2016-2017 Autumn/Winter Banter, Whining, Complaining Thread

[HighTechEE]

I actually used my snowblower "ONCE" back in December...

[cyclone77]

That transition from very heavy snow to heavy rain in southeast New England tomorrow is something that would be very cool to see.  

[cyclone77]

Not in our sub, and in fact it's off the east coast, but had to post this.  Very impressive forecast sounding out over the open water tomorrow ahead of that bombing surface low.  Could be a very impressive QLCS with embedded sups along the advancing cold front.  Not going to impact anyone, but still kind of cool to see I guess.

Lol @ 80kts @ only 950mb.

[osubrett2]

With today's snow chances plummeting for CMH, I decided to pull historical figures to see where 2016-17 will stand for snow. Currently at 8.1" for the season. 1-2" is in the forecast, but that is likely to bust. This season would stand a 8th least snowfall if it were to end today. Looks like we have a good chance to finish in the Top 10. Here is the list:

1.) 1918-19: 3.2"

2.) 1878-79: 4.3"

3.) 1941-42: 4.9"

4.) 1931-32: 5.3"

5.) 1949-50: 6.5"

6.) 1996-97: 7.7"

7.) 1934-35: 8.0"

2016-17: 8.1"

8.) 2001-02: 10.1"

9.) 1896-97: 10.3"

     1997-98: 10.3"

[buckeye]

12 minutes ago, osubrett2 said:

With today's snow chances plummeting for CMH, I decided to pull historical figures to see where 2016-17 will stand for snow. Currently at 8.1" for the season. 1-2" is in the forecast, but that is likely to bust. This season would stand a 8th least snowfall if it were to end today. Looks like we have a good chance to finish in the Top 10. Here is the list:

1.) 1918-19: 3.2"

2.) 1878-79: 4.3"

3.) 1941-42: 4.9"

4.) 1931-32: 5.3"

5.) 1949-50: 6.5"

6.) 1996-97: 7.7"

7.) 1934-35: 8.0"

2016-17: 8.1"

8.) 2001-02: 10.1"

9.) 1896-97: 10.3"

     1997-98: 10.3"

 I'm sure that you must have 1996-97 , mixed up.   I know we received more than 7.7" that year.  The eastcoast blizz of Jan '96 gave us more than that alone.   Should that be '97-'98?

[osubrett2]

17 minutes ago, buckeye said:

 I'm sure that you must have 1996-97 , mixed up.   I know we received more than 7.7" that year.  The eastcoast blizz of Jan '96 gave us more than that alone.   Should that be '97-'98?

I think you have your months/seasons backwards or I wasn't clear with my dates. 

The Blizzard of 1996 was in January and I have 24.5" for January '96 monthly total. I have 54.1" for the whole season November 1995 to April 1996.

[buckeye]

2 minutes ago, osubrett2 said:

I think you have your months/seasons backwards or I wasn't clear with my dates. 

The Blizzard of 1996 was in January and I have 24.5" for January '96 monthly total. I have 54.1" for the whole season November 1995 to April 1996.

oops you're right I'm backwards.... 

[Jackstraw]

Well should've had a thread for us folks down here called "The Great 2017 Flurrie Fest" lol.  10 hours of flurries, might have an inch total but need Holmes to find the evidence.  Too dry, too weak, pack it in.  Done, se levie to this winter of the nightmarish central IN. sucker hole.  Honestly maybe 6-8 inches on the entire winter and I'm being generous.  Fork is aggressively inserted.  Bring on boomers and morels!  

[IWXwx]

1 hour ago, Jackstraw said:

Well should've had a thread for us folks down here called "The Great 2017 Flurrie Fest" lol.  10 hours of flurries, might have an inch total but need Holmes to find the evidence.  Too dry, too weak, pack it in.  Done, se levie to this winter of the nightmarish central IN. sucker hole.  Honestly maybe 6-8 inches on the entire winter and I'm being generous.  Fork is aggressively inserted.  Bring on boomers and morels!  

 

[cyclone77]

This time last week we were dealing with a fairly tornadic QLCS roaring through the area.  Tornado sirens sounded for the 2nd time in 6 days here in town.  Tonight we picked up over an inch of lake effect snow on top of an already quality snow event.  Add in the extreme temps a few weeks back and this past 3 week stretch has been a very interesting stretch of weather to be sure.

[Snowstorms]

Can this whole Winter be a complaint, lol? 

A Nino next Winter would be devastating, lol. Atmosphere still has remnants left over from the Super Nino and another Nino next year would only add on to it. i know I'll get alot of hate for saying this, but based on this and climatology, I don't think next Winter will be anything exciting. 

