Volcanic Winter

From PSU on the M/A forum: 33 minutes ago, psuhoffman said: @CAPE this is what I mean. Look at the location of the pacific trough/ridge alignment. This makes sense. Aleutian ridge. Trough should be in the west with a SER but look what happens when the pac flips the the exact opposite pattern as the mjo gets into phase 8. Aleutian trough and… The conus trough ridge alignment remains unaltered. but wait check this out… the pac trough is even slightly east of ideal there…the ridge east if it is begging squeezes to death because the trough still refuses to exit the west. We need to stop blaming the pac. Yes 75% of the time it’s been in a bad case state. But that’s not unheard of. The reason we’re getting such atrocious results is even when the pac is altered it’s made no difference, the wavelengths just adjust however they need to accommodate the SER. It’s almost as if the TNH is more dominant here not the central pacific.

It’s okay Forky, maybe we just need to learn how to appreciate a good high qpf 45* rainstorm. @George001just mentioned how he appreciates a good windy rainstorm, maybe this dude is simply ahead of his time and a proper weenie of tomorrow.

For any gamers here, play RDR2 and hit the northern highlands. Incredibly beautiful. Spent more hours up there hunting and just exploring than I care to admit. I mean what's the difference, right? Digital blue = digital blue.

Like because I respect your positivity and optimism. Unfortunately for me if a storm doesn't result in the dawning of a new 48 hour stadial I become rather apathetic.

<3

It’s also cathartic to see the southern ridge get metaphysically annihilated.

Gotta try not to get sucked into the run to run variance at this stage. I kind of agree that with a loaded setup like this, you kind of have to trust the features to ultimately deliver. Doesn’t mean they will, but you have to hope that’s the case at least. If we can’t get a coastal / snow event with this kind of setup, man… I’ll defer to PSU on that.

The northeast megalopolis bombs are always the most exciting, at least IMHO. Really hope this ends up as something that leaves as few out of it as possible, assuming one of these waves becomes reality.

Why aren’t temps projected to be colder as we head into mid month with a pattern like this? Looks decidedly around average or slightly below, which seems odd to me. Not asking at all with respect to the storm and I’m not asking if it’s cold enough to snow, just talking general temperatures for March. Seems like we should be seeing more of a strong BN push with some days at least scraping the 30’s, no? With the SSW, -NAO, and all the other elements favoring a colder east what is preventing actual cold (a couple to several degrees BN at least)? Just wondering looking at everything. Doesn’t mean anything but my monthly Accuweather temp forecast looks very meh for such a pattern. Last year even we had a couple March days colder than anything I’m seeing forecasted now with highs in the mid 30’s and lows in the upper teens (ignoring the storm, just focusing on temps in general, trying to make that clear, and my apologies for asking this kind of clumsily - wasn’t sure how to phrase).

Yeah, I'd take that. Excuse me while I go have a cigarette.

Absolute nuke. That's bonkers. We should only be so lucky.

Thanks, was focusing too much on surface temp and didn’t check the 850’s. That does look great and looks better than what we saw all winter. So the surface will cool with a coastal low ripping snow from cold low/mid levels basically.

Just curious about temp expectations if the favorable heights progression occurs. Looking at 3/13/22 for example here in Hillside and we were 35/21 on the day. Would expect we’d need to see temps move in that direction and start to adjust lower as we move forward? Just curious and asking, not suggesting an issue.

Alternative title: Revenge of the Weenie I especially love that one for the epic duel between Nosnowbi Juan Niñaobi and Anafront Snowwalker.

Nothing like good old-fashioned NJ ‘cookies n’ cream’ snowpiles. Just beautiful!

Look at it from the perspective that most of us stayed engaged all winter despite being in a warm shutout post December. We still followed the low probability thread the needle threats that ultimately had little to no chance of succeeding. Now we actually might get the chessboard with the pieces where we want them, why not finish the game? Best look since December, sure it doesn’t guarantee anything, but at least the probabilities of a favorable outcome are increased again for the last time this season. Hoping for one solid east coast hit here, and would be thrilled to see the DC area score. You guys are certainly due.

Damn near all gone in Hillside. Been standing out here watching it melt, lol. Happy to have it all though, certainly.

