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We will never again witness...

HoarfrostHubb

By HoarfrostHubb,
in New England

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

Posted
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15 inches at CEF in October is probably a one in 500/750 year type event. Hell 15 " at CEF in wintertime is a stretch in a lot of years.

They probably got that in the 1804 storm. Hard to say for sure...but going over 1 in 500 years is a pretty bold statement considering the limited data we have. Its certainly a once in a lifetime event, I think we can say that for sure.

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Ginx snewx

Ginx snewx

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A big o'l pile of snow somewhat shaped like a pumpkin with a log stuck in the top for a stem.

Cool, rotate the pic

I still have not found a storm which delivered to the coast like this one did in Oct. somebody find one, this was unique in that aspect. Sure ther have been interior bombs in Oct, well known fact but just judging on the fact it snowed hard in NYC environs is historic. I looked hard but have had zero luck.

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skierinvermont

skierinvermont

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I don't think these odds are really close. There have been several references to huge October snows in the interior since before official records began...most notably the 1804 October "snowicane" which dumped 2-3 feet of snow over the interior. There have been some other big ones too in the 1700s and 1600s referenced.

My guess is this is about a 1 in 200/300 year type event. In these types of 1 in several hundred year events, you aren't really going to have "close but no cigar" type snow totals...its all or nothing pretty much. A good example is Oct 4, 1987...some spots in the Taconics and then in E NY saw over 2 feet of snow...even Albany got whacked down in the valley. We got nothing here, but if it had been just a bit east, we would have gotten slammed. So the snow total goes down as zero, but it was a "close but no cigar" type setup that isn't reflected in the snow totals.

Yes but the 1804 storm probably didn't bring snow to areas like Hartford it sounds like. It was mostly just the hills of NW CT and the Berkshires. Worcester could have had some I'm not sure. I'm just trying to reconstruct what it would have looked like from the wiki article:

-storm tracked from NYC north of New Haven to Boston

-3" in litchfield ct (NW CT)

-12" in goshen, ct (NW CT)

-2-3' in the berks

from this info it sounds like Hartford was probably all rain, worcester could have ended as snow but probably not much. Of course I'm just guessing based on limited info. If Litchfield CT only got 3" I highly doubt BDL got any, ORH might have had some but probably not as much as this storm.

So it sounds like Hartford and Worcester haven't seen anything like this in the last 200+ years? Unless there is another early/mid 19th century storm I am missing.

You could still be right though... this could be a 1 in 200-300 year type event for Worcester. It is hard to know. I think it was the most extreme for areas like Hartford that are on the SE edge of the significant snows.

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Typhoon Tip

Typhoon Tip

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None of those storms had snow to the coast and as great. I have been looking for a non elevation storm that resembles this , no luck so far.

I think that point he's making - and I agree with fwiw - is that we are differentiating the climatological norms right now.

That reduces the confidence interval because the static sample set does not represent any current accelerating curve (acceleration doesn't mean speeding up in this context for those that may not understand).

The 30-year, or even 100-year means may not be as useful if the region is (if perhaps yet unknown) heading into an era when/where what seems absurd becomes more commonplace. That's not a prediction, but consider that since 2000, 5 Octobers had snow. There was a snow in 1979, and 1987 that was more meaningful, too.

We have had 3 snows in October now acrossthe last 4 years. Granted, they were not all spun up mind bogglers like this ordeal, but the fact that the Pats played in 3" of slush with brief S+ just in 2009 (and I recall an October dusting to an inch in Winchester Mass back in 2003), and it seems that since 2000 the frequecy of snow in October is trumping the 30 years prior, it is enough to make one wonder.

IF IF IF the increased frequency of October snows is true, therein naturally ups the potential that any given one may be more meaningful.

Slight OT: I noticed some intriguing teleconnector behavior in the 2 weeks leading this event. The AO crumbled from +2 ...to about 0.0 SD, then back up to +.75, then crashed to -1; total = 3 SD. That is a huge amount of mass, actually. The prior 1.5 months the AO was predominantly positive. During autumnal +AO, cryospheric expansion can be robust, and we saw that this year, and along with explosive expansion of land-based snow cover. That, and cold atmospheric mass generation takes place at high latitudes. I don't think it coincidence that upon nearing -1SD in the AO, we suddenly found the westerlies cutting along and below the 40th parallel. That loaded the 50th parallel with cold, such that right above the 40th parallel lurked sub 534dm thickness across all of Canada and the northern tier of the U.S.. That excited the potential for baroclinicity in that same region where the ambient thermal gradient was thus quite steep.

I don't even think it was a PNA insert off the Pac in this case, just a transient PNAP blip that was able to act on that intense gradient and produced SOMETHING. Thinking snow would be possible during these times wasn't too hard, really.

