Volcanic Winter

Well, I can put the shovel away

I agree with you, it’s undoubtedly a bad stretch. I’d just rather roll the dice and see how we do - after a complete DJFM period - starting off with a pattern like this relative to the more typical crap we’ve seen since 2019 or so. I’m fully onboard with the Pac oceanic heatwaves and the downstream changes that’s caused which is interfering with our winter patterns, as @bluewave has posted about ad nauseum. But, and please correct me if this is false, I don’t think we’ve seen an extended pattern yet quite like the one we’re in since the mid 2010’s. I’d like to see how we end up failing with this deck of cards in this new era, for lack of a better way to phrase It . We’ve seen the extreme suppressive look so far, guys I even got relatively skunked on this last one, officially TR received 2.1 inches but in my yard it’s really closer To 1.5 if I’m being honest. I’m tucked in right by Manchester, so idk - it was kind of an odd event / non event here. Seemed about the same as my in laws in Milltown, where we were yesterday. Originally until those final southward shifts, I was supposed to be closer to a 3-6 ballpark. Meh. , same boat as the rest of you, really. Those final southward shifts really hurt, but in a silver lining sense I’m happy flakes flew for much of the metro. Infinitely better than zero, which is now my expectation Saturday. If we’re going to fail, let’s at least fail with a new look on an old clown show .

I don’t really ever recall a winter with locked in favorable storm tracks, there’s always variation. I don’t know the meteorological details as well as many of you, but that doesn’t strike me as too big a problem. We’ll likely have some rain storms with unfavorable tracks, absolutely. Hopefully we still get some chances. I don’t want to be a broken record but I truly believe that believing in the cold is warranted; as long as we’re not staring down protracted positive high temp departures, I think we’re in the game with a bit of luck (nod to @Dark Star). Nothing we say impacts what happens, so we do unfortunately have to rely on a bit of hope. Something I’m not well accustomed to as I try to keep a more scientific mindset, but this is the intersection of science and desire / preference / personal enjoyment, etc.

The wind is also brutal today here. Just had a shutter come down off a bedroom window. My Tempest isn’t in a great spot to record wind properly and tends to underrate it, but I would imagine it was at least a couple good 40-50mph gusts.

Yup, I've been panning around temperatures on my radar apps the past few days. Much of the northeast is "milder" than the mid atlantic, the further west you go the sharper the cold. Definitely interesting.

Been noticing the minimums are not really "impressive" despite the continued cold. I'm not talking about subjective "what feels cold," just statistical. My average low is 22F right now, and I've not even been hitting that consistently despite the continued cold. It's absolutely the maximums driving this outbreak, as the high temperatures are certainly below normal. With this kind of airmass and this level of persistence, I'd of otherwise been expecting more nights in the low teens. We've had a couple now, especially with the 1-2 inch snowcover that's rapidly receding (sublimating?). Just interesting.

My power just blinked out but came right back on, I'm right on the Manchester border. Sure enough, JCP&L just texted me as if my power's out.. At least they're on it . I've been here since 2011 and always felt the grid in this area is extremely fragile.

Even if cold and dry is the risk, I will always take the cold and hope snow opportunities work their way in later. We have shown that we're consistently able to fail via too warm too often, I'm all for rolling the dice during an unexpected cooler winter if a similar set up does continue. We all want a big storm, but if we can get a couple - few more minor events even to break up the monotony, to me that's an infinite improvement on watching cutter after cutter bringing 45 degree rainstorms all winter long. C'mon, it may not be ideal but let's roll the dice and see what happens. For some reason it feels later this year than it actually is, I genuinely feel like it's Jan 28th and not Jan 8th, but it's actually still rather early in the season. May end up another ratter, just a cooler one. Or we could have some nice surprises; at least we've had some fun 'model cinema' as @Typhoon Tip calls it .

Amazing, thank you so much!

This is so incredibly cool and interesting, where do you get / view this data? This is something I'd love to review from time to time.

@psuhoffmanJust did that for today's storm, amazing:

Yeah, it was… I knew I wasn’t ultimately getting as much as was modeled early on, but I squared with it. 2ish inches is still snow I didn’t have before, and it was a beautiful wintry day otherwise. Happy mostly everyone got something, at least a few flakes. Better than 40-50 and rain.

Agree. We could be 50 and rain.

Yeah about an inch and a half to two inches at the western border of TR with Manchester. A fine start, hopefully more to come for everybody. 29 here atm, so everything staying put for now.

Ahh, that stinks for them… I was reading about the threat of warm air intrusions on the south side but don’t recall much fear of it. I mean this was a pretty solid starting airmass, feels bad . 28 here at the moment, just a perfect airmass for a snowstorm here. Just need more moisture.

Haven’t been following too closely today so far, has it been underperforming in the M/A or how have they done? More conservative forecasts verify I get the impression? I have about two inches here which is basically where my expectations were. Definitely nice and better than nothing.

This looks much better and more realistic. Specifically the initial amounts down by me seemed too aggressive, I think two inches would be a win here. I personally would take the under on ACY -> due west doing that well, though. I certainly could be wrong.

I just think perspective is warranted - the geographic spread from Philly to NYC is, in the grand scheme, absolutely minuscule. Zoom a map out and we're all functionally the same dot on a map, far less spread than say SNE to the northern parts of NNE. The northeast overall is a much tinier region than most others, and the subdivisions near our area are even smaller. With that said, of course there are climo differences and differences with respect to storms that get one area and not another. But we also tend to share storms as well, especially the big dogs / most memorable storms. These extremely narrow overruning events tend to highlight latitude differences in an extreme way, however. Rambling a bit, my ultimate point is that we're generally all in the same region just with some specific differences, so I think getting overly pedantic about regional divisions in this area is somewhat futile. We share a lot of the best events with New England even more than the M/A frankly, and there are many storms that clobber SNE but not NNE and vice versa, yet they're still all "one region" on AWX. Just a bit artificial IMO, the Northeast is not particularly large especially with respect to how the main megaopolis / population centers are clustered. I think we're prone to splitting too many hairs sometimes, at least that's my opinion on it.

This one annihilated me in western Toms River. Fantastic storm…

I just took it to mean, “more than usual.” I would agree it’s always delicate, but the implication was that this was especially precarious.

I'll never forget the runs that showed most of NJ getting 40+ inches out of 1/29/22. I have those images saved somewhere, it was ridiculous. That one really could've been an ATG for this area, I think the double barrel low with the easternmost one becoming favored stole most of the subforum's snow and kept it offshore -> NE. But that system was an absolute nuke, I remember several meteorologists here posting satellite and infrared imagery of it at its peak and damn, what a monster.

This rings true as an issue during the 1/29/22 storm as well, models were consistently leaving energy back in the leadup making forecasting that storm a challenge. In the end, I think it did end up taking most of the available energy and phased into a bomb.. Not sure how much relevance that event has with this one, but it popped into my brain because that image looks remarkably similar.

Yeah, that’s a high level HECS as depicted. Was reading some discussion in the NE sub and one of the mets was saying the setup was very noisy / complicated; essentially there are a lot of pieces that could easily disrupt that outcome. Definitely filing for now under, “super unlikely but damn that’s beautiful.”

Eh, I enjoy the cold - but we know I'm the odd one out with that. Cold + snow is obviously better, but I appreciate winter feeling more like winter even if it's not drastically BN.

Hey, I might snag a couple inches on the northern fringe - no complaints! Happy you guys are going to get blasted, this is a nice storm. Enjoy!