Winter 2019-2020 Discussion

[Typhoon Tip]

The busts of the 1980s were uniquely bad man.... Those bust types you describe ...they don't hold a candle to pithy cryo dystopian illustrations that end up flat out partly sunny -

We're talking about diametric purity... 

If we wanna get down to it,....every storm, even the over-producing ones in the general scope have someone somewhere that got nobbed -

Even storms that for the most part righteously qualify as regional busts .... someone somewhere, did perhaps salvageable...

Nope -

bend over ... death BY Koabunga .. no questions asked... no exceptions conferred .... zero room for spin - discussion....         over

[ORH_wxman]

19 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

All the big busts for pretty much anyone west of 495 in Mass all the way into NY State include storms that turned into whiffs.  I feel like in the coast there’s a mix of storms that ended up being rain or whiffed to the east...but once into the interior it’s almost unheard of to be forecast 1-2 feet less than 24 hours out and have it bust because it rained 1-2” instead.  

Every memorable bust in the interior is “we were expecting 14-20 and got 3 inches of arctic sand.”  I’m sure there are some good ones that include sleet but rare to just miss 1-2 feet because it rained.  Usually it would come with a big front end or backside snow in those situations too.  But whiffs are when you get the true 15” to 3” type expectations.

Yeah mostly ends up that way but not always. Classic example...2/24/98 over interior MA and even all the way back to ALB....winter storm warning for 12-18" of paste. Not much, if any by the time you got to 128 and forecast was always rain for BOS and nearby/southeast MA. 

But different story for ORH and up through monadnocks and into E NY state. It started off as planned...pounding heavy wet snow while about 10 miles inside 495 was raining. The snow line actually collapsed southeast a little bit as the dynamics increased and I remember Todd Gross coming on and saying Lexington and Bedford had flipped to heavy wet snow and mentioned they may have to up amounts in the 128 zone. 

Meanwhile back in ORH, we were ripping...had 4-4.5" by about 830am after it started at 5am or so. No end in sight either. Heavy echoes just streaming north.  Then all of the sudden when really heavy echoes started moving in, the dreaded pingers were heard shortly after 830. Worst sound ever. They lasted maybe 30 minutes or so at 29-30F and the temp slowly rose to 32-33 and then we were all rain shortly after. I remember then around 11am the Mets were scrambling but said they expected the snow to collapse back southeast that afternoon and we'd still pick up an additional 4-8"...I thought "ok that is still salvageable even though this few hours of rain sucks". 

But then I noticed ALB went over to heavy rain not long after. I then knew deep down we were toast. I still hoped everything would collapse back southeast but it never did. Instead, we got nearly 3 inches of heavy rain at 34-35F on a benchmark storm track in February...the storm ended with a few pathetic wet flakes finally mixing back in. Even ALB and eastern NY had a bad bust...had to get west into the Catskills and out to BGM for big snows that never changed over. Worst negative bust of the 1990s by far for me. 

[powderfreak]

I love Will’s memory...can always put me in my place pretty fast haha.  

What you just described sounded like that storm (was it last winter or the one prior?) where everyone was modeled to be near 0C but with very heavy precip everyone assumed it would be snow...instead it was 3-feet like west of ALB but never flipped over for most of New England.  I think Ray was adamant about that one as it was in his seasonal forecast.

[ORH_wxman]

8 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I love Will’s memory...can always put me in my place pretty fast haha.  

What you just described sounded like that storm (was it last winter or the one prior?) where everyone was modeled to be near 0C but with very heavy precip everyone assumed it would be snow...instead it was 3-feet like west of ALB but never flipped over for most of New England.  I think Ray was adamant about that one as it was in his seasonal forecast.

You talking the 3/2/18 storm? Was looking like maybe 5-10" eventually over interior but it took forever to change over. Only got an inch or two at the very end. Though Scooter loved the storm on the coast for the epic wind. 

