March, 2019

[HeadInTheClouds]

24 minutes ago, ILoveWinter said:

Where were you for last weekend's stormS? 

Shoveling. 

[tek1972]

Winter can hit me with everything it's got.. April is 3 weeks away

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[triniiphone]

What’s the year to date snow for nyc ? 

[purduewx80]

21 minutes ago, triniiphone said:

What’s the year to date snow for nyc ? 

14.1" at Central Park since Jan 1. Season to date is 20.5", which is 2.4" below average.

[EastonSN+]

4 minutes ago, purduewx80 said:

14.1" at Central Park since Jan 1. Season to date is 20.5", which is 2.4" below average.

Pretty amazing considering. Also there is another shot of snow during the PNA spike if a system aligns right.

[donsutherland1]

At 4 pm, the temperature stood at 48° in New York City. That is the City's warmest reading since February 21 when the mercury topped out at 52°. Even greater warmth lies ahead late next week.

But that's still ahead of a transition that could see a storm bring some snow and sleet ahead of a heavy rain to portions of the area. This afternoon, the woods in New York City's suburbs still presented the spectacle of winter.

But if one listened closely, one heard the relentless rhythm of dripping water. Where ice had once locked streams into silence, water was now flowing with growing vigor. Under the still leafless trees, snow had begun to yield, leaving behind standing pools of mud and water.
.

The growing chorus of the birds and the rising power of the sun's rays that amplified the warmth of the upper 40s temperatures made abundantly clear that no matter what the GEFS or its ever frigid nephew the FV3 might show, spring is now rising. Soon, the baseball diamonds and soccer fields that have lain in silence will spring to life.

Winter will likely wage a last-ditch fight later this month and perhaps into the start of April, but a change in seasons is in order. Winter weather lovers can still hope for spring's reign to be delayed, but it won't be denied. Let there be one more, maybe two more, measurable snowfalls before the present snow season concludes.

 

[dmillz25]

12 minutes ago, bluewave said:

The ensembles are coming on so strong with the +PNA, that suppression could be an issue. Need to see the ridge axis pull further west in later runs so we can get a storm track closer to the East Coast.

That would be fitting lol

[dmillz25]

49 minutes ago, EastonSN+ said:

Pretty amazing considering. Also there is another shot of snow during the PNA spike if a system aligns right.

Yeah to go from full on ratter to just slightly below normal within a week helps alot

[BombsAway1288]

3 hours ago, ILoveWinter said:

Where were you for last weekend's stormS? 

Following the Euro OP 5 days out saying how the storm was going to be a cutter, nobody would have snow, and to prepare for rains.....

Wrong again.

[Juliancolton]

8 minutes ago, BombsAway1288 said:

Are you saying that there's a chance that the area doesn't get a snowstorm towards the end of March and that Spring is coming soon? Really!!!? You're just full of bold calls (which end up wrong most of the time anyway) including the rain you told me was coming last week. Got a foot of snow instead so you couldn't have been more wrong, sorry.

Everyone knows your shtick here so maybe you should take a rest from "forecasting" and all the bad calls you make.

A real shocker this post is coming from you.

His shtick is trying to get a rise out of the winter groupies, and some folks make it entirely too easy. He only needs 5 posts a day to control the course of discussion in this entire sub... pretty embarrassing. Stop letting people live rent-free in your head.

[HeadInTheClouds]

Had a high of 46 today but dropping like a rock, down to 34. 

[donsutherland1]

Today, the temperature soared to 49° in New York City's Central Park. That was New York City's warmest reading since the mercury reached 52° on February 21. Nevertheless, sensitivity analysis applied to the latest guidance suggests an implied 68% probability that March will finish with a below normal monthly temperature. There is an implied 46% probability that the March mean temperature could wind up below 40°.

The ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly was +0.40°C and the Region 3.4 anomaly was +1.10°C for the week centered around February 27. For the past six weeks, the ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly has averaged +0.45°C and the ENSO Region 3.4 anomaly has averaged +0.58°C.

Similar ENSO conditions will likely persist through much of March with some possible fluctuations to just below weak El Niño levels. Some guidance suggests the potential some additional warming of ENSO Region 3.4 in coming weeks.

The SOI was -6.51 today. It has been negative for 31 out of the last 32 days.

Today's preliminary value of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) was +2.588. The AO has now been positive for 30 consecutive days. The last time the AO was positive for at least that long was during the August 6, 2018 through September 4, 2018 period when the AO was positive for 30 consecutive days.

