5 Feet!!!

Before I review our most recent event, I wanted to show you all a video I made from the research flight I was on this past Tuesday (see below). We have a small camera aboard the King Air that takes a photograph every second, so you can actually take all of those photos and put them into a video - at the speed I have it, the video shows what it would look like flying at ~8,500 mph! Anyway, pay attention to the movement of the clouds and how they almost seem to "bubble up" as we fly by them. Enjoy!

So in my last post I let it be known that a big lake-effect snow event was in store, with possibly up to 3 feet of snow in some locations. It turns out that 60+ inches (5 feet) of snow ended up falling up in the hills east of Lake Ontario, with 66 inches in 78 hours at one of our OWLeS ground sites! Feel free to check out the blog from the University of Utah group who was stationed at that site during the event for photos.

I ended up flying in the King Air on Wednesday as well during the height of the event, when they were seeing snow falling at 3-4 inches/hour. In the end, this was a GREAT long-fetch lake-effect event! We collected a lot of very good data that will be analyzed in the years to come. We really could not have asked for a better event to study.

The lake-effect snow "machine" (as they like to call it up here) has been turned off for the time being, although a weak long-fetch single band may develop tomorrow (Sunday) evening or Monday morning and we may fly into it. Otherwise, the rest of the week looks relatively calm with regard to lake-effect snow. We are seeing some pretty good snow right now, but not of the lake-effect variety. Instead, this is a big snowstorm that is hitting the entire Northeast, from Washington D.C to Boston. Here in Geneva, NY we are expected possibly up to a foot of snow by the morning. I went out for some photos tonight just around the hotel. We had ~6 inches on the ground (maybe more) when these were taken, but it was hard to tell with all the blowing snow.

20 mph winds, and gusts to 30+, helped created these drifts

Pretty little walkway near the hotel

Fairly substantial waves from the strong winds on Seneca Lake