ORH_wxman

Yeah mostly ends up that way but not always. Classic example...2/24/98 over interior MA and even all the way back to ALB....winter storm warning for 12-18" of paste. Not much, if any by the time you got to 128 and forecast was always rain for BOS and nearby/southeast MA. But different story for ORH and up through monadnocks and into E NY state. It started off as planned...pounding heavy wet snow while about 10 miles inside 495 was raining. The snow line actually collapsed southeast a little bit as the dynamics increased and I remember Todd Gross coming on and saying Lexington and Bedford had flipped to heavy wet snow and mentioned they may have to up amounts in the 128 zone. Meanwhile back in ORH, we were ripping...had 4-4.5" by about 830am after it started at 5am or so. No end in sight either. Heavy echoes just streaming north. Then all of the sudden when really heavy echoes started moving in, the dreaded pingers were heard shortly after 830. Worst sound ever. They lasted maybe 30 minutes or so at 29-30F and the temp slowly rose to 32-33 and then we were all rain shortly after. I remember then around 11am the Mets were scrambling but said they expected the snow to collapse back southeast that afternoon and we'd still pick up an additional 4-8"...I thought "ok that is still salvageable even though this few hours of rain sucks". But then I noticed ALB went over to heavy rain not long after. I then knew deep down we were toast. I still hoped everything would collapse back southeast but it never did. Instead, we got nearly 3 inches of heavy rain at 34-35F on a benchmark storm track in February...the storm ended with a few pathetic wet flakes finally mixing back in. Even ALB and eastern NY had a bad bust...had to get west into the Catskills and out to BGM for big snows that never changed over. Worst negative bust of the 1990s by far for me.

The 1940s, 1950s, and 1980s seems to stand out as rather putrid years in Maine based on your data, tamarack. That actually matches ORH pretty well. I didn't have 1940s in my dataset, but if I did, they wouldn't be very good based on what I know from that decade at the older coop site. They weren't as bad as the '50s or '80s but still pretty cruddy. Your 1990s stand out for moderate events.

I really wish I could find it, but years and years ago, I saw a writeup on the Feb 1989 storm. It was of course in black and white PDF scanned onto some website and then printed back out. But it showed the old NGM paneled model forecast about 24 hours before the Feb 1989 storm and you could see why they were going nuts. We all remember how dry the NGM tended to be, and it was spitting out over an inch of QPF from NYC to BOS and all points in between back to ORH and HFD included. It had "the look" so to speak....not just QPF, it was thing of beauty in the midlevels with like 4 or 5 closed height contours at 850 and several at 700 even if a bit oblong. Looking at the reanalysis, you can probably see what was "supposed to happen"....that powerful southern vort energy was going to really swing around the base of the trough and "wrap back northward" and tuck that storm in closer to the coast....but the whole thing kind of gets pinched off a bit too quickly.....ugh, just looking at those panels is painful bringing back the memories that are still so vivid 30 years later: http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/NARR/1989/us0224.php http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/NARR/1989/us0225.php

Nothing was worse personally for me than the February 24-25, 1989 bust...it was similar to the one you described except it did get snow back to ORH hills...just it ended up being 3-4" of sand after 1-2 feet was predicted not 24 hours earlier. We were rewarded by WBZ channel 4 with Shelby Scott reporting live from Chatham, MA under 2 feet of snow and blizzard conditions long after the arctic sand stopped falling in ORH and the sun was already poking out. The bust you described may have been either late Jan 1987 or mid Feb 1987....that was actually a good season over the interior, but one of those storms absolutely demolished the Cape while giving nary a flake to Boston-westward except a brief burst that produced an inch or so from the WAA ahead of the developing shortwave...but the main CCB never made it back northwest of SE MA and the sun was out for much of it over the interior. http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/NARR/1987/us0209.php http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/NARR/1987/us0210.php Back in those days, there was always dread lurking behind the excitement of an impending storm. I was always excited, but after the first bust or two, I became wiser but at the expense of fun....we were waiting for the other shoe to drop constantly. Even in a 3-6" event. We'd see those types of events turn into an inch of slop washed away (waking up to the dreaded sound of cars splashing outside instead of that "muffled" sound of snow)....... or clear skies with stratus deck visible on the eastern horizon with semi-regularity. December 1992 was the turning point as you noted. That storm seemed to take a decade worth of frustration and turn it on its head. It was as if it almost mocked those who hated snow and started to enjoy our "new climate" of busts and underperforming snows in the 1980s and early 1990s...."here, take this 2-4" forecast and laugh about it turning into 34 inches blue cement-turning-into-powder combo." The 1990s still had their share of ratters and some busts....but you knew the tide had turned...the worst was behind us it seemed....and that feeling turned out to be prophetic as we went into the 2000s.

