LibertyBell

January 1988? Didn't that have 7" at LGA? I think I remember that storm, it snowed overnight into morning and we had school delays (but no cancellations of course.) Do you by any chance remember a December snowstorm that dropped 8.6" at NYC? I dont remember what year it was but it had to have been after 83 (all I remember about 83-84 is back to back 4-5 inch snowfalls that both fell overnight and lots of cold.) I think it was December 1984? Or maybe December 1985?

Some of those winters had crazy gradients, both 86-87 and 87-88 had much more snow to our SW, including Monmouth County. I think 88-89 was like that, I remember a virga snowstorm that February. And 89-90 of course, had that in December. Lots of cold and dry winters or cold and dry flipping to warm and wet.

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Maybe just for November Pattern takes time to reload so it might reinforce a backloaded winter after that. Or maybe we should call it a bookend season?

That could also be why we're seeing the more common occurrence of very early season snowfalls starting in October 2011.

We had a crazy streak of winters back then with no 10 inch snowstorms and no 30 inch snowfall winters. I think it lasted from 1983-84 thru 1991-92. Thats why it was so challenging to try and predict when the next big snowfall winter would be. I remember 1991 had such an abnormally cold summer thanks to Pinatubo and even the fall started off really cold, our long range predictors thought for sure it would be that winter, but just like 1989-90 which also had a very cold fall, the pattern changed on a dime. Then we finally had the one big snowstorm in 1992-93, even though it did change to rain, and then the real whole sale pattern change in 1993-94. Funny thing about that was that almost every single storm was predicted to either be rain or change to rain and all it ever did was go from snow to a mix. The large quantity of storms was how we got to 50+ and we ran out of salt lol. 1995-96 was the GOAT but in some ways 1993-94 was worse in terms of how hard it was to predict and handle all those storms. plus two subzero Arctic outbreaks and a major ice storm thrown in there!

Wow, thats amazing, Chris..... any thoughts as to why the sudden change? Maybe it has to do with changes in the Pacific we've been seeing in this decade and the "warm blob" of water just offshore from the West Coast?

Yep, I forgot what day it was, but I think it was before Thanksgiving- something like the 19th? Our most notable cold early November snowstorms were the one we had a week after Sandy and the one we had last year. Vets Day 1987 would have been big here too but somehow missed us and hit both DC and Boston.

An exception to this happened in November 1995 when it was in the 60s the day prior and we got a surprise 3-6 inches overnight into the next morning as a low formed along a front that stalled.

Does the event Ant was talking about on the following Tuesday seem more favorable? Will the air by then actually be colder than what we'll have on Friday?

I'm wondering how this ties in to the 6/6 couplet I saw in the data from 1951-1990 where our big snow winters had cold Octobers followed by mild Novembers. Perhaps the pattern was reloading in November and got favorable just in time to give us a big winter?

I wonder how much the solar min is affecting our temps this year. Those back to back 99s we had back in July, how much higher would the temps have been with a solar max? Does anyone know?

Back when I first started using analogs without even knowing what an analog was back in the late 80s and early 90s, I used the The Weather Almanac to look up previous years. The 1985 and 1990 editions of that book are what I had access too and there was no internet around back then. That book had monthly average temps for every year from 1951 through 1990 and I noticed that winters in which we had a large amount of snow (40" or more), we had an interesting couplet in fall. In all of those seasons October was below normal temps and November was above normal temps. It was a 6/6 using the following winters: 1955-56, 1957-58, 1960-61, 1963-64, 1966-67, 1977-78. We were in a long snow drought back then so I thought if we got that couplet again and it was followed by a very hot summer (which also seemed to be part of the equation), we had a chance at a great winter. That's why I was so excited when 1993 followed just such a pattern! And again in 1995, and this time with the aid of the tropics, which seemed so similar to 1933-34 with the predominantly offshore tracks. Of course, since 2000, something has changed and our winters are vastly different now, so the couplet correlation no longer seems to apply.

2014-15 with a better January 2015 storm would be ideal.

Wow, big difference between NYC, LGA and JFK. I wonder what the largest difference in temps between those sites have been when JFK had a freeze and the other two didn't.

Is there a chance that NYC will get the lowest first freeze temp? Not only that but the lowest temp after the previous seasonal low temp was 40 or higher?

If we get some kind of major or even moderate snowstorm this month lets see if your theory holds up that early season snow may be bad for us because when the pattern flips to mild it doesn't have enough time to flip back to cold and snowy again until half the season is over.

Wow, and it's never gotten to 25 or below before November has it? I see we also have chances for snow, we're going to be on the northern fringe of a storm- a good place to be right now lol.

Is Friday night going to be the coldest for this next cold spell? I see lows in the mid twenties that night!

Yep 2014 was the one which disappointed. I thought 2015 wasn't that good there either?

If we didn't have the solar min we definitely would have had widespread 100s this July on 2 days. As it is, we barely missed, even here on the coast.

I think you'd like lower humidity heat better

omg I saw that too! They showed how mammals went from mouse size to wolf size within 300,000 years after the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous! All from eating a legume-based diet. It gave us a window into how life may evolve on other planets too.

it's a banter thread though. Either way i apologize for the harshness anyway my biggest issue with his statement, aside from his obvious lying was the usage of the word "superstorm." It upsets me to no end, some meteorologists use it and it isn't even a meteorology term. The insurance industry also used it as an excuse to try and give lower payments to victims of the storm. I also didn't like how hurricane warnings were dropped just as the storm was about to make landfall. I know we've reformed the system to fix it, but I think we should use the word hurricane for any storm with winds of 75+ mph and use the word tropical hurricane when referring specifically to storms that have a tropical structure. I say this because the word hurricane has a special weight with the public that "storm warning" does not. Also, we have tropical storm warnings and storm warnings, so we should have tropical hurricane warnings and hurricane warnings. In the same vein, we should use the term blizzard warning to refer to any snowstorm that dumps 12 inches or more snow over 24 hours. Winter storm warning is not a strong enough term for these storms. The midwest-style blizzards that are caused more by wind rather than snowfall amounts should get a ground blizzard warning, since they really are ground blizzards.

I hate humidity. Arizona is a lot better (much cleaner air too.) Flagstaff is a light pollution free city! Colorado if you want the best of all worlds (snow, clean air, low humidity, etc.)