Today's storm was one of the more unusual storms I've ever seen. The first thing I noticed were the low temps. It was moderate snow at 7 degrees (usually when we get weather that cold, it's arctic-clear). When the changeover to sleet occurred late this morning, it was 15 degrees. I've been in touch with a weather-observer friend in the Lebanon area all day who says he also got sleet today.
What really killed accumulations in his area and this area today was the enormous "dry slot" that formed and stayed over us for most of the day. For those asking, 'what's a dry slot?' imagine a well-formed winter storm as having a comma shape (as opposed to a hurricane's pinwheel shape.) In a giant comma there's going to be a narrow space in between the comma's round center and the tail that wraps outward from it. This is a normal part of any winter storm and is really hard to predict.
Today we got a 'dry slot' that was much bigger than I've seen in a long time.
Between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. nothing really fell at all. We did have a lot of blowing and drifting snow as winds gusted to 44 mph just after noontime, from the east.
Just after 6 p.m. the parent storm over western NY state finished transferring all its juice to the new coastal storm over the mid-Atlantic. When that happened, the former dry slot rapidly filled in... and by 6:30 we were back to moderate snow and sleet. At 7 p.m. we went to moderate snow, which is what it still is.
The wind has turned from East over to the Northwest, which means we're now getting the backside of the storm (it spins counterclockwise). This is also helping to bring in the arctic cold air that has been waiting patiently to the NW of here.
At 6 p.m. we had a total of 5.8 inches for Black Cat/Center Harbor... but more snow is falling now.
As always, the data is updated every 5 minutes at
www.blackcatnh.com/weather.
Here's a pic of Rt. 25 in Moultonborough I took around 4 p.m.