ORH_wxman

I remember the 1994 EL Nino was being hyped that autumn. Coming off the heels of two big winters, a lot of mets were honking for a very stormy winter with the El Nino aiding. We can diplomatically say that seasonal forecasting even 25+ years later has big errors.....lol. What a let down. Ironically, it was 1995-1996 (the weak La Nina) that actually generated some subtropical jet...esp 2nd half of that winter. Produced some good events in February...we didn't always get the best of them, but then again, we didn't need to with the massive totals already built up from Dec/Jan. We did do quite well in some of those March events though.

FWIW, the slater model is predicting NSIDC extent, not JAXA. NSIDC tends to be a bit higher than JAXA....often 100k to 200k higher on the min. It still performed poorly this year, though. Just not quite as bad as when compared to JAXA figures.

It was ok for SE MA, but pretty cruddy elsewhere. 2/25/99 really helped the anomalies in SE MA. I'd agree it wasn't as terrible as years like '88-'89 or '11-'12....those were near all time ratters.

Pretty good chance many in NNE get their first frost between 9/25-9/30 if models are close to correct.

Yeah and '84-'85 was weird in that is was basically just one nuclear blocking month (Jan 85...maybe leaking into early Feb) surrounded by garbage....and we happened to whiff on most systems in Jan '85....epic arctic cold and southern snow events that month. 1954-1955 was just weird....the pattern didn't look bad but somehow we got basically no snow. Ir was pretty dry too in SNE.

La Nina with blocking is an extremely strong snow signal in New England. Almost all of our crappy La Ninas had a big +AO/NAO. Just go right down the list: 1. 2011-2012 2. 1999-2000 3. 1998-1999 4. 1988-1989 5. 1984-1985 6. 1973-1974 Now there were years like 2005-2006 which had some blocking but were pretty crappy in NNE....though SNE was closer to average in snowfall (with a narrow area above avg in CT). But overall, arctic blocking + La Nina is a very good snow signal.

Weeklies have showed a torch into October, but we'll see if they show a more muted for late month when they update today because the EPS didn't start showing the trough until a day or two ago, and weeklies last updated on Monday. My take is we are still in a hemispheric La Nina-ish pattern that favors above avg temps here, but it wouldnt be surprising to sneak a trough in late month...it often happens as the wavelengths are getting wonky and trying to fight the summer gradient. We still have a mean trough over AK and GOA though so I'd think any troughs here would be transient.

Euro ensembles look pretty chilly late month all of the sudden....we'll see if that holds up.

Yeah and I bet those trends would be even sharper if that map included the 2010s.

Yeah the late 1940s to mid 1950s were sneaky warm in New England for all months...for some stations in New England, 1949 is still the warmest year on record.

December seems a bit more boom/bust than previously. I checked Reading coop, the # of days with snow cover has been slowly declining in December, but mixed in are huge years....including the most days with snow cover in the record for Reading which was 2007 (29 days with snow cover). Ironically, March has a positive trend in snow cover days. We've been on a binge for March the last decade though (or reaping the benefits of lasting snow cover from monster Februarys like 2015 even if March is meh)

Yeah if we're going by pond skating on Thanksgiving, you really cannot have a much colder period than the 1960s/1970s in the past 100 years. That said, we had pretty much full-on frozen ponds at the end of both November 2018 and 2019.

It's an interesting conversation that we have had before. I think I mentioned further back sometime last year or the year before how our geography is also a mitigating factor on seeing a huge dropoff in snowfall. Some areas have suffered more due to the slight poleward migration of the PJ....mostly areas on the very southern fringe of a winter snowfall climo zone such as the southern Mid-Atlantic or southern plains. For New England, we are unique in that we sit comfortably north of a natural baroclinic zone (the gulf stream well south of ACK and the frigid combo of Labrador current to the north and the Cp airmasses coming off of Quebec/New England landmasses) while simultaneously sticking out into the ocean like a chin. So this causes storms to want to still track south of New England as a path of least resistance and also a place for rapid cyclogenisis to occur...and we all know that being in the spot where the storm intensifies the fastest is where you want to be for heavy snow. The biggest difference is that maybe we're getting -6C 850s on one of those tracks instead of -7C 850s in 1970...but the overall sensible wx effect is pretty minimal. Nobody is going to tell the difference between a 21F blizzard or a 23F blizzard. In addition, New England has a severe CAD-effect on the airmasses coming in from the west or southwest. So if you're getting these subtropical warm sectors trying to bully in from the south more often than 50 years ago, it's going to only enhance the baroclinicity seen near New England as the arctic/polar airmasses put up a massively stubborn fight against potential warm sectors. This would actually enhance WAA snowfalls. So we lose the occasional veyr marginal event to rain or rain/snow mix vs 50 years ago, but we gain more back from enhanced baroclinicity/heavier snowfall events.

Yeah I'll take the high baroclinicity environment any day and hope we have enough latitude to work with an imperfect track (we often do)....otherwise you have to try for something like a firehose ala Feb 1-2 last year.

Yeah agreed....EPO is higher correlation for us than the AO/NAO.

Yeah we really need H5 anomalies and not SLP anomalies. But it shows a decent PAC and a meh ATL.

Gray ME had 17.8" on 2/5/01. I looked up Farmington, ME....they had 24" and most of that fell in 12-14 hours, so I'm wondering if Tamarack managed to get his 4" per hour rate in there. Unless maybe that was inflated compared to what Tamarack got. (unless maybe he was still in Gardiner ME back then)

Even nights in the 50s are killer for pools. My aunt/uncle live like 3 min from us with an in-ground pool and they are pretty much done. Pool was freezing a week ago. Unless you have sun all day long, the nights are just too much of a losing battle. Their neighborhood is in a low lying area too which makes it worse....they radiate like mad. I feel like you'd need a yard that doesn't radiate well plus tons of sun to keep the pool going through September.

I don’t think they’d run anywhere close to 5F too cold year-round. They’d fix that pretty fast. The Euro ensembles used to have a slight warm bias actually (we’ve seen it in the summer a lot with the massive heat domes that don’t materialize) but I’m not sure on the official numbers now.

Did the 2/5/01 band hit you? I remember it extending all the way into interior Maine. What about 12/29/16? I think the latter was more south of you though in the lakes region from Bridgton to Naples to Raymond, etc. I would probably agree that areas like Farmington would be slightly too far inland and north to get the frequency of 3-4”+ per hour rates that occur further south. The synoptic sweet spot for those is prob like a Bridgton to ORH axis and roughly 30 miles each side. Obviously mesoscale areas like upslope have their own enhanced frequencies.

May have been Jan 30, 1987....there aren't any storms that fit your description in early Feb '86 or '87. But Jan 30th is certainly close enough that it may have been that date. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/fxg1/NARR/1987/us0130.php

Yeah +10 to +15 on the highs would be torch. So mostly in the 70s and 80s since avg highs are in the 70-75 range mid-Sept and mid/upper 60s by late Sept.

The models did fairly well overall with the theme of the first 10-12 days of the month....I recall saying they showed "Seasonably cool" (basically near to slightly below avg). Definitely going to turn up the torch knob though for the 2nd half of the month.

ORH site was on the north side of town around 600 feet back then.

50F with 10 feet of base on the ski slopes is totally fine...lol. I get Tip's nostalgia for the graupel showers and 45F, and I'm ok with it too....but after one day of it, I don't really want anymore of it. The first pellets/flakes of the season are a novelty that are fun, but then you are ready for real winter....or just go back to 70F. Everyone's got their own preferences though.