So what happened with the last nor’easter? We were all saying we would get several inches of snow and it would start Wednesday and get intense that night into Thursday morning. Well, that clearly did not happen. So what caused the change?
As late as the 12z GFS run, it was saying that the snow would start between noon and 8pm Wednesday afternoon.
The NAM was even giving the same time frame for when the snow would start. What the models did not pick up on though until right before it was supposed to start was how strong the dry air would be and how far south the dry air would come. The models had been indicating that the dry air would prevent much snow accumulation in northern new England, but that there would be good accumulation in much of Massachusetts.
This map showed is from the national weather service where they were saying that the snow would start around 6pm in Lowell. However, the snow did not actually start until closer to midnight. This definitely was an impact because the heaviest was expected from 6 to midnight, so by the time the snow reached here, it was not heavy as long.
This image shows the radar for 8:02pm and you can see that right over Lowell there’s no snow around Lowell and the precipitation around are light, caused by the dry air. When the snow did pick up, it was after sunrise Thursday, and as a result the sun quickly melted the snow.
What also impacted the snow totals was the storm track. The storm went more south than what was predicted. There is a 40/70 mark where if a nor’easter goes over the point it’ll be a big storm. With it being more south, the heaviest of the snow went to our south.
Therefore the storm was a bust, but there were many factors as to why. Hopefully for the next storm will do what it’s forecasted to do so we can get more snow.