The Feb 1998 storm was a bit different in that we weren't waiting to change over at the beginning. It was pounding and you don't expect to change to rain over ORH when you get a storm over the benchmark (both sfc and midlevels)

[powderfreak]

2 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

You talking the 3/2/18 storm? Was looking like maybe 5-10" eventually over interior but it took forever to change over. Only got an inch or two at the very end. Though Scooter loved the storm on the coast for the epic wind. 

The Feb 1998 storm was a bit different in that we weren't waiting to change over at the beginning. It was pounding and you don't expect to change to rain over ORH when you get a storm over the benchmark (both sfc and midlevels)

Yeah that 3/2 storm sounds right... I remembered it being bigger threat than 5-10 though.  Wasn’t that a QPF bomb?  I feel like I remember folks talking Dec 1992 threat.  Instead you had to go to like 2000ft in the Catskills.  

On your second paragraph, was it that it wrapped too much maritime air in it?  Bombed out too early and flushed Atlantic air to ALB? Trying to envision the synoptic evolution.  

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah that 3/2 storm sounds right... I remembered it being bigger threat than 5-10 though.  Wasn’t that a QPF bomb?  I feel like I remember folks talking Dec 1992 threat.  Instead you had to go to like 2000ft in the Catskills.  

On your second paragraph, was it that it wrapped too much maritime air in it?  Bombed out too early and flushed Atlantic air to ALB? Trying to envision the synoptic evolution.  

I think it was a combo of going a bit too negative and also cutting off from the polar jet too much....just enough to turn it from wet snow into 34F rain. Apparently the models just didn't quite allow enough warm air to get pushed back into the interior. I think some of it too was there was a sense of hedging toward snowier as earlier that winter we had the epic positive bust of December 23, 1997 that dumped 18" (over 20" in Tip-land just tot he northeast) on a 1-3" forecast of marginal paste. That had caused mass outrage at weather forecasters and people stuck everywhere....it's a lot worse for traffic when everyone expects nothing and gets buried versus people expecting more and then being "pleasantly surprised" that not much fell and they can drive easier.

 

Here's the renanalaysis of it:

http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/NARR/1998/us0224.php

 

The reanalysis is't perfect because it shows ORH above zero at 850 the whole time, but it definitely was pounding heavy wet snow for hours in the early going.

 

Probably the tough part about that one was they were upping the snow totals rapidly as it got closer. They were actually warmer with the forecast initially like 2 days earlier, but then they kept saying "things are coming in colder over the interior....we may have to up the amount in the Worcester hills"...and then by the night before, they were pretty gung ho and even moreso that mornign while the snow was pounding....they had no idea in real time that we were just an hour or two away from getting overwhelmed by the warmth aloft from the E and SE.

[CoastalWx]

That was the winter of no cold air. Not surprising given the ENSO state, but a few noteworthy interior snow bombs. I was at PSU in NE PA at 1600' and we had over a foot. Another goodie was in April. Surprise paste job over 6" before Easter. 

[STILL N OF PIKE]

15 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah mostly ends up that way but not always. Classic example...2/24/98 over interior MA and even all the way back to ALB....winter storm warning for 12-18" of paste. Not much, if any by the time you got to 128 and forecast was always rain for BOS and nearby/southeast MA. 

But different story for ORH and up through monadnocks and into E NY state. It started off as planned...pounding heavy wet snow while about 10 miles inside 495 was raining. The snow line actually collapsed southeast a little bit as the dynamics increased and I remember Todd Gross coming on and saying Lexington and Bedford had flipped to heavy wet snow and mentioned they may have to up amounts in the 128 zone. 