I dunno, Euro today looks like LabYore Day is coming. We'll see what the ensembles look like in a bit.

I should add in 1.0-2.9" events just to see if there's been anything going on there. But that would require a chunk of time for me to compile that data since there's more of those events, and I never started the process. I had already started doing 3, 6, and 12 thresholds over a decade ago. Anecdotal, but I swear 2.7, 2.8, and 2.9 were so damned common in the 2000s and 2010s looking at the ORH data. I can't believe how many times I left off an event because it failed to reach 3.0" by a few tenths or less.

Yeah the 1950s and 1980s were pretty big outliers that can skew the look. The 1950s were dreadful for snowfalls 6"+ in both categories over 6". Even worse than the 1980s....they seemed to try and make up for with lots of 3.0-5.9" events, but the 1956-1957 season kind of skews that decade too if we want to dig deeper. That winter had 11 events of 3.0-5.9" and ZERO 6.0"+ of any kind. No other year in the entire record even had 10, nevermind 11....2002-2003 was closest with 9, though unlike 1956-1957, the incredibly prolific 2002-2003 also had 2 events of 6-11.9" and 3 over 12".

Well I just made it....lol....I had the raw file for years, but I had to update it for the most recent decade.....here;s the raw data by each single year: Snowfall frequencies at KORH by year Year 3.0-5.9" 6.0-11.9" >= 12" 1950-1951 5 0 0 1951-1952 8 2 0 1952-1953 5 2 0 1953-1954 3 1 0 1954-1955 3 1 0 1955-1956 6 6 0 1956-1957 11 0 0 1957-1958 3 2 4 1958-1959 5 2 1 1959-1960 4 1 1 1960-1961 7 2 3 1961-1962 3 2 2 1962-1963 5 4 1 1963-1964 5 3 1 1964-1965 7 2 0 1965-1966 2 2 3 1966-1967 4 4 2 1967-1968 4 4 1 1968-1969 3 2 2 1969-1970 7 1 1 1970-1971 4 6 0 1971-1972 5 3 2 1972-1973 3 1 1 1973-1974 2 2 0 1974-1975 7 1 1 1975-1976 2 2 1 1976-1977 6 4 2 1977-1978 4 4 2 1978-1979 7 1 0 1979-1980 3 1 0 1980-1981 2 2 0 1981-1982 4 3 1 1982-1983 1 0 3 1983-1984 3 5 1 1984-1985 6 0 0 1985-1986 4 1 0 1986-1987 2 5 2 1987-1988 4 3 1 1988-1989 4 0 0 1989-1990 3 3 0 1990-1991 3 2 0 1991-1992 3 1 0 1992-1993 6 3 2 1993-1994 7 3 2 1994-1995 0 0 1 1995-1996 6 5 4 1996-1997 3 1 2 1997-1998 5 1 1 1998-1999 2 4 0 1999-2000 2 2 0 2000-2001 4 3 2 2001-2002 2 3 0 2002-2003 9 2 3 2003-2004 5 1 1 2004-2005 8 6 1 2005-2006 3 2 2 2006-2007 3 1 1 2007-2008 4 5 0 2008-2009 4 4 1 2009-2010 4 3 0 2010-2011 4 1 4 2011-2012 3 1 1 2012-2013 2 5 2 2013-2014 4 4 2 2014-2015 4 3 3 2015-2016 4 0 1 2016-2017 5 2 2 2017-2018 3 2 3 2018-2019 5 3 0

I decided to look into the frequency of snowfalls by magnitude at ORH based on the discussion by Tip and Ray....here's what I found: Now obviously a couple things stick out....small event between 3.0-5.9 have generally declined while larger events over 12" have increased. The middle run-of-the-mill warning criteria events have not really changed....slight increase. But something to keep in mind, the data is somewhat noisy. See the decade of the 2000s with the big increase again in small events and moderate events....but not really 12"+ events.

