ORH_wxman

The 1955 floods changed the way they had flood controls and drainage in ORH. There was something like 10 feet of water in downtown ORH during that. We will never see it again due to the changes they made. So yeah…tragic event did produce safety measures that undoubtedly has saved a lot of lives.

I've never understood the "morality' arguments in rooting or not rooting for certain types of weather. I think looking at it through a lens of only that storm can be too myopic. I can very easily root for a blizzard but hope people are not hurt or injured during it. I even proactively try and warn as many people as possible if it looks like dangerous weather is coming. In the end, yes, extreme weather does injure/kill people....but at the same time, we learn from extreme weather events both in terms of forecasting ability and preparation which actually saves lives in the future. So on that front, extreme weather events can be "good"....we're learning and saving lives in the future when the next blizzard or ice storm or hurricane hits. If we didn't learn from previous weather disasters, it's hard to estimate how many more people would have died in events like Katrina in 2005 or the blizzard in February 2013, or even the Buffalo blizzard this year....all those events injured and killed people to varying levels of magnitude, but they would have been way worse without the experience and learning from previous events.

Yeah if you look at 925-850, you can see that if the meat of the CCB gets in here, I think you'd be parachuting except maybe on the Cape and immediate south coast? Even there might get something if the lift was excellent.

Yep....if every single break goes in the "Bad" direction, we could have a 5-10 inch winter over interior SNE....likewise, if we hadn't gotten screwed in March 2015 or that marginal rainstorm on a nor' easter in Dec '14 or even on a couple events during the good pattern like 1/31/15, we could have had 170 inches, lol. But there's a reason we don't get 170 inches ever or 7 inches. Having every coinflip go against you the entire winter is really hard. You are bound to have even a couple coinflips go your way even when you're unlucky when there are a dozen of them.

Euro completely cancelled the spring warmup potential in that Feb 17th range....instead it has overrunning threat with high pressure pressing down into our area.

Euro is kind of like GGEM....really close but the good stuff doesn't get in here.

I'm expecting nothing until the models are in good agreement on something inside of 96 hours...and that agreement might take until <48 hours in a system like this. It does have the "feel" of a close miss....however, I'll add the caveat that the GFS being the furthest SE feels pretty normal for a pure east coast cyclogenesis event. I'd prob not scoff at the Euro as much in a setup like this as some other type of system or larger scale pattern.

Yeah I agree. Conversely, a record that may have happened if temperature sensor was accurate might not be recorded with a flawed temperature sensor. (i.e., if BOS was still running 2-3F warm, they wouldn't have recorded their coldest temp since 1957 even though it actually was the coldest since 1957 in reality)

Ukie is a decent hit for SNE...esp interior zones central/eastern areas. It has that nice advection of colder air at 925/850 from the northeast that the GGME had, but unlike the GGEM, it got the heavier precip into SNE.

GGEM was a close call...it dragged down some colder air too, but we just couldn't quite get the steady precip in here. If that was like 50 miles NW, you prob get a nice slug of heavy wet snow

Yeah I'm not worried about bad data for things like temp trends on the entire country or even regions....but you start getting incorrect data on places like BOS and ORH, that is not good. You could corrupt state-level data with stations like that in small states like MA. Data is really only useful if it's accurate.

Yep...all the Tblizz's of the world will be dutifully clicking on the 12z runs regardless of what they say about it having no chance. They like preaching to the choir though....as if 90+% of the posters here don't already know it's a long shot.

I think 06z EPS looked even a little better. Almost half get advisory snows into SNE with many getting more than that.

Yeah...I stated this yesterday....anytime you have a system completely cutoff from the polar jet, you are going to have temp issues. I don't care what month it is. These have happened in January too....they are just more common in spring than winter. I did say the one redeeming factor on this one is there is a bit of a high that builds in to our north which could aid in feeding in some lower DP air, which can help in a marginal airmass....you turn what might have been a 0-1C rain storm with mangled noodles into a -0.5C blue cottonball system. I'm still pretty skeptical on this one though....doesn't seem we get quite enough dynamics on most of these runs....even a tiniest amount of PJ injection would go a long way...like you said, maybe we can find that tiny sliver in the next couple days as more of this stuff is sampled.

Sheet of ice out there this morning. Wasn’t expecting that.

Absolutely ripping sleet here

Cutoff totally separated from the polar jet. Always tough to get enough cold in those. High is in a decent spot though so there’s a chance it could trend just a smidge colder. We’ve seen that a decent amount on progs…when you have a good high feeding lower DP air down into the system, even a rotted airmass can cool enough.

20 year anniversary today of a different event. Big positive bust. Can’t believe it was 20 years ago.

Fwiw, here is the BOS MADIS graph back to mid 2018 when the drift warmer started…you can see it persisted for well over a year before the correction…and then the initial cold bias after replacement. It looks like the BOS error got almost to 3F before they replaced it.

Yeah good illustration of the differences. Look at the ridge axis on EPS…it’s in the gulf of Alaska versus the Aleutians on GEFS. About a 600-800 mile difference and it matters. EPS has a hint of an Aleutian low forming way on the left side of that image whereas none in site on GEFS.

EPS still has the potential heat burst before that…but beyond 2/20, EPS looks to go for a much colder CONUS look…we’d still get some mild wx at times through 2/23ish, but then it looks a lot colder after that. We’ll see. I don’t trust any LR guidance at the moment for good reason…but that look is starting to become somewhat persistent on the Euro products. GEFS still not buying it.

Nice model war in clown range. EPS way colder than GEFS.

So the PWM one was also not legit…it was running about 2F warmer than it should? Did it get fixed? Or was it some local siting fluke? The BOS one was clearly not legit but it will look legit to anyone who casually glances at the data without any other context. That’s the unfortunate part. But only sickos like us who scrutinize the data will know the truth. I remember the month was warm…but it was absolutely not that close to being record warmth. Prob more like between top 10-20 type month based on surrounding sites.

That is bordering on insane to me…at least from a climate accuracy perspective. I know there are limited resources but it seems like there is WAY too much deference to ASOS than the empirical evidence would support. A couple years back in summer of 2020 I think it was, BOS had a record warm month (think it was July) when the other 4 major BOX climate sites weren’t even sniffing top 15….the record still stands today despite everyone with any QC experience knowing it’s a completely bogus “record”…you prob remember all the asterisk jokes during that year with BOS temps. It lasted a long time too…maybe even a year or more. One of the events months later in winter they were moderate or heavy snow with a 34 temp while everyone surrounding them was 32 and it became comical. I think NWS BOX finally got the sensor changed despite it “passing” multiple IT calibration checks (this part is coming back to me now as a result of this discussion). Not sure who they finally convinced it was wrong, but it obviously was. The funny part was when they replaced it, the new one had a cold bias of about 1F but I think it finally went away after a few months. Not sure if they changed the sensor a second time or if the error disappeared on its own for some other reason.

Early august heat wave was pretty legit. Lots of upper 90s in that one. But I agree in the larger scale of recent summers. The humidity I think caps the high temp potential…we want those EML type heat bursts on WNW flow in order to rip a 102F or 103F in the 128-495 belt but we just rarely get them in recent years. Instead we get plenty of 94/72 type Bahamas blue garbage.