SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT WEATHER
  • Home
  • Forecaster Discussion
  • SCW Social Media Hub
  • SCW Facebook
  • About Us/Contact Us

Grading the January 31 & Super Bowl Snowstorms

2/8/2021

Comments

 
Good afternoon from SCW. 

As you know, we like to grade our forecasts. It is a way for us to look back and identify how we can be better. With a number of active threats, including one tomorrow, time is hard to come by. As a result, we're going to grade the two most recent storms here, without the standard map that you see after a storm. Rest assured, however, I did review the storm reports in relation to our final call forecasts. Let's start with the January 31st event. 
Picture
Today's GOES-E image of the East Coast, with snowfall visible from Maryland to Canada! In the last week, some of us have received snow that would come in a normal month or two of winter! 

January 31, 2021 Event
Snow Accumulation
We took the numbers up modestly from our first call, and for the most part that worked. It's always difficult to get double digit accumulations statewide, and we saw a relative minimum in NE CT. That said, we could have gone higher with snow totals in SW CT. We saw multiple reports of 15+ in SW and central parts of the state, including 15.2" in Bridgeport! 

We weigh snow accumulation twice to account for the fact that most people only care about what falls in their backyard. Here, we did well. Of the 60 reports I counted, only 6 (10%) deviated from our forecast upper bound of 14" by 2 inches or more. Only one report ended up higher than our maximum isolated number on our map of 18". I think that puts us in a good place. 

Grade: A-


Timing
Overall the timing was good, though we did struggle a bit with onset. The worst of the storm was when we said it would be.

Grade: B+


Wind/Power Outages
This area was mixed. We did a great job highlighting wind potential and blizzard conditions in southern CT, and that's what happened. Inland CT winds were not as strong as I expected, and the southern CT winds were within our range, though on the lower bound.

As for power outages, while I did say I didn't expect widespread power outages, I went with scattered outages for southern CT. They were more isolated. That's splitting hairs, but it matters to me. 

Grade: A-

Road Conditions
This one wasn't too hard. Road conditions were terrible for a while, as you always see with a heavy snow event with blizzard like conditions. 

Grade: A


Overall Impact
We called for high impact, and it was high impact. We nailed the worst impact timing and for many this was the worst winter weather event since 2018. Very happy with this aspect of the forecast. 

Grade: A

Taking everything into account, this was an excellent forecast. There's no better feeling than coming through with a great forecast during a high impact event. 

Overall Grade: A-


Super Bowl (2-7-21) Event

This forecast was much more difficult than the January 31st event. This forecast had a lot more uncertainty with the guidance being all over the place in track. 

Snow Accumulation
After putting a large part of the state in the 6-10" zone, we downgraded that to a map which featured a large 3-6" zone and a smaller 4-8" zone at the shoreline. We thought that the heaviest banding would remain just to the SE of Connecticut, and that was wrong. We did tell everyone to expect a period of moderate to heavy snow, and we saw an afternoon full of heavy snow. We thought the highest totals would be in SE CT, and they ended up a bit further west and north. 

Here, we had 3/55 (5%) of the relevant reports fall two inches or more out of our zone, which is excellent, but we did have one report well out of our 3-6" range and we could have stood to be more aggressive in the overall map in eastern CT, among the other issues I mentioned earlier. For that reason, what would have otherwise been a higher grade gets downgraded harshly. 

Grade: B-


Timing
Our timing forecast was a mixed bag, and is also graded more harshly because although we were accurate in start and end time, we were off by a few hours in how quickly the heavy snow would begin. I was surprised by how quickly we went from light snow to heavy snow. This would be an A otherwise, but we lose a letter grade for failing to pinpoint how quickly things would get.  

Grade: B


Road Conditions
We were right on the money in saying the roads would be where the highest impact would be felt. We had snowfall rates of 1-2+ inches an hour, and we did correctly forecast that road conditions would begin to deteriorate by late morning and the worst being from 1-5pm on the roads. Great job here, which makes me even more annoyed that I missed the timing forecast for the onset of heavier snow. 

Grade: A 

Overall Impact
We were right on this one too. It was a moderate event because it was a Sunday, but high impact on the roads. There were no significant wind or power outage issues here, and it was a quick mover. Good job. 

Grade: A 

Using the formula we did with the first event, we did alright. With a higher degree of difficulty came some misses that cost us significantly on the overall grade, but I don't view this forecast too poorly. It would have been worse if GP didn't convince me to drag that 4-8" zone across the shoreline! Thanks, GP! 

Overall Grade: B 


A​s always, please like, share, and interact with us on our social media--on Facebook to share our discussions, and follow us on Twitter @southernctwx to retweet our posts. Hit the buttons below to join.

Thank you for reading. 
​
-DB​   ​
Follow @SouthernCTWX
Comments

    Archives

    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014

    Categories

    All
    Summer Forecast
    Tropical Weather
    Winter Forecast

    Authors

    Southern Connecticut Weather is brought to you by Timothy Wrightington Jr. (TW), Spencer Aronstein(SA), Greg Petridis (GP), and Don Bell (DB).

Picture
Copyright Southern Connecticut Weather 2018, all rights reserved. 
For website related inquiries, email us at [email protected]

Privacy Policy/Terms of Service