Digging Out, Staying Cold In Snowy Vermont

Lots of work: After three hours of shoveling, progress on clearing my
driveway of a foot of snow in St. Albans, Vermont, but as you can
see, there's plenty more work to do.

While my leaf raking muscles should be sore this time of year, it's my snow shoveling muscles that are whining today.

The worst thumping from Friday's storm hit the Adirondacks, the Champlain Islands of Vermont and the northwest corner of Vermont. 

That the Islands and far northwest in the Green Mountain State would get the most snow from a coastal storm is a bit unusual.

Most often, the biggest thumping is in central or southern Vermont and up the spine of the Green Mountains.

But the heaviest and most persistent snow band set up very roughly 30 miles either side of a Saranac Lake, New York to Alburgh, Vermont line. My place in St. Albans got a solid (and I do mean solid- Ow! My back!) foot of snow out of the storm.

The big winner seems to be East Enosburg, Vermont with 14 inches. A foot of snow was widespread through Franklin County, Vermont, and the northern Champlain Islands and on into the Adirondacks.

The snow in Vermont caused the usual commuting headaches Friday morning, with traffic coming to a standstill at times on parts of Interstate 89 and other areas. But if you think it was bad in Vermont, check out the video at the bottom of this post. People in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were stuck on snow highways for many hours on Thursday. Total gridlock.

I still see no big new snowstorms in our immediate future but it's sure going to be wintry. And there will be bouts of light snow and snow showers amid the upcoming January-like temperatures.

Today brings a bit of a brief reprieve with above freezing temperatures in most valleys and some scattered snow and light rain showers, especially in the mountains. Watch out late this afternoon, as there could be a snow squall or two thrown in here and there as yet another cold front blasts through.

The jet stream is temporarily at least a little different, shutting us off from any wet storms coming up the coast. Instead, upper level winds will be blasting in from the northwest through Thanksgiving. That means little storm systems and frigid cold fronts will keep coming through with packets of snow showers that will create just light additional accumulations.

This is a good set up for the already buried ski resorts, who are just loving this month. The best chances for any accumulating snow over the next several days are in the Adirondacks, up and down the Green Mountain range and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Plus it will stay cold enough to keep making snow to build up bases on the ski slopes.

It might turn briefly a little warmer next weekend to thaw some of the valley snows, but that's iffy right now. We'll wait and see.

I guess we'll just have to hunker down and enjoy what looks like will be a long, long winter. And I said that to jinx me. Reverse psychology: If I promise a long winter without any basis in science, like I just did, I will be proven wrong with a nice pleasant thaw.

As if I could play psychological tricks on Mother Nature. Ha!

Washington DC Parking Enforcement Found Big Profit In Blizzard

Parking was a challenge in Washington DC
after last week's blizzard. But the city made
a killing in parking and towing fines.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Something like two feet of snow fell in and around Washington DC last weekend.

As you can imagine, it was probably hard to dig cars out of snow clogged, congested streets.

Or, if your car was freed from the snow, good luck finding a place to park, since all the parking spots had been converted to giant mountains of snow. 

Washington DC's parking enforcers saw this as a golden opportunity.

Last week, after the blizzard, the District issued around $1.5 million worth of parking tickets, says the Weather Channel, via NBC Washington.

The city also issued $65,500 in fined snd towed more than 650 vehicles.

Requirements in the city are that cars must be parked fewer than 12 inches from the curb. That's hard to do when there's a four foot wide snowbank in front of the curb.

Of course, Washington did need to keep roads passable, and cars parked too close to the middle of the road due to the snowbanks would block the roads, so in that sense, I can see the parking fines.

The city focused their ticketing on snow removal emergency routes.

A few people caught a break, says NBC 4 in Washington

The mayor voided snow emergency parking tickets issued last Friday as the blizzard was beginning because some people might not have learned of the parking restrictions, or were still running errands to prepare for the storm.

But to add insult to injury, if your car was impounded in Washington DC, bring a shovel to the impound lot. It was snowed in, too, and people had to dig their cars out to retrieve them.

