North American Blizzard of 2006 - Meteorological Information

Meteorological Information

Since the heaviest snow was confined to a fairly small, but very heavily populated area, the storm was only ranked as a low-end Category 3 (Major) on the new Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale, which takes into account the area and population affected, as well as snowfall accumulations. This indirectly also reflects that fact that casualties were extremely low and cleanup was fairly quick, even in the New York City area where the record snow amounts occurred. The main reasons for this are: A) The storm fell on a Sunday when many people can more easily stay home, B) the relatively small geographic area of extremely large snowfall, and C) Because the temperature was well below freezing throughout most of the storm, the snow was mostly dry and light in composition, as opposed to the wet and heavy snows that make some otherwise lesser storms much harder to clean up from and are more common at least in the coastal Northeast. Additionally, temperatures in the days after the storm were unseasonably warm in some spots (reaching the mid-50s °F in hard-hit New York City, and the mid 60s in DC) which helped melt the snow much more quickly than usual.

The storm system began developing on February 11 as a relatively minor system, bringing some snow along the southern Appalachian range. The low pressure center moved off-shore early February 12 before it began its rapid intensification. By early morning, snow began falling heavily, taking several forecasters by surprise who had expected about a foot of snow, at most, along the eastern fringes of the Atlantic seaboard. During the height of the storm on Sunday morning the 12th, thunder and lightning occurred as the snow fell. The presence of this thundersnow shows how energetic this storm became.

The extreme intensification was partially the result of a fairly mild winter that kept water temperatures in the Atlantic a few degrees warmer than they normally are in February. The storm system's intensity led to snowfall accumulations upwards of 32 inches (81.3 cm) in some localities.

In addition to the heavy snow, coastal flooding from storm surge was reported, particularly in Massachusetts. Storm surges have been recorded as high as 3 feet (1 m) in parts of New England.

The low pressure area began forming in the Southern states a few days prior to the Blizzard striking, eventually merging with a northern stream system. A trough on the East Coast brought the system up the coast, and cold high pressure to the north eventually slowed the system to a crawl. As the system completed bombing, or rapid decrease in central pressure (a common measure of the strength of a storm), mesoscale banding features (areas of significant snowfall associated with smaller scale physical phenomena) impinged on the entire I-95 Corridor.

The low pressure center was so deep that somewhat of an eye actually formed. Rarely do eyes form on storms other than hurricanes, and it is especially rare in extratropical cyclones. NASA took a satellite picture of the eye of the storm; the eye was located south and east of southern New Jersey in this picture.