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NNE Cold Season Thread


wxeyeNH
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8 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

the models are terrible. Yesterday SNE was poised for rn while NNE was 6+". Now SNE 4-8" while NNE gets grazed.

Meh, it's one model cycle of many left to go. Ensembles still look like there's plenty of potential. 

I think it's increasingly clear that forecasters need to stop relying so much on deterministic run to run variability. With resolution down to 13 km in most instance you are just going to get far too much variability given the detail they show. 10-15 years ago deterministic runs were 80 km and features were much more broad and could be applied in the same way ensemble features are now. 

 

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18 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Meh, it's one model cycle of many left to go. Ensembles still look like there's plenty of potential. 

I think it's increasingly clear that forecasters need to stop relying so much on deterministic run to run variability. With resolution down to 13 km in most instance you are just going to get far too much variability given the detail they show. 10-15 years ago deterministic runs were 80 km and features were much more broad and could be applied in the same way ensemble features are now. 

 

Can you explain this? Seems counter intuitive. If there is greater detail, shouldn't there be less variability?

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57 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

Can you explain this? Seems counter intuitive. If there is greater detail, shouldn't there be less variability?

There are a couple reasons why this isn't the case. One is that you have to find a way to manage convection. You either explicitly resolve it (convection-allowing) or parameterize it. Either way you are making assumptions that you are either parameterizing it correctly or correctly modeling its location and strength. Two is that as you improve your resolution you also sharpen gradients and increase the max/min values of features. This can dramatically affect the forecasts farther and farther out in time. You can imagine that an 80 km Euro on day 4 having broad QPF amounts would show a potential event for everyone, but a 13 km Euro 4 days out may show a sharp northern edge and convince NNE that they are going to get nothing. What if the model trends north then? It will look like a bust, whereas years ago it wouldn't have seemed that far off.

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56 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

Can you explain this? Seems counter intuitive. If there is greater detail, shouldn't there be less variability?

I’ve seen various people on the boards get confused on this, and it’s because there’s not necessarily any correlation between a system’s resolution (what’s the smallest level of detail that can be discerned), accuracy (how close are you to reality/expected value) and precision/variability (reproducibility).  I don’t follow the specifics of weather modeling, but from what I’ve seen (and this can be the case in other systems as well) there’s typically an inverse correlation between resolution and variability.  Some types of output from the ensembles are sort of an example of this with smoothing/low resolution.  Low resolution output will likely be less susceptible to variability in some cases because you’re not even going to see changes below a certain threshold.

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17 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

Is he also our farthest east poster? 

Narrowly beats James and ACKwaves

70.027W here.  Not sure exactly where on CC/ACK those two live.  And Borderwx take the north trophy.

We've had some people from Ft Kent and Eastport in the past.

When I joined Eastern in March 2005 the fellow in Fort Kent was posting some impressive snow pics, with more from the post-Christmas 3-footer that year.  I think he moved sometime after 05-06.  Don't recall any posts from EPO.  Either I missed them or they came prior to 3/05.

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1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

Meh, it's one model cycle of many left to go. Ensembles still look like there's plenty of potential. 

I think it's increasingly clear that forecasters need to stop relying so much on deterministic run to run variability. With resolution down to 13 km in most instance you are just going to get far too much variability given the detail they show. 10-15 years ago deterministic runs were 80 km and features were much more broad and could be applied in the same way ensemble features are now. 

 

I agree.  While the increased resolutions are great, I like looking back at the coarser models.  It does feel like there is far too much variability run to run these days.  This is where knowledge/experience as a forecaster trump models.

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Just now, Baroclinic Zone said:

I agree.  While the increased resolutions are great, I like looking back at the coarser models.  It does feel like there is far too much variability run to run these days.  This is where knowledge/experience as a forecaster trump models.

I mean when you make a image out of 13 km f-gen it looks like a 2000 mile long series of mountain waves. I can glean no information out of that. But a 90 km GFS field showed clear regions of f-gen that could be used to diagnose the best area for potential banding. That's why I'm kind of okay with the Euro data we get in AWIPS being 80 km still, despite the model being 13 km res.

