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The wife is currently flying in from DTW to BOS arriving at like noon on Tuesday … figuring she'll either be Monday night or Tuesday night … or if it really blows up Wednesday morning. Will be interesting to see if Massport pulls the emergency chain and declares that nothing comes in on Tuesday. Not that big a storm, probably.

TT is out to 96 for both the GFS and CMC. On the surface … GFS is a 998 low over BNA CMC is a 1004 low over PGV That's only 500 miles. Both now are grazing ACK, but the GFS at least gives a snowstorm to … someone.

Nearly all of Minnesota, too. Compared with last year, it's feast or famine out there.

Yeah no snowpack out there. Most of the precip that has fallen this winter has been rain, and not much SN on the horizon. This sounds like perpetual March and perpetual sugar season up there. But no cold to be had.

Due north? YQB is 300 miles north and gets about 125" per year, with more in the mountains (elevation matters, even up there). YSJ is about 300 miles northeast along the coast and gets about 95" (much of NB gets 90-120). CAR comes in around 120. YUL gets about 90" but double that up in the Laurentians at elevation. So if you swung a 300 mile arc north of BOS, you're in the 110" range or thereabouts. Sort of makes sense: further inland it's colder but less moisture, nearer the coast, warmer but more moisture. Add in elevation and you get more (the top of Mont Sainte Anne at 800m reports >200" and of course KMWN gets more than that). So, yeah, I buy 110" 300 miles anywhere between NE and NW. Less if stuck out on a peninsula like YHZ, of course.

Oh man tell me about it. In the early days of the Internet, there was a lot of virtuosity about information sharing. Wikipedia is built on this: what if, instead of a book of encyclopedias or a CD-ROM we had a bunch of people go out and crowd-source knowledge about everything. People get their fiefdoms, there is pretty decent moderation (which somehow hasn't broken like most of the rest of the Internet, at least so far) and a wealth of information has been put at people's fingertips. Another more personal example is cross country ski trail reports (which are weather-dependent, bringing it back towards this forum). Unlike downhill, there are a lot of community trails which don't have much of a web presence, but with a good forum you can pretty easily crowd-source conditions reports, if a relatively small pool of people participate. There's such a site in the Midwest and not only does it work pretty well, but it has been working well with basically the exact same format for about 25 years. It doesn't have bloat, it doesn't have many features, it's basically a guy running a pretty simple SQL database (and frankly, he should add some features, but if it ain't broke, etc). It hasn't been blown up and updated fifteen times with new features that make it much less useful. Is there one of these for the Northeast? No. There is an app someone started to try to mobilize and real-time this data (and which has gotten a bit of traction in the Midwest, and has East Coast trails, but not a lot of action), but I'm a member of a Facebook group (well, Facebook just started showing me posts at some point) which is a poor replica. There's no map feature, no search feature, it's just people posting photos of them and sometimes with relevant information (where was it, was it good, etc). It's not very useful, but it's very performative. That's what people seem to want now, not to share useful information, but to show what they did to everyone else whether it's useful or not. Why? Because that's where the money is, and we've been trained by Facebook and IG and Twitter to do this, rather than to share information. As an older millennial digital native 1990s Internet person, it's hard to fathom how much we have, but also how much we could have if the whole thing was not based on how rich some tech bros can get. This forum, thank goodness, hasn't fallen completely by the wayside. Imagine if this forum were just people posting photos of snow during storms and that was basically all it was, but without where or how much. And model discussions? People who are actually experts explaining things? That's the power of the Internet. It just doesn't much exist anymore. An aside, the Midwest winter is really awful this year. Minneapolis has pulled 7" of snow so far, with the highest month, 2.7", in October. Their long-term snowfall climo is similar to Boston but less variable, mean of 47 range from 14 to 98. December was a +12 climo, warmest on record (basically BOS normals), January was only +6 thanks to a weeklong cold snap but had 16 days +10 or more and February is off to a +19 start. It's kind of wild, and not in a good way.

I have a nice view out of our office looking west on the 9th floor in Cambridge. Started out the day OVC, but could see the edge of the ceiling about 10 miles west. It has slowly pushed east and is now BKN but looking west is SCT or even FEW.

Three statisticians go duck hunting. The first one shoots one aims and fires a foot too high. The second one aims and fires a foot too low. The third one yells "we got him!"

Whoever located the BTV radar in a pit in the bottom of a valley should be sent to prison. (I know, mountains, but it's always frustrating to sort of have to guess what's going on in Vermont.)

19 at KBOS this morning, second-latest sub-20 reading on record (2007: 1/16, 2002: 2/05, and no one is looking back to the halcyon days of either of those winters!). Should be five straight days below freezing at KBOS, longest such streak since 2021, and more than the entirety of CY 2023. Freeze up some lakes and maybe the Charles, at least.

Just flipped in Kendall. Vis way up. Ptype undiscernable out the window but not SN.

New office has a great view from Cambridge towards Boston. Easy viz check and we're sitting right about 1SM right now. Hopefully some of those heavier bands can migrate north and bring it down further!

But it seems like it's still sn there. I think 2" w/ minimal rain is preferable to 6" with rain on top.

I'm headed up to your by … is there much snowpack on the ground up there?

Still glad I got the furnace guy to come today given the temps next week

Well well well

Jeez post a trigger warning for these posts at least

That's some nice, cold weather out at the end of the GFS.

The Prospect webcam on Route 9 in SVT shows SN and their weather station has their temp at 24 having come down from 26. https://prospectmountain.com/conditions/ I believe this is within a couple of miles of Chez Mitch.

1/18/15 went from -2 at BML at 12Z to 43 15 hours later with ZR in the afternoon. (One of those fun "oh it's 18 and it's raining" kind of days.) I waited to drive Route 16 until it had gone to freezing. Many of those who hadn't spent some extra time in a ditch.

Verbatim on the Euro they'll CAD well.

Google Maps has "yellow" roads now all the way into Cambridge/Somerville/Allston. Looks like this CF push was: 11:30 Lexington (after initially stalling out near there and pushing back for a bit) 12:15 Arlington Heights / Stoneham / Lynnfield 13:00 Needham / Brighton / Tufts / Melrose 13:15 JP / Union / Saugus

CF coming through near Porter Sq. After hours of white rain, feeling warm despite the snow outside and 1" of slush, the road is now covered and white, and the building I can see 1/2 mi away is right on the edge of visibility. Looks like we'll have a few hours to rip down here.

https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap I linked a couple of stations in. Looks like it's pushing slowly east now. Back into Belmont/Arlington now. Will see if it crashes east soon.