March 1993 East Coast Snow

Recently, Midshipman S. Martin from the United States Naval Academy visited the GMAO, to learn about MERRA. The specific case study evaluated for a brief internship was the March 13, 1993 east coast snow storm (links to a recent Capital Gang discussion on the predictability of the storm). This was just a preliminary evaluation of how MERRA analyses represent the storm, in preparation for a senior paper.  As with the Feb 1979 storm (see the MERRA home page), we generated an animation (~8Mb) to get a sense of the storm track. 

Snowfall totals of 2 feet or more occurred at many observing stations. Below, the snowfall totals from Kocin et al (1995) are compared with MERRA. The northern extent of the heaviest snow seems to be a bit weak (in NY and western PA, for example) . The MERRA snow data was converted from snow water equivalent accumulated for the two days, and converted to snow depth using 10% snow/ice density.

At 12Z13MAR1993, the surface low was centered over Georgia, with the surface front extending southward through Florida. Aloft, the main part of the jet stream was North of the surface low, but a maximum in wind speed (likely a jet streak)was in the 300mb trough, lagging behind the surface front (below).

Looking closer at the vertical cross section through the trough and this wind maximum, we find a well defined tropopause fold associated with the 300 mb wind maximum. Below we compare the MERRA representation of the tropopause fold to a case study (1978) observed with aircraft measurements. The MERRA figure shows wind speed in black, potential temperature in dashed red and potential vorticity in shaded blue.

The main point here is that the MERRA analysis of the storm shows good dynamical structure of a very strong storm. More still would need done, evaluating the cyclogenesis, and how well the system physical processes through the lifecycle of the storm. However, this is one of the stronger examples of cyclogenesis in the MERRA period, and so another question is whether MERRA data can reproduce the dynamical structure of weaker storms. Ultimately it's a promising result so far.

Figures obtained from:

Keyser, Daniel. “Atmospheric Fronts:An Observational   Perspective.” In, Mesoscale Meteorology and Forecasting, 216–257.

Kocin, P., Schumacher, P., Morales, R., and Uccellini, L. (1995, February). Overview of the 12-14 March 1993 Superstorm. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 76, 2, 165-182.