National Weather Service forecasters have been tracking a low pressure area that moved from the Midwest into the Atlantic Ocean today, and is expected to become a strong nor’easter that will bring blizzard conditions to the northeastern U.S. The path of the system was captured in a NASA movie of NOAA’s GOES-East satellite imagery.
An animation of visible and infrared imagery from NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental or GOES satellite captured over the period of January 24 through 26 showed the progression of the developing nor’easter.
The satellite animation began on Jan. 24 when clouds associated with a cold front preceding the low, pushed off the U.S. East coast. The front was followed by a low pressure area that moved from the Midwest to the southeast. That low moved over the Carolinas and exited into the Atlantic Ocean on Jan. 26. NOAA’s National Weather Service forecast calls for the low to intensify along the Eastern Seaboard and bring blizzard conditions to the northeastern U.S. on Monday night, January 26 and Tuesday, January 27.
On Monday, January 26, 2015, the National Weather Service noted: A storm system off the East Coast will continue to strengthen as it develops into a major nor’easter on Monday. As the storm moves up the coast, it is expected to bring snowfall of 1-3 feet or more to many parts of the Northeast through Tuesday evening, including New York City and Boston. Strong, gusty winds will combine with the snow to create blizzard conditions along and near the coast.
Winter storm warnings are in effect for the panhandles of West Virginia and Maryland, much of interior New England down to the northern Mid-Atlantic as well as for Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. Winter weather advisories are in effect for portions of the Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic and the southern Appalachians as well as a narrow area across interior New England.
To create the video and imagery, NASA/NOAA’s GOES Project located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland overlays the cloud data from NOAA’s GOES-East satellite on a true-color image of land and ocean created by data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites. Together, these data create the entire animation of the storm and show its movement.
GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth’s surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric “triggers” for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes.
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I’m here on the South Shore area of Ma., (about 6 miles inland) and outside of a little wind (30G40) and drifting snow, this is not that big of a deal for a small blizzard. The one back in 2013 was a lot worse comparatively.
So I guess the mantra now will be “See, Global Warming caused what should have been a record setting blizzard to not be one. Global Warming is real”.
starting to hit here in mid maine, winds running 25 gusting to 45 and visibility bad due to it.
temps about 8 deg F with -19 F wind chill.
the saving grace on this one is it (here) will be fluffy. drifts are gonna suck here though.
Yesterday the temperature, non wind chill in Stowe Vt was -17F.
have had a few nights at -20 to -22 F (wind chills -50F or so) with daytime high of 0 to .05/1 deg F.
they suck.
was that daytime temp? hope not as that would hit me tomorrow if so.
A most unusual storm! 120 miles in a NE vector resulted in a differential of 1/2 inch vs. 12 inches of snowfall. Second, the EU model, which has had a good track record predicted the most intense drop in barometric pressure and the resultant bombing effect. It predicted 16 inches in Philadelphia and a subsequent 2 feet in New York City. I’m thankful to be on the 1/2 inch end of the vector.
Regards,
How can you claim this storm is “unusual”? How far back have you checked? 50 years 5000 years, 50000 years or longer? It’s fools thinking that the past 50 years is a ‘normal’ baseline that’s resulted in all the climate alarmist nonsense we’re currently being subjected to. Please give it a rest – fool.
Jaffa68
By unusual, I meant to highlight the sudden demarcation across a small geography. There was little graduation of snowfall amounts. It was more like an on/off switch. That is the unusual aspect of the storm in this geographical area.
Sorry to have not written more clearly.
You seem to be making the claim that the storm was unusual in part because the model was wrong. That doesn’t tell us anything at all about the storm all it tells us is about the model and what it tells aus about the model is, it was wrong.
The European model which performed so well last year, does seem to be tanking this year. Guess they have some more adjusting to do
OMG – a bit windy AND a bit snowy – it’s a climate disaster.
Greetings from Shanghai where it is currently snowing…
Newsflash: NYC spared the Snow Storm of the Century, thanks to Global Warming!
This is not the end.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/blizzard-15/watch-live-new-york-city-snow-cam-n293521
NY City’t Times Square status: Light traffic volume, dusting of snow.
I live on one of those blue dots just off Florida and north of Cuba. Now I know why it is so windy here after seeing that NOAA animation. It is cool, only 66 here this morning but no snow.
Meh. Not much of an event here in western MD — undoubtedly a bit more in extreme west MD tho. Only 4″ snow and little wind (so far). Not even a flicker of the lights thankfully.
Cuomo said on Monday that “there is a pattern of extreme weather that we’ve never seen before” – reiterating his comments in the wake of hurricane Sandy, when he said that “anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns is probably denying reality.”
What we got in the last 24 or so hours is a perfect metaphor for the entire AGW consensus.
First, through the use of computer models, we get a forecast of catastrophic portions. Then, almost nothing happens as the models, now referred to as ‘a work in progress‘, were wrong.
Young people like Cuomo can’t be expected to have long term memory.
