ORH_wxman

February 1981 might one of the ugliest patterns you'll ever see for winter wx across the CONUS.

We may have reached the area minimum on 9/1....we're currently about 75k above the 9/1 value of 3.19 million sq km. Still a bit too precarious to call it, but if we had a 9/1 area min, that would be the earliest min since 1992.

Frigid December look. Torch February though there would be some cold lurking close on that.

Yeah I'm sure it is different up there. For ORH, after that 1960s blitz, they had a total of 2 measurable October snowfalls between 1964-1999. Then starting in 2000, they had 8 events (1 in 2000, 1 in 2002, 1 in 2003, 2 in 2009, 2 in 2011, and 1 in 2020)....and probably had one in 2005 that got measured as a trace, but that could have happened in previous years too so I won't count it.

Yeah the ECMWF seasonal look has a frigid Canada and we rarely get skunked when there's ample cold to tap into there. One of the few exceptions might be 1988-1989.

Esp in Dec/Jan....looked like El Nino with the southern/southeastern US having the lowest heights

The October snow aspect has gotten way more frequent for whatever reason....though previously when we had October snow, it was pretty common to torch not long after. The October 1979 snowstorm was followed up mid 80s like 10 or 12 days later.

Feb 1994?

Trough isn’t super ideal there but that is an active look with absolutely frigid cold in Canada and that H5 look means we’d likely be on the cold side of the boundaries more often than not.

That’s actually a fairly cold look for New England.

Yeah it’s like pulling teeth to get merely a below average September these days...nevermind a -2 or -3 like we could pull back in the day. I feel like the last true cold September was prob 1995. 2009 was kind of chilly iirc but not like some of those others. I feel like ‘09 was chilly during day but didn’t have those biting frosts. I think 2000 had some cold nights...that whole autumn was really cold actually. Last year’s cold shot (even if it didn’t represent the month as a whole) was impressive though for sure relative to current climate.

No you aren’t losing it....there were definitely some frigid autumns back during that period. The mid-1990s actually had some very cold Novembers which were absent for a while until we’ve recently matched them in years like 2018 and 2019. We had some brutally cold Septembers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We haven’t seen those since.

Yeah the autumns are definitely warmer now (particularly early autumn). Especially compared to the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was a string of obscenely frigid autumns back then which were cold even relative to the 20th century climate. The funny part is that we rarely ever got snow despite how cold some of those autumns were...lol.

EPS def looks warmer toward mid month...but seasonably cool before that. Above normal is nice though once well into Sept/Oct...back broken by then so a +10 day is fine.

Gonna feel like fall for the foreseeable future. Maybe a brief muggier day on Sunday? Otherwise that's a lot of football weather on the Euro. GFS tries to rebuild some heat toward mid-month but that is out in clown range.

"Drought in New England" is typically an oxymoron.

Yes! He’s back!

That’s ETauntonMA (Bob) We gotta give him the Mohawk ski dude avatar again.

That is some sick looking convection about inject into this...

Agreed. The 2011 damage was significantly greater and that was a high end EF3 (though you can make a legit argument for low EF4). Hard to say what that NJ one was without more damage pics to reference...it was at least a solid EF2 anyway. Possibly EF3. If those structures were pretty high-end, then EF3 for sure.

I can believe that if it’s during that time. The 1810s-1830s were brutally cold here with the little data we do have. We were getting a ton of volcanic activity (including Tambora) aiding things and probably the decadal cycles helped too. Temps actually rose quite a bit from 1830s to 1880s before falling again toward the 1910s and then rising hugely in through the early 1950s (and then briefly cooling again in the 1960s/1970s).

There may be a temporary negative feedback of sorts...as ice melts closer to the pole, the refreeze starts a little earlier there because of the higher latitude which may offset the later refreeze further out on the periphery of the ice. That negative feedback would eventually get overwhelmed by a warmer climate.

Is there any evidence that minimums are occurring later? I remember running the numbers several years ago and there was no statistically significant trend...but maybe that’s changed. I can pull up all the dates tomorrow when back on my PC and check if nobody else has them handy.

I think the person doing it for the past year or two cannot do it this year. So we now face potential garbage BOS obs again...hopefully it doesn’t end up back at the water treatment plant halfway to the Flemish Cap.

Agreed....you can tell anyway just by looking to the south in southern Oxford county...clearly there is big damage there. It wouldn't just stop like that...lack of obs is the culprit.