LibertyBell

I see quite a few going for a warm and dry summer but enhanced risk of tropical activity later on along the east coast

Thanks, it makes me wonder how many storms and canes we actually had in 1933, the record which was overtaken by 2005. It's possible that 1933 had more if the records from back then are that incomplete! About the AMO, I wonder if that cycle is of variable length, it seems like the earlier periods of the warm phase were somewhat dissimilar from each other (1950s-1960s), (1990s-2000s), etc.

Very interesting, so there hasn't been some sort of cyclic or pattern change that would cause this! How far back would you say that the HURDAT2 list is reasonably accurate, both on quantity and intensity?

Right. But from a climatological and historical perspective, the SSTs of the northern gulf shelf by Sept-Oct have generally cooled below what is required to support a rapidly deepening Cat 5. Sure, the central, southern GOM and Bay of Campeche would continue supporting Cat 5 intensity through October, but those storms tend to weaken drastically if steered into the N. GOM. Major hurricane Opal being a prime example. October of 2018 hopefully remains anomalous in its mutliple contributing factors that lead to Michael, as generally multiple cold fronts have swept through the northern gulf by mid-to-late September and subsequent dry continental air plus radiational cooling has brought down mean heat content by 3-4°C. Again, it's one thing to consider a rare Category 5 threat in July, August, perhaps still even September, but October? Michael is hopefully the rarest of generational occurrences. Yes, we dont need to have another one of these supercanes. Going by purely statistical records, we seem to get a Cat 5 landfalling cane in the US about every 30 years or so and this is the first one that's happened in October. August into early September is when the others have occurred. The question I have besides this is a general one about the Atlantic basin- has there been some change in the general circulation pattern to increase the number of high intensity hurricanes in October across the totality of the Atlantic basin? I know we have a secondary peak in average activity in October, but it seems like over the past number of years we've seen more major hurricanes in October.

Reading back through this thread, I was dead wrong in one point while trying to discredit preconceptons or misconceptions about landfalling Cat 5s along the N. GOM coast, including rapid intensification over its shallow shelf. I never once imagined that scenario being possible in the month of October. Then having that play out approximately one year later? Crazy! Some of the strongest 'canes have occurred in October though- it seems to be the new peak month for the strongest 'canes.

I visited my other home (in the Poconos) over the weekend and there's 10"-15" on the ground over there and it's very heavy and hard to move. I didn't even attempt to shovel my driveway there and just parked on the road and went inside to make sure everything was fine (I only stay in that house during the warm season.)

Based on the consistent undermeasurements since November (Logan is doing the same thing JFK has been doing for years), I feel the "actual" snowfall should be somewhere around 35-40" for the season, so Raindance's prediction would actually be pretty close.

snowing at JFK so the Rockaways should be all snow too.

Going to give credit to Chris (Blue Wave) for pointing this out, but have you noticed the sharp SOI drops we have had the last three Februarys?

The outrageous number of 10+ events in back to back winters, 2009-10 and 2010-11 (even including the near miss) will probably not be repeated for a long time. But I also said that after 1995-96, yet the back to back combo of 2009-10 and 2010-11 was probably a more rare occurrence.

It's amazing how the first several decades that NYC measured snowfall all had averages of higher than 30"

Thanks for this! Can I get the data for the 80s and early 90s from that link too? I averaged it out to 66 over 15 decades so just over 4 per decade so a bit less than 50% odds of having a 10" storm per winter. It was only 46 through 12 decades though if you just go up through the 80s so just less than 4 per decade at that point, so less than 40% odds per winter. And just 13 over 4 decades or about 30% per winter if you go from the 50s through the 80s. No decade in recorded history had more than 6 or a 60% chance in any given year in that decade, until the 2000s that is lol. The 2010s have a decent chance to be the first decade in recorded history to have double digit 10"+ events and average one per year for the whole decade, and already have 9 if you include the December 2009 event as part of this decade. *actually if you consider 2001 as the start of the 2000 decade, that decade had 9 of them (90% odds in that decade to have one per year- and 100%-110% odds if you include Dec 2000 or Jan 2011 which makes for 10 or 11 in that decade!) while the 2010s would only have 4 so far if the latter is included in the previous decade. This is because of the amazing 3 we had in the 2009-10 winter (and would have easily had 4 if we didn't just miss out on the early Feb 2010 event) and 2 in the 2010-11 winter (which was almost 3, since NYC had just over 9 inches in the storm in between)! So 5-7 of them over two years! Based on that no decade had more than 5 or 50% odds per year in that decade aside from the very first one and the last three!

The other thing is how some decades really sucked- the 1880s were horrible outside of the Blizzard of 1888- much like how the 1980s were horrible outside of Feb 1983 and April 1982. April 1982 doesn't even make the list because it was just under 10"! So both the 1880s and 1980s only had one storm of 10" or more for the entire decade and both were historic ones.

Two things I was hoping you could help me with...... Do you have a list anywhere of all 10+" snowfalls at NYC and JFK? I wanted to average out the numbers of such events per decade. Also, do you have a list of all accumulated snowfalls 0.1" and higher at NYC and JFK between the winters of 1979-80 and 1995-96? I wanted to match up data with my memories.

but we're also going to get multiple days in the mid 50s next week, I hear people want an early spring and to put this to bed already. I want a 2012-13 style comeback but I can understand why people dont want to go bankrupt over heating bills.

Ed did you get around 60 inches in 30 days? What was your maximum snow cover? I think we had a 3 month constant snow cover that winter!

It reached into the low 60s in the Poconos and down here on Long Island I hear pingers which can only be small hail lol.

You're right the transition has actually been the major indicator of sensible weather rather than the state of ENSO itself, December was actually a very La Nina-ish kind of month. In addition to that the MJO has created a very 80s type of look, with storms taking one of two predominant paths- either suppressed and hitting the lower mid atlantic or coastal hugging and bringing snow to elevated and far inland regions. Lots of cold air around but storms taking bad pathways for snow. The one snowstorm we got, in November, was also a coastal hugger with a big front end dump. I find that the east's best winters actually tend to be la ninas that come after el ninos (1995-96, 2010-11)- so the reverse of what this winter has been. I know 2012-13 wasn't an el nino but it was headed that way and has had some weather similarities- how do you compare that to this year?

I think you mean 2015 (going into 2014) which was a developing super, do you think next winter we'll have something like that? Regardless, February 83, February 2015, were both big snowfall months in the NE. And just like 82-83, the super el nino of 2015-16 had a historic event, but it was in late January not February. I got a 31 inch snowstorm that month.

Then again if excellent eclipse viewing comes to fruition Sunday Night and the progged excellent pattern begins around Jan 25 and lasts for 8 weeks, this storm will be a distant memory unless it overproduces.

Wow, the only three storms on that list that were all snow were the 1947, 1996 and 2016 snowstorms!

I wonder how cold it got for Mt Pocono! Thats always a northeast cold spot lol. And Monticello!

Wow it might have been bigger than the Jan 2016 snowstorm then (it had more total precip didn't it? We did hit 3.0" total precip here in Jan 2016).

It makes me think somewhere on Long Island might have gotten to -30 or even a bit colder than that! Maybe Westhampton Beach?

we didnt have any colder temperatures anywhere on Long Island than that during February 1934 did we, Ed?