January 23, 2016 - Roidzilla Storm In Review

Frank, great write up and great job with a very difficult forecast. Predicting where the cutoff was going to be was very tough given how extreme it was. Unfortunately, it turned out to be IMBY, but I'm looking forward to some white gold in future storms.

hyde in better words we go screwed!! Looking at those pictures is torture but hey its the weather and I have seen it all but never the cutoffs like this!!!! congrats to all you didn't suffer!!!!

jimv45 wrote:hyde in better words we go screwed!! Looking at those pictures is torture but hey its the weather and I have seen it all but never the cutoffs like this!!!! congrats to all you didn't suffer!!!!

My brother-in-law who lives on Long Island sent me a picture of the 2 feet in his backyard to rub it in a little. I sent him a picture of my backyard with the green grass and me barbequing. Who's jealous now?

Great job Frank. To say this storm tested our time and patience would be an understatement. I went to bed last night exhausted having spending the last week model watching into the late night. In the end it was all worth it. I measured 22 inches in my town in Nutley. It was a great storm, but 1996 still ranks #1 to me having received 30 inches in that storm. Hopefully it won't be long before we see our next event. I'm fairly certain we will see another Godzilla this winter probably sometime in February.

Frank. Thanks for the knowledge. We are all better for it. You saw this before it appeared on any conventional forecast and helped us understand what was driving the changes from model run to model run. Keep it up

In my jealous rant I forgot to say great job Frank you are the man!!

Yea Hyde I was doing good until i started seeing pictures then the breakdown!!!

Frank, great job during the week and with this.Congrats to all members who jackpotted.

I am in a major league slump with huge snowstorms since Boxing Day.Juno,Nemo and this Roidzilla should have given me two feet plus but I got 2,9, and 13 inches missing out by mere 25 to 30 miles.
Looking for a HV special this winter.

docstox12 wrote:Frank, great job during the week and with this.Congrats to all members who jackpotted.

I am in a major league slump with huge snowstorms since Boxing Day.Juno,Nemo and this Roidzilla should have given me two feet plus but I got 2,9, and 13 inches missing out by mere 25 to 30 miles.
Looking for a HV special this winter.

From your mouth to God's ears.

Great write up Frank. It's amazing that the NAM and other mesoscale models sniffed this out and they ignored all the noise of convective feedback. I guess in the future, we will have to give them some credence. I feel for you guys in the HV. I was mountain climbing in Washington State years ago and we got 68 inches of snow on Mt Rainier in 24 hours. Twenty miles away it was sunny and 40. Mother nature will always throw us a curveball. My Nonna used to say "some days you're the statue and some days you're the pigeon." That is so true....

Thankful it was not a wet heavy snow.

Great job with all of your knowledge and insight along with all of the other moderators of this board. The updates are really helpful and very informative. It is nice knowing I can get an idea of the whole picture (or pattern) so I know more of what to expect than with the traditional forecasts elsewhere. I'm a lurker but I follow up on your updates regularly. Keep up the good work!

Does anyone have a link to a radar loop of the entire storm to post? That would be interesting to see.

WeatherBob wrote:Does anyone have a link to a radar loop of the entire storm to post?  That would be interesting to see.

Radar

https://twitter.com/capitalweather/status/691660552506970112

Neat, wikipedia page

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2016_United_States_blizzard

Frank_Wx wrote:That was fast

Interesting interactive snow map, seems like higher totals were in a general band from 518-Rt27/Rt1 north from there in NJ and south from I80 to the north. Very localized heavier banding, 8" (officially) higher in my town then just a couple miles to my north. Many similar situations, about 10" less about 5 miles to my southeast in Kingston. Knew I noticed some massive differences with the height of the snowpack/road pile height as I was driving around.

http://www.nj.com/weather/index.ssf/2016/01/final_snowfall_totals_across_nj_from_monster_blizz.html

28" could very well be an all time record in my town. Still in disbelief... Too bad Belle Mead is hit or miss listed and different geographically from Hboro which is why I dont like to use it.

This was hands down my favorite moment of 2016.

Since November 2011, I have been tracking the models for potential storms, especially winter storms. I have seen numerous instances of Roidzillas on the models, especially 200+ hours out which don't happen. Some show up in the median range and don't happen. Another potential storm showed up 2-3 days out (1/26/15; "Juno") and did not pan out.

In this case, in the days leading up to it, it seemed like the storm would be suppressed (ala 2/6/10) and keep the big snows to our south. Throughout the day on Friday, January 22nd, models made a last minute trend northward with the snow, giving me excitement. Then that night, around the time the snow began, The 0Z RGEM came out and showed me this:



My post at 10:35 PM on the Observations thread (which I meant to put in the discussion thread):

WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW THE RGEM SHOWS A ROIDZILLA FOR NYC FROM THIS STORM!!!!!!

And at 10:39 PM in the Discussions thread, I posted the above image and said this:

"Hour 16 of the 0Z RGEM!!!! As Frank would say: MADONNE! ROIDZILLA INCOMING!!!!"

In my mind, I was screaming with excitement, I went to my father and said to him without hesitation, "WE'RE GETTING TWO FEET OF SNOW!!!" In this instance, a Roidzilla wasn't just possible, it wasn't just likely, it was IMMINENT!

I ended up with 25" of snow. While Bellerose does not keep official snowfall records, looking at Kocin-Uccilini snowmaps, the most snow that was recorded there prior to this occurred in the February 1969 Lindsay Day snowstorm, when 22" fell. This surpassed it alright!

This was a great moment in an otherwise dull winter, which was the second warmest on record.

Hands down my favorite snow event. 25" of snow IMBY! It began two years ago tonight!