Annual end of Oct blockbuster

[powderfreak]

39 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

 Amen brother. Good post about sample size. 

It's all sample size related.  Gets us to the "October nor'easters are a good sign as long as they aren't snow" line of thinking.

[WinterWolf]

1 hour ago, weathafella said:

Depends on where.  Accumulating an inch in Boston in October correlates to a poor winter but if Boston gets a smaller amount that correlation doesn’t apply.  And it’s only Boston.  Worcester has no such correlation.   But beware-sample size renders these correlations relatively useless.    

Good post....it's mostly Voo-Doo imo.

[CoastalWx]

22 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

It's all sample size related.  Gets us to the "October nor'easters are a good sign as long as they aren't snow" line of thinking.

  People around here are so shook about October snow. A fluke event in October has zero say about a 3-4 month seasonal pattern.

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

We really posting d7 clown maps already...

[CoastalWx]

2 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

We really posting d7 clown maps already...

Lock it in!

[WinterWolf]

43 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

We really posting d7 clown maps already...

C'mon it's cuz there's really nothing else to really talk about at this point....everybody should know to take them with a grain of salt, and even more so at this time of year especially.   

[MJOatleast7]

58 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

  People around here are so shook about October snow. A fluke event in October has zero say about a 3-4 month seasonal pattern.

Good to see Quebec puts down a healthy snowpack in this deal. Probably not the same correlation with Siberian snowpack/SAI but will help those early-season Quebec highs to lock in cold air (like that really happens in Dec. :))

Now where you WANT the snow right about now is south of Hudson Bay, like it's doing. I read somewhere, don't remember where, that a rapidly expanding cover south of Hudson Bay in late October is very important, and what you want to see for a good winter in NE.

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

  People around here are so shook about October snow. A fluke event in October has zero say about a 3-4 month seasonal pattern.

Will and I were discussing this a couple weeks ago... the empirical increase in snow occurrences/frequency since 2000 or so - 

it's been common enough that "fluke" (I know what you were talking about ... I'm just using your post as platform for this opine) is becoming a stressed term to describe snow in Octobers.

Since roughly 2002 ( I think we discussed) 8 of the Octobers, so roughly half, have measured.  Squalls,  synoptic ...whatever cause and flavor notwithstanding, ...white. 

As for as J.B.'s rip-n-read tweet above ...folks, I don't know if comparing El Nino autumns from prior to 2000 (1977) really apply.  Can't rule out a causal relationship - even partial of course.   However, something else appears to be driving this as more than a mere handful argues for a systemic change. Logic dictates...larger systemic properties and behavior of the atmosphere may not have been in place in El Nino years of the more distant past.  

Supposition: Personally I believe that a net positive anomaly in the oceanic heat content over the entire breadth of the Pacific Basin is actually a reasonably fit for the earliest climate-change modeling of the late 1980s ...Those primitive tools suggested that NE Pacific flows would tend to bulge from latent heat fluxing, and that meant ridge tendencies --> NW flows through the western chunk of the continent.  Cooling for N/A continent was inferred..  We are witnessing more North American continental cold loading in to the 40th parallel...  more frequently in Octobers (autumns for that matter), with more proficiency than we had really seen in the previous 100 or more years worth of climate.   

Whether that is caused by some artifact of GW or not... cold comes from the N   And, this has been occurring regardless of native and/or immediately leading ENSO states.   

[OSUmetstud]

On 10/20/2018 at 5:59 PM, Ginx snewx said:

Well lets just say coming to a model page near you. The research is done 

 

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0711.1

This is a cool paper. But I didn't see it make any sort of inference or correlation between fall nor'easters leading to winter ones. They just seem to be establishing a nor'easter climatology and then assessing risk via track and density based on different NAO and ENSO states. 

[OSUmetstud]

That paper isn't going to assess snow probabilities the best I think because it's focus is very intense lows. We know that we don't need overly intense lows to get a heavy snowstorm.   

[klw]

1 hour ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

We really posting d7 clown maps already...

It is like Spring Training for baseball.  We have to get our hype skills ready for the season ahead.  Plus it gives me 6+ so it must be right. 

[tamarack]

3 hours ago, weathafella said:

Depends on where.  Accumulating an inch in Boston in October correlates to a poor winter but if Boston gets a smaller amount that correlation doesn’t apply.  And it’s only Boston.  Worcester has no such correlation.   But beware-sample size renders these correlations relatively useless.    

Farmington co-op has recorded 31 Octobers with measurable snow (all 0.5" or greater) in their 125 years of obs.  Average snow total for those 31 seasons is 89.83".  Average for all 125 is 89.82", so obviously October snow means good winter.   
Limiting the Octobers to the 26 with 1"+ jumps the average all the way to 90.13".

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

59 minutes ago, WinterWolf said:

C'mon it's cuz there's really nothing else to really talk about at this point....everybody should know to take them with a grain of salt, and even more so at this time of year especially.   

I thought D7 clowns were banned even in mid winter. 

[WinterWolf]

lol didn't realize they were banned?   