Let's get a 49 at ORH with mist.

There's no way that verifies at his place. Might have to pull out the BDL tarmac for this one and hope they don't stay too cloudy.

We wedge. We invert. We stratus from the northeast. Maybe we can pull a Labor Day of Yore though. Still showing up on ensembles.

Melt ponding is supposed to occur more readily on first year ice than multiyear according to the literature but let's say that is flawed analysis....if melt ponding was truly getting harder because first year ice is somehow getting so bad and other factors now contribute more to melting because of this, then we would expect the NSIDC area in late June to significantly over-predict the amount of ice left at the end of the season. We haven't really seen that in recent years....except 2016. But it didn't happen in 2017 or 2018. It doesn't look to happen in 2019 either unless something pretty crazy happens in the next couple weeks. The late June area data (which is a proxy for melt ponds) told us that we had a good chance for 2nd lowest but not a good chance for lower than 2012's record. There's nothing glaring that says that data missed some sort of smoking gun on additional melting.

Those first two had big -NAO help. 2015 did not though but we got an amazing nearly-standing PNA wave in a perfect spot. When it doesn't line up like that we often have to be at the whim of the unmanned firehose....ala 2013-2014, 2016-2017, and last year...last year we got somewhat unlucky but that's the way it goes. We got lucky in some of those previous years. Obviously we all root for a -EPO since a +EPO is garbage but I will also root for some Atlantic help.

The role of the cyclone in 2012 is overstated imho. The ice was in terrible shape before it hit. I'm not really convinced it added that much to the losses. Maybe a couple hundred thousand sqkm or something. 2012 already had the highest percentage of melt ponds by the end of June suggesting a new record was likely. It was significantly lower on SSMI/S area than other years including 2019...it's the main reason I didn't think we'd set a new record this year despite this being the most favorable melt year in a while. It just didn't quite stack up to 2012's early melt ponding.

The sea ice argument was the reason given from 2009-2013 but now it obviously doesn't work given the recent +NAO. I've still heard it as relating to the recent -EPOs we've seen. We'll see if that holds up too in the coming decade. Regardless, it would be nice to grab at least a solid month of -NAO in the means (obviously fluctuating is ideal...before Tip makes an angry post about dynamic changes in magnitude)....it's nice not having to rely on the unmanned firehose spraying the right way all the time. A good solid PNA ridge can do the same ala 2015 but those don't seem to lock in place as easily as an NAO block...unless it's 2015 of course, lol.

Lol I just had to get the quotes out there. Classic.

Hey, you got your own regional "whine our way to a jackpot" poster... I think lavarock gives Tauntonblizz a run for his money.

Ocassionally he gets completely unhinged and probably starts throwing furniture in his basement like right before the 1/24/15 storm which was supposed to ruin our blizzard. I thought we might lose him before the March 4th storm this year too but then he tantrumed his way into a jackpot after issuing congrats to dendrite and powderfreak 2 days out.

No I sometimes side with you in the winter when Scooter starts getting cranky about coastal MA's snow prospects and starts taking it out on interior SNE too.

If they are big enough then it can take until you hit about 20F. But typically around here they don't get big enough like that...but it's possible if they get an early start in spring...a year where there's an early warm up and no real hard freezes in April.

Lol. I was just posting about the yellow jackets above. Usually they are done after a hard freeze. Though a lot of light frosts will do a number on their nests even if a few still survive.

Yeah I'll take a hard freeze around 10/10 to kill off the remaining yellow jackets but then give me 65/45 until Veterans Day. Then we can flip the DIT switch to ACATT.

I'm a huge fan of mild Octobers. I have no use for the garbage "highs of 46, low of 27" type airmasses in October. Save those for a month later when they give you highs near 30. Ill take highs in the 60s all the time in October. I'll allow for one or two quick frost/freezes just to remind us that winter isn't too far off but otherwise, I'm all for 65/45.