ORH_wxman

The pattern next week definitely looks more favorable to melt, but hard to say how long it lasts. Euro ensembles put the vortex back over the CAB in the 11-15 range...but it could be wrong. Sometimes the patterns lock in longer than models initially show.

Their forecast was for 5.3-5.4 million sq km September average extent. So the melt ponding must have been weak relatively speaking. The pattern does change though. Models have a pretty good dipole developing middle of next week. We will see how strong it gets and how long it lasts.

Looks good for melt from about 144-240 or so....but the 11-15 day on that doesn't look impressive as it just builds the vortex back into the middle of the CAB extending over to Greenland. That's usually the opposite of what we want for big melt. Ideally we'd see a massive ridge bridge from Greenland to AK for big melt.

Update on SIA (sea ice area).....here is how other years compare to 2018 (i.e. a -542k on 2007 means that 2007 had 542,000 sq km less area than 2018 on this date) 2007: -542k 2008: +163k 2009: +721k 2010: -217k 2011: -263k 2012: -664k 2013: +124k 2014: +152k 2015: -57k 2016: -424k 2017: -13k As you can see, 2017 is the closest match right now...though 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2008 weren't far off. That group of 4 right there shows how things can still change a decent amount....years like 2008 and 2015 still finished pretty low while 2014 and 2013 were the top 2 highest area minimums in the post-2007 era (2009 was the highest minimum extent though....and you can see how much area 2009 had at this point compared to those other years). We'll see how the next 10 days goes, but even by now, the contenders were already separating themselves from the pretenders.

Models are showing a reverse dipole for the remainder of June....if that sticks, then we're prob out of any top 3 running this year. Unless we get an obscene pattern in July....2015 was able to make somewhat of a comeback in this manner.

Laptev is taking a beating for sure right now...in fact it is the lowest area on record at the moment for this date in the Laptev. However, this is being offset by the East Siberian Sea and Beaufort...and to a lesser extent the CAA. The ESS has the highest area for this date since 1988...that's pretty impressive actually, and it's going to be a problem for getting massive melt. The lowest 3 on record for this date in the ESS? That would be 2007, 2012, and 2016 in that order. The ESS often has an "arm" of ice extending outward near the end of the season that can protect the central arctic basin from assault....and eroding that arm is a key to getting really low extents. The latest forecast doesn't look impressive for that area either after about Friday or Saturday...it looks like most of the warmth stays near the shoreline in the Laptev region and Kara sea. I'm not saying this is going to go 2013 or 2014 on us at this point, just that we need to see something better than a reverse dipole to get it up into the top tier of melt years...even if that reverse dipole is warm in the Laptev and Kara. It's also acting to protect all that vulnerable ice in the Chukchi that we started the season with. There's been very little progress in eroding the Chukchi ice the past week-plus and it probably won't change much with the reverse dipole.

First check on area this season....looks like we're in the middle of the pack though skewed a little more toward the lower melt years in the post-2007 environment. We're about 30k above 2017 and about 150k below 2014. 2012's freefall was already well under way...2018 is currently 500k above 2012 at this point. There's still time though....for example, 2007 was still only 25k lower than 2018 at this point, but it went nuclear over the next 10 days losing nearly 1.5 million sq km of area...an average of about 150k per day. Not sure 2018 has the weather forecast in its favor to do anything like that. For anyone new in here, we usually track SSMI/S area in June because it has a much higher correlation to the minimum extent in september than June extent does. The reason is meltponding...the SSMI/S sensors get fooled by meltponding so the area concentration falls. Because of this, it is giving us a measurement of meltponding which is an excellent predictor of minimum ice extent. I'll usually make a prediction of final minimum extent and area based on the area numbers at the end of June. They have worked quite well over the years with a notable exception in 2016.

This period was originally forecasted over a week ago to be pretty warm, but it never seems to pan out that way the last few years around this time. There does look to be some decent warmth that hits the Beaufort and Chukchi this weekend....but on the other hand, the dipole pattern forecasted by the euro ensembles has mostly disintegrated and now they have a low over the CAB. Cold up there now as we end May.

The ensembles are tryng to split the PV and have one half over the Kara region and the other half over Baffin Island...with the latter weakening and becoming less of an influence. We see some weak signs of blocking trying to get into Greenland from the east as you said. I'd def be in the "wait and see" camp though. We've seen this a lot in recent summers, where the ensembles try and do something, but every time, the PV just sort of reconsolidates over the CAA/Greenland corridor. I'd want to see a good dipole get within 7 or 8 days on the ensembles to start really thinking about a different pattern this summer. I'd also add that the GEFS are more enthusiastic about a dipole pattern than the EPS.