A question to first answer - why is snow happening in October so frequently since 2000? There are 2 aspects involved with the whole of the circulation system that have changed since 2000: The onset of a 300 year, 22 year, and 11 year temporal super-position of solar minima, set to last the better part of this decade matter of fact; the other is the multi-decadal NAO (which really should apply to the EPO as well, seeing as graphically the north Pacific has run along the same fate) signal that has flipped signs to negative.

These are 2 HUGELY cooling arguments that simply did not apply in the previous 2 to even 3 decades. Relative to era, 1987 may actually be the bigger anomaly - that one really had no buisness happening during that particular time. Of course, we are talking about snowing to the coast as a good bit of this interest.

To make a long story short, it may be "easier" to get a snow storm in the Octobers of the next 10 years than at any time between 1950 and the year 2000, for shear implication of having the NAO sign flip negative taking place in tandem with the 300, 22, and 11 year solar minimum overlay. Just maybe...

There is something else about this recent event that sticks out for me. It is kind of like that program about major airline disasters where the FAA agent was discussing how every big crash has a series of smaller, lower probability events that take place lead up to, and culminating in the accident. It is not usually just one thing that brings them down (terrorism not included). In this case, the devestation and massive crippling impact on power and communications infrustructure had 2 events culminating:

1) Obsenely warm October regionally seriously belated the seasonal foliage depostion rates. Many silver Maples, not just the Oaks, were heavily if not fully leafed out still. The lower probability of a 1 in 20 warmth October created a powder keg of opportunity should an ill-timed early cool snap invade the area. One did. Powder keg ignited.

2) The utility companies et al are culpable in this. Not for the fact that a historical snow storm took place; that’s par for the course on a dynamic world – earth quakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods… freak 1 in whatever year snow bombs in October. That stuff happens. No one’s fault.

What IS their fault is that they reap profit most of the year by charging monthly power-delivery fees and have been utterly negligent in infrastructure up-keep. As my attention is now honed for having endured this crisis for 3 days and counting, I am forced to glance up upon the utility lines that line the streets and thorough fairs of my little corner of American, and what am I seeing? An unconscionable degree of trees, some with limbs over 12” in diameter, sagging, hanging, intermingling in the utility lines.

That is total bull crap man. I am willing to pay a little more per month if will guarantee these communications and power companies get their asses up in the air in bucket trucks to maintain clearance for the utility lines. They are hugely culpable for their negligence in this matter, and the crippling power and communications issue that resulted from the weekend’s historic snow bomb is a direct result. For that, I blame them. The crisis would have been hugely more manageable and/or mitigated if they had done their jobs all along, like during the relative quiescence of last summer. Get up there and cut those limbs away from the lines, NOW!

But I digress...

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

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Cool, rotate the pic

I still have not found a storm which delivered to the coast like this one did in Oct. somebody find one, this was unique in that aspect. Sure ther have been interior bombs in Oct, well known fact but just judging on the fact it snowed hard in NYC environs is historic. I looked hard but have had zero luck.

Where's the page on Don Sutherland's site that talked about famous snows on each date? It had snows back to the 1700s or even earlier IIRC. It would def help us find storms in October of the past.

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Ginx snewx

Ginx snewx

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Where's the page on Don Sutherland's site that talked about famous snows on each date? It had snows back to the 1700s or even earlier IIRC. It would def help us find storms in October of the past.

Lol just left there. I posted a pic of his from NJ when this was a threat. Did not find anything. Wed when I go back to work I am going to go look through our archives and see if the Native Americans have any records of that, by the way what an awesome resource to have at my fingertips.

http://wintercenter.homestead.com/photoindex.html

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

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Yes but the 1804 storm probably didn't bring snow to areas like Hartford it sounds like. It was mostly just the hills of NW CT and the Berkshires. Worcester could have had some I'm not sure. I'm just trying to reconstruct what it would have looked like from the wiki article:

-storm tracked from NYC north of New Haven to Boston

-3" in litchfield ct (NW CT)

-12" in goshen, ct (NW CT)

-2-3' in the berks

from this info it sounds like Hartford was probably all rain, worcester could have ended as snow but probably not much. Of course I'm just guessing based on limited info.

So it sounds like Hartford and Worcester haven't seen anything like this in the last 200+ years? Unless there is another early/mid 19th century storm I am missing.

You could still be right though... this could be a 1 in 200-300 year type event for Worcester. It is hard to know. I think it was the most extreme for areas like Hartford that are on the SE edge of the significant snows.

Well its def a rare event...no doubt about that. I'm not sure I would say 1 in 1,000 years though. The 1804 storm dumped over a foot in ORH from past newspaper articles I have seen when I looked the storm up...I have no idea how accurate those accounts are though. Hartford probably got very little in that storm...so for them, we'd have to search a little more. A 1 in 300 year event certainly has the ability to go longer than even the word of mouth record has for the region (back to 1700s or even 1600s) and not be too strange.

Storms like 1987 gave Bridgeport CT measurable snowfall...it would have been a monster if it was slightly further east, but instead goes down as a narrow miss...even if you would never gather that from looking at the snow records alone. Its difficult to quantify events this rare. Back to that same year 1987...pretty significant snow fell on Nov 10-11 all the way to the coast of SE MA (over a foot in spots down in Plymouth MA)...not October, but less than 2 weeks removed from the date of this past storm.

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

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Lol just left there. I posted a pic of his from NJ when this was a threat. Did not find anything. Wed when I go back to work I am going to go look through our archives and see if the Native Americans have any records of that, by the way what an awesome resource to have at my fingertips.

http://wintercenter....photoindex.html

I have that link, but cannot seem to find the place on the site that had snowfall by date...a brief synopsis of events on each date.

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skierinvermont

skierinvermont

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They probably got that in the 1804 storm. Hard to say for sure...but going over 1 in 500 years is a pretty bold statement considering the limited data we have. Its certainly a once in a lifetime event, I think we can say that for sure.

Maybe but I kind of doubt 15" at CEF .. hard to imagine a situation where they get more than goshen CT at 1500'. Possible I guess if the storm stalled just north of Boston and Goshen was too far south or if the banding was E/W and CEF got a band that Goshen didn't. If I had to guess I'd say CEF got 2-8" but it could have been anywhere from 0-20". Total guesswork I know.

EDIT: just saw your post about 1'+ in ORH in 1804... if that's true then maybe 15" is possible at CEF. I'm just trying to imagine what track would look like.

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skierinvermont

skierinvermont

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Well its def a rare event...no doubt about that. I'm not sure I would say 1 in 1,000 years though. The 1804 storm dumped over a foot in ORH from past newspaper articles I have seen when I looked the storm up...I have no idea how accurate those accounts are though. Hartford probably got very little in that storm...so for them, we'd have to search a little more. A 1 in 300 year event certainly has the ability to go longer than even the word of mouth record has for the region (back to 1700s or even 1600s) and not be too strange.

Storms like 1987 gave Bridgeport CT measurable snowfall...it would have been a monster if it was slightly further east, but instead goes down as a narrow miss...even if you would never gather that from looking at the snow records alone. Its difficult to quantify events this rare. Back to that same year 1987...pretty significant snow fell on Nov 10-11 all the way to the coast of SE MA (over a foot in spots down in Plymouth MA)...not October, but less than 2 weeks removed from the date of this past storm.

Given the lack of data to create a good statistical model your method of thinking about it synoptically and near misses etc. is probably better.

Is the 1987 storm the type of storm that could have tracked farther SE and still produced snow? It's possible that it's much easier to get Oct snow when the storms really crank up and track NW.

For example, there was that October storm in 2008 that gave the catskills a lot of snow and wound up to like sub 970mb over the interior. That type of storm probably isn't too hard to get. I think it would be much harder to get a storm that intense in October tracking over the BM. So even though the 1-2' of snow in the interior could be called a near miss for the coast... it would be a lot harder to get it on the coast.

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

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Given the lack of data to create a good statistical model your method of thinking about it synoptically and near misses etc. is probably better.

Is the 1987 storm the type of storm that could have tracked farther SE and still produced snow? It's possible that it's much easier to get Oct snow when the storms really crank up and track NW.

For example, there was that October storm in 2008 that gave the catskills a lot of snow and wound up to like sub 970mb over the interior. That type of storm probably isn't too hard to get. I think it would be much harder to get a storm that intense in October tracking over the BM. So even though the 1-2' of snow in the interior could be called a near miss for the coast... it would be a lot harder to get it on the coast.

Well interior records suggest that a storm like Oct '08 was very rare. A lot of those places in interior NNJ and S NY that got 6"+ of snow had their biggest snowfall ever in October....until this past event broke it only 3 years later. Getting a wound up storm over any point in the interior isn't any easier than doing it over the BM per say...we often think of it like that because a wound up storm over BGM is the same to us as a wound up storm over ALB...mostly rain for SNE, but significantly different tracks for other folks.

The hard part is getting a significant portion of the polar jet to be completely phased in with a nor' easter in October...that's what gives such cold winter like profiles. A lot of storms in October are kind of lazy with their gradients...the PJ is more diffuse.

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