Central Park totals worse than ever.

Updated 2/2/15

Does anyone have a measurement who is near Central Park? If you do please post it here or send it to NOAA.

It's just ridiculous it always comes to this despite their assurances they want to fix it.

Please send e-mail to NOAA at the e-mail address below that the 3.6 inches measured in CPK is way low as always. Laguardia reported 6.6 inches, Newark 4.6 inches, JFK 4.5 inches, Bronx Zoo 6.7, Brooklyn 6.1. It never ends unbelievable.

okx.webmaster@noaa.gov

If you have an accurate measurement near Central Park, again before the change to freezing rain send that to the e-mail address below.

okx.spotters@noaa.gov

You can also tweet your snowfall measurement to

@NWSNewYorkNY

Thanks as always








Updated 1/24/15

okx.webmaster@noaa.gov

Below is a sample letter to send, just send to the e-mail address at the top of the page. Just copy and paste it if it makes it easier. Surprisingly it will make a difference.

Hello Men and Women of NOAA:

It looks like the zookeeper is at it again.

His so-called official measurement at 5:40 this morning came in at 2.5 inches.

Every reporting station and trained spotter within 10 miles, south, east, north, and west, has higher to much higher amounts, the majority of them reporting earlier than 5:40. As you well know and are aware, this goes on with almost every storm. The totals always come in low and the people in the zoo that supposedly take the measurements don't really care.

Can this finally be fixed, and can several trained spotters in and around Central Park just do the measurements. I'm sure there are many people, weather enthusiasts, and snow lovers, that would be more than happy to do the job.

Thanks as always for your time.

Sign your real name

okx.webmaster@noaa.gov

Idk why they always have this issue.

Thanks CP

Frank_Wx wrote:Idk why they always have this issue.

Thanks CP

Thanks for the forum to voice my obsession Frank.

Zookeeper update:

The 10:30am observation in CPK was 1.3 inches. As of 1:00 pm they upped it to 1.5 inches. Since it didn't snow between 10:30 and 1:00 pm in the park I can assume the e-mails are already having an effect. With a few more emails maybe by the 5:00 observtaion CPK will be at 2.0 which is what actually fell.

CP - go get 'em tigger - I love it when you get your ire up about this incompetent Zoo Keeper - may have to throw him to the Polar Bears?

amugs wrote:CP - go get 'em tigger - I love it when you get your ire up about this incompetent Zoo Keeper - may have to throw him to the Polar Bears?

Yeah go get em "tigger"..lol

sroc4 wrote:

amugs wrote:CP - go get 'em tigger - I love it when you get your ire up about this incompetent Zoo Keeper - may have to throw him to the Polar Bears?

Yeah go get em "tigger"..lol

Tis a blustery day today Pooh Bear, maybe I'll get em tomorrow.

Look at it this way CP with the seasonal snow total at 3.2" at least it won't be the least snowiest season on record.

Math23x7 wrote:Look at it this way CP with the seasonal snow total at 3.2" at least it won't be the least snowiest season on record.

Mike:

We're now 145th out of 146 recorded seasons.

Having lived through the most snow starved winter, if you can call it that, of 72-73 I never want to go through that again. 2.8 inches in CPK. I was only 11 at the time so I wasn't recording totals but I don't think we got much more than a foot in HV that winter. I remember one 6 inch storm and that was it for the whole winter. Similar in many respects to the winter of 2001/02, another nightmare.

Guess if all the e mails have no effect, CP, we will have to come up with a variable called the Zookeeper Deficit Variable, which will be added to the amount he always shortchanges.Why the most important City in this country allows the snow records to be so wrongly reported is a mystery of the ages.

I remember that God awful 72-73 winter, hardly any snow, 60's in January etc. I was 22 years old driving daily to Dental School Fort lee to Hackensack, and had good chances to observe it all.At least we have beaten that here in the HV this year.

What did we get today? NWS had Kiryas Joel 1.2 inch.Thats about 3 miles from me.

1997-98 was the worst in my memory, 5.5"...but in reality it was worse than that. 0.5" all winter(including what may be the only Feb without even a trace of snow) until a late March morning surprise storm dropped 5". The strong late March sun melted it rapidly so there was very little time to enjoy it. I kind of wished that 5" didn't happen so that yr could of gotten the credit of least snowiest at .5" Guess I wanted the credit for the yr of suffering lol.

I figured it was to make up for the epic 1996 b/c the rest of the 90s were light on snowfall.

Dtone, remember that as well, the March storm that rapidly melted.96-97,97-98,98-99 were poor years for snow lovers.We've been very spoiled this decade, only a bust year here and there.

docstox12 wrote:Guess if all the e mails have no effect, CP, we will have to come up with a variable called the Zookeeper Deficit Variable, which will be added to the amount he always shortchanges.Why the most important City in this country allows the snow records to be so wrongly reported is a mystery of the ages.

I remember that God awful 72-73 winter, hardly any snow, 60's in January etc. I was 22 years old driving daily to Dental School Fort lee to Hackensack, and had good chances to observe it all.At least we have beaten that here in the HV this year.

What did we get today? NWS had Kiryas Joel 1.2 inch.Thats about 3 miles from me.

1.3 inches today Doc, add it to the scoreboard. We're doing it with singles this year with the exception of the nice triple in the gap the day before Thanksgiving.

i was in middle school in late 80's and high school in early 90's. There was no snow then. That was bad. As a kid, no snow really sucks.

