Snowstorm ranked ‘crippling’
Feds: For Northeast snowstorms, this ranked No. 4.
By any measure, placing a rank on a winter storm is an imprecise exercise, but the government does take a crack at it.
And by the government's metrics, last weekend's storm ranked as a "Category 4" on a scale of 5, in terms of snow amounts and total population affected.
A "4" qualifies as "crippling," and Philadelphia had not been affected by one of those since January 2005. Yes, we know, bigger snows had occurred since, but we'll get to that.
Among the 58 Northeast snowstorms on the list, which dates to 1950, only two made it to 5, or "extreme" – the March 1993 blizzard and the Jan. 7-8, 1996 storm that gave Philadelphia a record 30.7 inches.
Of the 12 Category 4s, all but two generated big snows in Philadelphia, this latest one was the second-most significant of the 4s, right after a March 1960 storm.
The so-called Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale was developed by storm experts Louis W. Uccellini, who now runs the National Weather Service, and Paul Kocin, who works there.
The population and accumulation criteria are objective, but the scale doesn't take into account subjective factors, such as timing of the storm and quality of forecasts, advisories and warnings.
If we were assembling a subjective scale, we're not sure where we would put this one. Evidently it was horror at the Shore, where snow totals were less.
On the mainland, however, while the amounts that fell were prodigious, the bulk of it came on a Saturday, preceded by several days of drumbeat.
We can recall any number of weekday storms with far less snow and far more impact on our day-to-day affairs.
But if we were developing a "shovel scale" based on volume of snow-moving required, we would rank this a 5-plus.
Incidentally, while the news release announcing the ranking using the term "blizzard," no determination has yet been made about whether conditions around here met the visibility and-or wind requirements.
Dean Iovino, meteorologist at the weather service office in Mount Holly says the investigation continues.