A'NESIS Category 3'for New England-100th Column Special

摘要

The 2010-2011 winter season will be remembered as one that was exceptionally cold across the eastern two-thirds of the United States, and one that brought a series of major snowfalls to different locations. In this Highlight and the next (February 2011), I will briefly discuss two of these troublesome snowstorms, and illustrate a new technique that meteorologists are using to characterize their societal impacts. Just what exactly is a "NESIS Cat-gory 3"? NESIS stands for Northeastern Snow Impact Scale, a relatively new way of ranking the severity of snowstorms in the northeastern states. NESIS is a measure of a storm's societal impact, based on snow depth, areal coverage, and population density.The ranking scheme began in 2005 but also captures significant storms since 1950. NESIS ranks snowfall according five impact categories, ranging from Category 1 (Notable) to Category 5 (Extreme).The National Climate Data Center (NCDC) compiles the information necessary to calculate each storm's NESIS score.