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52 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

There are a couple reasons why this isn't the case. One is that you have to find a way to manage convection. You either explicitly resolve it (convection-allowing) or parameterize it. Either way you are making assumptions that you are either parameterizing it correctly or correctly modeling its location and strength. Two is that as you improve your resolution you also sharpen gradients and increase the max/min values of features. This can dramatically affect the forecasts farther and farther out in time. You can imagine that an 80 km Euro on day 4 having broad QPF amounts would show a potential event for everyone, but a 13 km Euro 4 days out may show a sharp northern edge and convince NNE that they are going to get nothing. What if the model trends north then? It will look like a bust, whereas years ago it wouldn't have seemed that far off.

thanks. makes sense to the extent I can understand your explanation.

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29 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

I agree.  While the increased resolutions are great, I like looking back at the coarser models.  It does feel like there is far too much variability run to run these days.  This is where knowledge/experience as a forecaster trump models.

then why not fall back to the lower res modeling as it seems it has better accuracy for predicting where/how much an event will produce. Do we have too much data at our fingertips that it ends up hurting us?

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1 minute ago, Lava Rock said:

then why not fall back to the lower res modeling as it seems it has better accuracy for predicting where/how much an event will produce. Do we have too much data at our fingertips that it ends up hurting us?

Demand. If you can offer higher resolution, in my backyard type forecasts that's what people are going to want. And we don't have the computing power to run two versions. And running a coarse model and downscaling it to 13 km isn't really helping improve things either.

There is an argument that we have too much data at our fingertips, or maybe that we have too much data that we don't understand fully at our fingertips. A 20 km GFS run is not the same as a 90 km GFS run, and forecasters need to change their thinking about how to use it to improve the forecast. Rip and reading may have worked for a broad brushed forecast at 90 km, but rip and reading at 20 km can make you look pretty bad at times.

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4 hours ago, dryslot said:

Don't remember anyone from Eastport, I think cool spruce was in blue hill, He was our furthest east poster back on Eastern.

:wacko:  Ellsworth was his home, IIRC, about 10 miles NE of Blue Hill.
 

Demand. If you can offer higher resolution, in my backyard type forecasts that's what people are going to want. And we don't have the computing power to run two versions. And running a coarse model and downscaling it to 13 km isn't really helping improve things either.

Probably way too simplistic, but if those resolution numbers represent square "pixels" then 13km offers about 38 times as many bust opportunities as does 80.  :D

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12 hours ago, alex said:

Lol I just made a similar comment on the train wreck thread for the weekend threat. People somehow talk like NNE has been having a banner year while I think relative to average SNE has been doing much better. 

Top 20 on Kevin W's table include 9 from MA, 5 from NH, 4 from VT, and 2 lonely ones from Maine - South Portland and Portland (of course!) 

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28 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Top 20 on Kevin W's table include 9 from MA, 5 from NH, 4 from VT, and 2 lonely ones from Maine - South Portland and Portland (of course!) 

Ha, Yeah,  Tom, You and I have some ground to make up, Maybe we start tomorrow and then add to it mid week next week.

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My average low temp dropped into single digits just after Christmas, and the last 6 days have not even gotten below 20 - will be 7 with today and may not end until Monday.:(
For grins (and groans) I compared those 6 days to the same dates 2 years ago:

16-17:   1.8/-23.2/-10.7;  28.6° BN

19-20:  32.5/21.3/26.9;   9.0° AN

Highs 31° milder, lows 44.5° milder.

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December Totals

Accumulating Storms:  11

Snowfall:  30.0”

Liquid Equivalent: 3.02”

2019 Precipitation: 61.49”

 

December snowfall came in right at 30.0 inches, which is definitely lean with average being closer to 40 inches.  Thanks to these last couple of storms at the end of the month though, snowfall did end up better than the 25.1 inches from last season.  December can be a very impressive snow month here with moisture of the lakes still in play, and that potential January arctic cold and storm suppression not typically in the picture yet.  But with this December in the books now, it’s been a surprisingly long time since we’ve had a strong one with respect to snowfall – looking at my data it’s been since the 2012-2013 season, which had 49.5 inches of snow.

