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On the doorstep of winter....it's coming! Pattern with banter

weathafella

By weathafella,
in New England

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danstorm

danstorm

Posted
Posted

Anyway, Harv and I used to discuss how in a holistic sense it was almost as though the atmosphere needs time to recharge after putting out so much power. Whether that's true or not and can be shown physically aside, there's definitely a correlation between big events and subsequent quiescence.

At first read, I was inclined to agree with you... we've all heard the atmosphere compared to a rubber band - storms often are said to "snap" the rubber band, release the tension and energy from the heavens. With regard to big events, it is logical that the subsequent period would be quiescent, both in an absolute and relative sense (obviously, vis-a-vis the latter).

But, I'm not so sure, especially in this part of the country. Oftentimes a major event will herald a pattern shift towards more activity... sometimes our region will land on the eastern side of a sharp trough, which enables waves to feed on the baroclinic gradient over and over again. I can think of numerous occasions where the conveyor kept producing storms in the following weeks... Jan 96/Mar 01/Feb 03/Jan 05 come to mind... then again, there was Mar 93/Feb 01, which I remember being quiet for a while... and of course, Feb 06 was a huge peak in a cornfield that winter.

I suppose there could be a way to test this, but you would have to come up with an objective measure of "activity", bucket the 7 days or so following the storm and compare the integrated activity (whether that's precip/wind, whatever) during those days to the same calendar periods sans the big events...

Could be an interesting study.

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Mr Torchey

Mr Torchey

Posted
Posted

Looks like the high at home got to 40.7F... right around what BOX thought, maybe a degree cooler. Not bad.

Down to 37F now it appears as per mesosite.

The torch being referred to... prolonged or a quick hitter?

Its probably muted, contrary to what the baldie from Mt Tolland posted, I never said anything about 3-5 days of 50s for anyone, he has busted so horrifically lately he is trolling again, like he always does. I would think slightly above for a period, perhaps one or two days well above certainly boring as hell over the next two weeks. Good luck tomorrow!

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HoarfrostHubb

HoarfrostHubb

Posted
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Its probably muted, contrary to what the baldie from Mt Tolland posted, I never said anything about 3-5 days of 50s for anyone, he has busted so horrifically lately he is trolling again, like he always does. I would think slightly above for a period, perhaps one or two days well above certainly boring as hell over the next two weeks. Good luck tomorrow!

Thanks. Hard to look at models here at work.

What is tomorrow?

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Typhoon Tip

Typhoon Tip

Posted
Posted

Perception. When something as anomalous as Sandy happens or an early season snowfall, big KU storm in winter etc. all the surrounding calendar dates will obviously be quieter. The amount of days to the next event that affects someone significantly will always be arbitrary and therefore is perception.

Jan 96 blizzard was followed by another nor'easter and came after a string of December nor'easters too and then an insane warm up and flood episode followed by more bitter cold in Feb....

I'll stop there. The point is: I can define a time and an event arbitrarily and then make statements about "energy in the atmosphere and recharging" too just as much as I can say the opposite (95-96).

Not entirely - yeah, there's some truth there, but the cases I sited specifically were measurable, and there are a lot more.

Granted it may not be that way all the time, but nothing in this cockomamy thing called the atmosphere behaves along nice neat little rules.

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Typhoon Tip

Typhoon Tip

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Posted

Syzygy?

Yeah that one - :lol:

It had a big spring tide because of the aligning of celestial bodies and so forth - I rode out the storm in Rockport Mass out on the end of Cape Ann. I had moved away from there to middle Mass the previous summer, and still having friends up there I stayed with them so as not to miss out on the oceanic component of the storm.

Nothing too dramatic was incurred there, though a lot of beach erosion and some bolder foisting was observed. I just remember seeing these giant waves cresting over the Sandy Bay Breakwater - a giant granite stone wall built along the outer harbor in the latter part of the 1900s. A large section of that edifice was toppled in Feb of 1978. The outer arm of Bear Skin Neck had wave action pounding over, too. Not sure if the inner harbor took much damage in that, though.

