Number of Winter Storms vs. Seasonal Snowfall

[weatherwiz]

Are there any sources out there in which you can breakdown the number of "storms" which occurred during from like October-April?  In the sense I'm talking here that term is extremely subjective but one thing I would like to do is focus more on the number of storms which occurred during the cool-season and incorporate this into seasonal forecasting techniques and use this information as a basis to determine how active a winter may be.  I know many like to include seasonal snowfall predictions within their winter outlooks, however, I've grown not to be a fan of this.  As the years continue to go by and we obtain so much more data and understand further the numerous teleconnections we know of and how they influence the development of atmospheric patterns, IMO, we're beginning to see correlations to seasonal snowfall forecasts weaken.  For example, let's say I forecast 60-70'' of snow for BDL (which is a good 10-20'' above-average) and they get 65'' of snow.  However, say one storm produced 25'' and another storm produced 20'', totaling 45''.  That's already 69% of the seasonal total.  Then the other 20'' comes in combination of like 3-4 more storms.  Now let's say in one winter BDL got 40'' (about 10'' or so below average) but they got like 11 smaller-sized storms...technically that season could still be "active" but snowfall wise it was below-average.  Instead of rambling on further I'll just try to conclude what I'm getting at:

1) If we knew what the average number of storms (this includes clippers, coastal's, cutters, etc) which occur between October-March we can use this information to determine which years are more active vs. non-active with regards to the amount of storms then you can start looking at global teleconnection patterns and such.  

2) Is it safe to assume that if you're getting above-average snows you're likely having a higher-than-average amount of storms?  

 This is something I would also like to investigate for the warm season and thunderstorm days vs. severe wx activity vs. above/below-average seasons.   

[Ginx snewx]

6 hours ago, weatherwiz said:

Are there any sources out there in which you can breakdown the number of "storms" which occurred during from like October-April?  In the sense I'm talking here that term is extremely subjective but one thing I would like to do is focus more on the number of storms which occurred during the cool-season and incorporate this into seasonal forecasting techniques and use this information as a basis to determine how active a winter may be.  I know many like to include seasonal snowfall predictions within their winter outlooks, however, I've grown not to be a fan of this.  As the years continue to go by and we obtain so much more data and understand further the numerous teleconnections we know of and how they influence the development of atmospheric patterns, IMO, we're beginning to see correlations to seasonal snowfall forecasts weaken.  For example, let's say I forecast 60-70'' of snow for BDL (which is a good 10-20'' above-average) and they get 65'' of snow.  However, say one storm produced 25'' and another storm produced 20'', totaling 45''.  That's already 69% of the seasonal total.  Then the other 20'' comes in combination of like 3-4 more storms.  Now let's say in one winter BDL got 40'' (about 10'' or so below average) but they got like 11 smaller-sized storms...technically that season could still be "active" but snowfall wise it was below-average.  Instead of rambling on further I'll just try to conclude what I'm getting at:

1) If we knew what the average number of storms (this includes clippers, coastal's, cutters, etc) which occur between October-March we can use this information to determine which years are more active vs. non-active with regards to the amount of storms then you can start looking at global teleconnection patterns and such.  

2) Is it safe to assume that if you're getting above-average snows you're likely having a higher-than-average amount of storms?  

 This is something I would also like to investigate for the warm season and thunderstorm days vs. severe wx activity vs. above/below-average seasons.   

Run a climod2  snowfall seasonal ranking using dates between Oct 15th and April 15th set number of days above 3 inches, correlate then to seasonal total, do the same in 3 inch increments

[Ginx snewx]

For example Boston number of days>6 and total snow

[dendrite]

Your first step is defining what qualifies as a storm...and I don't mean "clipper", "coastal", etc. You need a script that can run through all of the raw data to give you the information you need.

[weatherwiz]

19 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

For example Boston number of days>6 and total snow

Woah!  What’s the link for This?

[weatherwiz]

8 hours ago, dendrite said:

Your first step is defining what qualifies as a storm...and I don't mean "clipper", "coastal", etc. You need a script that can run through all of the raw data to give you the information you need.

Yeah I would have to come up with some type of definition for storm.  I could also just do old fashion map reading and use EWALL NARR and go back to 1950 and look every time some sort of system impacted the NE.  

I have zero clue how to write code so that would be tough for me.  Perhaps one day I’ll learn 

[Ginx snewx]

14 hours ago, weatherwiz said:

Woah!  What’s the link for This?

 climod2

http://climod2.nrcc.cornell.edu

[weatherwiz]

2 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

 climod2

http://climod2.nrcc.cornell.edu

Wow they’ve really done a ton of great work on this site. Incredible stuff