As many of you know, tomorrow we’re expecting a clipper system here in central New York. Whenever I see one of these events on the horizon, I see “bust” written everywhere. The problem with these things is, you have to take every single thing into hand, or else that word will be your forecast.
First off, clippers are something different. We’ve all dealt with Lake Effect, where Oswego county and the Tug get hit. There’s also the Nor’ Easters, where the Adirondacks are the winners. Take note in what those locations have in common, they’re in the northern tier of CNY.
Clippers are another beast, however. Unlike the normal “the farther north you go, the more snow,” they have more snow the farther south you go. This holds true for almost no matter what. Otsego county will always get more than Boonville in these systems, unless they track through CNY.
There’s also the forecasting challenges within. These clippers are fast movers, and some even have precip. type to take into account. On top of that, they’re fast movers. These systems may produce snowfall rates fast enough to warrant the high totals, but it just doesn’t last.
To add to all that mess to take care of, there’s the model bias. Currently, the NAM has been waiting until the middle of the storm to bring things north, to have that verify. So, right now when I see one of these systems, I’m thinking that it’s going to go further north than the NAM has pegged. The GFS seems to handle these events well, but it’s hard to use its resolution to make a snowfall forecast.
Now, I haven’t really been looking at too much weather data this past week, but I’ll be sure to get back into the swing of things after the holidays.