CPcantmeasuresnow wrote:

docstox12 wrote:Guess if all the e mails have no effect, CP, we will have to come up with a variable called the Zookeeper Deficit Variable, which will be added to the amount he always shortchanges.Why the most important City in this country allows the snow records to be so wrongly reported is a mystery of the ages.

I remember that God awful 72-73 winter, hardly any snow, 60's in January etc. I was 22 years old driving daily to Dental School Fort lee to Hackensack, and had good chances to observe it all.At least we have beaten that here in the HV this year.

What did we get today? NWS had Kiryas Joel 1.2 inch.Thats about 3 miles from me.

1.3 inches today Doc, add it to the scoreboard. We're doing it with singles this year with the exception of the nice triple in the gap the day before Thanksgiving.

Love that baseball analogy, CP.

Small ball wins games! Keep em' coming and by the end of March, we'll be happy.

Updating now and 10Q for the total.

devsman wrote:i was in middle school in late 80's and high school in early 90's. There was no snow then. That was bad. As a kid, no snow really sucks.

You've got that right! I think my love of snow began at age 10 when we got 2 days off from school, Mon and Tues after the Dec 11-12 Blizzard.

CP because of your constant disgust with the zookeeper,I was poking around and came across a website dedicated to historical data at Central Park over the years. I'm sure you have seen it, but for others who might be interested:

http://www.weather.gov/okx/CentralParkHistorical

GreyBeard wrote:CP because of your constant disgust with the zookeeper,I was poking around and came across a website dedicated to historical data at Central Park over the years. I'm sure you have seen it, but for others who might be interested:

http://www.weather.gov/okx/CentralParkHistorical

A funny thing about this site GreyBeard. If you do the Math on the 30 year totals for CPK which NOAA calculates and publishes using the period Jan 1981 through December 2010, the 30 year average for NYC equal 25.9 inches. The irony is the published totals for the 30 year average for CPK is 25.1.

I pointed this out to NOAA and the State Climate center last year and at first they tried to attribute it to rounding which is of course mathematically impossible. I finally got them to acknowledge the error and they said they would be modifying the totals. To date every site I've seen since still publishes 25.1 as the 30 year average.

I point these things out because this is as basic as basic gets. Its adding and then dividing, no calculus or quantum physics involved. Yet they can't even get that right. It has always made me skeptical of anything they publish that's far more complicated like say trying to predict the weather using complex software programs to project global weather weeks in advance. Or the easy things like sticking a  ruler in the ground and reporting snow totals.

I've been meaning for months to post the e-mails where they acknowledged the error in the published NYC 30 year totals, and said they were going to fix it. When work slows up I'll do that.

CP, that .8 discrepancy is a lot of snow over 30 years.Will enjoy reading those e mails of yours when you post them.

docstox12 wrote:CP, that .8 discrepancy is a lot of snow over 30 years.Will enjoy reading those e mails of yours when you post them.

Doc

My apprentice Obi Math23X7, will be verifying those 30 year averages.

"Help us Math 23X7, you're our only hope".

Wish i could project a two foot hologram saying this.

docstox12 wrote:"Help us Math 23X7, you're our only hope".

Wish i could project a two foot hologram saying this.

Dying here Doc, you're a friggin riot.

Seriously though the fact that a government agency can't add and then divide their own 30 year table is disturbing, but unfortunately not surprising.

Yes, CP, your tax dollars at work.

An easily correctable error goes untouched and probably will until we fill out 10 different forms in triplicate and wait for the next bureaucratic meeting in two years for them to decide they must table the matter for another year for more intensive study to be done.

Doc I agree with your comment earlier about this looks like a November March winter in the HV.

A foot of snow in November an inch in December and January not looking to good. February and March of course can be the saving grace for all of us.

February despite being the shortest month is of course historically our snowiest month. 9.2 inch average in CPK and well over a foot in HV and parts of north jersey. Of course this year we are not only fighting the crappy pattern but we are also fighting the all knowing and all powerful December Prognosticator.

May God help the distraught snow weenies everywhere. At least we share our misery this year with just about thee entire Midwest and northeast.

I HAVE THE ANSWER TO THE ZOOKEPER ISSUE!! A little birdie told me he's seen him do his "official" snow measurements under the spruce trees just outside the zoo entrance!

syosnow94 wrote:I HAVE THE ANSWER TO THE ZOOKEPER ISSUE!!  A little birdie told me he's seen him do his "official" snow measurements under the spruce trees just outside the zoo entrance!

I know you jest but it wouldn't surprise me.

From my conversations with NOAA and the state climate office it seems whoever does it just doesn't really give a sh!t. Some days I believe they don't even measure and NOAA just estimates from the precip that fell, what the snow fall was. Of course days like last week when .05 QPf fell in the park while the temperature never went above 20 degrees the ratios were high and 1.2 inches of snow fell. NOAA went with the standard ratio and recorded .5 inches in the park when all stations within 5 miles Newark, LGA and JFK all recorded over an inch. It wouldn't be a big deal if they did it once but they've been doing stuff like that for years and they even acknowledge it's a big problem.

The easy solution of Course is have several trained spotters that live near Central Park do the observations instead of a low payed city employee from the zoo that's doesn't give a rats ass how much snow has fallen. I've suggested that at times and they asked if I'd do it. If I lived on Central Park west I'd be happy to but why not just find one of the quarter of a million people that live a couple hundred feet from Central Park.

I'm done for the day.