-tripod_n_802492.html

 

[Kevin Cramer]

I know it's a little late to be talking about this storm, but I was in NYC for the blizzard and took quite a few pictures. I thought there might be some interest from the members here and wanted to share them. We were in midtown and heard 4 of the thunder cracks. It was my first time seeing / being in thunder snow and it was all in all a really cool experience. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Flickr set