ORH_wxman

I was taking a winter session class that year so I was actually there for the Jan 3-4 storm which gave ITH like 15”...one of only 2 synoptic storms over 10” while I was there (actually maybe PDII barely got there too)....the other was March 4-6, 2001 but that literally took like 3 days to get 16” so I almost don’t count that one. Lol. We did get a great streamer my freshman year on the backside of the Jan 25, 2000 bust. We had like 7-8” in 4 hours behind that storm. So the “total” was like 13” but we used LES for more than half of it. You were there for some excellent storms. Feb ‘66 was epic there.

That’s pretty awesome. My grandparents had a full nut-producing American Chestnut tree in their backyard in the 1980s and into the early 1990s. We noticed the trunk started cracking in about 1993 or 1994 and by 1995 it was clearly going to kill the tree so they cut it down. I didn’t realize until years later how relatively rare it was to still have a fully mature healthy tree like that as late as the early 1990s. But it made sense in retrospect because they lived out in the sticks and had a huge yard....and the tree was toward the middle of the yard away from any other trees. The isolation probably kept it alive for so long. I knew someone who had one that was healthy even a lot more recently than that but it eventually succumbed around 8-10 years ago.

My 4 years in Ithaca NY were like that. Of course, it drives you mad after a while because it snows for like 2 weeks straight and you have about 3” on the ground to show for it.

Yeah I'm hoping it doesn't migrate back though. The weeklies yesterday had it planting over AK for pretty much all of December. Weeklies can obviously be wrong (they've had some brutal stretches this year, including back in January), but you'd like to see the ensembles continue the trend over the next week. I'd like to see at least one transient ridge shoot up into Bering/AK just to get Canada reloaded. It's pretty torched. It could use a refresh. The PNA ridging would be a lot more effective with a fresh cold dump prior to it. But beggars can't be choosers I guess.

Yeah it's not a good pattern yet there but it is a lot better than what we've see before that. Hopefully we trend the PNA positive a bit more beyond 12/5.

Did you go on the statewide meetings back in August? My wife was on a couple of them and it seemed like the elementary school teachers in particular were pushing back a lot on the "100% remote learning, no compromises" type solution she was hammering home. At the end of the day, the district union reps seem to do more of the negotiating anyways, but it seemed weird that she was out of touch with a lot of the union base on that. Like, the teachers were absolutely concerned about safety, but so many were saying "we need to find a way to get into the classroom but safely"....esp the teachers of younger kids. For high schoolers, it felt a little less urgent.

Today is the first day I've had a little cautious optimism for December since maybe 10+ days ago. We've seen this trend toward a more serviceable looking pattern for a couple days now....so hopefully that lends some credence to it not being a model blio or one-off.

He's playing the reverse psychology game pretty strongly this year. Hey, at least he's not setting himself up for disappointment I guess if it actually ends up as a total ratter.

Even first week of December is pretty hostile from a climo standpoint...yeah we get a few large exceptions like last year, 2003, etc, but for the most part we really start getting historically better storms after the first week or so. Even in a lot of our fast start La Ninas like 1970, 1975, 2007, 2008, 2017, etc....the snows really come in more toward mid month or in the case of 2008 and 1975, less than a week before Xmas. It's still a positive sign to see the pattern trying to shuffle though in the first week of December because if it gets pushed out a week, then we're still only into mid-December when snowfall climo is ramping up quickly.

LOL...I like the October snow reference there. The dry humor is even better coming from Jspin considering how meticulous he is with statistics/data.

I was just going to ask what the tropical PAC was doing....and that might explain it. MJO itself seems to be all over the map depending on the guidance you use. Some of have it in the COD while others like the Canadian have it ripping into phase 7....but if there's a shift in the IO forcing, then it's probably enough to shake it up downstream.

Glass half full: AK pig showed up, but then as we get closer, it looks maybe like it's transient? Imagine the disdain if a good pattern showed up but then ensembles were breaking it down after 6-8 days. This is the reverse....bad pattern shows up but it seems to be breaking down quickly.

EPS map is doable too though I'd rather have the GEFS look....the EPS has been trending toward the GEFS look though the past 2 runs....hopefully it continues. Still out near the end of the run so obviously a lot can change....but if we have something between the GEFS/EPS look, that can definitely produce some winter wx events.

There's been more reluctance to have elementary school age kids go remote here. We've seen the high schools be more willing to cancel in-person and go remote if a case pops up vs the younger kids. It makes sense as the younger kids are hurt more by remote and they can't do it from home by themselves like high schoolers can....they obviously need a parent home. As someone once said, there are no solutions, just trade-offs.

My wife is a teacher. Unions definitely didn’t want full in-person...and for good reason. Having 30 high schoolers packed into a small room with shitty ventilation is about the least ideal setup. Her district ended up doing hybrid. Class sizes stay below 14. Most of her classes are single digits. Kids get broken into cohorts and they go in person 2 days per week with Wednesday being a remote day for everyone (to keep each cohort getting the same number of in-person each week)

Hopefully the weeklies are as accurate as last winter.

If it's a Yukon-based -EPO that is phasing with the PNA ridge, I;ll take it (happened at times in 2015)...but I will decline a massive ridge over the Bering Strait or W AK if I can have a generic +PNA ridge instead.

A higher PNA down the line might teleconnect to more of a decent -NAO if it happened. Those higher heights lurking in Quebec are kind of waiting for a wave-break.

2009-2010 you're thinking of. Anyways, EPS are still showing the 11/29 system as kind of cutter-ish, but it is offering another chance with the mean trough still over the east around 12/1. So there might be a window somewhere in tha 11/29 to 12/2 time span....more likely for NNE than down here, but we'll see if it's still showing up as we get closer. We have some pretty pessimistic posters here that offset the optimists. We had a whole bunch of people whining and canceling winter in January 2013 and January 2015....both winters where I had over 100" of snow, LOL. After last year though, I think even hopelessly optimistic posters like Kevin are becoming skittish.

GGEM also has a system around D10 as well. It is in response to the western ridge that amplifies between D8-10. 00z EPS have something too but it's more cutter-ish looking.

They are useful if most people wear them (as they will limit the horizontal projection of virus when someone breaths out or coughs)....but if there's someone near you not wearing a mask, then the cloth ones won't help much.

Keep national politics stuff out of here (just deleted a couple posts)....I know it can be related, but this isn't the thread for it.

2018 and 2019 were both extreme cold/snowy Novembers in NNE. Definitely not the norm. Hell, even down here in 2018, we had like 10 days of snow pack which is crazy....usually November snow melts within a day or two down here.

It's an utterly putrid pattern for at least the next 10 days....if we managed anything remotely exciting in terms of winter wx, it would be do to something extremely well-timed and probably more for NNE to boot. As mentioned above though, if one squinted, you could start to see a potentially "better" looking hemispheric pattern by the end of the GEFS (and to a lesser extent EPS). So hopefully that becomes more apparent in the next few runs.