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Wake Me Up When September Ends / Banter thread


Damage In Tolland

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yep, feedback. Nature abhors an inbalance. Midwest finding that out today.

Eventually we'll probably reach a tipping point, especially on the coast, where things just warm too much. But if I owned a ski area in NNE I wouldn't mind another 50-100 years of runaway CO2 emissions lol.

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Eventually we'll probably reach a tipping point, especially on the coast, where things just warm too much. But if I owned a ski area in NNE I wouldn't mind another 50-100 years of runaway CO2 emissions lol.

It seems as if the zone of declining snowfall has been moving north slowly, from RIC in the 90s to DC more recently. Not a lot of consistently snowy winters down there.m

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It seems as if the zone of declining snowfall has been moving north slowly, from RIC in the 90s to DC more recently. Not a lot of consistently snowy winters down there.m

Yeah but there's a difference between the mid atlantic where seasonal snowfall is closely tied to temperatures as opposed to New England where seasonal snowfall is more closely tied to precipitation.

I do think you're right, however, that eventually we'll reach a tipping point where things start going down but we may see an increase before that happens. The ramifications of GW are going to vary widely by region and by season. GW does not necessarily equal less snow... in some areas the opposite will be true at least for a period of time.

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Global warming may help us over the next 100 years. Warm waters... stronger baroclinic zone... and our winter snowfall for most of NE is more closely correlated to precip and not temps.

Bingo... just posted in the winter thread today that I love warmer than normal temps (slightly like +1F, +2F, even +3F can be ok) during the core of the coldest months because high moisture/PWATS and more snow.

It really doesn't matter in terms of snowfall if your average high temperature in January/February is in the low 20s... so what if its +3F? The high is 25F instead of 22F and its generally a wetter pattern. The funny thing is, most days during a synoptic snowstorm comes in with a solid positive departure in NNE...though that's mostly because of a high minimum temp in clouds/snow/precipitation.

I get the GW thing at the ski resort a lot... folks are like, won't Global Warming mean no snow and you're all out of a job, etc. Yeah, sure, when the average temperature on the upper mountain is under 15F (and under 25F at the base) for Dec/Jan/Feb we'd need to see one heck of a temp rise to wipe out snowfall. You can have +10F departure days from 2,000ft and up, and its still plenty cold enough to snow. The season may become shorter though.

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Bingo... just posted in the winter thread today that I love warmer than normal temps (slightly like +1F, +2F, even +3F can be ok) during the core of the coldest months because high moisture/PWATS and more snow.

It really doesn't matter in terms of snowfall if your average high temperature in January/February is in the low 20s... so what if its +3F? The high is 25F instead of 22F and its generally a wetter pattern. The funny thing is, most days during a synoptic snowstorm comes in with a solid positive departure in NNE...though that's mostly because of a high minimum temp in clouds/snow/precipitation.

I get the GW thing at the ski resort a lot... folks are like, won't Global Warming mean no snow and you're all out of a job, etc. Yeah, sure, when the average temperature on the upper mountain is under 15F (and under 25F at the base) for Dec/Jan/Feb we'd need to see one heck of a temp rise to wipe out snowfall. You can have +10F departure days from 2,000ft and up, and its still plenty cold enough to snow. The season may become shorter though.

When I was 17 we were warned that the sea rise would take our hometowns coast by 2012 and we would not have a tourist industry. Not to get into a GW debate but meh, the circle of life.

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Bingo... just posted in the winter thread today that I love warmer than normal temps (slightly like +1F, +2F, even +3F can be ok) during the core of the coldest months because high moisture/PWATS and more snow.

It really doesn't matter in terms of snowfall if your average high temperature in January/February is in the low 20s... so what if its +3F? The high is 25F instead of 22F and its generally a wetter pattern. The funny thing is, most days during a synoptic snowstorm comes in with a solid positive departure in NNE...though that's mostly because of a high minimum temp in clouds/snow/precipitation.

I get the GW thing at the ski resort a lot... folks are like, won't Global Warming mean no snow and you're all out of a job, etc. Yeah, sure, when the average temperature on the upper mountain is under 15F (and under 25F at the base) for Dec/Jan/Feb we'd need to see one heck of a temp rise to wipe out snowfall. You can have +10F departure days from 2,000ft and up, and its still plenty cold enough to snow. The season may become shorter though.

Yes, good point. For the meat of the season, however, things should be fine. That's when ski areas make most of their money anyway I assume.

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Yes, good point. For the meat of the season, however, things should be fine. That's when ski areas make most of their money anyway I assume.

Yeah, but not to get too off-topic into the ski discussion, but the larger impact I could see would be less terrain open during the Christmas-New Years holiday period. As we've seen in recent years, a warmer than normal November and early December can be a problem, as that's the time period when averages are right near freezing. Average temps allow for some snowmaking, below normal is excellent snowmaking, and above normal means no snowmaking. The kicker is that you're then setting yourself back a couple weeks which does have a trickle down effect for Christmas holiday period.

By mid December though, averages are low enough that above normal temps generally still support snow, and that's what we saw last year with snowmaking finally really taking off and natural snowfall beginning in mid-December about a week before Christmas. And then on the other end of the spectrum, like last year, we have earlier closings in an above normal pattern in March (although last year was hopefully a burp with 80F at elevation in northern VT in mid March).

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I could also envision a scenario where down the road our snowfalls become much more elevation dependent, even in mid-winter if warming continues. I'm not saying what causes it but that it seems widely accepted that warming is occurring. Maybe eventually we hit a tipping point where we turn into a sort of Pacific NW pattern with snows at sea level decreasing while snows from 1,500ft or 2,000ft+ increase with more moisture.

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It's warming up but I was looking at a display in the Museum of Civilization in Quebec and it showed how the wx was definitely warmer before the "little ice age". Since 1900 we have been coming out of that cold period. The question is are we warming primarily because of mankind or is it a natural cycle to warmer underway... The display was about the Inuits and how their economy was once centered around fishing ...but that largely went away and they had to adapt to the new colder reality with much more sea ice build-up.

Really? I haven't really seen anything to the contrary.

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Steve's a denier. But I love the man.

Having a debate with Powderfreak. I'm pretty sure that all of SNE wants below normal temps for snow. AOA vs AOB. AOB wins in all of SNE for snow I think. Anyone have the stats? I know it's like that for the cp and the cp is never AOB while the interior is AOA...doesn't happen in winter.

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Steve's a denier. But I love the man.

Having a debate with Powderfreak. I'm pretty sure that all of SNE wants below normal temps for snow. AOA vs AOB. AOB wins in all of SNE for snow I think. Anyone have the stats? I know it's like that for the cp and the cp is never AOB while the interior is AOA...doesn't happen in winter.

Color me a skeptic, not impressed.

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