Double NorEasters Drop Snow From NC to NH

UPDATE: See important Comments below. Also for photos & wind/wave graphs check out this blog entry.

This map from NOHRSC does a good job of illustrating who got snow during the double Nor'easters over the weekend. First, the heavy snow even that I blogged about ad nauseum here in Central PA shows up well (amounts are underdone on this graphic because the snow started more than "72 hours ago").

But some even more localized events are on the map as well. Snow fell during the Patriot's game near Boston; Baltimore had a surprising snow which brought down some tree limbs (see video) and the mountains of West Virginia (Jim Smallwood posted some photos on Facebook) and North Carolina (photo) also got some snow Saturday.

Measurable snow at the Baltimore (BWI) airport in October has only happened once in recorded history (1925), and that was on the 30th. A local news article said that as much as two inches was reported, though the NWS reported only half an inch in Baltimore County and said that none fell at the airport and observations seem to bear that out.

Comments (9): Kevin:

It did snow in western/northern Baltimore County with some light accumulation, according to a couple friends who live in Reisterstown, MD. It similarly came through where I live (Stewartstown, PA), snowing heavily for a couple hours but only a bit of slushy accumulation with 33 degrees - we are on the right edge of the blue dot near the MD/PA border. The map looks pretty accurate to me. A surprise, yes, but not as impressive as the 12 inches or more we got in Reisterstown Nov. 11, 1987.

Posted by Kevin | October 21, 2009 7:47 AM The Delmarva Johnster Monster:

While most of the attention has been on the snow, all of the temperature records that were set were also quite amazing. Baltimore set record low maximums for 4 straight days, and missed a fifth day by one degree. Saturday's record was broken by 8 degrees and Friday's record was broken by 9 degrees! Baltimore records go back to 1870, so this was really impressive. If this had occurred in January or February, we could have had a cold wave like February 1899.

Posted by The Delmarva Johnster Monster | October 20, 2009 4:35 PM Glen:

Somewhere around Oct 12 1979 it snowed about 2-4 inches one evening in the Baltimore area. It was warm the next day and the streets were just wet. I remember because I had just moved here and spent the first night here and asked someone when to expect snow - not until December they told me. I woke up to this snow. Quite a surprise, coming from Texas.

Posted by Glen | October 20, 2009 1:50 PM bart:

Interesting to note what a big ticket item this second storm was being billed and hyped up to be. Various charts and talk of 12-18 across NE PA to Cats and nothing materialized whatsoever across those areas for storm number two(or for any areas)

Maybe some analysis as to what happened or in this case did not happen and why and what we can learn from those second storms in the 1-2 punch. Seems like they ALWAYS under-perform

FROM JESSE: It depends on where you are... it underperformed for NE PA but over-performed for Central PA. I think this time was really an unusual situation we probably won't see again, having to do with a very shallow layer of cold air and fall elevation effects.

Posted by bart | October 20, 2009 12:40 PM Chris:

That makes sense that the weather stations "circle of influence" extends too far toward the coast, not taking into account the warm ocean. I did see snow on live radar in south central CT last week and in New Jersey but on the CT coast south and NYC east, it was all rain. I did observe what was possibly snow pellets while I was driving that very briefly mixed in with the rain on Long Island, but nothing more.

Posted by Chris | October 20, 2009 9:59 AM exNOAAman:

Correction on the Balto snow record. 0.3 inch is in the official BWI record for 10 October 1979. That is our earliest measured snowfall.

Many baseball fans will remember it because the Orioles were in the World Series, and TV networks showed video of Memorial Stadium covered in light snow.

Posted by exNOAAman | October 20, 2009 9:13 AM Chris:

Has anyone verified the accuracy of this map along the coast? I'm in Long Island and didn't see any snow fall here even though the whole island is covered in the graphic. Also, NWS reports the lowest temperature this month at Farmingdale is 38 so if there was any snow it certainly didn't stick to anything.

FROM JESSE: That's a good question for the NOHRSC people but the map's key says "0.0 to a Trace" so we're talking only flakes, and I think each dot assumes a "circle of influence" around it which probably exaggerates the area - note there are no "station squares" on the island so that could indicate that nearby stations were responsible for the grey color.

Posted by Chris | October 20, 2009 9:11 AM Jason:

A heavy band of rain moved through Baltimore prior to 3 AM Sunday morning. The heavy precipitation moved into the northwest suburbs and a report of heavy snow from Reisterstown, MD on the Accuweather forums prompted me to check a few traffic cams and sure enough the grounds were blanketed. Once the precipitation band pushed through it was back to rain and melting. A fantastic occurrence!

Posted by Jason | October 19, 2009 7:52 PM car luksic spotter id blc32:

Well with this early snow up and down the east coast so early I feel we r in for a tough winter. This I think will be a winter for the record books

Posted by car luksic spotter id blc32 | October 19, 2009 3:57 PM