A Complete Post Mortem Of The Great Blizzard of 2016

Editor's Note: I've been away for a couple days because my dad, Henry, "Red" Sutkoski, passed away Saturday, January 23, 2016 at the age of 95. 

I want to thank him for always encouraging me in any and all ways to pursue every interest that made me happy, which of course includes weather and writing. Nostrovia, dad. The latest Matt's Weather Rapport post follows:

This post-blizzard igloo in New York City was
 jokingly being advertised as a one bedroom
apartment for the low rental rate of $2,500 per month. 

It's been a few days now since the Great Blizzard of 2016 finally trudged out to sea. I've still got a few random thoughts, images and videos that made some impressions on me with this truly historic storm.

Unfortunately, the storm has killed at least 38 people, a big death toll for a modern American storm.

And that death toll might go up, as people are subject to traffic accident on icy roads, carbon monoxide poisoning in houses with snow-clogged vents, heart attacks from the exertion of snow shoveling, and possibly structural collapses from heavy snow.

Transportation is recovering but is still screwed up. The airline industry at last report is still tryin to dig out of the 12,000 or so flight cancellations that had a worldwide ripple effect.

In any event, here the are, in no particular order are some of my impressions of this storm. Also, be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post for a few choice videos of the blizzard you'll want to watch.

Stop Whining About The Forecasts:

As expected forecasts in advance of this blizzard were not perfect. They never are and nobody should expecd them to be.

Even though some parts of the blizzard surprised forecasters, the predictions days ahead of this storm were nothing short of amazing. For three days or more before the storm, meteorologists told us the areas which would get the biggest blast were Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, parts of Kentucky, the mountains of North Carolina, much of New Jersey, Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania.

Forecasts for the timing of the storm, the depths the snow would accumulate and the timing of the storm were absolutely spot on. That's an amazing job when trying to determine what a powerful nor'easter would do. And now notoriously unnpredictable nor'easters are.

The biggest surprise out of this storm was what happened around New York City, which got its biggest or second biggest snowstorm on record, depending upon where you measured. Twenty five to 20 inches in the NYC area is incredible.

True color satellite photo taken
Sunday clearly shows the snow on the ground
from the blizzard stretching between North
Carolina and southern New England. 

In the days and hours before the storm hit, the New York City metro region was always expected to be near the northern edge of the blizzard conditions.

Meteorologists knew there would be a sharp cutoff between snow measured in feet just to the south, and snow measured in a few inches or just fractions of an inch just to the north.

That sharp cutoff was expected for at least three days ahead of the storm to be near New York.

And it was. But the heavy snow enveloped the metro area, where just a short distance north up the Hudson River Valley, there wasn't much.

Official forecasts had called for six to twelve inches to accumulate in New York City, but every meteorologist I could find emphasized in their forecasts that much more could fall, given the limitations of determining in advance exactly where the heaviest snow would fall.

That means people in the New York region should have been aware before the storm that more than six inches of new snow was a possibility

For anyone loudly complaining the forecast was "wrong," take a chill pill and shut up. In meteorology, the unexpected happens sometimes. Deal with it.

The Coastal Flooding:

In the annals of forecasting this storm, another accuracy of note were the warnings, again well in advance, that the storm surge along parts of the Middle Atlantic Coast would be quite destructive.

That turned out to be true, unfortunately.

People stranded atop a car
by a storm surge Saturday in
Ocean Beach, New Jersey. 

As I noted previously, the flooding along the southern half of the New Jersey shore and in Delaware was worse than in Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Sandy focused its worst destruction on the northern half of New Jersey.

This storm attacked southern New Jersey hard, with several cities, including Lewes, Delaware and Cape May, New Jersey, reporting record high tides. 

Between the damaging storm surge and coastal floods, together with the damage and disruption of several feet of snow in a heavily populated area of the world, this storm is likely to be the first, or among the first 2016 natural disasters to cause over a billion dollars in damage.

Let's Review Record Snowfalls 

An incredible 66.1 inches of snow fell on Mount Mitchell, North Carolina during this storm, likely making it the biggest snowstorm in North Carolina history. Of that, 41 inches came on just Saturday alone.

In West Virginia, 42 inches of fresh powder fell on the community of Glengary, West Virginia.