Since 1950, there were 13 years during which the AO reached +3.000 or above during the February 15-29 period, as happened this year on February 19 with a +3.354 value. In 7/13 (54%) cases, the March 1-15 period saw no AO- days. The mean figure was just 2.5 days during which the AO was negative in the March 1-15 period during those years. Based on the latest ensemble forecasts, 2019 could fall short of the mean figure of 2.5 days. Overall, the durability of the strong polar vortex in the Arctic region responsible for the AO+ was highly consistent with historic experience. Historic probabilities favor the continuation of a predominantly positive AO through the remainder of March.

On March 8, the MJO was in Phase 4 at an amplitude of 2.576 (RMM). The amplitude was somewhat lower than the March 7-adjusted figure of 2.655. The MJO could lose amplitude in coming days as it heads back toward Phase 3. As the seasonal tendency has favored high amplitudes, there is a distinct possibility that it could reach Phase 3 at a high amplitude.

A storm moving through the Great Lakes region could bring a brief period of wintry precipitation tonight into early tomorrow morning to parts of the region before the precipitation ends as rain. Parts of central and upstate New York into northern New England could pick up moderate accumulations of snow.

Afterward, readings could remain warmer than normal for at least 7-10 days, limiting opportunities for snowfall. The warmth could peak around mid-month with the potential for readings in the 60s extending as far north as southern New England. The 12z ECMWF suggested that the 70° isotherm could be close to the New York City area on March 15.

Beyond that, the possibility exists for a return to cooler temperatures relative to normal during the closing 7-10 days of the month. Currently, the GEFS is more impressed with the potential return of colder weather than the EPS.

The last 7-10 days of March could see high temperatures that generally range in the middle 40s to the lower 50s and low temperatures in the lower and middle 30s in the New York City area based on historic experience with patterns similar to the one that is forecast. A few colder days are possible (mainly during storminess). Timing of precipitation events could be crucial for potential snowfall opportunities.

[CIK62]

Next 8 days averaging 45degs., or about 4degs. AN.

Month to date is -7.6[31.5].     Should be -2.1[37.9] by the 18th.

Temp. here is between 39*---40* during 7am---8am and all rain.   41.5* by 9am. 42.0* by 10am.

While it may be a little BN Twise starting in a week, GFS has no precipitation at all, beginning at the same time, and  for the duration.  

[sussexcountyobs]

Snow sleet freezing rain mix falling. .6"  accumulated.  29.7°

[495weatherguy]

57 minutes ago, bluewave said:

We are really lucky that we got those few coastal storms during the first week of March. They were the first coastals since the fall. But notice how quickly we shifted back to the cutter storm track. One today and later in the week. In a sense, this was more like an 80’s or 90’s winter when cutter or hugger storm tracks dominated. It’s  how places like State College did so well with snowfall during those days. Not a surprise that this was a rare year for this decade when those areas did better with snowfall than the immediate coast. That’s what happens when there is a lack of coastal or traditional benchmark storm tracks. Be interesting to see how the storm track situation plays out with the week 2 +PNA pattern.

 

What do you think was the reason for that type of pattern to consistently set up?

[wdrag]

Good Sunday morning everyone,  Some thoughts.  

A)I'm aware of the horrendous ECMWF 2m temp bust for NYC middle of last week, including my own going for 6F in NYC if more than 3" of snow on the ground in CP for Thu morning. Terribly wrong.  EC and myself had a problem on the 2nd night extreme cold forecast for CHI for Jan 31 as well. Room for improvement in these potential extreme situations via 2M temp forecasts (exclusive to model output statistics).

Now to what I think are more positive potential outcomes.   

Seems like  a window of opportunity for a coastal snow event March 19-20 per trough location and max departure from normal 500mb heights on both 00z/10 EPS and 06z/10 GEFS with modeled closed surface low pres off the mid Atlc coast and 24 hr pcpn trends.  At least its an opportunity, even something near the 25th-26th.Maybe something to monitor in the coming days, whether its too little too late? The 19th has been flagged for several days in the broadly reviewed ensembles, I think as others have noted herein.  

I do not think my area of Wantage NJ will stop at our seasonal snowfall of 35.4", because we've not yet dealt with bigger elevation "only" early spring wet snow events that sometimes occur in April. 

The following may be old news but I want to reiterate, as I've just spent the last two months looking very closely at snowfall guidance. 

