The Greatest Hits of Blizzard 2006

I have several things to add about the Blizzard of 2006 before we close the book on it. If you think there is something else major that I should link to here, let me know. First, here is a list of my previous blog entries on the storm:

Record Blizzard Snow Totals, Photos
Blizzard Photos, NYC Record, More
Northeast Clobbered, Nearly 2 Feet
Blizzard Snow Totals So Far
Blizzard Watch for New York City
Historical Blizzard Comparisons
Blizzard Begins: Snow in Arkansas

Next, here are several impressive satellite shots of the storm (click for access to high resolution versions):

And now for some additional information:

I'd like to offer up a couple of maps drawn by our meteorologist Dan Kottlowski here at AccuWeather:

The first is a map showing the position and strength (pressure, in millibars) of the storm. You can see that the storm reached 978 mb before exiting the waters off of the East Coast. For comparison, a Category 2 Hurricane starts at 979 mb on the Saffir-Simpson scale. The second map shows the model accuracy with the storm. Notice that the models agreed pretty well where the center of the storm was on Sunday morning, and weren't too far off predicting where it would be Sunday night (00Z), especially considering that some models predicted a broad area of low pressure for the center. The truth is though, the snow amounts were determined by specifically how the lines of precipitation setup and moved. While I don't want to get into a whole forecast review here, our meteorologists felt that we did pretty well with the storm in the major cities.

The satellite image above, showing a brief but hurricane-like eye of the storm, has become famous. here is another version of the picture, taken at the same time.

I usually archive weather images from the web during hurricanes, but I was so excited about monitoring the Blizzard of '06 that I totally zoned out and didn't set my auto archiver running. Ray Martin, however, did, and you can see his archive here.

I did pull quite a few maps from the WeatherMatrix Archive to offer up, though... click below to see lists of them.

| PROG | RADAR | SAT | BUOY | PSU ANALYSIS | ETA | RUC | NWS

Viewers of the AccuWeather.com / WeatherMatrix Photo Gallery submitted dozens of images from their locations during the Blizzard. These can be viewed in the Weather: Winter & Cold gallery. Random photos from that gallery are shown below.

A complete snow-total list (as researched by me, showing highest amounts by state as reported to the NWS & SnowMatrix) is available here, as is an Excel spreadsheet. I am fairly sure that those are the final totals, though any reports that were more than 24 hours after the snow ended may have not been included, so if I am missing something, let me know.

Here is a list of complete reports from the SnowMatrix (we got over 350 reports from the storm!):

February 11th | Feburary 12th | February 13th.

There is also a detailed account of the snowfall in Union, New Jersey (10 miles west of NYC), as provided by Ron Regan.

DISPUTED SNOWFALL AMOUNTS...

The Banner Elk, NC claim of 24" of snow was questioned by one blog reader and I thought, but several came to its defense. Brian from Grapevine, NC (3000 feet elevation) said he thought it was reasonable, and in fact he got about that much from the storm. Ron Holland from BigBaldHighlands.com (north of Asheville near the Tennessee border) says that accumulations were hard to discern due to high wind but he estimates at least a foot and a half at 4500 feet. He's even got the pictures to prove it!

The Central Park amount of 26.9", which set the daily and single-storm record for the location, was disputed by many enthusiasts and some meteorologists online. Mike Ekster at NWS Upton discussed his procedure for verifying the record snowfall at Central Park on the Eastern U.S. Weather Board (permanent copy here).

Chris Burt, author of the excellent book Extreme Weather Guide, is currently attempting to verify the authenticity and timing of the 30.2" report from Fairfield, Connecticut. He says that if it all fell within 24 hours, it would break a record. You can monitor his updates page for updates.

The Topton, Pennsylvania report of 22" was refuted by some AccuWeather meteorologists because, although there were reports of 21" in PA, it was not near that area. The person who left the report on the SnowMatrix did not leave any name or contact information, so there is no way to verify the report.

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