Yeah recently, it's been colder over the arctic versus the first week of the month. There looks to be a dipole still trying to set up as we head into June, but the sig is def weaker than it was a few days ago on the Euro ensembles....it shows more low pressure poking up from the CAA and also hanging back down from the Kara to try and go over the pole. It still has the general low pressure over the Kara area and the general high pressure over the Beaufort, but the high is covering less area than before. If we end up with some low pressure over the pole with a smaller high over the Beaufort, then the sensible wx impact of the pattern will be greatly diminished versus a true dipole blocking pattern. For bigger impact, I want to see that high sprawl to the east toward Greenland the low pressure over the Kara shift a little more toward the Barents....really start churning that fram export and also help the wind come more off Siberia.

We don't have good real time meltponding data unfortunately. We'll prob have to wait until early June when Schroeder gives an update (he's the guy who authored the original paper in 2014 on melt ponding). The month stated off warm in the arctic, but the melt ponds typically don't get going until later in the month in the peripheral areas....and the past 7-14 days have not been very warm in the peripheral areas like the Kara, Laptev or the Beaufort where it's been an ice box. The Chukchi has been the exception...so that might be where to watch. The Laptev may try and get a good shot of warmth this week over the next few days.

Euro ensembles are showing a classic dipole pattern setting up in early June...low pressure over Kara/Laptev region with high pressure over the Beaufort and CAA. If that verifies, we would have a good jump start to the melt season in June for the first time in years.

Yep...I'm def a bit more interested in what happens late this month and into early June...that's when the meltpond formation starts ramping up a lot. The total meltpond formation in May does have a good correlation, but a lot of that occurs in the final week to 10 days of the month. If we can sustain the warmer pattern into late May, then it will definitely help...even if we have a flip in June. 2016 saw a very warm May (warmer than 2011 and 2012) but it flipped in June back to just slightly above normal temps and it likely cost us a run at the record...but that May still helped with getting momentum into the season and we finished with a top 3 lowest min. It probably helped too that 2016 was the warmest refreeze season on record up there. It was nearly 2C warmer than 2015 (Oct-Apr area-weighted average)...and we've sustained the warmth into the next two winters, though this past winter wasn't quite as warm...it was about half a degree C cooler than 2016, but still warmer than all previous ones before 2016 and 2017.

Got a long ways to go before anything becomes too exciting....it's going to come down to weather if you are looking for a record minimum. It's gonna take a massive warm dipole to probably get there given the distribution of ice thickness this winter. Gonna want something that looks kind of like the 2007 pattern....you can see how the thicker ice is all in the Laptev and East Siberian seas.

This was the radar when Ray cleared....he cleared at the 5pm mark, and this is probably about 3-4 inches per hour type snow over him at the time so it was definitely a perfect time to clear to optimize high totals....

Hey for all the flak PeteB takes by some on here...he knows his snowfall measuring

Why does he think the melted core is accurate? That isn't credible.

Or he cut a biscuit into existing snowpack from that paste bomb last week....that might do it.

I mean, he prob didn't do it on purpose....but it's clearly an error. Maybe he cut a biscuit where a snow avalanche off the roof happened so he was slicing through packed snow or something. There is a zero percent chance he had like 7 to 1 ratios up there.

The 3+ qpf report is about 100x more egregious than a snowfall report that was about 6 inches higher. That 3+ qpf is so blatantly not credible.

Airports have 6 hour measurements going back to the 1940s even...though not all of them did. The 6 hour clearing method will probably be more accurate in the long run than a coop who only sticks a ruler in the ground at 7am every morning. You lose way too much snow in the latter. Most NWS people I have talked to don't enforce the changes because they are pretty subjective and sometimes impractical. Besides, there is the subjective element of "when instructed"...and the NWS people can just say they instruct them to continue measuring with 6 hour increments. What is the point now of having a homogeneous record broken if someone has been measuring snow for a decade using the clearing method? Only in storms that have a big fluff band will the differences be really obvious anyway.

Snow pack is extra impressive looking because we still had all that low ratio cement from the previous storm last week before yesterday happened....so while 2 feet of snow looks impressive no matter what, the piles and everything are starting to give me flashbacks to 2015.

You would think so....but the 2nd half of March can shut down quickly sometimes even when things look pretty good for more threats like they do now. Climo would get them there, that's for sure.

Anything under 15 to 1 up in that area that was also measured last night isn't credible IMHO. That band was blower powder. You need to be either outside the band with crappier snow growth or right on the beach where the snow stayed pretty wet to have ratios under 15 to 1. I can buy it maybe if you didn't measure until morning. Given the nature of the snow in that band...if you were swiping every 6 hours, your total is def going to contrast more with the "yardstick in the ground at the end" method more than normal. In a typical dry cement windblown blizzard, the difference might only be 3 inches. It could very well be double that in a storm like yesterday if you were being very diligent.

I'll add to the list for ORH.... 21.8" yesterday was a daily record, but it also put the monthly total at 40.0".....this is the 2nd snowiest March on record for ORH only behind March 1993 which saw 44.1".