I also attached yesterdays ~0830z/9 probabilistic ensemble image for 1" or greater snowfall.  MUCH MUCH better than some of the algorithms used by the websites that we use, inclusive of EPS and GEFS ensembles in mixed precip events and also used in the op models across the board. I think these are using more rudimentary conversion schemes (10 to 1).  These mixed precip marginal temp situations suggest to me it is better to use the available operational POSITIVE SNOW DEPTH change as a conservative bottom number for snow-sleet accumulations.  I think you'll like the POS Snow Depth change, especially in situations that occur frequently here, which is above freezing layers aloft limiting dendrite growth, and of course with temps are at or above freezing at the surface.  Certainly gives me a better handle on pavement accums, which is crucial for transportation. Hopefully this is not old news and is useful for review, including anyone going back in the archives.  The other thing I've noticed HRRR snowfall is useful (not referring to the sometimes available HRRX variable density snowfall).  1003A/10

 

So far, I've only found 1 or 2 reports of more than 1" of snow in ne PA, near where the 40-50% probability was, ditto se NYS.  Otherwise s of I84... generally less than 1" total. added 1005A/10

 

 

 

[MJO812]

I just landed in Florida

 

Beautiful 78 degrees and sunny

[the_other_guy]

About 1/2 inch of snow and ice before the rain came.

Now slush

35F.

Up 2 degrees in last 2 hours

[gravitylover]

43 minutes ago, wdrag said:

Good Sunday morning everyone,  Some thoughts.  

A)I'm aware of the horrendous ECMWF 2m temp bust for NYC middle of last week, including my own going for 6F in NYC if more than 3" of snow on the ground in CP for Thu morning. Terribly wrong.  EC and myself had a problem on the 2nd night extreme cold forecast for CHI for Jan 31 as well. Room for improvement in these potential extreme situations via 2M temp forecasts (exclusive to model output statistics).

Now to what I think are more positive potential outcomes.   

Seems like  a window of opportunity for a coastal snow event March 19-20 per trough location and max departure from normal 500mb heights on both 00z/10 EPS and 06z/10 GEFS with modeled closed surface low pres off the mid Atlc coast and 24 hr pcpn trends.  At least its an opportunity, even something near the 25th-26th.Maybe something to monitor in the coming days, whether its too little too late? The 19th has been flagged for several days in the broadly reviewed ensembles, I think as others have noted herein.  

I do not think my area of Wantage NJ will stop at our seasonal snowfall of 35.4", because we've not yet dealt with bigger elevation "only" early spring wet snow events that sometimes occur in April. 

The following may be old news but I want to reiterate, as I've just spent the last two months looking very closely at snowfall guidance. 

I also attached yesterdays ~0830z/9 probabilistic ensemble image for 1" or greater snowfall.  MUCH MUCH better than some of the algorithms used by the websites that we use, inclusive of EPS and GEFS ensembles in mixed precip events and also used in the op models across the board. I think these are using more rudimentary conversion schemes (10 to 1).  These mixed precip marginal temp situations suggest to me it is better to use the available operational POSITIVE SNOW DEPTH change as a conservative bottom number for snow-sleet accumulations.  I think you'll like the POS Snow Depth change, especially in situations that occur frequently here, which is above freezing layers aloft limiting dendrite growth, and of course with temps are at or above freezing at the surface.  Certainly gives me a better handle on pavement accums, which is crucial for transportation. Hopefully this is not old news and is useful for review, including anyone going back in the archives.  The other thing I've noticed HRRR snowfall is useful (not referring to the sometimes available HRRX variable density snowfall).  1003A/10

 

So far, I've only found 1 or 2 reports of more than 1" of snow in ne PA, near where the 40-50% probability was, ditto se NYS.  Otherwise s of I84... generally less than 1" total. added 1005A/10

 

 

 

That map worked out almost perfectly here. I was out early this morning and went to Danbury and the 40% gradient followed the slightly over 1/2" accumulation very well.

[495weatherguy]

18 minutes ago, bluewave said:

During the 1980’s, it seems like many storms wound up suppressed to our south. I can remember numerous winter storm warnings where the storm went OTS. The 90’s saw a very active storm track right near the I-95 corridor. 3-13-93 and 1-17-94 were two of the biggest examples that favored the interior for the heaviest snows. This winter was a combination of those two patterns. Cutter, hugger, and suppressed southern stream. The first week of March brought back the coastal track for a time. So it will be interesting to see how the coming +PNA storm track works out. 

 

I seem to recall we would get cold rain.   Much like today.  Especially in the 70’s and 80’s on LI.

What im curious about is how do these patterns get established and how do they get broken? 

[wdrag]

3 minutes ago, gravitylover said:

That map worked out almost perfectly here. I was out early this morning and went to Danbury and the 40% gradient followed the slightly over 1/2" accumulation very well.

Haven't seen all the numbers yet ...several 1-2": in the 40% or greater area, seemingly high terrain.  NOHRSC website hasn't updated since the 8th so I can NOT use that evaluation tool, til they restart the 24 hour snowfall tool.  From my view, this ensemble probabilistic and the operational snow depth products frame expectations, much better than the old methodologies including rudimentary 10 to 1 snowfall ratios.  NWS has ability to blend multiple snow ratio guidance into one reasonable product, every 6 hours, from which forecasters can run snow fall tools, based on their probabilities for snow and hourly qpf in the 6 hour periods in question.   This applies to any snowfall forecasts from anyone.  I just think this probabilistic guidance is getting harder to beat day in-day out. If you can't beat them, join em and essentially be a darn good interpreter-communicator of upcoming scenarios including IMPACT. 

