4th March Nor'easter Slams the Northeast on the First Day of Spring

I describe the official Campus Weather Service snowfall map during my video Tuesday morning

Happy Spring! The season filled with blooming flowers, warmer temperatures, and....snow! Apparently, Mother Nature doesn't care when the vernal equinox is as the northeast got hammered with its 4th nor'easter of March over the past couple of days. Penn State received about 4-5 inches from the storm, but places just south of State College and towards the eastern half of Pennsylvania saw snow totals get close to a foot. Many people are getting sick of all this snow and just want some spring-like temperatures, so I'll let you know if we have any more snow in the forecast later in this blog post.

There were two main things that made this storm interesting to forecast for and monitor as it impacted the northeast. First, this storm was very hard to create a forecast for a few days out, especially for State College, which was looking like it would be right on the fringe of the snow. Models were all over the place with some models forecasting over a foot here in Happy Valley a few days before the storm and others barely giving us an inch.

A typical setup for a nor'easter - Credit: The Weather Channel

The previous nor'easters that have impacted the northeast United States have been much more of traditional setup for a nor'easter, where the system develops off the coast of the United States and then moves up the coast towards New England. However, this system made its way across the country, west to east, and then almost stalled in the mid-Atlantic where it received an injection of moisture from the south and then redeveloped off the coast of Delaware before it moved northeast, towards New England. This meant that Pennsylvania had the possibility of seeing snow from when the system was traversing across the country and even when it was stalled before it would move onto impact Southern New England.

The problem was the dry air just to the north of us. This dry air kept the snow to the south of us for the entirety of the day on Tuesday in State College, which left many meteorologists scrambling to adjust their snowfall forecast maps and lower the amounts that they were expecting. However, when many of us woke up on Wednesday morning, the snow had finally made it into Happy Valley and it was coming down at a moderate clip.

Graphic about different sun angles in different seasons - Credit: Home in the Earth.com

The second impressive thing about this storm was that for late-March it's usually difficult to see accumulations of any snow during the daytime, in cities especially. The spring sun angle is much higher in the sky than during the winter, which warms the ground and the lower atmosphere faster. In order to overcome this, it must snow at a heavier rate to accumulate during the daytime, which it did - with heavy snow coming down especially during the day on Wednesday reducing visibilities to less than a mile in some locations and creating treacherous travel conditions. For instance, some impressive 5-inch-per-hour snowfall rates were reported on Long Island with some gusty winds causing for quick snow accumulations and very poor travel conditions.

LOW VISIBILITY = DANGEROUS TRAVEL
Avoid travel if possible, especially in southern and southeastern parts of the state. Heavier snowfall leads to lower visibility and difficult travel conditions. Stay safe! #PSUWeather pic.twitter.com/1a7Fh8x3r8

— Campus Weather Service (@PSUWeather) March 21, 2018

Many places, such as Philadelphia and New York, also saw the snow totals from this system break their old records for the most amount of snow that's fallen on this date in history. Washington D.C. doubled their yearly snow total after they picked up around 4 inches from this storm. The graphic below highlights just how rare having a big snowstorm is in the second half of March for New York City.

Graphic showing the rarity of large snow events late in March - Credit: AccuWeather

Two people have also died in accidents from trying to travel in this nor'easter and nearly 50,000 are without power due to this storm (for many this isn't the first time that they've lost power in the month of March). Over 4,000 flights were canceled on Wednesday and travel headaches could be seen from Massachusetts all the way down to Washington D.C.

What conditions are looking like for Thursday - Credit: AccuWeather

It will remain cold for the rest of this week with the freeze potential on Thursday morning from this storm as the places that saw some of the snow melt during the day on Wednesday will most likely see this refreeze overnight as black ice.

The Alberta clipper stom just missing PA to the south and west over the weekend - Credit: Tropical Tidbits

The good news is that the sun will be out by this weekend and we'll be missing out on the snow for an Alberta clipper system that will pass just to the south of Pennsylvania. By the time we get into early next week temperatures should begin to gradually increase and we could hit 50! by the time we get to Wednesday and Thursday. No guarantees that this will stick around, but I'm sure many people are just happy to hear that there's no more snow in the forecast for the next 7 days. Stay warm!