ORH_wxman

Yeah it was a much better storm....the way it kind of shunted it east after it looked good to the south is kind of weird. I'd feel pretty good if i was down in SE MA or S RI.

NAM actually has a much better storm and increased QPF down in S NJ and just offshore to there....it just gets kicked east at the last second, but I didn't hate that trend at all. I think more of that would get at least into SE areas than shown there. edit: Scooter kind of beat me to it already....saying the same thing for the most part

Saturday will be the 14 year anniversary of the SE MA snowbomb on 3/1/05....the messenger special. I remember that one vividly back on WWBB. SE MA def stole my snow in that one....huge convective blob formed over E LI and the ocean just E of it and was heading toward SE MA....SE MA was expected to have some ptype issues (though still get accumulatins snow despite that) while the max would be 495 area to ORH with 8-12 forecast....instead, that convective blob that looked more like an MCS seemed to rob the system of it's usual midlevel circulation and what happened in SE MA was epic....we weren't sure if it was gonna be snow when it hit them.....but then I remember messenger was posting pics of like 100 foot vis, lol. PYM had like 16 inches of snow in 4-5 hours. It was insane. Back up this way, we limped home with like 5-6"....still a decent system, but it was a bust compared to the 8-12 forecast. Might as well do it again for SE MA on the anniversary this Saturday.

Only place that might get a watch is SE MA....pretty close call there on the 50% chance at warning criteria in next 48 hours by the time we get to the PM shift. Plymouth/Barnstable counties...maybe Bristol and Newport county RI. Prob need another bump to get CT in on that type of confidence and the rest of us in E and C MA.

Yeah ginxy, EPS were pretty jacked looking on the conventional plots. Didn't see qpf but your maps confirms that qpf matches.

Cape has some mid-level issues...850 starts tickling above 0C there at the height....PRob want to be west of the Canal for the jack this run. Though its really close...

Prob advisory snows for SE MA this run (like BOS to PVD and TAN)....not gonna jump right into the water and go big. Classic incremental but significant Euro move. Warning snows close to the canal maybe. Prob gets 2-3" back to 495. A solid move that we wanted to see form Dr. No.

She's coming NW on the Euro through 36 hours.

Euro was the first to toss the idea of a cutter for this storm...GFS was still cutting this thing even a couple days ago.

Def a big improvement over 00z, but not as good as the GFS solution. If the Euro can make a pretty notable jump toward this today, I think we're in business...I wouldn't expect Dr. No to come all the way in one run...but a non-microscopic jump will be telling. I'm guessing it will...the 06z run actually looked decent aloft, but it wasn't really drawing that sfc reflection in toward it as well as the other models we've seen.

Ukie looks borderline warning for SE MA on the 12z run.

GFS has a nice commahead look to it...would probably even be a little better on the northwest side than the qpf maps think.

Scooter bitching his way to a warning event Saturday?

Killington's high elevation def helps them early on (and late too). I mean, the base of Superstar chair and the main Killington peak gondola is like 2500 feet elevation. That's a huge advantage for retention. And yeah, that glades lift that basically sits entirely above 3500 feet is in its own world.

I really want to get there. It's one of the few real mid sized mountains with a good rep I haven't been to yet. Everyone raves about it once the snowpack gets deep and the glades are open season.

No not really. At least from a pure short term operating cost standpoint. It's more of a bone they throw season pass holders...it may help retain the pass holders though and give them a better reputation amongst those seeking to get a season pass. So in the end, it's probably a positive long term return if you view it from that perspective.

It's a pretty epic early season pattern out there shown on guidance. That is a deep trough that sits there for a while. Northern Rockies will get crushed.

I remember someone had written an overview of the 2013 Arctic melt season and I can't find it now...but either way it showed how much the loss of multiyear ice had changed the Arctic. The 2013 summer was the coldest in the Arctic basin since 1996...but yet we still had a min around 5 million sq km, which was lower than any min pre-2007...despite some really warm years like 2005 or 2002.

