Winter 2011-2012

[Baroclinic Zone]

This was when Bob could not start a thread that failed...

So so true! I think we need to employ him to start all threads this winter too, until his first failure

Juju flowin'

My thoughts are optimistic for the winter.

[OKpowdah]

Yeah what was the cause of the dead zone? Could it be that the storm was almost TOO strong? Wasn't it like low 970s?

It was a 961mb low as it tracked near ACK. It did wrap up too quickly and nearly stalled, with the best mid level frontogenesis ending up to our west for most of the storm.

In this case, areas of western New England, eastern NY, down into NJ got 30 more inches of snow than they were expecting 3 days earlier, and eastern MA, near the CF, exceeded a foot also. So yes, it was an incredibly huge positive bust. Someone is always going to be disappointed with a storm; it can't be avoided.

[CoastalWx]

It was a 961mb low as it tracked near ACK. It did wrap up too quickly and nearly stalled, with the best mid level frontogenesis ending up to our west for most of the storm.

In this case, areas of western New England, eastern NY, down into NJ got 30 more inches of snow than they were expecting 3 days earlier, and eastern MA, near the CF, exceeded a foot also. So yes, it was an incredibly huge positive bust. Someone is always going to be disappointed with a storm; it can't be avoided.

You did get the sense that NJ up through western New England were gonna get smoked when you saw the mid level features. I remember how we were posting about those features looking like they would crush those areas mentioned..even if QPF wasn't impressive. One of those things where QPF is overrated when it comes to placement of certain features in winter storms.

[HoarfrostHubb]

This was one of the most powerful storms in recent memory. Yeah parts of central mass down through CT got caught in a dead zone , but to have places like Orange MA gust to almost 50kts is unheard of. Not to mention the coastal flooding too. An incredible storm.

Yup... pretty meh here. Nice wind and decent snow, but run of the mill IMBY

For others, top 5 event of a lifetime

[HoarfrostHubb]

You did get the sense that NJ up through western New England were gonna get smoked when you saw the mid level features. I remember how we were posting about those features looking like they would crush those areas mentioned..even if QPF wasn't impressive. One of those things where QPF is overrated when it comes to placement of certain features in winter storms.

Attention Shelburne, MA listeners!!!

[OKpowdah]

You did get the sense that NJ up through western New England were gonna get smoked when you saw the mid level features. I remember how we were posting about those features looking like they would crush those areas mentioned..even if QPF wasn't impressive. One of those things where QPF is overrated when it comes to placement of certain features in winter storms.

Yeah, after the models shifted. My point was that 3 days earlier, model guidance still took the storm outside the benchmark, and those areas that got the insane banding weren't expecting anything at the time

[Typhoon Tip]

Well we had two very distinct areas of lift. One associated with strong low level frontogenesis and lift over se mass and the other area was more with the mid level frontogenesis and deformation in western mass. The susbsidence zone was because of the lift in eastern mass. When air rises in one spot, it must come down in another spot. Usually, it occurs downstream of the lift.

what was pretty amazing about that g-wave phenomenon is that the GFS had "notched" the QPF field for run after run; we ignored it figuring on model echoing of some kind but ..heh, banged.

[snowNH]

what was pretty amazing about that g-wave phenomenon is that the GFS had "notched" the QPF field for run after run; we ignored it figuring on model echoing of some kind but ..heh, banged.

Oh ya.. I forgot about that "V" that was formed with the qpf on most of the models.. I knew someone was gonna get screwed I just didn't think it would be a 100 mile by 100 mile swath

[tamarack]

Oh ya.. I forgot about that "V" that was formed with the qpf on most of the models.. I knew someone was gonna get screwed I just didn't think it would be a 100 mile by 100 mile swath

Plus a smaller area (80x40, widest W to E) farther north. I was happy with getting 8", but would've been happier with the 12-16" reported N,S,E, and W. S & E got the bands, N & W had the ratios. My 0.92" LE at low 20s and moderate wind had ratio 8.7 to 1. 40 miles to my north the ratios were twice that.

[OKpowdah]

EPIC!

[40/70 Benchmark]

Meteorologically speaking, the Boxing day storm was phenomenal, but as far as I'm concerned it sucked a fatty.

Spare me all of the scientific rebuttals.....I get that.....it was a big let down imby; I don't care what was modeled 3 days earlier.

[ORH_wxman]

Meteorologically speaking, the Boxing day storm was phenomenal, but as far as I'm concerned it sucked a fatty.

Spare me all of the scientific rebuttals.....I get that.....it was a big let down imby; I don't care what was modeled 3 days earlier.

For SNE, Jan 12 is where its at. That was a classic SNE Miller B bomb. The type we crave. Boxing Day was a Miller A that developed too rapidly for us to jackpot (which can be all too common in those setups). We clean up on Miller Bs...always have.

[nzucker]

Arctic sea ice is doing terribly. Will that be a factor this winter, either in encouraging a -NAO as some have theorized, or in depleting our cold air source early in the season? We'll see...

[ORH_wxman]

Arctic sea ice is doing terribly. Will that be a factor this winter, either in encouraging a -NAO as some have theorized, or in depleting our cold air source early in the season? We'll see...