Among the cities reporting their biggest snowstorm on record with this one are Allentown, Pennsylvania, with 31.9 inches, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 34 inches; Baltimore, 29.2 inches and Philadelphia, 25.3 inches.

Most of these cities had as much or more snow in this one storm than they do during an entire winter.

Heed The Warnings:

In the days leading up to the accurate Blizzard warnings with this storm, meteorologists, emergency managers and other public officials urged people to be off the roads by the time the storm hit.

Highways would rapidly become clogged with snow and stuck cars and trucks. The warnings said people could be stuck for many, many hours in life threatening cold and snow.

A lof of people heeded the warnings, but others didn't. A bunch of people got stuck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, including a bunch of Duquense college basketball players, who were out there for 30 hours.

Luckily, everyone ended up OK, especially since emergency responsders were able to get out on the highway to make sure everyone had enough gas, food and warmth to make it through the night.

The same thing happened on Interstate 75 in Kentucky, where as many as 3,000 motorists spent the night trapped in their cars. Miraculously, no serious injuries were reported there.

Things were a bit difficult on the streets of  Washintgton DC
during the height of the blizzard. 

I get it that the way the economy works these days, if truckers or freelancers in this ripoff "sharing economy" miss a day of work they miss wages or risk getting fired, no matter what the risk to the employee.

Employers ought to stop being so greedy and give workers a break if going out in the elements risks their lives.

Blizzard's Stupidest Twitterer.

All this stuff about snowbound roads and stuck motorists leads me to my award for the Stupid Twitterer Of the Blizzard Award.

Drum roll, please:

The winner is Todd Starnes!!!!

As the blizzard worsened more than many had expected in and around New York City, Mayor Bill De Blasio initiated a travel ban on area roads.

De Blasio's sensible logic was that he didn't want people stuck in cars in dangerous conditions. Plus, he figured it would be easier to get the city moving again after the blizzard if snow plows could get out there without contending with thousands of stuck cars and trucks in the way of the job.

Todd Starnes, a conservative pundit who doesn't like anything a liberal does, even if it makes sense in an emergency,was outraged. OUTRAGED I say!!!!

He Tweeted that the travel ban, in which the NYPD threatened to arrest errant drivers was martial law, and "This is what life under communism looks like."

Yeah, the government was taking away the freedom for you to go out in your car and screw things up for everybody else.

The Naked Cowboy has been a fixture in Times Square
for years, and he didn't let a little blizzard prevent
him from performingn in his undies, as usual. 

The paranoid World Net Daily also accused New York of enacting martial law by what they said was ordering people to remain in their homes. Of course there was no such order.

The NYPD made it clear that, as always, everybody was free to walk the streets of New York anytime they wished, blizzard or no blizzard.

During the next blizzard, I would invite Starnes to drive to a remote location with a near empty gas tank with no warm clothes or emergency supplies in your car.

What's Next?

The Great Thaw has now settled in so the snows can start melting. Other than this blizzard, it's been a fairly mild winter, and that seems to be continuing. Higher elevations in the Appalachians are likely to hold onto this deep snow for awhile because the thaws won't be too extensive there.

In the wide swath of cities and suburbs buried by the blizzards, daily thaws are likely for the most of the next week. The good news is, it won't get extremely warm, mostly 40s by day, and many places will have a few overnight freezes to slow things down.

Even better news: Not a lot of rain is likely over the next week. Most of the blizzard zone will get a quarter inch or less of rain in the next seven days.

In the short term, at least, this means that flooding from the snow melt will be limited to streets with clogged drains, and poor drainage areas.

But beware: There's lots of snow in the Appalachians, and if there's a particularly heavy rainstorm in the coming few weeks there could be trouble.

Videos:

The best time lapse video I've seen of the storm was taken by Wayne Bennett in Martinsburg, West Virginia. His camera took one photo every two minutes for 27 hours as the snow accumulated.

I love the hapless skeleton getting buried during the course of the video:


One of the most iconic videos of the blizzard is also the most adorable. Its the panda Tian Tian, absolutely loving the deep snow at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC:



Here's some scenes, given to us by Storm Chasing Video, of the record high tide in Lewes, Delaware during the storm: