Winter 2019-2020 Discussion

[Hoth]

1 hour ago, weathafella said:

The pattern this year suggests a better December hopefully 

Hope you're right. Dec '13 was the last good one for me. 

[Typhoon Tip]

Better than what ... ha

November had -EPO loaded cold waves and at least chances - that's lucky to get that far this early.  We should be so lucky in December, relative to that month.  

I think expectations were/are set a little high if folks are disappointed by a November with -20 C tappable and pervasive in Canada, and at least a favorable beginnings - so it didn't snow prodigiously in November.  Holy hell the humanity. 

'Course I don't know what the aft pages of that discussion were so ...

[raindancewx]

The AMO has cooled off a lot again from September to October. Back to the level of warmth seen entering last winter in the Atlantic. If the AMO is really going to be around 0.00 from Nov-Apr in a lot of winters now, that's definitely a good sign for the Southwest for precipitation. Nov-Apr values tend to lower toward 0 from October.

My over/under for the true AMO flip is about 2024 - we'll see how that goes. It could be as early as now or as late as 2030 though.

My analogs had Boston getting about half an inch of snow in November this year. The winter blend had a cold West October, warm West November, with the East relatively opposite. Looks promising so far. The cold in Albuquerque in November has been stronger than I expected so far. We've had 11 days with lows of 32F or less since 10/1 here - a top five frequency figure in the last 90 years or so.

[CT Valley Snowman]

Latest JAMSTEC. Certainly not high resolution stuff but you can see the general distribution of  varying degrees of cool and wet anomalies across most of the eastern half of the country.  

 

[LibertyBell]

On 11/12/2019 at 10:23 AM, ORH_wxman said:

Pack retention was pretty crappy...definitely '80s-esque....ORH had about 55 days of pack last winter and 10 of them came in November with 0 in December and only 9 in January. Average for the season is about 74-75 days.

 

and that is a very stable pattern- once it sets in it's very hard to dislodge... cold Novembers around here have often led to winters like that.

[LibertyBell]

On 11/12/2019 at 7:34 AM, weathafella said:

That’s 1993-94.  Lots of 6-10 events and cold.  But to me, 3 storms of 2 feet plus and nothing else is better than that spread over a 3 month period.

2010-11 was great that way too

[Damage In Tolland]

On 11/12/2019 at 7:26 PM, raindancewx said:

The AMO has cooled off a lot again from September to October. Back to the level of warmth seen entering last winter in the Atlantic. If the AMO is really going to be around 0.00 from Nov-Apr in a lot of winters now, that's definitely a good sign for the Southwest for precipitation. Nov-Apr values tend to lower toward 0 from October.

My over/under for the true AMO flip is about 2024 - we'll see how that goes. It could be as early as now or as late as 2030 though.

My analogs had Boston getting about half an inch of snow in November this year. The winter blend had a cold West October, warm West November, with the East relatively opposite. Looks promising so far. The cold in Albuquerque in November has been stronger than I expected so far. We've had 11 days with lows of 32F or less since 10/1 here - a top five frequency figure in the last 90 years or so.

We don’t live in the SW. Please post New England only thoughts here. 

[raindancewx]

I post Southwest stuff because your precipitation patterns are correlated to ours in El Ninos, especially for snowfall. Once we hit our averages last February I was pretty much certain you guys wouldn't get to yours.

The AMO cooling was actually a reference to the NE anyway - you guys have been pretty dry. Fall doesn't really indicate temperature patterns too well in winter, but it's usually not terrible for precip patterns.

 

[Typhoon Tip]

I'd monitor this ... It's new. And it's emerged abruptly in the 5 hPa sigma level from the GEFs modeling.  Not sure what the EPS presently has in mind for this day-10 range, but I personally am interested in whether if any SSW activity takes place this season, given the strong solar minimum that's on-going. There is an established correlation with solar minima and SSWs.  There is also the QBO being in the positive mode, though slipping toward negative, that's actually anti-correlated/mitigates, due to the direction of wave-breaks/momentum transfer of the positive model tending to deflect terminating WAA at high latitude/altitudes...   ( eyes glazed over - ).  But, since the QBO is weakening in the positive mode ( < 10 ), there's also threshold to consider in whether it could plausibly have weakened enough that it's less physically inhibitory.  So yeah..there's some moving parts..  However so, we have an abruptly emerged 5 hPa sigma level warm lobe there, and these typically do initialize at that very high altitude when comparing virtually all of them in history. 

The antecedent summer was very low in sun-spot numbers, so ozone destruction may have been less than the longer termed mean.  Presently the ozone modeling indicates there is a large region over that ~ side of the polar region where mass is neutral to modestly above normal - however, the source I look to only progs that specific metric out to day-5 .. 

It'll be interesting to see if this rather suddenly emerging warm region in the very high altitudes of the PV rim begins to work down in altitude as this 240-hour depiction comes into 192 ...etc. It may stay at day-10 for a couple few days in the modeling before/if that happens... Looking also to histories, these can/do pop off and oscillated in and out before the u-mean/wave channel really shows the wave is occurring.    

[tamarack]

On ‎11‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 7:34 AM, weathafella said:

That’s 1993-94.  Lots of 6-10 events and cold.  But to me, 3 storms of 2 feet plus and nothing else is better than that spread over a 3 month period.

I've yet to experience even a pair of 2-footers in the same winter, much less 3.  My biggest for winter's 3rd best snowfall was 18", the December entry in 1960-61's snowfest.  That year was one of only 2 (2016-17 being the other) that had even 2 with 20"+.

[dryslot]

30 minutes ago, tamarack said:

I've yet to experience even a pair of 2-footers in the same winter, much less 3.  My biggest for winter's 3rd best snowfall was 18", the December entry in 1960-61's snowfest.  That year was one of only 2 (2016-17 being the other) that had even 2 with 20"+.

20"+ storms just don't happen often up here, Most that SNE have seen were occluding or heading off the NE when they reached this lat.

[tamarack]

12 minutes ago, dryslot said:

20"+ storms just don't happen often up here, Most that SNE have seen were occluding or heading off the NE when they reached this lat.

That's often true.  We had 4 storms of 20"+ in NNJ, all during the period 3/56 thru 2/61.  Only 3 in 10 Fort Kent winters, neither BGR (3 years) nor Gardiner (13 years) came close, while I've measured 6 such storms here in the foothills going into winter #22, plus a 19.9" event in March 2018.

[dryslot]

9 minutes ago, tamarack said:

That's often true.  We had 4 storms of 20"+ in NNJ, all during the period 3/56 thru 2/61.  Only 3 in 10 Fort Kent winters, neither BGR (3 years) nor Gardiner (13 years) came close, while I've measured 6 such storms here in the foothills going into winter #22, plus a 19.9" event in March 2018.

I've had a couple 19" ones in 2016-17 but that's rare air, If the Mid Atlantic and SNE get the big ones, We generally don't here.

[ORH_wxman]

2 feet is an extremely high bar....ORH has never done it twice in one season unless you count the double barrel December 1996 storms as "one storm" tag-teaming with the April 1997 33.0" storm later that season. Other storms have been classified as one like Feb 8-11, 1994 that were actually two distinct storms....but December 6-8, 1996 has always been classified as two separate events.

The closest ORH came was 2013 when they had 28.7" in the February 2013 storm and then 22.8" in the March 2013 firehose storm.

Other close calls were 32.1" in December 1992 and then 20.1" in March 1993 superstorm. In 2015, they had 34.5" in the January blizzard and 17.4" in the Feb 2-3 event. Not as close as the other examples.

[J.Spin]

1 hour ago, tamarack said:

I've yet to experience even a pair of 2-footers in the same winter, much less 3.  My biggest for winter's 3rd best snowfall was 18", the December entry in 1960-61's snowfest.  That year was one of only 2 (2016-17 being the other) that had even 2 with 20"+.

I’m glad Will pointed that out with ORH data; three 24”+ storms in one season has really got to be incredibly difficult to achieve for most valley locations not in a LES hotspot.  Even at our site with the bonus of upslope on the back side of many storm cycles, we haven’t come close to that.  I checked my data, and the situation here is similar to yours – three storms at 18”+ has thus far been the most I’ve seen.  Even in a feast or famine situation with that setup you’re talking about a snowfall floor on the season at 72”, but more likely it would have to be part of a 100”+ season.

We have achieved a sort of related scenario at our site with six 12”+ storms in 2010-2011. , but that’s likely much easier to achieve and more in line with the climate up here.

[ORH_wxman]

15 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

I’m glad Will pointed that out with ORH data; three 24”+ storms in one season has really got to be incredibly difficult to achieve for most valley locations not in a LES hotspot.  Even at our site with the bonus of upslope on the back side of many storm cycles, we haven’t come close to that.  I checked my data, and the situation here is similar to yours – three storms at 18”+ has thus far been the most I’ve seen.  Even in a feast or famine situation with that setup you’re talking about a snowfall floor on the season at 72”, but more likely it would have to be part of a 100”+ season.

We have achieved a sort of related scenario at our site with six 12”+ storms in 2010-2011. , but that’s likely much easier to achieve and more in line with the climate up here.

12 inches is a large storm...esp if it has to come from synoptic precip. That's probably a much better benchmark to use for blockbusters.

 

ORH has never had more than 4 storms of 12"+ in one season. They've done exactly 4 a few times.....in 2010-2011, 1995-1996, 1957-1958 with 2014-2015 and 1965-1966 narrowly missing 4 events. BOS made 4 events in 2014-2015.

[J Paul Gordon]

I'm dreaming (for the first time in years) of a white Christmas. Snow deep on the ground and floating in the air. All that great stuff. Would make two "perfects" in a lifetime that is now close to halfway into its seventh decade.

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, J Paul Gordon said:

I'm dreaming (for the first time in years) of a white Christmas. Snow deep on the ground and floating in the air. All that great stuff. Would make two "perfects" in a lifetime that is now close to halfway into its seventh decade.

Were you sleeping during Christmas 2017?

[CoastalWx]

What an awesome surprise that was. Pounded for like 90 minutes and a quick 2.5" on Christmas morning. It looked meager here for awhile until last minute. Bitter cold that aftn. Just like the ones thy ancestors used to know.

[ORH_wxman]

56 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

What an awesome surprise that was. Pounded for like 90 minutes and a quick 2.5" on Christmas morning. It looked meager here for awhile until last minute. Bitter cold that aftn. Just like the ones thy ancestors used to know.

I had to miss the snowfall that morning...I was torching down in NJ....but we came home to a fresh 5.5-6.0"....and bitter cold. It's definitely been a bleak streak of white Xmas's around here....for ORH which averages about 60-65% chance for a white christmas, here's the past 10 years:

2009: About 7" pack...mostly from the 12/19-20 storm that really crushed SE MA

2010: About 2" mostly from the retro storm on 12/20-22 that got the Cape with a foot

2011: Bare ground

2012: 1 inch of fresh falling snow that morning....last second rescue as model guidance was kind of meh on the snow. But then it started falling predawn and lasted 3-4 hours.

2013: Swiss cheese pack of about 2-3 inches that survived the grinch storm leftover from the big snows that fell between 12/9-12/17

2014: Bare gorund

2015: Bare Ground

2016: Patches....but counts as bare ground...i think 2-3 inches survived up by Hubbdave

2017: Xmas morning 4-6" on top of about 2-3" leftover from earlier

2018: Bare ground

 

So we've gone 4 out of the last 5 with bare ground or mostly bare ground. Pretty bad...and even 2013 wasn't a clean pack, and 2012 had to be rescued by a fluffy inch. We had a good run in the 2000s....between 2000-2010, we had 8 out of 11 (only 2001, 2004, and 2006 failed)

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

12 inches is a large storm...esp if it has to come from synoptic precip. That's probably a much better benchmark to use for blockbusters.

 

ORH has never had more than 4 storms of 12"+ in one season. They've done exactly 4 a few times.....in 2010-2011, 1995-1996, 1957-1958 with 2014-2015 and 1965-1966 narrowly missing 4 events. BOS made 4 events in 2014-2015.

Only time I saw 4 storms of 12+ was that 1960-61 bonanza in NNJ, one each in DJFM.  Closest since then was 1981-82 in Fort Kent, with 11.3" as 4th best.  Even 3 has been rare, 3X in 46 Maine winters, all at my present location, 00-01, 16-17, 17-18.  Then there's 05-06 when my top 4 were 5.9, 4.3, 4.3, 4.0.

[ORH_wxman]

59 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Will, what’s the general return time for a 12”+ storm in SNE? I imagine it’s once every other year? Some people I talk to who aren’t into wx seem to think that those happen all the time and would dispute those being in the blockbuster category.

ETA: How would I find that info so I don’t always have to ask you? lol

Not sure if one of the theadex type sites can do it....Chris has a link to a good one that isn't just the extremes. I don't have the averages for BDL for 12"+ storms.

 

For ORH, since 1950, there have been 80 events of 12"+....but obviously some winters go without one. So in those 69 winters, 44 of them had at least one 12"+ event. That means 25 of them did not. So if you go by the binary "yes" or "no"....then the probability of getting at least one event would be 64%. BDL is a significantly worse spot for big storms than ORH, so my guess is the odds would be somewhere around half of ORH's. Maybe a bit more....like 35-40%.

 

I know this information is available somewhere in the climate normals in the NCDC (now NCEI) probability sections, but I cannot navigate that disaster of a site anymore. Not user-friendly at all for finding those values.

[weathafella]

20 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Only time I saw 4 storms of 12+ was that 1960-61 bonanza in NNJ, one each in DJFM.  Closest since then was 1981-82 in Fort Kent, with 11.3" as 4th best.  Even 3 has been rare, 3X in 46 Maine winters, all at my present location, 00-01, 16-17, 17-18.  Then there's 05-06 when my top 4 were 5.9, 4.3, 4.3, 4.0.

And BOS has 4, two of 2 feet+, 2 of 16 inches from 1/22/15-2/28/15.  Think about that.

[ORH_wxman]

10 minutes ago, weathafella said:

And BOS has 4, two of 2 feet+, 2 of 16 inches from 1/22/15-2/28/15.  Think about that.

Slight nitpick....but BOS had 23.1" in the Feb 7-9, 2015....so not technically two feet. Though they probably slightly under measured according to most of the obs around them.

[powderfreak]

7 hours ago, tamarack said:

I've yet to experience even a pair of 2-footers in the same winter, much less 3.  My biggest for winter's 3rd best snowfall was 18", the December entry in 1960-61's snowfest.  That year was one of only 2 (2016-17 being the other) that had even 2 with 20"+.

The best I can do is 4 events of 18” or more in a calendar year in two different spots lol.  From 12/24/2002 to 12/24/2003 I saw two in ALB and two in BTV.   Back during the interior golden years when it seemed every deform band was in eastern NY or western New England.

I still remember moving to UVM in BTV and the first December of Freshman year it snows 50” in the Champlain Valley.  I remember being like holy crap, this NVT stuff is real!  Then you learn that BTV is the snow hole and while you got 50” in a month, other spots were doing 60-80” lol.

[dryslot]

Even multiple 12" storms are not all that easy to pull off in a season, I've had season here where we had none but still had an above avg winter because of more falling in the 6-8" ranges.

[MJO812]

Anthony Masiello‏ @antmasiello

Pretty classic -NAO sequence ahead. It's in its formative stages now.

[mreaves]

47 minutes ago, dryslot said:

Even multiple 12" storms are not all that easy to pull off in a season, I've had season here where we had none but still had an above avg winter because of more falling in the 6-8" ranges.

The 3”-8” range is our bread and butter. We all have different weather favorites and mine is retention and base depth. Some prefer the big dogs but as long as I have enough to ride, that’s my jam. 

[Ginx snewx]

5 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Not sure if one of the theadex type sites can do it....Chris has a link to a good one that isn't just the extremes. I don't have the averages for BDL for 12"+ storms.

 

For ORH, since 1950, there have been 80 events of 12"+....but obviously some winters go without one. So in those 69 winters, 44 of them had at least one 12"+ event. That means 25 of them did not. So if you go by the binary "yes" or "no"....then the probability of getting at least one event would be 64%. BDL is a significantly worse spot for big storms than ORH, so my guess is the odds would be somewhere around half of ORH's. Maybe a bit more....like 35-40%.

 

I know this information is available somewhere in the climate normals in the NCDC (now NCEI) probability sections, but I cannot navigate that disaster of a site anymore. Not user-friendly at all for finding those values.

Peaked my interest, found this gem. In 1897 Dec 28th New London had a 27.5 storm , its biggest storm ever.

[LibertyBell]

19 hours ago, tamarack said:

I've yet to experience even a pair of 2-footers in the same winter, much less 3.  My biggest for winter's 3rd best snowfall was 18", the December entry in 1960-61's snowfest.  That year was one of only 2 (2016-17 being the other) that had even 2 with 20"+.

2010-11 had two storms, one 20" and one 19"  There was a third storm that dumped about 10" here but up to 20" on Central LI