The

Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) was created to measure snowstorms in the U.S. Northeast in much the same way the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale records hurricane intensity and the Enhanced Fujita Scale with tornadoes. The Scale NES ...

(NESIS) is a scale used to categorize winter storms in the

Northeast United States The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic list of regions of the United States, region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast ...

. The scale was developed by meteorologists Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini, and ranks snowstorms from Category 1 ("notable") to Category 5 ("extreme"). Only two historical blizzards, the

1993 Storm of the Century The 1993 Storm of the Century (also known as the 93 Superstorm, The No Name Storm, or the Great Blizzard of '93/1993) was a cyclonic storm that formed over the Gulf of Mexico on March 12, 1993. The cold weather, heavy snowfall, high winds and st ...

and the

North American blizzard of 1996 The North American blizzard of 1996 was a severe nor'easter that paralyzed the United States East Coast with up to of wind-driven snow from January 6 to January 8, 1996. This storm was a classic example of a nor'easter, but the storm would not ha ...

are rated in the 5 "extreme" category. The scale differs from the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale and

Fujita Scale The Fujita scale (F-Scale; ), or Fujita–Pearson scale (FPP scale), is a scale for rating tornado intensity, based primarily on the damage tornadoes inflict on human-built structures and vegetation. The official Fujita scale category is determ ...

, which are used to classify

tropical cyclones A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

and

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...

es, respectively, in that it takes into account the number of people affected by the storm. The scale, as devised, is intended chiefly to assess past storms rather than assist in forecasts.Kocin and Uccellini, pp. 269–270

List

Winter Storm Jonas - Fairfax Villa Neighborhood - Santa Clara Street - 5

10 PM March 12 surface analysis of Great Blizzard of 1888

There are two available values for NESIS. The original values that Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini computed for storms in their original 2004 work "A Snowfall Impact Scale Derived From Northeast Storm Snowfall Distributions" and the NESIS storm values recomputed using some different data and differing methods by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in 2005 to productionize their work for assigning values to future storm storms beyond Kocin/Uccellini work. Kocin/Uccellini originally computed NESIS values for 70 storms from 1888 to 2003. The NCDC recomputed NESIS values for 30 of the same storms and has since for newer storms beyond 2003. Storms pre-2005 use the Kocin/Uccellini rating and description. Storms 2005 and onward use the NCDC rating and description. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information publishes
list of storms
with ratings and other information, starting with the March 1956 storm.

Footnotes

References

* *{{cite web, author=, title=The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS), date=, publisher=National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), access-date=December 18, 2015, url=https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/rsi/nesis
Development of an Operational Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale
by Michael F. Squires and Jay H. Lawrimore

External links

The original Kocin/Uccellini NESIS work

A paper explaining differences between the original Kocin/Uccellini and the NCDC NESIS values for the same storm
Climate of the United States

List

See also

Footnotes

References

External links