And So It Begins

It has been an incredible show already on the Tug Hill Plateau and the storm is just getting started.

Overnight we were prefrontal and temperatures rose into the 40s with heavy rain at times.  The snowpack became totally saturated and between settlement and melt dropped in height substantially.

Yesterday

This morning

One has to wonder just how deep the snowpack would get around here if northern New York wasn't so susceptible to midwinter thaw and rain events.  What a pity Mother Nature is such a tease.

It began to snow at our place in North Redfield a bit after 8 am this morning.  Lake effect began to get going around 11 am.  So far accumulations have been light, but the wind has been very gusty so visibilities fluctuate between about 1/2 mile when the wind is light to perhaps 100 yards when it is strong.  Sometimes it is possible to take a very patriotic photo.

An unfortunate aspect of the wind is that it makes snow observations very difficult.  We are hoping it backs off some soon.  

This is still expected to be a big event for us, but the models are calling for a wavy band that moves back and forth like a lose firehose.  We're going to have an interesting 48 hours.