Highly doubtful as that was touched upon earlier this thread:

[ORH_wxman]

Cryosphere has historically had little to do with snowfall or temps in our area when looking at the summer. The epic high ice minimum of 1996 produced a complete torch for a lot of the CONUS and only New England was able to muster above average snowfall helped by the fluke of the Mar 31-Apr 1, 1997 historic snowstorm. The other high ice minimum on record was 1980...how did that work out for the east coast?

There is just almost zero correlation there. The cyrosphere regenerates when the sun sets and a lot has to do with the synoptic pattern and snowfall in October....but even then it doesn't matter all the time as 2008 taught us.

[A-L-E-X]

For SNE, Jan 12 is where its at. That was a classic SNE Miller B bomb. The type we crave. Boxing Day was a Miller A that developed too rapidly for us to jackpot (which can be all too common in those setups). We clean up on Miller Bs...always have.

How about Jan 26-27 Will? Was that considered better than Boxing Day or in third place?

[A-L-E-X]

Highly doubtful as that was touched upon earlier this thread:

http://www.americanw...post__p__753905

I think it's way too early for any of that, I'm just looking forward to some triple digit heat up here in a week and a half or so lol. Today's 98 was a nice appetizer.

[nzucker]

Cryosphere has historically had little to do with snowfall or temps in our area when looking at the summer. The epic high ice minimum of 1996 produced a complete torch for a lot of the CONUS and only New England was able to muster above average snowfall helped by the fluke of the Mar 31-Apr 1, 1997 historic snowstorm. The other high ice minimum on record was 1980...how did that work out for the east coast?

There is just almost zero correlation there. The cyrosphere regenerates when the sun sets and a lot has to do with the synoptic pattern and snowfall in October....but even then it doesn't matter all the time as 2008 taught us.

There are some interesting recent studies, such as the Walsh paper, about arctic sea ice affecting the NAO:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442(2000)013%3C0617%3AASIVIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2

[ORH_wxman]

How about Jan 26-27 Will? Was that considered better than Boxing Day or in third place?

Jan 26-27 was awesome, but it definitely comes in 2nd place to Jan 12 for SNE as a whole...there's obviously going to be some spots that prefer Jan 26-27, but that is just from mesoscale variance. The better storm by far for SNE was Jan 12 with a ton of 20"+ amounts. Jan 26-27 produced a nice area of 12"+ amounts but nobody had 20"+.

[nzucker]

Jan 26-27 was awesome, but it definitely comes in 2nd place to Jan 12 for SNE as a whole...there's obviously going to be some spots that prefer Jan 26-27, but that is just from mesoscale variance. The better storm by far for SNE was Jan 12 with a ton of 20"+ amounts. Jan 26-27 produced a nice area of 12"+ amounts but nobody had 20"+.

January 12th was better here, too, albeit by only half an inch.

Here was a picture from a couple days after that storm here in Dobbs Ferry's nature preserve, snowpack was around 18" or so in the woods:

[ORH_wxman]

There are some interesting recent studies, such as the Walsh paper, about arctic sea ice affecting the NAO:

http://journals.amet...IT%3E2.0.CO%3B2

The funny part about that study in the year 2000 is it suggests that AGW was responsible for the increase in +AO winters....now we hear the opposite. Though the recent claims have not been peer reviewed.

Either way, I think it has little bearing on our own winters because clearly we cannot establish a good relationship there with the cryosphere. So I'll leave that stuff to the climate change forum and not here...but we just have no correlation here.

[nzucker]

The funny part about that study in the year 2000 is it suggests that AGW was responsible for the increase in +AO winters....now we hear the opposite. Though the recent claims have not been peer reviewed.

Either way, I think it has little bearing on our own winters because clearly we cannot establish a good relationship there with the cryosphere. So I'll leave that stuff to the climate change forum and not here...but we just have no correlation here.

There isn't much of a correlation, but a depleted cryosphere can't be a good thing in the long term. I imagine that fall and early winter temperatures will continue to warm if we lose more and more sea ice and Canadian snow cover. Fall temperatures have warmed dramatically in the last few decades, and it's rare indeed to have a cold fall these days. It seems that we've had a lot of autumns where the summer drags on a bit more, with less delineation of the seasons, such as 2007. One has to wonder if extreme warmth such as October 2007 has at least a small connection to the decline of the cryosphere.

[A-L-E-X]

Speaking for our local area, the weird thing is cooler/colder Octobers seem to be more common, while warmer/milder Novembers are more common-- with a cold November now very rare. We haven't had a cold November in a long time and no measurable November snowfall in over 15 years.... we once averaged around an inch of snow that month.

[ORH_wxman]

There isn't much of a correlation, but a depleted cryosphere can't be a good thing in the long term. I imagine that fall and early winter temperatures will continue to warm if we lose more and more sea ice and Canadian snow cover. Fall temperatures have warmed dramatically in the last few decades, and it's rare indeed to have a cold fall these days. It seems that we've had a lot of autumns where the summer drags on a bit more, with less delineation of the seasons, such as 2007. One has to wonder if extreme warmth such as October 2007 has at least a small connection to the decline of the cryosphere.