The 11 accumulation storms this month was right about average, but total liquid equivalent was a couple inches on the lean side, and snowpack was well below average, so it’s really going to go down as a pretty lackluster month.  I haven’t summed SDD for the snowpack, but I’m sure it’s quite low.  Although we’ve maintained snow since the pack began back on November 8th, it’s limped along at just an inch or two during the middle of the month.  Mean snowpack right now is close to a foot, so we’re still several inches below that, and it’s only been the past week that’s it’s really started to increase again.

November was a bit above average on snowfall, but with December being slow, it’s not surprising that we’re a little behind average pace on the season.  Mean snowfall to this point is ~55” and we’re at ~50”, so it’s lagging a little, but it’s not really a huge deficit at this point.

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2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I mean I don’t hate that EURO look.  

0.55” QPF as snow for MVL.   Gotta start making up some ground on climo. 

4530F6B1-3B8F-411B-9D38-785D50F3E2B0.thumb.png.30720bc0a0087018b94a4eaa87545390.png

Yeah, we are actually behind on seasonal snowfall at our site as I mentioned above.  Mean is ~55” and we’re at ~50”, so of course we’re well within 1 S.D. of the mean and not behind the eight ball, but a shot of snow would at least help keep pace with average.

And LOL at the thread for this potential storm – of course now it’s a POS storm.  I still find it really weird how people “track” the storm through the model runs and somehow project the feeling that the end result is “changing” as the output from the models changes.  Using terms like “losing the storm”, or “it’s gone” really perpetuates this.  The reality is that the end result was always going to be what it ends up being – the model runs were simply suggesting something that wasn’t ever going to occur.  If model runs show nothing and then a modest event pops up out of nowhere, the weenies are positive as if it’s some sort of “win”, but if there are model runs showing a potential larger event that ends up smaller, or as nothing, then it’s doom and gloom and whatever effects ensue due to the nonsense they built up in their heads.

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4 hours ago, J.Spin said:

Yeah, we are actually behind on seasonal snowfall at our site as I mentioned above.  Mean is ~55” and we’re at ~50”, so of course we’re well within 1 S.D. of the mean and not behind the eight ball, but a shot of snow would at least help keep pace with average.

And LOL at the thread for this potential storm – of course now it’s a POS storm.  I still find it really weird how people “track” the storm through the model runs and somehow project the feeling that the end result is “changing” as the output from the models changes.  Using terms like “losing the storm”, or “it’s gone” really perpetuates this.  The reality is that the end result was always going to be what it ends up being – the model runs were simply suggesting something that wasn’t ever going to occur.  If model runs show nothing and then a modest event pops up out of nowhere, the weenies are positive as if it’s some sort of “win”, but if there are model runs showing a potential larger event that ends up smaller, or as nothing, then it’s doom and gloom and whatever effects ensue due to the nonsense they built up in their heads.

I had never thought about it that way... brilliant! So true. 

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Would not be a bad week if this verified:

Tonight
Mostly cloudy, with a low around 27. West wind 5 to 10 mph.
Saturday
Snow likely, mainly after 1pm. Cloudy, with a high near 32. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of around an inch possible.
Saturday Night
Snow. Low around 21. Calm wind becoming northwest around 5 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 5 inches possible.
Sunday
A 50 percent chance of snow before 4pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 25. Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.
Sunday Night
A 30 percent chance of snow after 3am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 8.
Monday
Snow likely, mainly after 7am. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 24. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Monday Night
A chance of snow before 7pm, then a chance of snow showers after 7pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 17. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Tuesday
Mostly cloudy, with a high near 27.
Tuesday Night
Snow likely, mainly after 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 18. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Wednesday
Snow likely. Cloudy, with a high near 24. Chance of precipitation is 70%.
Wednesday Night
A 30 percent chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 8. Blustery.
Thursday
Mostly cloudy, with a high near 16.
Thursday Night
Mostly cloudy, with a low around 8.
Friday
A chance of snow showers. Cloudy, with a high near 33.
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