Heh, I elected out of the snow storm in that in lieu of witnessing the N Atlantic. But it was fantastic!

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

if PF isn't hanging from the chairlift he'll just put his mouth around a snow gun nozzle and drown instead.

Haha... looking that rough?

So what you're saying is my whopping 3" snow depth at my home stake won't last?

Was out walking the dog and it finally looks, smells, and feels like winter here at home in the valley/village.

Hopefully we can get a WINDEX/upslope combo on Wednesday before the torch arrives and makes quick work of this snow on Sunday.

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tamarack

tamarack

Posted
Posted

Right, I think back - the weather went benign and did almost nothing after the Jan 26-28 Cleveland Superbomb, and the Blizzard of '78 for both the GL and NE areas. Those two events and anything leading up to defined the winter that year. In 1986 there was "The ZYZYGY Storm", I think it was '86. Weeks of benign inactivity settled in - in fact I wonder if it even snowed much at all after that. The ZYZYGY storm was a HUGE hit for Middlesex County and eastern ORH - there was a band of 18-22" there. That storm was awesome. Giant parachutes that never went over to rain falling at 1/8th visibility. The storm didn't do much in the MA and the coast was spared if memory serves, which is why it probably doesn't get remembered. I remember the night before the storm the air smelled like rain actually. Interesting.

In both Januarys, 1986 and 1987, there were singificant snowstorms during the 1st week, but the zyzygy storm was 2-3, 1987, when nearly all the planets from Jupiter inward made a line through the moon to the sun to produce massive tides even without the northeast winds. That storm had one of the most dramatic openings outside my AUG office of any I've seen. PWM had been reporting SN/SN+ since 4 AM, but nary a flake up here until 12:30 PM, at which time it went from nada to 1/10 mile visibility in 30 seconds. I don't think I've seen a snowsquall roar in that quickly.

And in Maine there was plenty left in January, though. At PWM, the 16" on 2-3 was followed a week later by a 12" storm, then 9" a week after that, followed by 6" two days later, then a week's rest before 8" on 30-31 brought the month total to 51". Much of the southern half of the state had similar snowfall, and a lot of that was still around for the late March thaw which, augmented by the 4-7" rain on 3/31-4/1, brought the Kennebec to 22 ft above flood stage in AUG. (More accurate to say that the thaw augmented the downpour, as the rain event was the bigger factor.)

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

Posted
Posted

It was all good until the end

Northing wrong with an east based -NAO if the PAC is in good shape. 2002-2003 and 2004-2005 were like that. So was 1995-1996 and 1963-1964.

If the PAC is awful, then you want the NAO block closer by to suppress the zonal flow and keep us north of the gradient.

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dryslot

dryslot

Posted
Posted

Northing wrong with an east based -NAO if the PAC is in good shape. 2002-2003 and 2004-2005 were like that. So was 1995-1996 and 1963-1964.

If the PAC is awful, then you want the NAO block closer by to suppress the zonal flow and keep us north of the gradient.

Don't we like a west based one better?

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

Posted
Posted

Don't we like a west based one better?

In the means, yes...but when the PAC is good, we don't need a big west based NAO. Those winters I listed had pretty nice pacific setups.

Years where we had a big west based NAO and did well were usually a bit more erratic PAC pattern....2010-2011, 1968-1969, 1970-1971 to name a few.

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dryslot

dryslot

Posted
Posted

In the means, yes...but when the PAC is good, we don't need a big west based NAO. Those winters I listed had pretty nice pacific setups.

Years where we had a big west based NAO and did well were usually a bit more erratic PAC pattern....2010-2011, 1968-1969, 1970-1971 to name a few.

I guess you answered as i posted, Lol, But that's what i thought, 2 out of those 3 years were real good up here

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