We had a pretty extreme drop in ice cover in the past 7 years....yet there is no correlation to our winter temps. Our winter temps have gotten colder. The sea ice is something fun to watch in the climate change forum, but its pretty irrelevant for us in predicting winter. There are factors that dwarf sea ice by probably 100x that we worry about such as the NAO/AO...the PDO, etc. It just doesn't matter to us. We haven't heard about record warmth in winter for a while like we did back in the 2000 time range....its likely because the PDO shifted and the also the NAO decadal cycle shifted. We had way more ice in the 1980s and early 1990s but we had awful winters with warmth...because of much more important factors than how much ice was sitting on top of the arctic ocean in September.

It doesn't matter to us. You like 2008-2009...which might be the worst cryosphere on record (if you count snow cover in October). That stuff is not very important.

[nzucker]

Speaking for our local area, the weird thing is cooler/colder Octobers seem to be more common, while warmer/milder Novembers are more common-- with a cold November now very rare. We haven't had a cold November in a long time and no measurable November snowfall in over 15 years.... we once averaged around an inch of snow that month.

I believe the 2000s were the first decade in which NYC did not record measurable November snowfall. Considering we're at 41N, we should be seeing snow from time to time in late November. After an incredibly snowy stretch of Novembers in the 1930s, there was a fast decline, and it really fell off in the past 30 years with just a few tenths here and there, to nothing in the last decade. I do remember some snowfall in Westchester during November of 2002, setting the stage for the early December storm and the huge winter that followed.

2008 and 2009 were years with pronounced cold shots in October, followed by mild weather in November. Central Park had 5 straight days of double-digit negative departures in October 2009 due to the strong Kelvin Wave/WWB that powered the El Niño. Snowfall was recorded in parts of Westchester during that Nor'easter, and I saw a few inches fall on October 16th in the Poconos, the earliest significant snowfall to hit Central/Northern PA in about 150 years.

[nzucker]

We had a pretty extreme drop in ice cover in the past 7 years....yet there is no correlation to our winter temps. Our winter temps have gotten colder. The sea ice is something fun to watch in the climate change forum, but its pretty irrelevant for us in predicting winter. There are factors that dwarf sea ice by probably 100x that we worry about such as the NAO/AO...the PDO, etc. It just doesn't matter to us. We haven't heard about record warmth in winter for a while like we did back in the 2000 time range....its likely because the PDO shifted and the also the NAO decadal cycle shifted. We had way more ice in the 1980s and early 1990s but we had awful winters with warmth...because of much more important factors than how much ice was sitting on top of the arctic ocean in September.

It doesn't matter to us. You like 2008-2009...which might be the worst cryosphere on record (if you count snow cover in October). That stuff is not very important.

Well of course, ice cover is not going to dwarf the NAO/AO. If we have a trough rather than a huge ridge like we saw in the late 90s, it's going to be colder. Everyone knows that. Also, the influence is always going to fade as winter goes on because the cryosphere naturally fills in with zero sunlight.

But in the long-term, we're going to warm, especially in fall and early winter, if we have less sea ice and snow cover by a dramatic margin. There's simply less cold air to build up when you have open land and water. Autumn has been incredibly warm in the CONUS, especially the northern tier, in the last decade:

[nzucker]

Here was the anomaly for the fall of 2007, when arctic sea ice reached its lowest minimum recorded:

[ORH_wxman]

Well of course, ice cover is not going to dwarf the NAO/AO. If we have a trough rather than a huge ridge like we saw in the late 90s, it's going to be colder. Everyone knows that. Also, the influence is always going to fade as winter goes on because the cryosphere naturally fills in with zero sunlight.

But in the long-term, we're going to warm, especially in fall and early winter, if we have less sea ice and snow cover by a dramatic margin. There's simply less cold air to build up when you have open land and water. Autumn has been incredibly warm in the CONUS, especially the northern tier, in the last decade:

pull up 2008-2010, that was after the pdo flip...its less drastic....it simply doesnt matter on the scale we are talking about. I wouldn't use it to predict winter temps. I'm not sure what you are trying to get at other than that the 2000s were warm for autumns. Yes that is true. But we are talking about winter in this thread...and it has not translated to winter temps...the cryosphere matters little.

[OKpowdah]

while there isn't a very clear correlation between ice cover and our winters, there is pretty good physical basis for connection to the potential magnitude of Nov/Dec cold IMO. However, the pattern dictates how much of that potential is tapped into, so any correlation is consequently mostly masked.

One thing to keep in mind too is that the NAO/AO do follow an inter-seasonal oscillation with a period around 195 days or a little over six months. We have been squarely in a negative NAO/AO regime so far this summer, however an increasing index annular mode will probably follow by the late summer and autumn ... during which time ice cover increases drastically.

[CoastalWx]

Meteorologically speaking, the Boxing day storm was phenomenal, but as far as I'm concerned it sucked a fatty.

Spare me all of the scientific rebuttals.....I get that.....it was a big let down imby; I don't care what was modeled 3 days earlier.

You had some nice quotes with this storm. I personally like coastal front exhaust.