ORH_wxman

Here's the DIT seasonal clock:

We had the last GTG on the weekend back in January....we know you had something going on, but it was a good solid crowd.

2nd half of September is when the forces are really becoming equally opposing....always a fun 2-3 weeks between about 9/20 and 10/10. He will be pimping a 70F on 9/23 but at the same time really struggling with the clown range models showing -5C 850 temps over New England in early October....it pulls him like a strong gravitational force. You can start to tell that while on the outside, he is still pimping that 71F dewpoint on 9/23, it doesn't have the same enthusiasm to it that it did a month earlier....it's kind of empty and going through the motions. His eye is really starting to turn to that first cold shot in early October....he's just dying to mention that we may see a few flakes in the high terrain too, but can't quite bring himself to say it yet. Then usually by Columbus Day weekend, the transition is complete. It's pimping highs in the 30s and 40s as normal October weather while scanning for snow chances....references to October 2009 and 2011 start to appear. By Halloween, we're turning every cold shot into a chance for flakes and even some accumulation....November is going to be a November of yore where snowpack supposedly started on 11/10 and never melted until April....perhaps "yore" meaning the ending vestiges of the previous ice age...but that is beside the point. It's gonna happen this year.

Yeah, that high pressure over Lake Ontario screams southwest flow.

The NSIDC data I'm using is from their satellite dataset. Specifcally the SSMI/S satellite. Jaxa and U Bremen use the AMSR2 satellite, which is highest resolution of the two. SSMI/S is useful though because it has a pretty homogeneous dataset going back to 1979. IMS uses both satellite and human augmentation of the data based on visual shots of the ice. Here's the FAQ from MASIE/IMS site: https://nsidc.org/data/masie/masie_faq

Labor Day of Yore?

Even ensembles have the wedge hinted into Thursday

It will be interesting to see if this product stays below 2012....I suspect it will not, but we'll find out in about 2-3 weeks. NSIDC area is now favored to finish 3rd lowest...we're only 90k lower than 2016 now and 2016 loses about 400k in the next week. So this year needs to kick-start again on area loss to stay pace. Extent is still favored to finish 2nd lowest behind 2012 on NSIDC, Ubremen, and Jaxa.

We wedge

Euro says we wedge until next Friday

Yeah I can get that...the rocks should actually be fine as long as they stay relatively white. But if they start getting dirty, then that's gonna move the needle.

I mean, I guess that's definitely better than dark mulch....but I wonder why they couldn't just do grass?

It's also not something that would be readily noticeable on an anecdotel scale....I think the average came out to something like 0.4C too warm on the maxes versus the newer digital thermometers. So you'd probably see it more in the data when plotted out over time. But yeah, your actual location would probably mask any hardware bias because you have a short afternoon before the sun sets.

Yeah, the mins are definitely where it is more noticeable. Even a non-radiator like ORH it shows up since there's no such thing as truly zero radiational cooling on our observation sites. Even ORH radiates a little bit....just less than pretty much everyone else. But ORH airport has had 33 record low max temps since 2000 in the DJFM period. With records since 1947-1948, we would expect an even distribution to be 35 record low max temps. So it's very close on that front. But the 24 record low minimums is significantly below the 35 expected.

I should probably add the caveat "unless the GGEM verifies"....lol. It tries to form a wave along the boundary to the south and give us precip on Monday.

To get back on topic a bit...Monday actually might be the best day out of the COC intrusion. We get the retreating high up in Nova Scotia turning the flow more ENE....but still dry with the high really wedging down. So you're prob looking at temps near 70F with sunny skies over a lot of eastern MA/RI.

I mean, eventually it's not going to work for them....it's just funny how every year, there's always posts about how this is the year they don't turn on the jets late. That's the one advantage of not being a Patriots fan....I look at the fan base and team from a different perspective. Being a Cowboys fan....it also means I don't look at them through the prism of a division rival or even conference rival where hatred clouds judgement too. They are just sort of there existing in front of me every Sunday. But I always laugh at the panic.

We await the annual September Scooter meltdown in the Patriots thread every fall telling everyone how "this year is different"

Oh it almost certainly is....I don't think the instrumentation is off at a place like BTV. Occasionally a thermometer will go off its rocker, but it's really obvious when it does and usually gets corrected pretty quickly. Way more often, its a siting issue when stations start showing problematic temp obs. Sometimes the siting issue is temporary....piles of rocks at KCON, lol.....sometimes it might be more permanent like development around the airport. IAD Dulles is a good example of the latter....used to be out in the sticks and radiated like mad. Now they are in the middle of heavy development and don't come close to their former radiational glory days. Yeah I kind of lean with you on this. There's some evidence in the literature that the old passive stevenson screens with the liquid MMT produced warmer maxes and cooler mins than the newer digital thermometers at coops stations.

You're not kidding about MPV.....they have the same record length as ORH airport (ok, 1 year less...but basically the same) MPV has set 32 low minimums in winter (DJFM) vs ORH's 24 since the year 2000. Just for reference, BTV has set 15. They are more in line with CON and like CON, the BTV airport site started around 1940.

Seems like the rad spots really struggle more now in the winter. ORH has set 9 record low minimums in winter since 2000 versus CON with only 6. Using only the ASOS locations: CON: 14 record lows since 2000 ORH: 24 record lows since 2000 Period of record is similar...CON winters go back to 1939-1940 at the current location while ORH goes back to 1947-1948....so slightly longer record for CON but nowhere near long enough to explain the 10 extra records for ORH. I even double checked ORH records for the same dates as the January 1942 and Feb 1943 outbreaks and only 1 record low occurred at ORH after 2000 during those dates, so at most, I can only toss 1 record due to period of record differences. It is definitely harder to radiate at CON versus earlier....while ORH can still get record lows a bit more often because they do it on CAA type airmasses.

Yep...there was plenty cold over the CONUS, just not for most of the posters in here....pretty classic gradient with SE ridge in the east actually.

Oh yeah...I wasn't implying that we're screwed because of it. Just a few short winters ago, we had our "Labrador visits Boston Harbor" storyline complete with sea ice that didn't melt until after the spring equinox and snow cover draping the buildings like "Day After Tomorrow" footage. And hell, even since that winter, we've had some pretty good stretches despite the +NAO. But I was mostly rolling my eyes at the "NAO flips positive as soon as summer is over" theme that has been present the past few years. At some point, it would be nice not to have to rely on the EPO/PNA region to bail us out as winter enthusiasts....even though it has bailed us out quite often recently.

We haven't had a full DJFM season average a -NAO since 2012-2013. 2017-2018 was the closest we came on the strength of a big -NAO March that season. But it still finished slightly positive. In fact, here's an amazing stat.....March 2018 is the only month out of any DJFM cold season that has averaged a -NAO since March 2013. January 2016 was just north of neutral as the closest runner up. January 2017 was also close (it actually averaged slightly negative on the Hurrell SLP method, but slightly positive on the Z500 CPC method). But that is pretty amazing. Out of the past 24 winter months, we could only get one of them to be decidedly negative on the NAO.

Friday-Monday is clothing-optional.