[495weatherguy]

12 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Mostly atmospheric circulation changes from decade to decade. This past winter was a bit a of a throwback to older times. Hopefully for us, it was just a blip.

Atmospheric circulation???   It’s not global warning then?  Just a normal circulation change?  That sounds like a reasonable explanation.  

 

[ILoveWinter]

1 hour ago, Snow88 said:

I just landed in Florida

 

Beautiful 78 degrees and sunny

Was at Disney for presidents day week, upper 80s (some records broken I think) and sunny each day, was awesome.

[gravitylover]

12 minutes ago, 495weatherguy said:

Atmospheric circulation???   It’s not global warning then?  Just a normal circulation change?  That sounds like a reasonable explanation.  

 

Well sort of. IMO as the arctic has warmed and the coldest departures have been pushed south of the true arctic it has changed the circulation patterns, at least over North America as I haven't looked at Europe and Asia recently. 

[495weatherguy]

38 minutes ago, gravitylover said:

Well sort of. IMO as the arctic has warmed and the coldest departures have been pushed south of the true arctic it has changed the circulation patterns, at least over North America as I haven't looked at Europe and Asia recently. 

I’m sure there are many components to this.  There is no simple explanation.  To say there is one reason is a cop out

[gravitylover]

9 minutes ago, 495weatherguy said:

I’m sure there are many components to this.  There is no simple explanation.  To say there is one reason is a cop out

I didn't say it's the only reason but it is the most obvious and again, IMO, the primary reason. I'm not a climatologist or a meteorologist but I did stay in a Holiday Inn a while back  

[495weatherguy]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

Warming changes the atmospheric circulation patterns. 

 

 

So what were theses waves patterns before the 70’s and 80’s?  I’m not trying to be argumentative.  Have surface temperatures been increasing decade by decade for the last 150 years?

[495weatherguy]

1 hour ago, gravitylover said:

I didn't say it's the only reason but it is the most obvious and again, IMO, the primary reason. I'm not a climatologist or a meteorologist but I did stay in a Holiday Inn a while back  

I wasn’t saying that you were.   Please don’t misunderstand.   What I am saying is that the weather is extremely complex.  We try to simplify it for ourselves.  I bet there are factors we don’t even know about that play a role in our weather

[H2Otown_WX]

2 hours ago, bluewave said:

Looks like clouds and scattered showers may limit the high temperature potential later this week. We had full sun that  maximized our early February warm up. Overperforming February warm ups and underperforming ones in March has  been a common theme recently.

They have? 

[donsutherland1]

Earlier today, a broad area of 1"-3" snow with some locally higher amounts was recorded from central and upstate New York across central and northern New England. An area of sleet fell farther south, even into New York City's suburbs in northeastern New Jersey, Westchester County, and on portions of Long Island. In the wake of the system, the cold air remained entrenched across parts of the area, but that will change tomorrow.

The ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly was +0.40°C and the Region 3.4 anomaly was +1.10°C for the week centered around February 27. For the past six weeks, the ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly has averaged +0.45°C and the ENSO Region 3.4 anomaly has averaged +0.58°C.

Similar ENSO conditions will likely persist through much of March with some possible fluctuations to just below weak El Niño levels. Some guidance suggests the potential some additional warming of ENSO Region 3.4 in coming weeks.

The SOI was -12.02 today. It has been negative for 32 out of the last 33 days.

Today's preliminary value of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) was +2.514. The AO has now been positive for 31 consecutive days. The last time the AO was positive for at least that long was during the April 13, 2018 through June 3, 2018 period when the AO was positive for 52 consecutive days. Historic probabilities favor the continuation of a predominantly positive AO through the remainder of March.

On March 9, the MJO was in Phase 4 at an amplitude of 2.089 (RMM). The amplitude was somewhat lower than the March 8-adjusted figure of 2.583. The MJO could lose amplitude in coming days as it heads back toward Phase 3. As the seasonal tendency has favored high amplitudes, there is a distinct possibility that it could reach Phase 3 at a high amplitude.

Starting tomorrow, temperatures will likely remain warmer than normal for at least 7-10 days across much of the region. That will limit opportunities for snowfall. The warmth could peak around mid-month with the potential for readings in the 60s extending as far north as southern New England.

Beyond that, the possibility exists for a return to cooler temperatures relative to normal during the closing 7-10 days of the month. The risk of severe cold relative to the season has declined in recent days. The latest EPS actually sends readings back above normal by around the 23rd of March.