[Baroclinic Zone]

41 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

I thought D7 clowns were banned even in mid winter. 

Better yet, how about we just not use accumulation images that count sleet.

[Damage In Tolland]

I see the Pope is posting in the NYC forum. Did he transfer churches from NH to NYC?

[powderfreak]

19 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Better yet, how about we just not use accumulation images that count sleet.

Yeah it the map says "this may include sleet" it's gone immediately, lol.

[ORH_wxman]

9 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

I see the Pope is posting in the NYC forum. Did he transfer churches from NH to NYC?

He still has Dover NH as his location so don't think so. Maybe. 

 

Anyways, def some weenies flying through the air on a D7 storm. The signal for something is def there but i prob won't really look at this storm for another couple days. 

[Damage In Tolland]

2 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

He still has Dover NH as his location so don't think so. Maybe. 

 

Anyways, def some weenies flying through the air on a D7 storm. The signal for something is def there but i prob won't really look at this storm for another couple days. 

Do you happen to recall lead time wise .. how long did it look like Oct 2011 would snow like it did? I’ll never forget your post that storm ..”you pretty much have to predict a major snowstorm “ like a day or two in advance . Scooter said 925’s were colder in that one than the ones currently modeled .

 

[CoastalWx]

The 12z GFS is darn cold below 850 thanks to Scooter HP north of New England. 

[ORH_wxman]

3 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Do you happen to recall lead time wise .. how long did it look like Oct 2011 would snow like it did? I’ll never forget your post that storm ..”you pretty much have to predict a major snowstorm “ like a day or two in advance . Scooter said 925’s were colder in that one than the ones currently modeled .

 

I recall oct 2011 looking pretty damned interesting about 5-6 days out but t was hard to take it seriously until within 3 days. 

And yeah, about 36-48 hours before, when a lot of mets were being cautious citing climo, all you had to see were fields like 925mb temps to know this wasn't the time to get cautious. It was like -4 or -5 at 925 and model guidance isn't going to have a huge error on 925 temps inside of 48 hours.  

[WinterWolf]

4 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

The 12z GFS is darn cold below 850 thanks to Scooter HP north of New England. 

Is that the first Ingredient/sign that this could have a potential frozen surprise with this....?

[ORH_wxman]

4 minutes ago, WinterWolf said:

Is that the first Ingredient/sign that this could have a potential frozen surprise with this....?

You def want low level cold...frequently we are missing that in October even if 850 is like -1 or -2. Still doubtful this thing has enough to work with for frozen but the high is def in a good spot so it's plausible. 

[dryslot]

If you use the general rule that we can usually follow in winter, Models underestimate the colder airmass until we get much closer in time, But that's not always the case, But would like to see more continuity towards that idea going forward with the position of that high.

[CoastalWx]

5 minutes ago, WinterWolf said:

Is that the first Ingredient/sign that this could have a potential frozen surprise with this....?

It's 6 days out and guidance is all over. I was just noting that for a model that loves to torch the boundary layer, it was cold. I would not read much into anything until there is agreement. 

[klw]

Boo hiss on the 12Z!  We locked the 6Z.  this is wrong!  How can we not rely on a 168 hour map to be locked- boo hiss!

 

Wake me when this stupid winter is done and Caribou stops stealing our snow!

[WinterWolf]

3 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

It's 6 days out and guidance is all over. I was just noting that for a model that loves to torch the boundary layer, it was cold. I would not read much into anything until there is agreement. 

Oh exactly.  And when you posted that I too immediately thought of how the GFS has a warm bias more often than not, so that's why I said perhaps an early sign????   Caveats all applied of course.

[Damage In Tolland]

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

1 hour ago, Damage In Tolland said:

I see the Pope is posting in the NYC forum. Did he transfer churches from NH to NYC?

Just passing through weenie gatherings in his pope ride, blessing all the lurkeyboys and snow88s. 

[Typhoon Tip]

GFS may have warm biases (...or not) but so too does "October"    

Anyway, ... large scale structural components do have some text-book aspects about them.  Literally...the nearer term Maine exit cyclogenesis and backside CAA looks right out of the K.U. catalog derived check-list, because at that time, ...it could be providing subsequent E.C. cyclone with cold air arriving 36 hours thereafter.  There are multiple isobars crossing the sub-540 dm thicknesses with this lead system - i.e., deep layer CAA. 

The problem is then two folds... How much?  2nd, the models appear as though they are moderating that cold too soon - however, by what standards?   I'm not sure what the recovery rate on air masses of the -1 or -2 SD in the critical thickness levels ( < 700 mb ) really is in late October.   As 2011 demonstrated, sometimes we need to get in tighter to the event before the models "see" the extend/magnitude of that particular component.   

For that matter ... I'd love to share an email with the moder(s) at NCEP ..whether the global-based numerical guidance 'factors' in climatology prior to release and consumption for the public. I am wondering if that cold complexion recovery speed might be caused because if there is an anomaly the models "might" be working a bit hard to normalize -