Syrmax

No snow cover here to speak of so we went snow shoeing this a.m. where there was snow, at Winona State Park on the Oswego/Jeff county border. I'd say about 12" of new snow. Definately slower going breaking new ground, and a better workout...

No problem. Glad I could help you out. This is looking solid for pool weather.

Looking around for the Spring & Summer long lead forecasts. I'm so done with winter and it's barely started.

Yeah I think so. We do see interesting changes. I suspect we are seeing, on large scales, changes that correlate (sea ice etc.). Some does not. The Antarctic isn't warming like the Arctic etc. I do read some on the issue still, both sides. Something gets published and I look at the other side to see which one seems to hold water best but i have too many other interests to spend the time I used to on it. My concern is that I'm fairly certain that interests on both sides are well entrenched and predisposed to certain positions for various reasons. Its damn near impossible for the layperson to discern truth from Agenda-driven distortions. And that's not just this issue. I tend to default to the idea that we are conducting a bit of a science project on ourselves with CO2. Not all outcomes will be as dire as some hysterical projections (some could actually be good on a local or regional scale, depending on your viewpoint). Look at the medieval warm period...life was better! Serfs were slogging around in 50 degree mud versus 45 degree mud! Bring out your dead...

I get it and it makes sense. Change the makeup of a closed volume and you are changing its response. It's also one of the hand waving arguments that gets thrown around. It could be right, to more or less extent. I have no way of knowing for certain. We rely on modeling to project the future state and from what I understand of that, there's a lot of uncertainty in results, which is to be expected. Where I have concern is in willful misrepresentation of results as they are being used to formulate public policy (and spending of $). Simply put, do I spend $1 to address the issue or $1,000? That gets to be a subjective discussion pretty quickly (especially when i don't really have the $ in my account and/or have to reshuffle what i spend on).

If that solution was about 50-100 miles west you know it would be locked in!

That's an interesting point and well taken. It was one of the key arguments that was hotly debated in the UN IPCC's Year 2000/2001 (?) Climate Report, which was the first to ascribe a "discernable" human influence in global temperature trends...and hence AGW was more formally born, or emerged from being almost crackpot theory. Since then it's been rebranded as Climate Change because....that's a whole 'nuther story. At the time, drawing on my experience an electrical engineer and mathematics background, I could see the crux of the argument, which was...if you understand instrument uncertainty and its component factors in the equation, it's usually impossible to determine exactly why (say a pressure switch setpoint) As Found setpoint varies between calibration intervals. Could be any one of several factors that amount to random variance or possibly a bias. But all we can (usually) know is that "it" changed. The UN report concluded that temperature trends were explainable, essentially, as a bias factor (Anthropogenic Global Warming). Its not quite the same thing as an instrument setting calculation but a reasonable comparison. Back then, I never thought the UN analysis could withstand a rigorous 95/95 confidence examination (esp given underlying data quality concerns and hand waving arguments - that still exist) but i stopped following the issue rigorously once politics got more seriously involved and everyone's emotions flared. It's become a matter of almost faith, a litmus test on both sides now. I have people regularly tell me climate is changing and they don't know a millibar from a candybar. And life's too short to deal with that kind of idiocy.

I realize that its tempting to ascribe everything that happens weather-wise to AGW. I'm not going to argue the veracity of that here. Given enough time and thereby sample size, it could be a contributing factor. But it doesn't have much to do with our local "underperformance" of late and, by inspection, couldn't possibly explain why it seems to snow "all around us" but not here.

Possibly, on a large enough scale and given enough time. But that doesn-t account for the localized variability we are moaning about here.

I dont think there's any deep meaning to our perceived local jinx going on, certainly not global warming / climate change...i think its more of a random distribution, almost chaos theory, especially on a micro level here. Think of probabalistic monte carlo analysis....or even simple coin flip testing....with enough iterations you come up with a representative outcome, an average result, a mean, a standard deviation, etc., but doesn't mean you can't flip heads 10x in a row. Or roll 7 a dozen straight times on the craps table. Over a large enough sample set, such streaks gets washed out, or normalized, but with small sample sizes, large deviations can exist. Most of us simply end up calling it "luck"...or "bad luck". Sometimes it conveniently fits a narrative we have, or even bias confirmation. Years ago I used to marvel at how this immediate area used to sometimes scam snow out of nowhere. Not the long duration single band monsters because we don't get those, but smaller WNW snowfalls. I've definately felt that we've been unlucky the past few years. Maybe reversion to mean going on...

We have steady wet snow here. The grass is whitened so an "official" Trace accumulation will now stand up to rigorous scrutiny!

Log it!

Merry Christmas to all! Yes, it is actually snowing here, finally. I would say a slight slushy accumulation mainly on raised surfaces. It'll be enough to register a "T" on my CoCorahs logs tomorrow.

There's your sfc lp...Slotting in CNY! Unreal.

You are right! I was looking at the wrong column! I had 0 new snow 12/24-12/26/19 but we went from 2.0 to 1.5 to 1.0" o.g. each day so we were melting off each day and temps were mild 40s. I thought last Xmas was mild but then I looked at my recorded data incorrectly! Thx! Edit: So basically 2014, 2015, 2019 (iffy ?) , 2020 snowless. 2016, 2017, 2018 had snow on ground >1" with 2017 & 2018 having 2.5" & 5.8" new snow on Xmas morning, respectively. Here. Edit edit: 2016 had 5.0" o.g. on 12/25 but we were melting off an inch a day from 12/24-26. Temps hit 50 on 12/26 & 12/27 that year at KSYR, so we were white but hanging on for dear life...

I just updated my post. But yeah those snowfall values are what I recorded....measured in a.m. which year were you referring to?

Last Xmas my records show we had 1.5" on 12/24 and another 1.0" Xmas morning. Back in 2018 we were saved by a rare local WNW LES flow and had 5.8" overnight Xmas Eve into the morning. That saved our bacon and was so cool. In 2017 we had 2.0" on 12/24 & 2.5" Xmas a.m. Can't luck out every year. Edit: 2016 had 5" on ground Xmas a.m.. 2014 & 2015 were also 0.0" snow depth on Xmas morning also. Just perusing my Cocorahs records.

Kind of a dryslot punching up into Central PA now, far northern edge is encroaching on Central NY. Interesting feature. Along with the curve in the R/S line down in WPA, assumedly associated with the sfc lp as @DeltaT13 noted. Just measured...0.74" rain thusfar and 45F currently.

Now that's a damn shame. Ugh. I'd take a deep snow depth that sticks around rather than a few lousy inches here and there, even at Xmas.

Raining pretty hard here. Its cleaning the roads and cars of salt so we'll be spit shiney and ready for Spring by the time you get back.

I hear ya. It can be really crappy sometimes. We'll see... you do have at least a reasonable chance of getting something. Which is tougher in some ways then just being out of the game...

But Wait...There's MOAR!! Look at this thing Beasting way out to the West. Can only hope it pumps some Spring temps into here. This should halfway kill off January.

Hell. Freezing.

We do have this in our back pocket though for NYE Festivus, for when Matt gets back. (if it looks familiar, its cuz its LOCKED IN).

Here's a screenshot for Matt ... we're surrounded by all sorts of wx alerts but here we sit, damp and nasty, don't even rate a wind advisory. At least the lawn looks nice and Christmassy green! Sad Covidmas.