This resulted in a mostly rain event for eastern Massachusetts (Boston just had 7” of slushy snow) and Maine in 1888 with the core of the heaviest snow falling from New York City north to Albany and east though western Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut. Also, the 1888 storm actually made a small loop south of Long Island, unlike Nemo. In 1888 the storm center ‘bombed’ about 100 miles further to the southeast than where Nemo did such. The big difference between the blizzard of 1888 and Nemo was the location of where the ‘bombogenesis’ took place. Both storms formed from similar synoptic situations low pressure system/trough arriving from the west combined with low pressure center developing of the mid-Atlantic coast and then ‘bombing’ explosively south of Long Island and slowly tracking off to the northeast. There were many ways this storm was similar to the great Blizzard of March 1888. Photo from NASA.Ĭomparison to the Blizzard of March 11-14, 1888 However, in Nemo’s case this was a pure winter storm, not a hybrid tropical cum extra-tropical storm like Sandy and the 1991 event although there have been other winter storms in the past that also displayed a similar ‘eye’ structure. This feature was also seen with Sandy last October and the ‘Perfect Storm’ of October 28, 1991. The amazing structure of the storm resembles a hurricane with an eye structure. The storm was certainly among the top five to affect Southern New England and Maine and for some localities, the worst winter storm on record (going back 300 years since European inhabitants began keeping track of such things).Ī satellite image of Nemo Saturday morning around 7 a.m. Winter storm ‘Nemo’ (as The Weather Channel’ has designated it), winded up this Saturday night although sea-effect snow showers continue to brush Cape Cod and Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. Caption by Mike Carlowicz.Winter Storm ‘Nemo’: A Historical Perspective Images and animation courtesy NASA-NOAA GOES Project Science Team.

Visit our natural hazards gallery for other images of the storm. The combination of heavy, wet snow and gale- to hurricane-force winds snapped trees and power lines across the region and led to power outages for hundreds of thousands of residents as temperatures dropped 10 or more degrees below freezing. Hurricane-force gusts were recorded in 12 locations, including 83 miles per hour at Cuttyhunk Island in Massachusetts and 82 mph in Westport, Connecticut. At some points in the video above, the storm appears to rotate around central eye-it was a shallow area of warm air was trapped near the center-though meteorologists such as Masters pointed out that the storm was not otherwise comparable to a tropical cyclone in structure. Significant wave heights over 30 feet were measured in Massachusetts Bay, and a storm surge over 4 feet inundated many of the north- and east-facing towns on Cape Cod and eastern Massachusetts. on February 9, a level usually recorded in category one hurricanes. The central pressure of the storm fell to 971 millibars at 7 a.m. The highest snowfall totals by state included 40 inches in Hamden, Connecticut 35.5 inches in Gorham, Maine 28.3 inches in Southwick, Massachusetts 30.3 inches in Upton, New York 25.7 inches in West Glocester, Rhode Island and 29.3 inches in Seabrook, New Hampshire. Note how a weather front near the Great Lakes merges with a weather front moving up from the southeastern United States, eventually becoming one storm with the counter-clockwise rotation characteristic of a nor’easter.Īccording to the National Weather Service, snowfall rates reached 6 inches per hour in parts of Connecticut. The time-lapse animation is made up of images taken every 15 minutes from 12:01 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on February 9, 2013. The still image was captured at 1:15 p.m. The image above and the movie below show the development of a severe winter storm over the northeastern United States as captured by the GOES-13 (or GOES-East) geostationary weather satellite. As meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground put it, the snowfall from this blizzard was measured in feet, not inches. Snowfall was reported in fourteen states from Wisconsin to the Atlantic Coast, from North Carolina to Maine, with the most prodigious totals in the New England coastal states. In early February 2013, a potent storm with hurricane-force wind gusts pounded the northeastern United States for the second time in four months.

February 2013 snow storm totals