Ranking Winter Storms

Reported January 2007

CAMP SPRINGS, Md. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- When a winter storm hits, so do delays and headaches. Do you stockpile candles and canned goods or prepare the ice scraper and expect a difficult drive to work tomorrow?

Snowstorm warnings predict how many inches to expect, but don't say how long delays will last. Now, a new system ranks a storm's strength and helps predict when things will be back to normal.

Developed by meteorologists, the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale, or NESIS, ranks storms by size, amount of snowfall and number of people affected.

"It boils down to how much snow falls on the population," Meteorologist Louis Uccellini, Ph.D., tells Ivanhoe.

Researchers like Dr. Uccellini at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NOAA) in Camp Springs, Maryland, assess the storm's impact today, compare it with past storms, and then assign it one of five categories: Notable, Significant, Major, Crippling or Extreme.

"Relaying that this is going to be a category three, four or five storm, we tell you that this is similar to the 'Blizzard of 1996' or the 'Superstorm of 1993,' you will immediately know that this is going to be a storm of major proportions," Dr. Uccellini says. Those were the only two storms in the past century that rated category five or extreme -- the Blizzard of January 1996 dumped 17 to 30 inches of snow in every city from Washington, D.C., to Boston.

The northeast is the first region to use NESIS because it is so heavily populated. The new rating system is used after snow falls, but it could be used in forecasts to help warn of major traffic, school and airport delays -- dealing with the storms, one snowflake at a time.

The American Meteorological Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Carmeyia Gillis
Public Information Officer
National Climatic Data Center
(301) 763-8000 ext. 7163
carmeyia.gillis@noaa.gov

American Meteorological Society
45 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108-3693
(617) 227-2425
http://www.ametsoc.org

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