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Old 01-15-2008, 03:41 PM   #45
CanisLupusArctos
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R2B, What you say about the high not being that strong -- this is starting to make a lot more sense now, in comparison to more typical storms. Usually Nor'Easters bring more of an easterly wind than northerly. I've found the lake's geographic alignment (NW-SE) likes to bend wind to those directions if they're similar enough. Even the other night when everyone else was reporting NE winds (while this storm was approaching) this station was getting winds straight up the lake from the SE... "The Rattlesnake Express."

This may also explain a lot in relation to past storms: As a typical Nor'Easter passes, its wind will go to north for 1-3 hours, before the Northwesterly backside kicks in. As I remember, at that point in the storm, the snow has always either shut down to flurries/patches of clear sky, or at least tapered off significantly, even while everyone else was continuing to snow moderately. Then, the NW winds kick in, and we get the backside squalls with another inch or two of accumulation.

Therefore, this may help predict future snow at this end of the lake. Based on this, my guess is that in order for the Center Harbor end of the lake to get a storm's full potential snowfall, the storm needs to provide most or all of its snowfall while it's still far enough down the coast to give us its East or NE winds. Once it's close enough to shift our winds more northerly, we could predict that snow will shut down at this end of the lake until the storm passes and shifts our winds to the NW.

On the flipside of the coin, we could forecast enhanced snowfall for all windward slopes around the lake during the same situations. This sort of localized feature would not be picked up by the models at all (at least not for a few more years).

NHKathy, I'm going to guess that Moultonborough Neck didn't get any more than here at Black Cat (2.7 inches). Other snowfall reports seem to draw a line from the Ossipees directly SSW, and the closer you get to the Ossipees on that line, the less snow there was.
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