Meanwhile back in ORH, we were ripping...had 4-4.5" by about 830am after it started at 5am or so. No end in sight either. Heavy echoes just streaming north.  Then all of the sudden when really heavy echoes started moving in, the dreaded pingers were heard shortly after 830. Worst sound ever. They lasted maybe 30 minutes or so at 29-30F and the temp slowly rose to 32-33 and then we were all rain shortly after. I remember then around 11am the Mets were scrambling but said they expected the snow to collapse back southeast that afternoon and we'd still pick up an additional 4-8"...I thought "ok that is still salvageable even though this few hours of rain sucks". 

But then I noticed ALB went over to heavy rain not long after. I then knew deep down we were toast. I still hoped everything would collapse back southeast but it never did. Instead, we got nearly 3 inches of heavy rain at 34-35F on a benchmark storm track in February...the storm ended with a few pathetic wet flakes finally mixing back in. Even ALB and eastern NY had a bad bust...had to get west into the Catskills and out to BGM for big snows that never changed over. Worst negative bust of the 1990s by far for me. 

What a bridge jumper of a storm . 

Sounds like no Cold high certainly 

[powderfreak]

28 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

What a bridge jumper of a storm . 

Sounds like no Cold high certainly 

Will said the 850 analysis may be too high but nothing good in New England comes from this look.  

Rain for Tamarack and all of us, while NJ gets pounded.

[tamarack]

17 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

The 1940s, 1950s, and 1980s seems to stand out as rather putrid years in Maine based on your data, tamarack. 

That actually matches ORH pretty well. I didn't have 1940s in my dataset, but if I did, they wouldn't be very good based on what I know from that decade at the older coop site. They weren't as bad as the '50s or '80s but still pretty cruddy. 

Your 1990s stand out for moderate events. 

During all but the final winter of the 1990s we lived 40 miles to seaward from that co-op rather than the current 6 miles, and had mostly moderate storms there as well.  In 13 winters, 85-86 thru 97-98, the largest storm was 17.5" of pre-Christmas powder in 1995 - not even one 18-incher.  Total of 8 events 12-17.9" and 55 more in the 6-11.9" range.  Never reached 30" depth, got somewhat skunked by the Superstorm (10.3" of gritty 6:1 stuff at near 20 temps, have not found a station in Maine that reported less) and the strongest storm was probably the 8.5" thunderblizzard in Nov. 1989 that ushered in the record cold of December.

The bust discussion brings to mind the 2 most contrasting busts in my memory bank.  Worst was the VD massacre of 2015.  When the blizzard watch was posted the afternoon of 2/13 maps were giving our area 18-24 and discussions hinted at even more.  By the next afternoon that had abated to 12-18 as watch became warning.  Verified at 1.5" while BOS got 16 and Machias 25.

Best will always be April 1982 - could not imagine a better one for snow weenies.  Late evening on 4/6 CAR upgraded their forecast of cloudy/cold/windy to include flurries.  Less than 4 hours later we had SN+ and I "measured" (a very generous verb in 60 mph gusts) 17" while the flurry-forecast site had 25.3", at the time their greatest snowfall on record.  (It's now in 4th place.)

[ORH_wxman]

8 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Will said the 850 analysis may be too high but nothing good in New England comes from this look.  

Rain for Tamarack and all of us, while NJ gets pounded.

FWIW, NJ did not get pounded in that storm. Too warm down there...they may have had some snow in the high terrain of NW NJ. Most of the dynamics were north of them....it wasn't as wrapped up as the Feb 2010 retrostorm.

[tamarack]

14 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

FWIW, NJ did not get pounded in that storm. Too warm down there...they may have had some snow in the high terrain of NW NJ. Most of the dynamics were north of them....it wasn't as wrapped up as the Feb 2010 retrostorm.

Farmington got 1.5" RA and mid-upper 30s with "T" snow from that one.  We were still in Gardiner then, records there not at hand but probably 38-40° RA.

That was the winter of no cold air.

None that got very far to the south.  The region's temp layering during the Jan. ice storm is fascinating.  South to north:

NYC/NNJ:  60° rain
SNE:  Rain, 30s/40s.
S.Maine:  RA/ZR and low 30s, little ice impact.
C.Maine & Downeast (inland):  Disaster - 2-3" qpf @ 26-30°, essentially all ZR
Mts/foothills:  20s with significant ZR but mostly IP, 2-8" accum, little ice damage.
Aroostook:  Singles and teens, 5-6 days of near continuous snow, 18-27" of 8:1 sand.

[powderfreak]

25 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

FWIW, NJ did not get pounded in that storm. Too warm down there...they may have had some snow in the high terrain of NW NJ. Most of the dynamics were north of them....it wasn't as wrapped up as the Feb 2010 retrostorm.

Ahh that evolution looked like a heavy paste bomb in NNJ.  Too bad for them, lol.

[dendrite]

1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

Ahh that evolution looked like a heavy paste bomb in NNJ.  Too bad for them, lol.

It probably would've been any other winter, but yeah...97-98.

[40/70 Benchmark]

17 hours ago, powderfreak said:

All the big busts for pretty much anyone west of 495 in Mass all the way into NY State include storms that turned into whiffs.  I feel like in the coast there’s a mix of storms that ended up being rain or whiffed to the east...but once into the interior it’s almost unheard of to be forecast 1-2 feet less than 24 hours out and have it bust because it rained 1-2” instead.  

Every memorable bust in the interior is “we were expecting 14-20 and got 3 inches of arctic sand.”  I’m sure there are some good ones that include sleet but rare to just miss 1-2 feet because it rained.  Usually it would come with a big front end or backside snow in those situations too.  But whiffs are when you get the true 15” to 3” type expectations.

I think VD 2007 busted as sleet for central NE

[ORH_wxman]

44 minutes ago, tamarack said:

During all but the final winter of the 1990s we lived 40 miles to seaward from that co-op rather than the current 6 miles, and had mostly moderate storms there as well.  In 13 winters, 85-86 thru 97-98, the largest storm was 17.5" of pre-Christmas powder in 1995 - not even one 18-incher.  Total of 8 events 12-17.9" and 55 more in the 6-11.9" range.  Never reached 30" depth, got somewhat skunked by the Superstorm (10.3" of gritty 6:1 stuff at near 20 temps, have not found a station in Maine that reported less) and the strongest storm was probably the 8.5" thunderblizzard in Nov. 1989 that ushered in the record cold of December.

The bust discussion brings to mind the 2 most contrasting busts in my memory bank.  Worst was the VD massacre of 2015.  When the blizzard watch was posted the afternoon of 2/13 maps were giving our area 18-24 and discussions hinted at even more.  By the next afternoon that had abated to 12-18 as watch became warning.  Verified at 1.5" while BOS got 16 and Machias 25.

Best will always be April 1982 - could not imagine a better one for snow weenies.  Late evening on 4/6 CAR upgraded their forecast of cloudy/cold/windy to include flurries.  Less than 4 hours later we had SN+ and I "measured" (a very generous verb in 60 mph gusts) 17" while the flurry-forecast site had 25.3", at the time their greatest snowfall on record.  (It's now in 4th place.)

Your reference to the temp gradient in the '98 ice storm reminded me of the temp gradient on the morning of the 2008 ice storm down here. Never seen something so sharp in a storm here. Focus on eastern CT up into S MA....or even just east-central CT to far NE CT....talking about 25-30F over less than 10 miles. (much of the stations below 32F in central MA and SW NH were not online for obvious reasons)

 

 

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

17 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I love Will’s memory...can always put me in my place pretty fast haha.  

What you just described sounded like that storm (was it last winter or the one prior?) where everyone was modeled to be near 0C but with very heavy precip everyone assumed it would be snow...instead it was 3-feet like west of ALB but never flipped over for most of New England.  I think Ray was adamant about that one as it was in his seasonal forecast.

Yea, sorry; I was off by 5 days. Lol

[40/70 Benchmark]

17 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah mostly ends up that way but not always. Classic example...2/24/98 over interior MA and even all the way back to ALB....winter storm warning for 12-18" of paste. Not much, if any by the time you got to 128 and forecast was always rain for BOS and nearby/southeast MA. 

But different story for ORH and up through monadnocks and into E NY state. It started off as planned...pounding heavy wet snow while about 10 miles inside 495 was raining. The snow line actually collapsed southeast a little bit as the dynamics increased and I remember Todd Gross coming on and saying Lexington and Bedford had flipped to heavy wet snow and mentioned they may have to up amounts in the 128 zone. 

Meanwhile back in ORH, we were ripping...had 4-4.5" by about 830am after it started at 5am or so. No end in sight either. Heavy echoes just streaming north.  Then all of the sudden when really heavy echoes started moving in, the dreaded pingers were heard shortly after 830. Worst sound ever. They lasted maybe 30 minutes or so at 29-30F and the temp slowly rose to 32-33 and then we were all rain shortly after. I remember then around 11am the Mets were scrambling but said they expected the snow to collapse back southeast that afternoon and we'd still pick up an additional 4-8"...I thought "ok that is still salvageable even though this few hours of rain sucks". 

But then I noticed ALB went over to heavy rain not long after. I then knew deep down we were toast. I still hoped everything would collapse back southeast but it never did. Instead, we got nearly 3 inches of heavy rain at 34-35F on a benchmark storm track in February...the storm ended with a few pathetic wet flakes finally mixing back in. Even ALB and eastern NY had a bad bust...had to get west into the Catskills and out to BGM for big snows that never changed over. Worst negative bust of the 1990s by far for me. 

The 'ole 4-8" backlash ..tried and true..

[ORH_wxman]

13 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

The 'ole 4-8" backlash ..tried and true..

Yeah you need a specific set of criteria for that type of progression to work out.

If we exclude anafrontal storms like March 2005....it's usually massive bombs....like December 1992 and April 1997 (both changed over to snow in the CCB after 6-8 hours or more of heavy rain in eastern MA)....or super dynamic like December 9, 2005 flashing to heavy snow on the coast of MA after they had changed to heavy rain for several hours.

[Typhoon Tip]

Just on the rip n read surface of that 1998 description - and I do have a vague memory of that oddity ... - the Feb/1998 sounds like a warm NINO east coastal storm... Not a-typical to get nor'easters to be wetter/milder in ++ENSO, at least per in house discussions back in my UML/Lab days ... interesting...  

 

[tamarack]

3 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Your reference to the temp gradient in the '98 ice storm reminded me of the temp gradient on the morning of the 2008 ice storm down here. Never seen something so sharp in a storm here. Focus on eastern CT up into S MA....or even just east-central CT to far NE CT....talking about 25-30F over less than 10 miles. (much of the stations below 32F in central MA and SW NH were not online for obvious reasons)

Then there's the reverse gradient for another ice storm, the one that hammered western parts of SNE in mid-December 1973.  While my parents were enjoying 15° with ZR/IP in NNJ, we had RA+ at 56° in BGR.  Couple hours later BGR temp slid all the way to 51 but NNJ was down to 9, with all IP.

[CoastalWx]

Let’s get a 2010 again where Tamarack was climbing coconut palms in New Sharon.

[tamarack]

2 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Let’s get a 2010 again where Tamarack was climbing coconut palms in New Sharon.

LOL.  (And a pox on such thoughts!)  
Actually I was trying to push 8" of rain-enriched 3:1 glop off my thawed-surface driveway with a snow scoop as my snowblower was dead, and trying not to push too much of the surface gravel onto the lawn.  Much much harder than scooping the 24" dump a year earlier, even though I didn't have to slide the stuff up a 7-ft bank like in 2009.

[Typhoon Tip]

22 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Will said the 850 analysis may be too high but nothing good in New England comes from this look.  

Rain for Tamarack and all of us, while NJ gets pounded.

