The image does show that the snow piled up and still existed this morning across the hills and mountains of West Virginia northward into Pennsylvania and parts of upstate New York. Additionally some areas in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine picked up some light snowfall. Some of the higher preliminary snowfall reports from the storm are from Laurel Summit, PA where 23.2″ fell, Sinclairville, NY where 15″ fell, Cattaraugus, NY where 12.8″ fell, Warsaw, NY where 12″ fell, near Sylvania, PA where 11″ fell, Oakland, PA where 8″ fell, Estcourt, ME where 8″ fell, and Frostburg, MD where 6″ fell.
The track of the storm, shown below in a few images, varied somewhat from what the models were predicting on Friday afternoon when I last wrote about this storm system. The eventual track of the storm actually started off in good agreement with the 12Z Friday GFS before beginning to look more like the 12Z ECMWF. The problem was that no model really forecasted the initial low to weaken as it continued north out of New York City and for a secondary low to form off to its east and take a track toward the north from there. This initial pull of the track farther east than many expected was the reason that Sunday night into Monday morning, many areas on the eastern edge of where the snow occurred were surprised. Residents of those areas went to sleep thinking they may wake up to a dusting of snow or maybe even an inch and instead woke up to inches of snow with newly posted winter weather advisories and winter storm warnings.
Storm system just after it makes landfall on Monday morning with the low pressure traveling northward from central New Jersey to New York City where it reached 986 mb.
Storm system on early Monday afternoon with low near Albany, NY at 988 mb.
Storm system on late Monday afternoon with low over the Adirondack Mountains at 987 mb.
Storm system on Monday evening with initial low over the Adirondack Mountains at 988 mb and a new low over the eastern end of Lake Ontario at 989 mb.
Storm system in the early morning hours on Tuesday with initial low over northern Vermont weakening now at 990 mb and new low deepening over eastern Lake Ontario at 986 mb.
Storm system now with only the new low just north of Lake Ontario at its lowest pressure of 985 mb just before sunrise on Tuesday morning.
Storm system Tuesday mid-morning as it continues to push northward and begins to weaken with the lowest pressure now only at 986 mb.
The surprise snow caught some off guard though it should have been expected in my opinion. The exact track of this storm was never fully certain and therefore deviations of tens of miles were quite possible which would lead to deviations in the areas receiving snowfall. My alma mater, Cornell University, which is located in Ithaca, NY picked up right around 6″ of this surprise snowfall on Sunday night. The fact that the storm system dumped much of its snow on areas farther east than expected on Sunday night actually helped keep storm snowfall totals down as Monday night the snow fell over areas further to the west where it was predicted to fall. While this did cut down on the amount of damage done to trees and power lines, some areas still saw their fair share of damage and power outages. Despite the damages, the snow came as good news to some such as Seven Springs Mountain Resort which had previously closed their resort to skiing and snowboarding, announced that they will open the resort for one last day of skiing Tuesday. This will be the latest date this ski resort has offered skiing and snowboarding since it opened.