The local winter storm scale: A measure of the intrinsic ability of winter storms to disrupt society

The application of the new Local Winter Storm Scale (LWSS) classification scheme to 15 recent cold seasons at Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey, US, demonstrated its usefulness in assessing the potential for winter storms to disrupt society. LWSS was defined in terms of quantities available from the routine surface observation network to ensure the availability of sufficient data and ease of use. The data collected over 15 winters at the airport provided another resource with which weights were to be estimated. A multiple linear regression was performed to determine the weights that led to LWSS to explaining the variance in a particular measure of realized disruption. The results from three independent assessments of the relative importance of the various storm elements were averaged to provide an estimate for the weighting function.