 

 

 

[KokomoWX]

13 hours ago, Jackstraw said:

Well should've had a thread for us folks down here called "The Great 2017 Flurrie Fest" lol.  10 hours of flurries, might have an inch total but need Holmes to find the evidence.  Too dry, too weak, pack it in.  Done, se levie to this winter of the nightmarish central IN. sucker hole.  Honestly maybe 6-8 inches on the entire winter and I'm being generous.  Fork is aggressively inserted.  Bring on boomers and morels!  

I think we share the same sucker hole.  Maybe a couple of inches on my car before lunch that quickly compacted and melted.  It was gone by the end of my work day.  I see 50's coming back in the forecast next week.  I am ready and don't plan to ever look back.

[buckeye]

ended up with under an inch...dusting

Haven't checked the official airport yet...but no way we've broken 10" for the season.   Where are those upper 60 degree temps when you really want them?   LR looks miserable.

[Hoosier]

For a winter that was so unwinterlike for so long, the snowfall rates this morning were something.  

Rarely have I seen it snow that hard, but when I have, it's been LES.

[SchaumburgStormer]

Seems like some significant busts on the east coast near the coast

[IWXwx]

I always laugh when the auto-generated point forecast does this:

Monday

A chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 50. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

 

 

[bowtie`]

11 minutes ago, IWXwx said:

I always laugh when the auto-generated point forecast does this:

Monday

A chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 50. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

 

 

Sure, but what is the low Sunday night?

[hawkeye_wx]

Season total snowfall.  Winter began with north vs south and it is ending that way.  45-50 inches of snow has fallen in far north-central Iowa while only 3-5 inches has fallen in nw Missouri into sw Iowa.  I believe this is two consecutive winters with 40+ inches over northern Iowa and single-digit snowfall in southern Iowa.  Both winters, I ended up on the low side of the sharp gradient.  My avg snowfall is about 30 inches.  Last winter I received 20 inches and this winter 17.9 inches.

 

[nwohweather]

I don't really know how anyone can say this winter has been boring. Big snowstorms in December, 70 degree heat in mid February and multiple major severe weather outbreaks. It's been exciting that's for sure, just not snowy


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[harrisale]

1 hour ago, nwohweather said:

I don't really know how anyone can say this winter has been boring. Big snowstorms in December, 70 degree heat in mid February and multiple major severe weather outbreaks. It's been exciting that's for sure, just not snowy


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True. Saved a lot on heating in Feb too. 

If there was at least one large snowfall here this winter would have been tolerable. Hoping to see the severe continue into spring. 

[Snowstorms]

Last few Winters at YYZ; (downtown Toronto (goes back to 1840) in brackets, due to Nipher purposes). 

2010-11: 50.7" (49.0") - above normal

2011-12: 16.8" (incomplete data for Dtown station) - lowest on record

2012-13: 42.0" (48.8") - near normal

2013-14: 54.4" (59.7") - above normal

2014-15: 39.0" (40.9") - slightly below normal 

2015-16: 25.9" (23.5" - incomplete) - below normal 

2016-17: 30.9" (incomplete data for Dtown Station) - below normal

Avg. is 45.0". 

Plus this Winter, this would make it 4 out of the last 7 Winters being below normal at YYZ/Toronto Dtown and 7 out of last 12, lol. What a disaster. 

[Stebo]

On 3/14/2017 at 9:02 PM, IWXwx said:

I always laugh when the auto-generated point forecast does this:

Monday

A chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 50. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

 

 

Friday

Rain and snow likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 55.

At least this is covering the rain chances too

[Chinook]

Here is something that I read recently. Just to give a little bit of a background: Cliff Mass, from U. Washington, frequently criticizes the NOAA, saying that the GFS should be up to speed with the top-notch ECMWF model. In this blog post, Cliff recommends something of an improved short range NCAR-ensemble. (Yes, this NCAR ensemble exists now. It runs at 00z and the useful data, which is the data that is more than 24 hr in the future, comes in at something like 12:00 midnight Mountain Time, or 2:00AM Eastern Time. So, yeah, kind of a lot later than the 00z 4km NAM, by like 4 or 5 or 6 hours.) Cliff recommends that NOAA create a 3km or 4km ensemble group with 50 members, for severe and high-impact weather. I would imagine it would be something like looking at the 00z 4km NAM, WRF-ARW, WRF-NMM, WRF-NSSL, 3km NAM, plus an extra 45 ensemble forecasts, to get a feel for tomorrow's severe weather.

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/03/high-resolution-ensemble-forecasts.html

[Trent]

On 3/16/2017 at 5:14 PM, Snowstorms said:

Plus this Winter, this would make it 4 out of the last 7 Winters being below normal at YYZ/Toronto Dtown and 7 out of last 12, lol. What a disaster. 

