Historic Snow Storm: April 16, 2007

Boy...what a difference a year can make! We are in the midst of a stretch of absolutley lovely and warm weather with temperatures in the upper 60's today and 70s on the way.

However...April the 16th isn't always so nice. In fact, if you remember, it was just last year that winter came roaring back to life on the 16th, giving us the largest 24-hour snowfall that I have recorded (since Christmas 2002).

So lets take a moment to revisit this historic snow storm, which saw Groton get 18", Locke a national attention grabbing 23", and a couple of my videos posted on Accuweather.com senior meteorologist Henry Margusity's blog.

Looking back on my own blog, I first mentioned the possibility of a storm on April 11th. By the 13th everything looked like a go. I remember this day very clearly...it was a Friday. In school, I kept telling people we would have no school Monday or Tuesday from a snow storm. Of course few believed me at first...I mean snow days in mid-April? However, we did get snow days both days.

By 10AM Monday morning, the storm was in full force blasting us with heavy snow. Here is what it looked like Monday morning:




The snow was still coming down by the afternoon. One of the things that amazes me looking back at that post is the radar. Notice how most of the state was getting rain at this point...but we had enough cold air in the Finger Lakes to remain snow. I find that so ironic because we couldn't get a single storm to keep the cold air in all winter long this year...even in the dead of winter! In fact...this April storm gave us more snow than probably our two or three largest (non-lake effect) snow events this past year!

The snow was a very heavy snow and caused a good deal of problems with tree damage. Within a couple of days, the snow was gone, and I got a chance to go out into the woods and take some pictures of the tree damage that occurred, especially to pine trees.




I also like to point out the fact that just three weeks later, on May 9th, we hit 90 degrees.

If you want to read more about this storm, Accuweather's Jesse Ferrell also blogged about the storm today. Of course, he doesn't mention Groton (but he does mention Locke!) and takes a much more regional look at the storm, but it is a nice little post with an awesome map. Check it out.

Grotonweather.com Administrative Update:
I have been working on redesigning (again!) the grotonweather.com homepage. This is why I haven't gotten many of the links on the current homepage working again. I am very excited about the new design and a couple of new services I am going to be offering! I am having some new weather icons (not animated...sorry...) being made and will launch the new look once they are done. I am not sure when that will be though, so make sure you keep checking back!

Late Season Snow Storm Tonight!

A late season snow storm is in store for the area tonight as low pressure moves to our south along a stalled frontal boundary. As this low moves along the front, cold air from Canada will advance south. Meanwhile, the low will throw moisture up into the cold air.



The precipitation will likely start as some rain later this afternoon and tonight. As that cold air moves in, however, it will change the rain to snow overnight. As is often the case with storms at the beginning and end of winter, the higher elevations will end up with more snow than the valleys. The models haven't been doing a good job with this storm so far; just yesterday they had us getting barely anything. However, they seem to be in better agreement with this morning's runs, and looking at the radars to our west, I think we are in for a decent snow. The map below is a little confusing since its hard to incorporate the elevation factor into the map. For downtown Groton, I would say 3 or 4 inches will fall. In the hills surrounding Groton, more like 5 or 6 inches. I think the highest amounts will be in the hills north, east and south of Cortland, especially down towards Binghamton. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone down there get 8-10", maybe even a foot!

Service Update, Storms ahead

Thank you everyone for your patience over the past couple of days while I switched over hosting services. The homepage is back up, but I have decided to not link a good deal of the links to their respected pages just yet. I am going to be working on a bit of a redesigning of the page and I want to work on those other pages and update them before relinking them.

Also, last night, I launched a new website with a few of my fellow meteorology students. This site gives forecasts in a similar manner to grotonweather.com, with a 3-day forecast, forecast discussion, and hazards outlook for all of New York, which we split into 20 different sections to ensure local, accurate forecasting. The Tompkins, Cortland and Southern Cayuga area is simply linked to grotonweather.com, but this site is great for more regional forecasting! Check it out and let me know what you think!

www.empirestateweather.com

Now, for more of a long range outlook! A very stormy week is coming up next week, with at least 2 different storm systems moving in. By now, I am sure you are becoming familiar with how accurate models are even just a few days out when it comes to large storm systems. I just wanted to mention some of the trends I have been seeing over the past couple of days. First off, while the first storm this week was projected to shoot well to our west, the models are once again bringing it closer to us, with some runs even taking it to the east. This is a very similar trend to what occurred last week. Late last week, the models had a storm tracking to our west, brining rain and warm air in. By Saturday and Sunday, the track had shifted to our south and east and we ended up getting 8" of snow. Now, this isn't the same type of storm system, but it will have to be watched over the next few model runs. Now, later in the week, another storm will ride up the coast and possibly turn into a major nor 'easter. The models have been consistently showing this storm for a few days now, so it too will have to be watched closely. If it becomes anything, it would be later in the week into the weekend. By no means is any of this guaranteed to happen, I am just putting the latest trends out there for you!