40/70 Benchmark

Yea, I'm not sure why, but I know that the NWS is now discouraging spotters from doing the swipe and clear method. I have all of the respect in the world for Chris and I'm not trying to be rude, but I deal with the NWS regularly and they defer to the lower depth measurements in larger events when theere is a noticeable contrast. It doesn't matter in 95% of the storms, but obviously it does in upper tier events. Even the airports that do the 6 hour method are often not meticulous enough...they frequently underreport in mixed events because they measure after some has melted...its very common.

A significant, if not majority of the spotter snowfall reports that comporise the official NWS snowfall total maps are depth measurements. I know this for a fact...I'm sure you can find an article that claims that the sun if brown if you look long enough, but that doesn't make it so.

I don't care what the article states, I know for a fact that it isn't standardized. Again...I have had a 6 hourly measurement discarded by BOX, so perhaps they need to read your article.

So .5" yesterday and today?

Any accumulation there?

Sums up the last 7 for me....been like this since April 2018.

Sums up winter 2024-2025 perfectly.

Agree!!!!!

My old stomping grounds...

Probably won't stick.

Both east-based.

I'm not disputing that....there was a confluence of factors that made that season so anomalous for the mid atl. Solar min, too. I don't think the Modoki was meaningless, though...IDK, maybe Modoki is more favored under certain stratospheric conditions...another consideration.

Depends how strong it is....weaker is more variable. But I think a stronger Modoki like 2009 is always going to have some -NAO.

I agree with this....however, weak leaves more possibility for -NAO is how I would articulate it. Its more about the strongest events being west based favoring +NAO and flat Aleutian ridging.

If the strongest El Nino on record were a Modoki, theoretically speaking, I would expect to be colder...2009 is probably the closest example. very strong east-based La Nina would be cold...1955.

They should have been.....east vs west is more imortant than weak vs strong. The reason they look similar is because strength is usually correlated with EMI. IE most Modoki El Nino events are weaker because more modest WWB allowed the anoamlies to remain out west, and the strongest events are east based...presumably due the fact that the prevalence of the WWBs needed to reach that intensity also pushes the greatest anomalies east.

Same here....and I don't know, but they are. measuring settled depth is an entirely different concept...its not "snowfall". Why I now do in large events is report both.....snowfall and settled depth, and the NWS can do with it as they wish.

1955-1956 is probably the closest example.

Ok, Montreal Canadiens.....you get the point.

Ultimately maybe ENSO has very little impact on the NAO...I am open to anything and everything given the great dearth of data that he have to consider, as you correctly point out. However, in the mean time, all we are left to do is discuss the data that we have, and use it to develop hypoethesis. Its like a sports talk show.......if a baseball team starts out 61-20, people are going to call and discuss how great they look with the tacit understanding that perhaps they would end up so dominating after a 162 game sample size. But life goes on and we discuss incomplete data because its all that we have. Hey, maybe the Yankees blow...we only have 130 years of data!!

The thing is....the strongest El Ninos are east-based....to a somewhat lesser exent, the storngest La Nina are Modoki.

Its not a perfect correlation obviously, but I think it matters more than Chuck is implying. Obviously strength matters....weaker events are a wild card.

Can you find me a strong, east-based El Nino that averaged a DM -NAO dating back to 1850? How about a strong, Modoki La Nina??

Well, I just referenced a peer reviewed article and 3/4 of a century worth of composites that corroborate said research, so I don't see what is "nice and easy" about that. It simply doesn't support your premise. Maybe in 50 years the data will change and you will be right, but for now....not so much. BTW, I never said the NAO was "completey" driven by what occurs over the Pacific. This is why there is more variance in the weaker ENSO events.

When you collect enough data to refute this assertion in 80 years, you can leave it on my grave.