ORH_wxman

We really need winter to warm a lot more to start really thinking about "ice free" (which is less than 1 million sq km). Right now, the low sea ice in the autumn actually acts a negative feedback for volume regeneration in winter once we lose the sun. That open water sheds the excess heat pretty effectively and most of the volume gain occurs in the first couple months of refreeze, and then tails off as ice reaches the asymptotic point for thickness gain. Throw in a couple decent patterns in the winter (like we saw in 2012-2013 and then again in 2013-2014), and you end up "regressing" away from the ice free arctic and have decent volume bounces like we saw those years which means you have to "start over again" in trying to shed that volume. The last two years have trended back downward and lost back that volume gain, but they can reverse with a decent winter pattern and a non-dipole summer. I forget where I read this...I'll look around...but someone had shown that we really need winter to warm about another 2C to really be able to get ice free arctic. If everything happened perfectly in one season (abnormally warm winter coming off a bad melt season...then another horrendous pattern in melt season), we could maybe achieve it within a decade? Hard to say, but we want to see winters warm enough to where we aren't realizing the full regeneration of volume from first year ice.

CT SIA has locked in 2nd place now...it fell below the 2011/2007 mins today. It would need another 600k or so to catch 2012, which isn't happening. (though I should never say never when it comes to these things...but it would be crazy to have that much loss this late in area...esp with that big area of low concentration near the pole which will likely refreeze pretty soon and be a headwind on further area losses after the next few days) Looks like extent though is lagging somewhat. Still uncertain whether we will make it for top 3 in extent. I wonder if that poster last page still thinks my prediction range of 2nd-7th is still too low?

Looks like it was displaced a bit too much toward the Asian side though to produce the type of cold we saw in those other seasons. (1996 had the coldest June/July on record and 2013 was top 5) Still, it prevented a record from occurring when the ice was well beyond record lows in May.

Ahhh...right. I don't usually use those since they have no real history (only back to 2013 AMSR2). Though the bootstrap AMSR2 data from U Bremen does look like a slowdown the last couple days: The ice still looks pretty precarious though so I wouldn't be surprised if we see some big drops between now and the min. I don't know if it will be enough to finish below 2011, 2015, or 2007...but we'll see. You can see on the graph how 2015took a really steep dive starting this week.

We gained area on today's update but we didn't gain extent on any of the main datasets. I'm not sure which datasets you are using to get those numbers.

Doesn't he use SSMI/S for 2012 though? That would not be the best comparison. If those numbers are accurate though, then they will show up on most metrics very soon. I'm a bit skeptical on that though. I do think there's higher than normal risk for a late crash given all the marginal concentration....but on the flip side, I could see a pretty big area spike if that stuff near the pole starts to refreeze in the next 4-6 days. That's a difficult area to keep low concentration this late.

CT SIA (or really NSIDC area) is something like 400k above 2012 actually.

You can look at it both ways this year...we had a record warm spring (after a record warm winter) and June actually wasn't that cold...maybe slightly below normal, but it ranked like 19th or something since 1979. 2013 and 2014 ranked in the top 5 coldest. There was unprecedented open water on the pacific side early in the season. So the ice came into this summer in about the worst shape it could have given the starting point at the end of last melt season. Yet, we're not going to come close to the record. On the other hand, July and August have been cold and yet we're still challenging the 2nd lowest season. So that sounds impressive too. It will be a race between the ESS arm of ice melting down and the CAB slush pool refreezing late this month that determines the exact spot we finish.

CT area as calculated by wipneus on the arctic sea ice forum is currently 3rd lowest...just below 2011 and above 2007 (2012 is long gone). So we def still have a solid chance at getting the 2nd place spot. We'll have to see how the ESS does in the next week...we've lost a ton of area in the central CAB just north of the CAA/Greenland recently and that spot can refreeze pretty fast in late August, so I'm guessing we'll need to see that arm of ice in the ESS get hit hard to secure 2nd place.

Area is currently 3.63 million sq km. In order to finish higher than 7th, we'd need to only lose 200,000 sq of area between now and the min as the current 7th place year of 2009 had a min of 3.42 million sq Km. A loss that low from here to the min has never happened I don't think (if it did it was maybe 1997 but I don't have the numbers right in front of me). The 6th place year was 2015 at 3.09 million sq km which is still possible to finish above. So I feel pretty safe saying that we will finish between 2nd and 7th in area. Volume also doesn't bottom out in August. It bottoms in September. At least according to piomas it does.

Way too early to know if it is going to be an early min. The min won't occur until at least a week into September and that is still 4 weeks away. Also, that arm of ice extending out into the East Siberian sea is looking pretty fragile...so the storm may not be good for it. The 2012 storm destroyed ice out in that area...but the difference this time around is that the ice is in a bit better shape there and the storm is occurring deeper into August than 2012 which means colder temps...but the water getting churned up could easily offset that. We'll see in a few days what happens. I'd call it a toss-up right now on whether extent finishes top 3 or not. 5th is certainly a possibility...but so is 2nd. As for area...we're in the same boat. We are currently in 4th place behind 2012, 2011, and 2007...and barely lower than 2015. So it's basically a tossup...we could finish anywhere from 2nd to 7th realistically.