Yeah the interactive graph uses the 5 day mean....it's updated daily, so its a daily reading, but the data is a 5 day average. The single day reading is actually 4.56 million sq km today. Like I said before, I can't remember if they use that or the 1 day reading as the min...but looking back at past mins, I think they use the 5-day reading that's on the graph. I seem to remember them explaining that the single day jumps can be a bit volatile and produce faux numbers on the margins, so they prefer to smooth it out. JAXA actually does this too but they do it over a 2 day average. We'll know soon enough. Not that there is a big difference...

Bluewave, I think you are referencing the 5 day average....the daily on NSIDC did get as low as 4.55 million sq km. I'm actually not 100% sure what NSIDC uses...I think they might actually use the 5 day average as the min if I recall correctly, so your number might be more "official".

Time to bump this as it looks like the NSIDC area minimum has been reached. The min area likely occurred 2 days ago at 3.17 million sq km. This ranks 9th lowest. My prediction above was for 3.3 million sq km +/- 200k...so this falls within that range. Taking the post-2007 average of area losses continues to be a better predictor than all previous years. The 3.17 million result was the 38th percentile of all the potential outcomes using only post-2007 area loss. This was around one half of a standard deviation, so not a strange result. The other typically less accurate prediction is extent. My NSIDC daily extent minimum prediction was 4.75 million sq km +/- 300k (and Jaxa would have been around 4.55 million sqkm). I'm not completely sure if the NSIDC extent min has occurred yet, but if it hasn't, the difference should be trivial from here on out. 2 days ago, the NSIDC extent bottomed out (for the time being at least) at 4.55 million sq km. It is still only 4.56 million sq km, so it's possible it falls back below 4.55 million sq km...though it is unlikely it will fall much below that if it does. The extent prediction was actually good this time as it falls within the margin set. In a strange nuance this year, jaxa extent is pretty close to NSIDC...usually it is close to 200k lower, but not this year. Jaxa min so far is 4.51 million sq km, so only 40k below NSIDC so far. So as a result, my jaxa prediction is really close to perfect. Again, these both could fall slightly more, but it's doubtful it would be more than trivial amounts. The current extent min on jaxa ranks 8th lowest, and the min on NSIDC ranks 6th lowest. 2017 and 2008 were both a little bit higher than 2018 on NSIDC extent.

Jaxa had a gain of 38k yesterday....so it's possible we have hit the extent minimum. If we have, then the jaxa min was 4.54 million sq km. This would rank 8th lowest above 2017, 2016, 2015, 2012, 2011, 2008, and 2007. Area loss is still crawling along (around 5k loss today)....area is currently at 3.2 million sq km. It is probably very close to the minimum but I will wait until it is reached to reconcile my predictions from the end of June data. If area loss doesn't change much more, then this would rank 9th lowest (same list as above, but area is higher than 2010 unlike extent).

Still falling for both area and extent but it's been very slow recently. We're around 3.4 million sq km on area and about 4.74 million sq km on jaxa for extent (prob about 200k higher than that on NSIDC). We are likely looking at a final extent somewhere in the 4.4-4.5 million range for jaxa (4.5-4.7 for NSIDC) and an area minimum of 3.1-3.3 million is my guess at this point. But there is still some time for a few minor surprises. The final outcome of this season though looks like it is going to be in line with what we thought in late June once it became apparent that melt ponding was not strong early in the season. I'll bump my predictions based on the melt ponding/area numbers once the minimums actually occur and compare the results.

Jaxa extent is currently 7th lowest but the ice pack is pretty compact which is leading to area being only 9th lowest. I borrowed the area graph from Neven's Arctic sea ice forum for a better visual.

Yeah they already have really good snowmaking, so they are pretty committed to staying around the top of the line in that category. I find it amazing even compared to when I first started skiing in the early 1990s. Those winters were absolutely putrid and I remember it being totally normal to go up to Killington and sugarbush and you see so many trails with brown grass showing and 60% of the mountain being open in February wasn't that abnormal. I feel like now you would never see that with those big snowmaking mountains even in terrible winters.