Why, are the drugs different now? 😉
Regarding Cuomo’s comment, Central park, 7+” of snow, LaGuardia, 11″ of snow, Suffolk Co, Long island, 24″. As predicted a very sharp cut-off on the western side, if the low passes a little closer then NYC gets buried. Central NJ is nearly always close to the boundary. Further east the predictions of about 2′ snow are on the money with hours more snow to come, getting the traffic off the highways overnight was very smart and will enable a faster recovery. The Weather Channel showed three model maps last night, there was a slight difference in the track of the storm center with the Euro model showing the west most path and worst effects in NYC, GFS and UKMet turned out the be closest with a slightly more offshore track, so less snow in NYC, but they all showed a huge snow fall around Boston and winds up to 70mph. In RI still a travel ban in effect, visibility on highways minimal still snowing with winds of 30+mph, the models got it pretty much right.
Okay… what’s all that got to do with Cuomo’s comments?
Nice try at damage control there Phil-dot, but when you’ve lost Time Magazine…
http://time.com/3684240/blame-de-blasio-and-cuomo-and-christie-for-the-blizzard-snow-job/
So, they had it on the correct coast, there was some wind, and there was snow. Gotcha, pretty much right.
That must have been the most exciting days in the life on all AGW-believers:
At first Global Warming produced the snowiest blizzard in the histrory of the northeastern US.
Then it stroke one more time: Due to the warmed atmosphere even the SNOWIEST blizzard don’t deliver much snow anymore.
2 proofs at at the same time. How ignorant must one be to disregard the warnings?
I want to see the actual snow totals on a map when this storm is over, compared to the predictions just hours before.
Apparently it’s going to get bad on Thursday
http://www.enterprisemission.com/_articles/05-14-2004_Interplanetary_Part_1/DayAfter-b.jpg
Why the NYC forecast failed:
The National Weather Service strongly weighted their forecast toward the historically more accurate European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting model (ECMWF) and the high resolution North American Model (NAM), which showed the Long Island snow band stalling out directly over the city. That didn’t happen. In constructing their forecast, the New York City office of the NWS all but ignored their own recently upgraded Global Forecast System (GFS) model, which showed significantly less snow in the city. As late as Monday evening, the NWS emphasized that the storm could over-perform in NYC, saying, “it should be a raging blizzard.”
Slate
Back in the day people didn’t alway blindly follow what computers told them. Some forecaster actually looked at what actually was happening and figured out for themselves what was most likely to happen. I don’t care what anyone says about models, an intelligent creative person,who has been around awhile will out perform the models almost all the time.
I kept reading in the news reports that they had used the wrong model, but if they had only used their own model, it would have been right. “Still, the model correctly predited the general outline of the storm”. Wow, a good forcaster could have done that without a fancy model. Good old Bill Matheson in my home town used to predict these things quite well, and explain all the interactions and possibilities. Now days, they just look at a model and claim the science is settled; get ready for life threatening 4′ of snow.
Actually, from me, a former long-time NWS forecaster in the NY-NJ area, the real reason (or at least a large part of the reason) the forecast was a bust is because of the culture of the agency. The narcissists-in-charge have been selecting Senior Forecasters who automatically see the worst in all significant weather situations…from the NCEP WWD desk where relatively little expertise resides, to the local forecast offices where a few geeks who think they know everything pressure others in their office and in surrounding offices to issue products one level more dire than they should be. It’s one thing to adhere to a policy of erring on the side of caution and taking the course of least regret, but it’s another thing when a few nutjobs put out too many watches/warnings/advisories. The statistics show this: the Probability Of Detection has remained high at PHI from 5 to 10 years ago, but the False Alarm Rate has increased. NYC’s POD is a bit lower, but the FAR has increased there too, for several storm categories. Yes, true blizzard conditions were just a few miles east of the PHL-NYC line in this event, but one cannot ignore the culture which plays into the products the public receives. And I will not even get into the culture in NWS/NOAA which exudes a preference for human-caused global warming…at least not now.
I’d take sensible precautions as were taken in NYC over the events that occurred in Atlanta a year ago! The forecast wasn’t ‘a bust’, everything predicted happened, fortunately shifted about 20 miles east. I definitely prefer clearing the 6″ off my drive this morning than the upper prediction of 12″. I’m used to what happens here and was expecting it would probably be at the low side of the range.
There’s 21″ at Boston right now and more falling, probably will exceed 24″ by this evening.
That is a long way from the 48″ predicted.
Where do you get the prediction of 48″ from? The predictions I saw were in the 1-3′ range which were on the money.
3 inches of snow. 30 inches of hype. See why reporters and politicians manipulate the people. There’s actually a reason, and you won’t like it. Maybe it’s time for a little rugged individualism and less dependence.
http://www.frontlineofdefense.com/culture-watch
What three inches of snow? Thirty inches of snow in Framingham? Getting traffic off the roads for a few hours over night enabled much more efficient clearing of the streets and highways. I notice the Time criticism is focused on the governors of the states to the west of the storm, no mention made about the governor of RI who still has a travel ban in place. Or in Mass where it’s still snowing and Boston will likely reach the predicted 2′.
