A Case Study of a Mesoscale Snow Event in New York's Capital District

Surface low pressure moved from near Cleveland, Ohio at 1200 UTC, February 24, 1990, to about 270 km southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts by 1200 UTC, February 25, 1990. The passage of this synoptic scale system produced snowfall amounts of 1 to 7 inches across upstate New York (Figure 1) from the southern Adirondack mountains to the central Catskill mountains, including the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Snow associated with the passage of the surface low pressure system became light after 1400 UTC, and was mainly associated with the effects of Lake Ontario. Between 1800 and 2100 UTC, a north-south convergence line formed in the Hudson Valley from near Albany south to Poughkeepsie.