We definitely could have had a legit chance of beating out 2012 if this summer had a 2007-2012 pattern. The ice was served up in rough shape after the month of May. But that June pattern is still so crucial and even with obscenely low extent well below 2012 in May, you need the good dipole or you won't break the record. But that really rough start will still be felt this summer. There's a decent chance still we can get by 2007/2011 depending on the weather at the end here.

I wouldn't classify this summer as good. It was ok. June temps were significantly warmer than 2013 and 2014 despite it not being a classic dipole pattern. It ranked something like 21st or 22nd coldest June since 1979 while '13 and '14 were in the top 6.

I think the fact that 2016 was so far below previous years in spring got people convinced. At one point it was over 1,000,000 sq km lower than 2012. But this is another very good season as proof the late spring/early summer is what matters most. So much of the ice in March and April that contributes to that higher extent is completely irrelevant to the arctic basin where the ice remains in late summer/early fall. That said, this year is still going to be pretty damned low I think. It's still got top 3 potential. But it won't be anywhere near 2012. But we can't rule out something close to 2007 or 2011 if August has a hostile weather pattern.

The other thread we have temporarily hidden as we try and figure out the root cause of the slowdowns on the new software. The huge mega threads seem to cause some issues. Hopefully we figure it out soon. In the meantime, Both extent and area are currently 4th lowest. Though area is threatening to fall to the 6th over the next few days if the losses remain mundane.

Nice archive there. Glad the model runs reflected my memory well, lol. You can see how far north the ETA was compared to the AVN on Saturday night.

It was actually much better in the Mid-Atlantic as the core of the cold air came in from the Lakes/OH Valley...for New England, it is better to have the core come in from Quebec/eastern Ontario. It was still brutal cold though up here....but to see DCA have a high of 7F in the afternoon is crazy. Only the midnight high stopped the actual high temp from being single digits.

I just checked 1/17/82 for DCA and that 10F high was a cheap midnight high too. Their afternoon high was 7F. That is absolutely ridiculous for DCA. The low of -5F occurred with NW winds of 20mph gusting to 30mph.

I've had some conversations with zwyts in the past about how underrated January 1982 was for a winter month. Probably gets overshadowed by Feb '83 blizzard and PDI a few years earlier...kind of sandwiched between two great storms. That was a frigid month though with good snow. Probably one of the better snow cover months for DCA considering they didn't get a massive storm. The cold shot before the Air Florida storm was really impressive. Managed to choke the Potomac with ice after only 3 days. I want to say DCA put up a below zero low in there somewhere too during that stretch. I think Matt had told me they ran the table on snow cover too from the Air Florida storm to the end of the month...aided by another couple advisory events. Close to 3 weeks of continuous snow cover.

Oh I know the signal was good a good couple weeks out on a much better pattern for storminess and cold (I was one of the few also trying to keep all the cliff jumpers from diving)...I was just talking once we got inside of 5 days, there was nothing that would really make you predict a historic blizzard until we got inside of 72...the whole setup was really too far east on guidance and we got that ideal, monster phase that showed up on Friday night to bring things back for eastern areas (Euro subsequently came even further west, but ended up wrong).

There was really nothing obvious at 3-4 days lead time. The trough looked too far east. It required pretty deep phasing to pull that storm back for us.

Those are interesting totals...when I made my map years ago, there was a thin stripe of <=18" totals down the Housatonic Valley. I think Lanesboro had 18" and Great Barrington had 13". I never did find a Pittsfield number as they stopped reporting snow in 1970 at their site. I would suspect Pittsfield did ok since they are above 1,000 feet, but 30 inches would surprise me a bit. The Stockbridge coop discontinued in 1985 and Adams in 1978, so unfortunately nothing official there. The Kocin Book has what looks to be 13" in AQW, but can't say for sure that is where the number comes from since it isn't labeled on those maps. He does have a couple 48" amounts on what looks like the spine of the Berkshires...I never found those totals (best I found was 44.5"), but they are probably pretty accurate given what we know about that storm.

This is awesome, thanks for sharing. That is some excellent video of the changing conditions. Even just being in downtown ORH, the video captures the wind well, the wind was relentless even inland...of course, its on another level on the coast.

We lost power for 3 days in this ice storm in Dec 2008...it really sucked. But I'll admit, I might do it again because it was pretty cool seeing that much ice. Maybe like a once a decade type thing.

Wow. Yeah you're right. They must have went insane that early morning. They ended up with the same that ORH got and interior elevated SE MA.