The prediction was for a major winter storm for the NE with snow accumulations exceeding 2′ in places, check: storm surge flooding caused by on-shore winds up to 70 mph: check, power outages due to the blizzard conditions: check, major flight delays and cancellations: check.
Claiming the models are no good because the track of the storm varied by about 50 miles is nuts.
In the short term gets heavy snowfall in the region of the Great Lakes and the North-East.
Here in NH, we were in the 18-25″ band, and we have around 8″ or so, and the snow is already slackening, so I’m guessing we might see about a foot. Maybe we should call this storm “Hypeageddon”.
mid maine here and pretty much under full assault now. I would not be surprised to see 20″ but I would guess closer to 15-18. however its hard to tell due to drifts. most of yard is 3-4 feet right now with a few paths of a few inches caused by windbreaks.
I remember when I was in the Midwest “Blizzard of ’78” looking out the picture window and seeing nothing but snow. But it wasn’t up against the window. It was a drift that resembled one of of those big waves you see surfers on. You could go out the front door and there was about a foot and a half space between the window and the snow where the snow was only an inch or so deep. The “crest” almost touched the roof.
Amazing to look at. A pain to shovel through!
drifts up to chest in many places, both vehicles up past windows. end of road was about 5 feet high a d a pita to break through with snow blower. I am private road so handle lot of this myself personally.
I broke a path in case emergency vehicles need access and called it good.
the 45+ mph winds make clearing it impossible now.
Sorry, somehow I got a wrong link from YouTube. I was going for the scene in “The Shipping News” where Quoyle is learning how to write for the Gammy Bird newspaper.
Look out there, what’s the headline? Killer storm threatens village.
Here in central northern New Jersey we’ve gone from 18″-24″ predicted to 3″-4″ actual. And most of that may be from drifting. I’d rather be surprised in this direction than the other. Based on snowfall maps, it looks like the bands were compressed and shifted east from the original forecasts.
Where is a reliable 100-hour weather forecast?
#MeteorologyFail
MSNBC was blaming “climate change” for the storm and they were calling it a hurricane. Turns out the storm was completely overrated and the people predicting a warming climate over the next century can’t even get the forecast right for 12 hours into the future, but we’re supposed to put all our trust into their predictions because the science is “settled” lol.
‘Completely overrated’, what storm are you talking about? Snow accumulations up to 30″, winds up to 70 mph, coastal flooding, what were you expecting if that’s ‘overrated’?
“Up to three feet of snow in parts of New York City”.
I guess according to the models, Framingham, MA is a part of New York City.
There is a huge difference between a 30″ snowfall and ‘Snow accumulations up to 30″.’
2 inches of snow in Central Park and all roads in the New York area are closed and for the first time in history the subway is closed for snow, thousands of flight canceled, for 2 inches of snow. That was historic ok, a historic fail. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/OKX/CLINYC
“Up to three feet of snow in parts of New York City”.
Care to tell us where this quote is from? The original post said: “On Monday, January 26, 2015, the National Weather Service noted: A storm system off the East Coast will continue to strengthen as it develops into a major nor’easter on Monday. As the storm moves up the coast, it is expected to bring snowfall of 1-3 feet or more to many parts of the Northeast through Tuesday evening, including New York City and Boston. Strong, gusty winds will combine with the snow to create blizzard conditions along and near the coast.
Which was right on the money. Several areas near Boston had 3′, Boston itself had 24.5″, Worcester had 34.5″, Framingham 33.5”. Around NYC about 10″ in Central park, upto 28″ on Long Island. Trevor’s claim of 2″ in Central park is nonsense.
Sure thing Phil-Dot
http://www.businessinsider.com/parts-of-nyc-could-get-up-to-3-feet-of-snow-2015-1
You know, it’s funny. A lot of meteorologists are openly admitting they blew the forecast for NYC and large parts of the Northeast. Perhaps the code of ethics for meteorology is higher than for “climate modelers”, who it seems, cannot admit error under any circumstances.
It’s only the truly committed who seem to have trouble admitting some of the forecasts were wrong. I wonder why.
Snow Job: http://time.com/3684240/blame-de-blasio-and-cuomo-and-christie-for-the-blizzard-snow-job/
Of course it is a good measure if the government sends out warnings for possible dangerous situations but locking down entire towns for a storm in a teapot…
People talk about the cost of doing too little, but they hardly ever talk about the cost of doing too much. Closing all roads,closing the subway, closing the airports, canceling thousands of flights canceling Broadway shows, and having police cars drive around Columbus Circle and other roads to enforce the no drive ban, all for something that might have happen but didn’t, has real costs, and the fool politicians never consider those. The real odds of this being 30 inches of snow was always extremely low, no matter what the computer models claimed.
The roads in NYC were closed from 11pm to 8am, the airlines decided to cancel the flights ahead of time rather than have masses of passengers stuck at the airport (the winds alone would have caused major delays, particularly at EWR). As to the odds of 30″, there were many totals of 3′ so the odds weren’t ‘extremely low’.
The government SHOULD err on the side of caution. But the weather forecast was woefully inadequate. How could anybody even dream of a 100-year forecast?