What leaps out to me also about this rendition above is that its got a broad 540 dm closed isohypses ...with a bit of a widely spaced ( i.e., gradient is weak ) relative to what is more typical the case when you see closing, negative tilted troughs, with the next contour designation ( 546 ).  These are actually anomalously elevated for that spatial layout/synoptic behaviors.

This system was like a Mona Lisa - looked fantastic from a hundred feet but get in closer and ooph...not so attractive.  Details 'ill get cha.

It seems in addition to being in a marginal atmosphere to begin with, which may or may not be outer causal with the ENSO stuff that season ( I suspect it was ..) the system was lacking some depth/dynamics in there. It's possible that a colder in situ air mass 'feeds back' and helps the former ...and the two sort of "synergistically" enhance the cold solution ... But looking over the total chart space ... the real whip mechanics are really plowing through the west/middle latitudes... and that's sort of killing the wave lengths between it and the Plains... which may be transitively not helping the system in the east.

Interesting but either way ... I'd like to see a closed smaller region inside that broad of a 540 surface ... plumbed to least 534 dm... Probably that keeps the core heavier echoes "blue" on ptype scans....

These things are textured when it comes to cause and effect... The 988 surface reflection seems a bit deep (then) considering the overall observation ( abv ) - particularly if/when the system is/was cold maxed early and actually anomalously weak relative to negative tilt and so forth.. That would be essentially true in simple sense.  However, there can be other reasons not inherently obvious at first glance ... The ambient surface pressure appears to be slightly below normal to begin with when considering all fields.  These systems then achieve pressure relative to those initial conditions - not the climate signal. That's how we have to approach...  Feb 1978 was an opposite effect of that - the storm bottomed ( I think ...) briefly at 974 mb ... but spent most of it's time during the capture and Fuji Wara around the deep layer vortex in the mid 980s... These are substantively below climate... of course.  But, not as deep as one would expect for system that had governing kinematics at its disposal that had never before, or since... been quite so idealized.  As it were... ambient surface pressures were unusually high prior to the bomb back whence... Such that the depths actually - relative to that elevated environment - were by virtue exceptional.  During the evolution of 1978 Feb ... a sprawling multi-nodal anticyclone was situated N-NE of MN by just a short distance ...with arms (housing the smaller nodes) spanning S and E to southeastern Canada and the TV regions...  Essentially, enveloping a near perfect mechanical synergistic-wrought event, inside an equally and opposing atmospheric anomaly.   That juxtaposition was like a "rogue wave" statistically... made for one helluva a PGF.  etc...etc...

 

 

 

[USCAPEWEATHERAF]

Remember how awful the winter of 2009-2010 was for SE MA and RI?  We got porked in one the strongest -NAO blocks we have ever dealt with.  Especially late January 2010 and February 2010, PA and NJ got feet of snow, while Boston, SE MA, and RI were balmy with fog and temps in the upper 50s.  All because the storm backed in the north of us.

[40/70 Benchmark]

9 hours ago, USCAPEWEATHERAF said:

Remember how awful the winter of 2009-2010 was for SE MA and RI?  We got porked in one the strongest -NAO blocks we have ever dealt with.  Especially late January 2010 and February 2010, PA and NJ got feet of snow, while Boston, SE MA, and RI were balmy with fog and temps in the upper 50s.  All because the storm backed in the north of us.

Ne MA was actually screwed the most, relatively speaking..

[ORH_wxman]

36 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Ne MA was actually screwed the most, relatively speaking..

 

[USCAPEWEATHERAF]

46 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Ne MA was actually screwed the most, relatively speaking..

Seems like Will's map suggests my area was screwed the most.

[ORH_wxman]

7 minutes ago, USCAPEWEATHERAF said:

Seems like Will's map suggests my area was screwed the most.

No, you were pretty close to average snowfall....Ray's current area was well below average.

[dryslot]

That winter sucked.