Snow record confirmed in New Jersey — 75 years later
It took four years to verify Philly's record snow. That seems like fast work in comparison.
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Four years passed before Philadelphia’s snow record was affirmed officially. But that might seem like fast service compared with the latest reported weather-record investigation in New Jersey.
The National Weather Service this week decreed that the 29.7 inches reported in Long Branch, N.J., between 4 a.m. Dec. 26, 1947, and 4 a.m. Dec. 27, indeed was legitimate, and surpassed any snow amount that had fallen in the Garden State in any 24-hour period.
It was a storm of such magnitude that the Daily Record of Long Branch declared that it made the Blizzard of 1888 look like “light snow.” (In reality, ’88 was a bit more than that.) In Philly, 7 inches was measured.
But for the record, verifying the Long Branch total was quite a forensic process involving members of the State Climate Extremes Committee, which included meteorologists from the Mount Holly and New York weather service offices, and Rutgers University’s David Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist.
» READ MORE: About Philly's record snow ...
Their findings were contained in a detailed 60-page report, which also noted that the committee had rejected three other snow totals in its investigations, including a 30-inch report for Bernards Township in January 2016.
The reexaminations of the snow totals were prompted by questionable snowfall reports from last winter.
Historically, amounts of 30-plus inches have been measured in the state for storm totals, however the committee confined its work in this instance to 24-hour totals.
In the climate community, vetting weather records is serious business.
In the case of Philadelphia’s record 30.7-inch snowfall of Jan. 7-8, 1996, an investigation was prompted by well-grounded skepticism about the total.
Given the winds and the fact that a newly installed automated weather station didn’t have a function for measuring snow, the total accumulation was inferred based on the melted-liquid content of the snow and the air temperatures.
» READ MORE: Philly winters aren't what you think.
The National Weather Service commissioned Robinson and then Franklin Institute meteorologist Jon Nese to investigate. Based on similar totals reported nearby, they ruled in 2000 that the 30.7 figure would stand.
Humans do the measuring these days.