Foot's Forecast | Weather Intelligence

MARCH 16-17 STORM GRADE REPORT

Final Snow/Sleet Totals across the Northeast, as reported to PSU's Public and Spotter Page.

This storm report is based on a procedure we've established on the site since since 2005. The actual amount is graded by it's % deviation from the forecast, and then grades on a GPA scale. Now in fairness...we have not yet reached consensus on the discussion board here if the grade should be actual accumulation of just SNOW or can it be SNOW & SLEET or just SLEET. Obviously the 2 recent storms have retrained everyone as to what sleet is and can do to a forecast.

Also in fairness…please note I don’t just pick and choose among the best actual observations. Frequent long term readers know and can vouch for the fact that when I say “NYC / Boston / PHL ” I have used the same locations each storm… NYC = Central Park / Boston = Logan airport / PHL = airport. The other locations are from members of the discussion community based on their obs posted in the comments.

Just for a new reader to know there’s no sugar coating here. The numbers speak for themselves, good, bad or ugly.

The numbers are: Final GPA / City forecasted / amount forecasted / actual / %dev / grade

The GPA is determined by the standard 4.0 academic scale:
4.0 A / 3.67 A- / 3.33 B+ / 3.0 B / 2.67 B- / 2.33 C+ / 2.0 C / 1.0 D / 0.0 E

0.00 / Baltimore (BWI): 2.0 / .6?/ 70%/ 30% = E

3.33 / Dundalk, MD: .75 / .85 / 12% / 88%=B+

0.00 / Philly (PHL): 6.0 / 3.0 /50% / 50%=E

2.33 / New York (Central Park): 7.0 / 5.5 / 21% / 79%=C+

4.00 / Boston (Logan): 8.0 / 8.1 / 2% / 98%=A

0.00 / Greencastle, PA: 9.0 / 5.0 / 45% / 55%=E

2.00 / Martinsburg, WV: 10.0 / 7.0 / 30% / 70%=C

2.00 / Paoli, PA: 7.0 / 5.0 / 29% / 71% = C

0.00 / Bucks Co, PA (Doylestown, PA) : 11.0 / 5.7 / 49% / 51%=E

1.00 / Central NJ (New Brunswick): 6.0 / 4.0 / 34% / 66% = D

0.00 / Fallston, MD: 4.0 / 1.0? / 75% / 25%=miserable E--- sorry Terpguy

So despite your claims that “this guy is always right!” you can plainly see that is not true!

Storm Forecast GPA = Less than thrilling 1.33 / (some would say, it’s at least passing! But far less than the C average of the February 11-12, 2006 Storm or the January 2005 Blizzard.

WHITE FOR ST. PATRICK'S DAY,

THEN BACK TO GREEN, then white again?

So your 2 week forecast should have been something like this:

THIS WEEK: 80's then much colder with rain changing to snow and sleet.

Keep scrolling to see the forecast for next week and beyond.

Ice-encrusted backyard of "Fort Jackson" as we call it (named after our street)

Seems like I've posted this same map before, a couple times this winter.

NEXT WEEK: Chilly and a bit cloudy until mid-week, then sunny and becoming warmer by late in the workweek. Mid 70's by Saturday from southern PA south to Richmond, near 70 Philly to NYC, 60's from NYC north to Boston.

( I knocked out my claim to 90 because the clipper coming across Great Lakes Sun-Mon will reintroduce second High I theorized early last week, holding mid-week temps down a bit)

WEEK AFTER: Turning colder with snow possible by Palm Sunday Weekend?!?!?

What part of this forecast is an early April Fool's Joke? Well, the snow part I hope. I found those maps on a weather discussion board called Eastern US WX, so I am not claiming to have discovered the info on my own. But I thought the extremes were so interesting you just had to see them. I can see how we COULD warm up into the 70's, if the Polar Vortex near Alaska goes to town strengthening onshore Pacific flow into the West while the Atlantic Ridge becomes the major influencing player for much of the Eastern U.S. Concurrently, if the North Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation remain strongly positive the next 7-10 days, this would also allow warm air to surge across most of the country. These climatic features are a measure of how much the Icelandic Low and Atlantic Azores High "oscillate" back and forth across their portion of the Northern Hemisphere over a period of time. If the NAO goes positive, it means the Labrador-Icelandic Low would be retreating north, holding the Polar Jet in central/northern Canada. Thus the Azores-Bermuda High can take over and influence weather more along the East Coast.

As for the theorized Palm Sunday Weekend storm...well, sometimes long range (7 day+) model projections are to be taken with less than a grain of salt. In fact, you can't even use salt this time because Home Depot ran out weeks ago. I tell you about this storm purely for entertainment purposes only, because the GFS has shown on just one model run this morning, from Hour 324 to 372 (weekend of 30th) a possible snowstorm for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The only shred of "future evidence" that could back up this outlandish claim is the NAO/OA are both forecasted to strongly tank negative by the 30th. Sometimes 14 day projection on the Climate Indices/Teleconnectors never pan out or even trend in the opposite direction, other times they are verify fairly well. So were the NAO/OA to go 2 deviations below normal like that, it is would indicate cold air might again invade the Northeast U.S. just in time to disrupt plans for Palm Sunday Weekend. This all sounds like a skipping CD I can't clean off, and I'm not buying that scenario anyway (that's analogous to a broken record for our more seasoned readers) so I'll stop there and revisit in 7 days.