Holiday Blizzard 2010–Another Update

Good afternoon everyone. I just posted a video here in the blog on the weather conditions we’ve had over the past 24 hours. I also have a time lapse photography video of the storm that will be posted soon. This storm was a vicious storm that is still packing a wallop with the winds. Even after the snowfall has stopped the winds have gotten stronger as they take advantage of the pressure gradient from the low moving out and strong high pressure moving in.

After I gave my report early this morning, the barometric pressure slipped a few more inches to 29.08 inches of Hg (Mercury) or 985 millibars. Very strong storm. Since that time, winds have gusted to 30 and 31 miles per hour here in South Plainfield. Those are the strongest winds ever recorded here on my weather station in the yard, and that is taking into consideration that the station is not in an open area, and the winds are obstructed by nearby houses and trees. I measured the snow again, and found that it was about a foot and a half. I would like to make one more measurement though just to make sure.

I had a talk with my mother this morning, and she said that she had never seen anything like this storm in terms of the amount of snow that got on our porch. There was a ton of snow there, which has never happened before even in the Blizzard of 1996. Speaking of that storm, this blizzard was the sixth highest snowfall in Central Park in New York City right behind the Blizzard of 1996. This storm dumped 20 inches in Central Park while the Blizzard of 1996, which happened almost 15 years ago, had 20.2 inches. The biggest snowfall in Central Park was back in the Blizzard of 2006 with 26.9 inches.

Another interesting stat was the drop in pressure from 8:10 AM on Sunday morning to 4:10 AM this morning, a span of 20 hours, the barometric pressure in South Plainfield dropped 70 inches, or about 23 millibars. So, there was a drop of 3.5 inches, or 1.15 millibars per hour.