Rethinking Snowstorms as Snow Events: A Regional Case Study from Upstate New York

Call, David A.

doi:10.1175/bams-86-12-1783

Cited by 30 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The abstract for this article can be found in this issue, following the Research on aspects of these issues has been conducted for specific geographical areas (e.g., Saviers and Van Bussum 1997;Lazo and Chestnut 2002), for specific events or weather phenomena and decisionmaking situations (e.g., Katz and Murphy 1997;Anderson-Berry et al 2004;Stewart et al 2004;Call 2005;Drobot 2007;Hayden et al 2007; Morss and Wahl 2007;Zhang et al 2007), or for certain demographics (e.g., CFI Group 2005). Private sector marketing studies have likely also investigated these issues, although results from such studies are not readily available.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

300 Billion Served

Lazo¹,

Morss²,

Demuth³

2009

Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.

175

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

E very day, the U.S. weather enterprise collectively disseminates numerous weather forecasts to the U.S. public through various media. Considering the range of forecasts generated at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, the array of forecast providers and communication channels, and the size and diversity of the U.S. population, this equates to an enormous volume and multiplicity of information. The meteorological community knows intuitively that these forecasts are useful and of significant benefit to the public. However, apart from anecdotal evidence and vague notions, the community does not have a clear overall picture of how members of the public obtain, perceive, use, and value weather forecasts.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

300 Billion Served

Lazo¹,

Morss²,

Demuth³

2009

Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.

175

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Kristovich and Steve (1995) found multiband LES storms to be the most common type downwind of all five Great Lakes, while single-band storms are most frequent downwind of Lake Ontario. LES storm mode affected the spatial extent of each storm and, subsequently, the number of snowfall reports (see Table 1).…”

Section: A Warning-criteria Snowfall Areamentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Each band typically is 5-20-km wide and 20-50-km long. During an LES storm, detrimental impacts on travel are not uncommon as snowfall rates often are 2.5 cm h -1 (1 in h -1 ) (Call 2005). Additionally, significant storm-total snowfall gradients have been documented.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous locations downwind of the Great Lakes exhibit average annual snowfall >150 cm (60 in), while average annual snowfall >250 cm (100 in) occurs in many of the snow belts (i.e., favored areas for LES). These snow belts exist east and southeast of the lakes owing to the prevalence of west-northwest flow accompanying cold-air outbreaks (Kristovich and Steve 1995). Of all the NWS weather forecast offices (WFOs) in the Great Lakes region, only the Buffalo, New York, WFO keeps a thorough LES event archive that is available to the public.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A GIS-based assessment of lake-effect snow warnings in Upstate New York

Jaszka

Call²

2014

J. Operational Meteor.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A GIS-based assessment of lake-effect snow warnings in Upstate New York. J. Operational Meteor., 2 (6), 5970, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15191/nwajom.2014.0206. ) also have been documented. Twenty-four-hour snowfall measurements taken by National Weather Service (NWS) observers during Lake Ontario LES events were collected. Utilizing a geographic information system, snowfall was interpolated from spotter reports with the kriging method. Then, the area of warning-criteria snowfall was compared to the area of the corresponding county-based LES warning for calculation of false alarm percentage. This warning performance evaluator identified the proportion of a county-based LES warning that received sub-warning-criteria snowfall. Percent of false alarm was calculated using temporally comparable snowfall reports and all available reports from each event. Corresponding author address:A total of 13 events from the 2009-2010 through 2011-2012 LES seasons were analyzed. The average percent of false alarm was approximately 90%. This suggests the NWS should consider smaller warning polygons. Limited-size warnings would enable meteorologists to provide greater specificity regarding the location of anticipated significant snowfall, while simultaneously reducing the number of people who are unnecessarily warned.

show abstract

“…The Dolan and Davis (1992) scale only provides utility to those living close to large bodies of water, and the Zielinski (2002) scale provides no method of accounting for the impact of precipitation, which is known to be an important indicator of intrinsic disruption (Rooney 1967;Call 2005;Changnon et al 2006). Qui (2008) is solely geared toward the highway maintenance aspect of winter storms.…”

Section: The Local Winter Storm Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

The Local Winter Storm Scale: A Measure of the Intrinsic Ability of Winter Storms to Disrupt Society

Cerruti

Decker

2011

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A local winter storm scale (LWSS) is developed to categorize the disruption caused by winter storms using archived surface weather observations from a single location along the U.S. East Coast. Development of LWSS is motivated by the recognition that the observed societal impact from a given winter storm (called realized disruption here) arises from the convolution of two factors, the meteorological conditions that lead to disruption (i.e., intrinsic disruption) and society's susceptibility to winter weather. LWSS is designed to measure the first factor, intrinsic disruption. The scale uses maximum sustained winds, wind gusts, storm-total snowfall and icing accumulations, and minimum visibility to arrive at a categorical value between 0 and 5 inclusive. An alternate method is used to quantify the realized disruption that each storm produced and helps calibrate aspects of LWSS. All winter storms observed at Newark Liberty International Airport over the 15 cold seasons between 1995/96 and 2009/10 were categorized using LWSS. Focusing on one location reduces the variability in societal susceptibility, which allows the relationship between intrinsic disruption and realized disruption to be quantified. Some important factors related to societal susceptibility were found to increase storms' realized disruption, including occurrence during a weekday, off-peak season, and less than two days subsequent to a previous storm. A closer examination of the 9–11 February 2010 winter storm demonstrates LWSS's ability to depict the spatial variability of the storm's intrinsic disruption. This information is used to infer variations in societal susceptibility between metropolitan areas and reveals the need for an instantaneous intrinsic disruption index to account for temporal variations in storm intensity.

show abstract

Rethinking Snowstorms as Snow Events: A Regional Case Study from Upstate New York

Cited by 30 publications

References 8 publications

300 Billion Served

300 Billion Served

A GIS-based assessment of lake-effect snow warnings in Upstate New York

The Local Winter Storm Scale: A Measure of the Intrinsic Ability of Winter Storms to Disrupt Society

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About