Almost identical for Cleveland with 5 out of the last 7 below normal and 7 out of last 12 below normal. 

[Snowstorms]

2 hours ago, Trent said:

Almost identical for Cleveland with 5 out of the last 7 below normal and 7 out of last 12 below normal. 

We deserve a March 2008 type storm redux. A couple actually, to make up for these below normal winters. 

Atleast you guys benefit more off LES than Toronto. Almost rare to get an East Wind off Lake Ontario. 

 

[snowstormcanuck]

Looks like spring's here for good starting next week. Good riddance to winter 2016-17. Glad I didn't spend much time tracking. 90% of our seasonal snowfall came in about 72 hours. lol

 

[IWXwx]

Freudian slip by the afternoon forecaster at IND:

Forecast Soundings and Time Height Sections continue to indicate
plentiful lower level moisture tonight as the cyclonic lower
level flow is expected to persist for moist of the night.

[snowstormcanuck]

On 2017-03-16 at 5:14 PM, Snowstorms said:

Last few Winters at YYZ; (downtown Toronto (goes back to 1840) in brackets, due to Nipher purposes). 

2010-11: 50.7" (49.0") - above normal

2011-12: 16.8" (incomplete data for Dtown station) - lowest on record

2012-13: 42.0" (48.8") - near normal

2013-14: 54.4" (59.7") - above normal

2014-15: 39.0" (40.9") - slightly below normal 

2015-16: 25.9" (23.5" - incomplete) - below normal 

2016-17: 30.9" (incomplete data for Dtown Station) - below normal

Avg. is 45.0". 

Plus this Winter, this would make it 4 out of the last 7 Winters being below normal at YYZ/Toronto Dtown and 7 out of last 12, lol. What a disaster. 

 

I believe I read somewhere that starting this winter (16-17) YYZ switched from a nipher to a snow saber for measuring purposes. I have noticed that the amounts recorded during the two 6"+ events were comparable to the downtown station and reasonable to what I observed. So at least going forward maybe we can start using YYZ data for climatological analysis, especially considering the downtown station's data completeness has started to get a bit patchy the last decade or so. 

Growing up a very good winter to me was when we hit 60". It our new AGW reality, might be tough to ever do that again.

 

 

[Chinook]

Apparently the 4km NAM has been canceled and the experimental 3km NAM is now operational as NAM-HIRES on NCEP's web site.

[Snowstorms]

6 hours ago, snowstormcanuck said:

 

I believe I read somewhere that starting this winter (16-17) YYZ switched from a nipher to a snow saber for measuring purposes. I have noticed that the amounts recorded during the two 6"+ events were comparable to the downtown station and reasonable to what I observed. So at least going forward maybe we can start using YYZ data for climatological analysis, especially considering the downtown station's data completeness has started to get a bit patchy the last decade or so. 

Growing up a very good winter to me was when we hit 60". It our new AGW reality, might be tough to ever do that again.

 

 

Hey SSC! I'm sure this Winter wasn't a great one in your books either haha. And really? Thats awesome given all the controversy surrounding the Nipher over the last decade or so. If I'm not mistaken, EC also invested in new weather radar equipment as its very limited at the moment. Would be a great addition especially during severe weather season. 

You know what, this "snow drought" that we've been experiencing thus far has been very localized. Cities like Ottawa, Detroit or Boston have been breaking records over the last few years (in a good way), while we've been getting shafted. Now I don't know what the explanation is for this lack of snow in Toronto, however seeing 7/12 below normal Winters is very intriguing and bad at the same time too.

I didn't expect this Winter to end up as bad as it did. Basically a repeat of 05-06 and 1999-00. I thought for sure it'd be an average Winter at the very least and not another snowless crap fest after December. Before I come to any conclusions regarding AGW for our Winters, I want to see how the next few fair out. Its a small sample, but then again, winters like 97-98, 99-00 and 01-02 weren't exactly average either. If we see an El Nino next Winter again, it may not end up average again. But lets see!

I did a sample test for when I assume the next climatological average will come out once the new decade starts. I added up the snowfall from each Winter starting in 91-92 till present. So up until this Winter the 26 year average is 109.7cm or 110cm. Even if you take out 07-08 and 11-12, you're still at 109cm. The 1971-2000 average was 115.1cm. Biggest hit was January and March, with a net increase in February. 

These two Winters have been horrible. Though December wasn't bad, Jan-March was a no show. We got lucky with that February snow event, otherwise we'd be flirting in another top 5 snowless Winter. I'm lost for words.