The Relationship Between Radar-Observed Mesoscale Snowbands and their Environment in a New England Blizzard during the NASA IMPACTS Field Campaign

The January 2022 Nor’easter blizzard, also known as Winter Storm Kenan, caused intense blizzard-like conditions stretching from Maryland to Maine and parts of Canada. The storm formed on January 27 and experienced a rapid deepening of 29 millibars in 18 hours on January 29, causing it to be categorized as a bomb cyclone. Throughout its life cycle it caused two direct and two indirect fatalities, and an estimated $50 million in damages. This damage was caused by heavy snowfall of up to 35.7 inches, ice accretion, and hurricane-force winds reaching sustained speeds of 75 miles per hour. Preliminary analysis of the storm’s snowbands suggests three different modes of organization. This study presents a synoptic analysis and a categorization of the spatial and temporal snow band regimes of the January 2022 Nor’easter blizzard using the ERA5 reanalysis data set and data collected by RaXPol, a mobile X-band, polarimetric Doppler radar deployed on the coast at Plymouth, MA, during the IMPACTS NASA field campaign. The analysis of the radar and reanalysis data can help further our understanding of the snow-band types observed in the January 2022 Nor’easter blizzard, and how our findings compare to those in other coastal extratropical cyclones.