NNE Fall Thread

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

Agree. But time and time again the warm ground argument will be vomited in our direction until we puke.

Warm ground, intensity dependent, all the same argument. 

<ducking and running>  

 

[OceanStWx]

         Name and Elevation    	    Location Distance from cam            	       Name and Elevation    Location  Distance from cam
1.    Rattlesnake Mountain - 984 ft    ME    12.6 miles    			10.    Tenny Hill - 738 ft       ME    11.6 miles
2.    Mount Washington - 6289 ft       NH    58.3 miles   			11.    Black Cat Mtn - 820 ft    ME    11.4 miles
3.    Mount Jefferson - 5659 ft        NH    60.0 miles    			12.    Mt. Success - 3563 ft     NH    55.8 miles
4.    Carter dome - 4836 ft            NH    52.8 miles    			13.    Mt. Carlo - 3563 ft       ME    55.7 miles
5.    Mount Adams - 5730 ft            NH    59.5 miles    			14.    Goose Eye Mtn - 3714 ft   ME    55.8 miles
6.    Mount Madison - 5315 ft          NH    59.1 miles    			15.    Mahoosuc Arm - 3701 ft    ME    58.5 miles
7.    Middle Carter - 4541 ft          NH    53.5 miles    			16.    Old Speck Mtn - 4144 ft   ME    58.3 miles
8.    North Carter - 4459 ft           NH    53.8 miles    			17.    West Peak - 3583 ft       ME    58.6 miles
9     Mount Moriah - 3980 ft           NH    53.5 miles    			18.    East Peak - 3743 ft       ME    58.8 miles

Glad we live here.

[powderfreak]

32 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Melting from below probably 

I think we come at it from hearing it as an excuse why our coworkers haven't put snow accumulations in the forecast too. Not necessarily for why a weenie will or will not have more snow IMBY. 

lol it is probably melting from below, walking anywhere it's like 4" of mud below the snow.

And yeah you guys in the industry definitely have a hatred for that term that I didn't know about.  

I mean to me it's all the same as having the intensity discussion...not a blanket term for "no accumulations."

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Warm ground, intensity dependent, all the same argument. 

<ducking and running>  

 

 

The best way to ask oneself how important warm ground is for accumulations is to keep all the same factors present except the warm ground....

 

How well would an isothermal profile atmosphere with 34F at the surface accumulate in December if the snow was falling lightly? Essentially the same exact thing as the other night...waterlogged 34F flakes that is like 1 mile vis and an isothermal profile lower atmosphere. My guess is the accumulations would still be pretty terrible. The warm ground maybe took off a sliver extra off but overall the dominating factors were the isothermal profile, light rates, and the 34F surface temp.

[OceanStWx]

Just now, powderfreak said:

lol it is probably melting from below, walking anywhere it's like 4" of mud below the snow.

And yeah you guys in the industry definitely have a hatred for that term that I didn't know about.  

I mean to me it's all the same as having the intensity discussion...not a blanket term for "no accumulations."

I mean we had it during the October snowstorm, and have the discussion nearly every season with the first snowfall. One shift says warm ground, no accumulations, the next shift is frantically updating to keep up with snow accumulations.

[powderfreak]

46 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I'm actually angry about all those northern VT obs and the hole that we have in northern NH.

What's interesting about that to me is that NE VT actually has a really good spotter and weather network.  I mean we all get the MPV-BTV corridor and around the Spine you have ski towns and suburbs and stuff...but I'm always impressed with the number of reports that come from the middle of no where in NEVT.

[powderfreak]

14 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

The best way to ask oneself how important warm ground is for accumulations is to keep all the same factors present except the warm ground....

 

How well would an isothermal profile atmosphere with 34F at the surface accumulate in December if the snow was falling lightly? Essentially the same exact thing as the other night...waterlogged 34F flakes that is like 1 mile vis and an isothermal profile lower atmosphere. My guess is the accumulations would still be pretty terrible. The warm ground maybe took off a sliver extra off but overall the dominating factors were the isothermal profile, light rates, and the 34F surface temp.

Yeah it's a small piece of the puzzle.  I do think I would've done much better with a rock hard January ground where it was well below freezing that morning but warmed up to 34F light SN.   We may just disagree on that aspect.  Maybe 2-3" instead of half an inch.  Sort of like freezing rain at 34F because all the surfaces are so cold. 

There are other ways of wording it than just "warm ground" though.. I agree with that fully.

[dryslot]

50 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I'm actually angry about all those northern VT obs and the hole that we have in northern NH.

As well as in far Western Maine towards the Pittsburg, NH area, I have rode off trail in those areas in the winter and the snow pack is epic most seasons, The problem is, We usually don't see any human life other then us up there...............

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah it's a small piece of the puzzle.  I do think I would've done much better with a rock hard January ground where it was well below freezing that morning but warmed up to 34F light SN.   We may just disagree on that aspect.  Maybe 2-3" instead of half an inch.  Sort of like freezing rain at 34F because all the surfaces are so cold. 

Maybe...the problem with that is you are describing a rare phenomenon...34F surface temp and light snow when you have a frigid ground in January really doesn't happen. It's normally more like 31-32F as the latent cooling from melting at the ground level is strong when you've been frozen for weeks on end...it's probably even lower than that usually stuck in the upper 20s. So I don't think you would have been 34F to begin with in mid-January coming off of arctic weather. By the time you actually breach into the 30s in that scenario, your mid-levels are typically long gone anyway and you are talking a rain or ZR scenario.

 

So to me, the "warm ground" argument is mostly just diverting attribution from intensity and boundary layer temps. I really think the scenario where warm ground may be slightly more obvious is like an anafrontal event in November after we were in the 50s for a few days, and you flash cool to 29 or 30F, but you struggle to accumulate that first inch...maybe it takes a couple tenths of liquid to do it.

 

 

 

 

[OceanStWx]

21 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

What's interesting about that to me is that NE VT actually has a really good spotter and weather network.  I mean we all get the MPV-BTV corridor and around the Spine you have ski towns and suburbs and stuff...but I'm always impressed with the number of reports that come from the middle of no where in NEVT.

Part of it is I don't think we've ever tried to develop strong relationships in those areas, BTV clearly has. And the other part is as Dryslot says, there just are a lot of empty spaces up there.

[OceanStWx]

10 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Maybe...the problem with that is you are describing a rare phenomenon...34F surface temp and light snow when you have a frigid ground in January really doesn't happen. It's normally more like 31-32F as the latent cooling from melting at the ground level is strong when you've been frozen for weeks on end...it's probably even lower than that usually stuck in the upper 20s. So I don't think you would have been 34F to begin with in mid-January coming off of arctic weather. By the time you actually breach into the 30s in that scenario, your mid-levels are typically long gone anyway and you are talking a rain or ZR scenario.

So to me, the "warm ground" argument is mostly just diverting attribution from intensity and boundary layer temps. I really think the scenario where warm ground may be slightly more obvious is like an anafrontal event in November after we were in the 50s for a few days, and you flash cool to 29 or 30F, but you struggle to accumulate that first inch...maybe it takes a couple tenths of liquid to do it.

I like looking at it that way. Does a warm ground hurt snowfall accumulation? Yes. But not as much as rates and air temperatures do.

I think in the met world, forecasters tend to focus too much on air temps and ground temps and ignore the rate aspect.

[dryslot]

6 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I like looking at it that way. Does a warm ground hurt snowfall accumulation? Yes. But not as much as rates and air temperatures do.

I think in the met world, forecasters tend to focus too much on air temps and ground temps and ignore the rate aspect.

 

Yes, And many of those conditions at times can be offset with heavier rates as we have all seen

[powderfreak]

9 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I like looking at it that way. Does a warm ground hurt snowfall accumulation? Yes. But not as much as rates and air temperatures do.

I think in the met world, forecasters tend to focus too much on air temps and ground temps and ignore the rate aspect.

Yeah I feel like we are saying similar things just in different ways, haha.

 

[powderfreak]

24 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Maybe...the problem with that is you are describing a rare phenomenon...34F surface temp and light snow when you have a frigid ground in January really doesn't happen. It's normally more like 31-32F as the latent cooling from melting at the ground level is strong when you've been frozen for weeks on end...it's probably even lower than that usually stuck in the upper 20s. So I don't think you would have been 34F to begin with in mid-January coming off of arctic weather. By the time you actually breach into the 30s in that scenario, your mid-levels are typically long gone anyway and you are talking a rain or ZR scenario.

So to me, the "warm ground" argument is mostly just diverting attribution from intensity and boundary layer temps. I really think the scenario where warm ground may be slightly more obvious is like an anafrontal event in November after we were in the 50s for a few days, and you flash cool to 29 or 30F, but you struggle to accumulate that first inch...maybe it takes a couple tenths of liquid to do it.

 

I think about the warm ground anytime my deck or car has more accumulation than the ground haha.   Any wet snowstorm where there's 6" on the car but 2" of mush on the ground....heck we'd report the 6" though of course lol.

 

[CoastalWx]

It's the worst default excuse from mets as to why snow may not accurate, as I've ever heard.  I don't know how many times the reasons have to be hatched out. It's really a terrible reason some go low on accumulations. The biggest fail on that was during the October 2011 event in southern CT. Ask the folks in Shelton CT how the warm ground affected accumulations. 

[CoastalWx]

2 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I think about the warm ground anytime my deck or car has more accumulation than the ground haha.   Any wet snowstorm where there's 6" on the car but 2" of mush on the ground....heck we'd report the 6" though of course lol.

 

I can't think of one time that has happened. At least that extreme.

[ORH_wxman]

3 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I can't think of one time that has happened. At least that extreme.

 

Yeah that's a pretty big split...I've seen it maybe on the blacktop...where 5" was on the grass and the blacktop had and inch of slush...but that is a little different than the warm ground argument when we are talking about on lawns and regular ground. I'm sure it's happened in the perfect setup where the ground got 2" of slush and a spruce tree had 7" on it, but it's really rare. It's hard to get 7" of snow on a tree without heavy rates and those heavy rates are going to negate ground warmth...so you rarely see a split like that. You'd probably need like static sfc temps around 33F and like a 12-14 hour light snow event to get that to occur.

[CoastalWx]

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

Yeah that's a pretty big split...I've seen it maybe on the blacktop...where 5" was on the grass and the blacktop had and inch of slush...but that is a little different than the warm ground argument when we are talking about on lawns and regular ground. I'm sure it's happened in the perfect setup where the ground got 2" of slush and a spruce tree had 7" on it, but it's really rare. It's hard to get 7" of snow on a tree without heavy rates and those heavy rates are going to negate ground warmth...so you rarely see a split like that. You'd probably need like static sfc temps around 33F and like a 12-14 hour light snow event to get that to occur.

Even the first April event this year didn't have a huge difference between pavement and grass. Maybe 1.5" or so? The second one fell at temps below 32. 

  Anyways Scott we aren't trying to give you a hard time. I know you talked about your 34F example, but I think that it would have a very tough time accumulating at any point in winter as Will has stated and stated well. I've seen my fair share of 34F snows and even when it comes down hard...it's tough. It's fighting melting as it falls, as it is on the ground, and flake structure is damaged. I guess you could have very heavy 34F snow, but that won't last long as that phenomenon isn't sustainable in the atmosphere. 

[powderfreak]

Put a trace in the books today at home too...have light snow grains falling even at 750ft.  Wet bulb and evap cooling going to work.  

 

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

I can't think of one time that has happened. At least that extreme.

Yeah I guess not that much on grass at least. One of those shots my buddy sent from 1500ft looked close but that was a dirt driveway that struggled.

I think I'm confusing those events where it's all stuck up in the trees and not getting to the ground fully.  

Youre right though that was probably too extreme.  Last April we had one of the biggest snows of the season at the end of the month and yeah I think the car and ground difference was only 1-2".  Like 4" white car, 2" ground, 3" elevated snowboard.  

[CoastalWx]

Should be a nice wintry week there. What a good way to kick off the season. Natural snow to boot.

[Lava Rock]

         Name and Elevation         Location Distance from cam                    Name and Elevation    Location  Distance from cam1.    Rattlesnake Mountain - 984 ft    ME    12.6 miles     10.    Tenny Hill - 738 ft       ME    11.6 miles2.    Mount Washington - 6289 ft       NH    58.3 miles    11.    Black Cat Mtn - 820 ft    ME    11.4 miles3.    Mount Jefferson - 5659 ft        NH    60.0 miles     12.    Mt. Success - 3563 ft     NH    55.8 miles4.    Carter dome - 4836 ft            NH    52.8 miles     13.    Mt. Carlo - 3563 ft       ME    55.7 miles5.    Mount Adams - 5730 ft            NH    59.5 miles     14.    Goose Eye Mtn - 3714 ft   ME    55.8 miles6.    Mount Madison - 5315 ft          NH    59.1 miles     15.    Mahoosuc Arm - 3701 ft    ME    58.5 miles7.    Middle Carter - 4541 ft          NH    53.5 miles     16.    Old Speck Mtn - 4144 ft   ME    58.3 miles8.    North Carter - 4459 ft           NH    53.8 miles     17.    West Peak - 3583 ft       ME    58.6 miles9     Mount Moriah - 3980 ft           NH    53.5 miles     18.    East Peak - 3743 ft       ME    58.8 miles

Glad we live here.

Cool pic. I can't see our house on Tenney.

[eekuasepinniW]

3 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

         Name and Elevation    	    Location Distance from cam            	       Name and Elevation    Location  Distance from cam
1.    Rattlesnake Mountain - 984 ft    ME    12.6 miles    			10.    Tenny Hill - 738 ft       ME    11.6 miles
2.    Mount Washington - 6289 ft       NH    58.3 miles   			11.    Black Cat Mtn - 820 ft    ME    11.4 miles
3.    Mount Jefferson - 5659 ft        NH    60.0 miles    			12.    Mt. Success - 3563 ft     NH    55.8 miles
4.    Carter dome - 4836 ft            NH    52.8 miles    			13.    Mt. Carlo - 3563 ft       ME    55.7 miles
5.    Mount Adams - 5730 ft            NH    59.5 miles    			14.    Goose Eye Mtn - 3714 ft   ME    55.8 miles
6.    Mount Madison - 5315 ft          NH    59.1 miles    			15.    Mahoosuc Arm - 3701 ft    ME    58.5 miles
7.    Middle Carter - 4541 ft          NH    53.5 miles    			16.    Old Speck Mtn - 4144 ft   ME    58.3 miles
8.    North Carter - 4459 ft           NH    53.8 miles    			17.    West Peak - 3583 ft       ME    58.6 miles
9     Mount Moriah - 3980 ft           NH    53.5 miles    			18.    East Peak - 3743 ft       ME    58.8 miles

Glad we live here.

That is an impressive number of labels for what appears to be a flat horizon. 

If I tilt my monitor back a bit, I can make out those distant hills.

[dendrite]

4 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

         Name and Elevation    	    Location Distance from cam            	       Name and Elevation    Location  Distance from cam
1.    Rattlesnake Mountain - 984 ft    ME    12.6 miles    			10.    Tenny Hill - 738 ft       ME    11.6 miles
2.    Mount Washington - 6289 ft       NH    58.3 miles   			11.    Black Cat Mtn - 820 ft    ME    11.4 miles
3.    Mount Jefferson - 5659 ft        NH    60.0 miles    			12.    Mt. Success - 3563 ft     NH    55.8 miles
4.    Carter dome - 4836 ft            NH    52.8 miles    			13.    Mt. Carlo - 3563 ft       ME    55.7 miles
5.    Mount Adams - 5730 ft            NH    59.5 miles    			14.    Goose Eye Mtn - 3714 ft   ME    55.8 miles
6.    Mount Madison - 5315 ft          NH    59.1 miles    			15.    Mahoosuc Arm - 3701 ft    ME    58.5 miles
7.    Middle Carter - 4541 ft          NH    53.5 miles    			16.    Old Speck Mtn - 4144 ft   ME    58.3 miles
8.    North Carter - 4459 ft           NH    53.8 miles    			17.    West Peak - 3583 ft       ME    58.6 miles
9     Mount Moriah - 3980 ft           NH    53.5 miles    			18.    East Peak - 3743 ft       ME    58.8 miles

Glad we live here.

Adding one to every airport?

[powderfreak]

2 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Should be a nice wintry week there. What a good way to kick off the season. Natural snow to boot.

It's so nice after last winter.  It feels more normal.  Like it's snowing right now in my flood lights at home.  These snow showers are building a bit on composite radar, not heavy but a steady flurry haha.  

Wintery appeal is the way to say it.  If it wasn't for yesterday, I'd be really weenie-ing out given the flakes flying.  Wet bulb is really working for us.  I noticed the cloud height before darkness was above summit level so definitely some drier air in the low levels assisting getting frozen down to town level.

[alex]

Nothing yet at Bretton Woods, though an inch is in the forecast overnight. Definitely nice to see for my first winter up here!

[alex]

Funny timing for my post. Flurries just started. 

[tamarack]

4 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

I can't think of one time that has happened. At least that extreme.

Maybe not 6" vs. 2" (and long ago), I was visiting in NNJ in April 1986.  On 4/21 we had mid-60s rain, then on the 22nd a cold rain, mid-40s, began at midday, and changed to snow after dark.  Our friend at whose home we were guests lived in Blairstown, NJ (near the Del. Water Gap) at about 1,200', and by dawn there was a real birch bender.  There was 4-5" in the gravel drive, 6-9" on the lawn, and up to 13" on a table made from a utility cable reel and on some loose boards nearby.  All the snow came in about a 10-hour period after dark.

(The previous time we'd been in NJ was in 1983, when we stayed with the same friend when she still lived in Ogdensburg, Sussex Cty.  The 19th brought 11" and was the only day-long snow I've ever seen in a NJ April.  Started about dawn with temps upper 20s, and there was little difference in accum except on pavement.  After the 1986 storm, we wondered if the snow haters would ever let us back into the state.)

[powderfreak]

The persistent flurry show is back.  Definitely a more wintery look on radar than the warm season convection.  Temps are upper 30s but it continues to be wet flakes and snow grains.

 

[OceanStWx]

39 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

The persistent flurry show is back.  Definitely a more wintery look on radar than the warm season convection.  Temps are upper 30s but it continues to be wet flakes and snow grains.

Looks like steady light stuff for John in Pittsburg too, according the webcam.