2/7/10: Summary – The Blizzard of 2010

The idea of a major winter storm on the east coast began to come into focus last weekend, as one storm was bringing over 6 inches to the area and another was forecast to bring more last Tuesday (it did, 5 more inches). While most of the area was dealing with those two storms, me and the rest of the meteorologists in the area were focusing on what was looking like a major storm for this weekend. Just about every model out there were locking in on this storm and did a fantastic job showing the potential. With that much agreement, confidence was high very early on that this storm would be potent.

I began alerting people of this storm early last week and on Thursday evening, I issued my first forecast:

The snow started falling here at around 10am Friday morning, and around that time I decided to increase totals on my forecast:

2nd forecast:

Deck furniture, as it started… with some snow from Tuesday left over:

The snow began to stick around 3pm and at that time, I increased my totals again, one final time, as it became very evident that this would be an historic storm:

…and it appeared that the National Weather Service agreed, as Blizzard Warnings were hoisted:

By 4pm, the first inch of snow had fallen:

The snow was light for a few hours, but as the following radar clip illustrates, we had a long way to go:

Around 7pm, the intensity began to pick up and temperatures continued to drop while the snow and winds were raging. We were up to 5.0 inches already and the storm was just getting started.

Here is a picture of my measuring surface or snowboard (our deck table). On the left side is the area I left undisturbed to measure snow depth, and on the right side is the area I cleared every 6 hours to determine the official snow accumulation:

The heavy snow continued and by 2:00am, I measured 10.6 inches on the snowboard (giving us a total of 15.6), and 15.0 inches on the undisturbed portion. That means we received 10.6 inches of snow in 5 hours, or 2.12 inches an hour:

The heavy snow continued and at 3:00am, I measured 13.0 inches on the snowboard (2.4 more inches in one hour), bringing our total up to 18.0 inches fallen with a depth of 16.8 inches:

The radar at this time began to make some “weather weenies” nervous as a dryslot was making a beeline for the DC area:

What was happening was the storm was re-organizing off the Carolina coast and would “pivot” so that the moisture stopped moving from southwest to northeast and would begin to move southeast to northwest, keeping DC and points north in the snow. After watching the radar and seeing that this pivot was indeed occurring, I decided to take a 5 hour “nap” so that I could be up at 9 to measure and clear my snowboard.

I woke up at 8:30 to heavy snow still falling and this scene outside my front door:

The 5 trips out to shovel the night before were barely distinguishable. I took my official 9:00am measurement to find that since 3:00am, 5.5 more inches had fallen:

At 10:30, I decided to begin digging out. Here is a before and after shot of my walk:

While shoveling, I had my little buddy out there to keep me company:

Here are some additional shots, as the snow continued to pile up and the neighborhood begins to dig:

At 3:00 I took my 6 hour official measurements and 4.0 inches had accumulated on the snowboard and 23.5 inches were on the undisturbed half:

The snow ended around 4pm and I took one last measurement. We picked up an additional 0.2 inches after 3pm, bringing our accumulation total to 27.7 inches.

Here is a snapshot of my measurements: