roardog

98-99,99-00,00-01

We always had WGN on our cable provider around here. Tom Skilling was the only good source for getting an idea on how the medium/long range looked. Even though it was obviously Chicago based, Tom would talk about possible pattern changes two weeks out. You weren't getting that information anywhere else. The NWS forecast was always biased toward climo. Tom would be the only met daring enough to do something like put a temperature 20 degrees below/above normal on a 7 day forecast. This was great information before the days of the internet with all the model data available. I was always disappointed when Tom would be on a 2 week vacation and Jim Ramsey was filling in. Not that Jim Ramsey was bad but he was no Tom Skilling. lol

There could be an above normal April and still have hard freezes so another March 2012 would pretty much doom the plants/trees again.

The tropics of Illinois.

At least you got to experience some nice temperatures. I had to deal with mid 30s, pouring rain and NE winds. I hope you enjoyed your S winds and nice temps.

It’s still 3 days or so away. The SE and weaker runs should start anytime. lol

I think it was November 1997 when there was a Winter Storm Warning for 6-9 inches of snow here for the next day. This was back when The Weather Channel had the NWS forecast on the local forecast and that was how I saw the NWS forecast as I didn’t have the internet yet at the time. So the next morning I woke up to find the Winter Storm Warning gone and a forecast of 1-3 inches. We never had a flake from that storm. The Detroit area ended up getting the 6-9 inches and the northern edge made it up to around Flint where they got a couple of inches.

The NW trend back in the day used to be as much of a guarantee as the SE trend is today. I wonder if the model updates over the years are the reason for that. Maybe changes were made to “fix” that issue and have now resulted in the opposite problem. Now we just need a model that understands how far south an MCS will track in the warm months.

I think the ensembles look interesting going forward. Both the gefs and especially the eps have higher heights building in Alaska and NW Canada in the medium range. That would push/bleed cold air into the SE ridge. The red colors on the height anomaly maps don't always mean warm at the surface in a pattern like that, especially the more north you go.

I have kind of a random question. Before the NWS changed the format of the daily temp/precip records there used to be a lot more stations in what I think was called the daily almanac or something like that. Now, with the new format, not all of those stations are on the list. Is there a way to still access that data? I know some were from waste water treatment plants so I would assume they’re still recording data.

Sounds like a miserable place(weather wise) to be in the Spring. lol

Doesn’t a “volcanic” winter have a tendency to produce a positive AO and positive NAO with mild mid latitudes? I don’t think most people posting here would like that.

If the AGW trend has been dry in the Midwest, I’d hate to see what wet is considering all the precip that seems to fall each year. A hot and dry year like 2012 feels impossible.

I like the text from the high wind warning out of North Platte. It says holiday decorations will be damaged or blown away. lol

Generally speaking, most winter lovers in the east probably don’t want Valdez to break a record as that’s usually bad news for eastern winter lovers.

The question is what actually determines how high they build their nest?

Plus early cold Octobers are pretty useless.

There’s no reason to think this is the start of any kind of long term recovery but if somehow we ever did get into a long term recovery, a gradual increase is how it would begin. You aren’t going to get back to the 1980s or even 1990s average minimum anytime soon with the loss of so much MYI. It would probably take a decade or more of consistent ice increases to build up enough MYI to get us back to those kind of minimums. I think it’s kind of interesting though if we end up higher than the 2010s average.

Isn't it your immune system that causes the issues that lead to serious complications or death just like the 1918 flu pandemic? Basically the virus does it's thing and after about a week to 10 days, you either recover or get seriously ill, correct? So, the vaccines basically allow your immune system to recognize Covid as something it's seen before which allows your immune system to be more prepared for it as opposed to completely caught off guard. This makes sense as to why most vaccinated people don't get seriously ill from it. The same thing should eventually occur naturally as the virus burns through the population. It won't go away but it'll just be another virus that causes cold symptoms. Unfortunately, it would seem to me that measures to curb the transmission of the virus is just delaying the ability for it to burn through the population and become endemic.

I remember you posting about how you can't get weather like that in July anymore. Maybe you still can.

A business owner would be a fool to only allow vaccinated people into their business if they want to stay in business.

We are just going to have to learn to live with the virus. It isn’t going away. We have a vaccine and that’s about the best we can ask for. It sucks that so many people died but we are still living in a great time medically speaking overall compared to what people dealt with in the past. There should not be anymore restrictions put into place.

I don’t know enough about Hadley cell expansion but why was that the cause of the well above normal temperatures on the east coast during that Nina February but didn’t hold back the brutal stretch of cold that winter from mid December to late January here in the Midwest? It just seems like so much of this stuff only works when it’s convenient. Remember when declining Arctic sea ice was causing high latitude blocking? How about Siberian snow cover advancement in Autumn determining high latitude blocking for winter? It only works when it’s convenient. I’m not saying there isn’t some truth to these ideas but i just feel like people have a tendency to simplify the atmosphere too much sometimes.

It gets into the 80s in mid winter in New England every other year?

If there is a summer that has potential for extreme heat around here, this might be the one with the dryness. I would say highs in the 90s in early June for possibly several days in a row is actually pretty extreme.