INTERESTNG SNOW QUESTION BY A VIEWER
Written by: Brian Neudorff
As I was thinking of a topic for today's blog someone sent us an email with an interesting question and scenario. Here is what they asked:
"How many inches of snow is a trace of snow? If we had only a trace of snow every day during the winter season, how many inches of snow would we have at the end of the season?"This is an excellent question and something I never really thought of until this question was asked. Kind of gives you a flash back to some of my high school math classes. In order to answer this question we have to define a trace of snow and the length of the winter season numerically.
A trace of snowfall is defined as an amount of snow that has occurred but is below the detectable or measurable limit. For snowfall the limit is 0.05" or less. For this question I decided to use the limit of 0.05" as my numerical value for a trace of snow.
For the length of the winter season I went with 120 days. (From Nov. 15 to March 15) 120 days is also one third of the year. If you multiply 0.05 inches of snow per day by 120 days you would get 6 inches or less of snow for the season. Which is a far cry from our average of 99 inches per year.
With that thought on mind, maybe our first 6 inch snow fall you should forcast it as a seasons worth of traceable snow LOL
ReplyDeletespeaking of snow, I heard Scott mention on last night's broadcast that he thinks winter will come early this year. So just how early are you thinking? Not another snowless November I take it?
ReplyDeleteNo I think we will get some snow in November but this Winter may be one featuring many twists and turns. An active storm track near or just West of Rochester would mean messy storms followed by cold and lake snows. Also I think it may be a rather windy winter as well
ReplyDeletelooks like Tuesday into Wednesday will be the first taste of that wind. One heck of a storm will be taking shape around lake Superior. Whenever I think of serious winter wind it usually comes up the lake plain on a WSW vector. I don't know if you're familiar with the Buffalo area, but they have the most spectacular storm surge during those events. Sometimes route 5 along lake Erie gets shut down due to storm surge. Quite impressive. I'll never lose my amazement for these gems we have in the northeast called the Great Lakes.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the la nina, it does appear as though we'll be having one of...if not THEY strongest la ninas on record. I'm not sure if la nina intensity has any correlation to just how amplified those swings are during the winter, but if there is a correlation, it's going to be interesting to see just how crazy this jet stream is going to ripple up and down throughout the winter. I can see some incredibly deep troughs carved out by some incredibly strong ridges. And you know there has to be some whopper storms somewhere in between. Can't wait, it's going to be a bumpy ride this winter...even if it's not always white!
ReplyDelete