January 23, 2016 - Roidzilla Storm In Review

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!

When the 0Z RGEM came out, boy did I get excited.  I told family and friends, without hesitation, "We're getting two feet of snow!!!"

I know I posted them the previous page but here are my two posts on this forum relating to that moment:





Man I loved this event.  CPK, after further review, got 27.5" of snow from it, surpassing the 26.9" from the February 2006 event.

This was the storm NAM lost its "Not A Model" title

One of my all-time best storms. I was in the bullseye and experienced actual white-out conditions for a prolonged period of time. It just kept dumping snow for hours. And it was two weeks before I closed on my first house so took my mind off those nerves and I was glad it did not happen on the day I had to move.