Does KU imply anything about track? I think I assumed it also implied a coastal nor’easter with sort of a textbook track for the east coast. If it’s just based on qualifying for NESIS that makes more sense actually.

I think the best takeaway here is that there’s finally some cause to be cautiously or reasonably excited for the first time since Dec. We’ve been in nearly an eight week shutout (finally broken for the northern half of the metro), even if snow climo will begin deteriorating, even if there are no guarantees which obviously applies at all times with this sort of results driven hobby, there’s very clearly a reason to be at least somewhat excited again. I’ll take it, personally. Lot of knowledgeable people across all the eastern forums saying similar things. This is it, this is our shot. March is always a depressing month for me, not because of deteriorating snow climo or sun angle or any of that, but because it signifies having to wade through the seventh circle of hell (our extended summer climo) to get back to the cold season, which is frankly the only weather season I care about here. I track severe in the plains and south, sure. I track hurricanes, sure. But aside from the infrequent tropical system to hit us, all of my investment lies in the cold season. In some ways I envy @LibertyBell and his love of summer heat waves. They make me fantasize about a two month trip to Antarctica. With all that said, I didn’t hear no stinkin’ bell, let’s grab a cold one on the way out, yeah?

Yup, the impact of a volcanic winter may not be felt equally among all regions at the same time, and one year of Pinatubo’s cooling episode was somewhat offset by ENSO conditions or so I’ve read for much of NA. Would have to refresh on that. Still, caused a significant global drop in average temperature (see here: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1510/global-effects-of-mount-pinatubo). Just difficult to link to individual, regional weather events. It’s more of a broad diffuse influence on global circulation patterns as best I understand that may express more or less strongly in different regions at different times. Still an interesting phenomenon that can have some profound effects, not unlike a SSW but for a much longer duration (usually 2-3 years, but larger eruptions than Pinatubo that have some constructive additional forcing have been theorized to last for a decade or longer. Subject of research wrt the LIA whereas volcanism was believed to be a large component due to a very large clustering of large explosive events).

Just wait until the next VEI 6 explosive dacitic to rhyolitic eruption on land that isn’t buried deep in the pacific (though thankfully HTHH was in terms of human impact, for sure), you’ll understand why in the era of modern photography. The images of Pinatubo’s main mega blast were obscured by the incoming typhoon and the hasty evacuation of the military base there. It would blow your mind the scale and raw power. The photos that do exist of Pinatubo’s climactic blast are already insane. Do note that the majority of common images of that event are from its precursory plinian eruptions or “throat clearing” episodes. The main event caused a gigantic cascading pyroclastic flow underneath a monstrous eruptive column. And Pinatubo was only a borderline or otherwise “small” 6 (yet it still caused a true volcanic winter as it was highly, extremely sulfurous). (Whatever that time stamp is this is known to be from June 15th, the day of the climactic blast) Not to stray too far off topic, but I always connect back to how Pinatubo caused a significant volcanic cooling episode, as has happened numerous times throughout history. Interesting how that article links this to shifts in the AMO and other oceanic patterns, if only I’ll be able to read it, lol. I would wonder how HTHH may fit into that, however anomalous it was it certainly was of the size necessary for global scale impacts.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abc5810 I know what I’m reading today. From the AMO wiki page, a section mentioned this 2021 paper theorizing past AMO flips have been instigated by volcanic forcing. Edit: Sigh. As long as I can access the article, I’ll have to do some digging. This type of science should never be paywalled IMO.

@psuhoffman has also been talking about the possibility of us being in a new -PDO period for a couple decades, and how the prior -PDO period in the middle of last century often featured a crappy Pac that was offset by Atlantic blocking that functionally produced snow in a pattern we would recognize as less than stellar today. I’ve read all his posts, he has some very interesting thoughts on the state of things. He’s suggested the last few years that blocking has begun to fail more frequently and if we’re truly going -PDO for a while (on average, I know it still does oscillate back and forth a bit), it could signal trouble. Not suggesting he’s 100% right, and he isn’t either. But he’s a very interesting and informative poster. His series of charts on the 1960’s showing the patterns that produced snow was very enlightening. Lots of -PNA but also -NAO blocking.

Congrats guys! Just getting up to Hillside for work, gonna check out what fell around here. Thinking an inch or two (just west of Newark).