Always Sunny in Philly: Blizzard 2015 Hits & Misses
UPDATE: The storm generated a total of 1,360,000 tweets of the hashtag #blizzardof2015! At its peak Tuesday morning, more than 60 tweets a second were going out with that hashtag. Here's a heat map from TrendsMap.com:
UPDATE: Here's the final snowfall map from the storm. (Some of the Appalachian snow was due to the clipper beforehand). This is the best article I've read on the "lack" of snow in NYC, and you can read more quotes from non-AccuWeather meteorologists here. Final totals (highest by state) are shown below:
Auburn, Lenenburg, Hudson, MA: 36.0"
Thompson, CT; 33.5"
Nashua, NH: 33.2"
Sanford, NE: 31.5"
Orient, NY: 30.0"
Burrillville, RI: 28.5"
Windber, PA: 14.0" (Western PA)
Manasquan, NJ: 12.0"
NOTE: Additional stats and records broken are listed here.
UPDATE: Massachusetts has cracked 30 inches! New list of highest snowfall totals by state below. In addition I've added comments from our meteorologists on why Philly's snow amounts were so low. If you'd like to read additional quotes from outside AccuWeather, see Mashable's article or The Vane's angry diatribe, which pulls no punches.
ORIGINAL POST: 9 a.m.: Social media (and regular media) is abuzz with complaints that the blizzard didn't happen in their back yards, but the storm is still ongoing from New Jersey northeastward. Here's a look at what has fallen so far (7 a.m.) plus what's still to fall:
Winds have gusted to 78 mph at Nantucket, Massachusetts, and about 10,000 have lost power in the state. More info on our Live Blog.
Here are the highest snow amounts by state, as of 12 p.m. from NWS reports:
Framingham, MA: 30.0"
Orient, NY: 28.5"
Atkinson, NH: 26.0"
Waterford, CT: 23.0"
Burrillville, RI: 21.0"
Windber, PA: 14"
Brick, NJ: 10.0"
One legitimate place where people can be disappointed (or relieved!) at the snowfall is Philly, and to a lesser extent, New York City, which still got 10 inches of snow but did not approach their record of 27" (I said in my blog Sunday evening "a lot has to come together for the official Central Park observation location to beat the record.") A number of our meteorologists are posting about the storm (and the lack thereof) in Philadelphia and New York City. Here are some quotes:
- Elliot Abrams: "According to AccuWeather.com Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams, "The storm was more compact than we thought it would get. As a result, the back edge of the heavy snow and strong winds were farther to the east." Once the storm hit the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, it began to strengthen tremendously and move steadily northeastward, rather than stall. The storm also began to track a few dozen miles farther east than speculated on Sunday."
- Mike Smith (also a meteorologist for over 40 years) wrote: " I was shocked by the amount of self-flagellation going on with regard to the NYC forecast. Over and over, meteorologists were criticizing themselves and their colleagues for getting the Manhattan (only one of the five NYC boroughs) wrong."
On the technical side...
AccuWeather's Heather Waldman had this to say:
"Please be kind to the meteorologists in Philly today. They were asked to do the impossible. We knew this would be a game of mere miles from the start. Here's a scientific explanation: The European Model, highly regarded by meteorologists as the best winter storm forecasting tool in the world (and the first model to pick up on Hurricane Sandy 2 years ago) has a resolution of 16km. That means it has a grid of data points around the entire earth spaced every 16km. It takes up to 7 of these initial data grid points to accurately determine a weather feature. So the smallest feature the European can accurately resolve is about 112 km. The distance from Philly to NYC is just over 150km. Barely within range of what the model is capable of "seeing". NYC currently has almost a foot of snow on the ground, while Philly has barely an inch. 80 km east, in Islip, NY there is over a foot and a half on the ground. It doesn't take much."
- Henry Margusity brought up the "70/40 rule":
- Anthony Sagliani showed how the European Model, demonstrably the most accurate worldwide forecast model, missed the location of the storm by 120 miles, a day out:
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