New York State Mesonet Winter Weather Data, Products and Services for NOAA operations

New York State (NYS) provides the ideal testbed for monitoring all types of winter weather over complex terrain (blizzards, lake-effect snow, snow squalls, ice storms and mixed precipitation). The NYS Mesonet provides comprehensive winter weather measurements along with other surface and atmospheric measurements with unprecedented high spatial and temporal resolution. They include (a) accurate and continuous snow depth every five minutes from an acoustic sensor at 126 sites along with other meteorological data; (b) 6-hourly snow water equivalent (SWE) measured by a downward-pointing gamma-ray device (CS725) at 20 sites; (c) high quality precipitation data every five minutes from a weighing gauge (with double Alter shields to reduce under-catching) for all precipitation types (rain, snow and ice) at all 126 sites; (d) camera images every five minutes at 126 sites to monitor snow conditions and a snow scale in the camera field-of-view to provide additional estimates of snow depth; and (e) continuous thermodynamical and wind profiles at 17 profiler sites. To meet our diverse stakeholders’ needs, it is essential to derive value-added products (VAPs) and visualize, display and make available the data and VAPs to end users. With the NOAA Weather Program Office’s support, NYSM has undertaken an “end-to-end” project to develop a series of VAPs and a dedicated website for winter weather. The VAPs include precipitation type, snow accumulation, snow depth change, precipitation accumulation, snow-to-liquid ratio, frozen soil and elevation dependent snow depth maps. The products are evaluated against independent measurements and by operational partners. A winter weather website (http://nysmesonet.org/weather/winter) was developed to display real-time and archived products to aid data interrogation and inform warning operations and decision making. The ultimate goal is to permanently transition these data and products into regular, real-time operations by NWS WFOs and RFCs. The data, VADs and website have been widely used by a variety of stakeholders including NWS, NOAA NERFC, state and local emergency managers, water and resource managers, USGS, researchers and others for various applications. This talk will present an overview of the project, show a few new or improved VADs and new features on the website, seek input on how to better communicate with and engage stakeholders, and assess the value (Return on Investment) of the NYSM winter weather project.