November 2019 General Discussion

[cyclone77]

Last season after the foot of snow that fell on Nov 26 we had basically nothing until about Jan 12.  After that it went nuts for a good month with snow system after snow system.  If we are to end up with a long stretch of down time I'll just try to remember how it worked out last season lol.

[Hoosier]

53 minutes ago, RogueWaves said:

 

 

 

It's over folks..

Yep.  Hope everyone enjoyed winter in November.  Better luck next time.  

[Roger Smith]

I am working on a project to extend the records of the (downtown) Toronto city weather station. This was a first order station back in the day and I have published records for it starting in March, 1840. I have recently updated all the daily record highs and lows for temperatures, and rainfall and snowfall. Some of that required taking estimates from nearby locations as there is not quite a continuous observation program (it was most incomplete in 2016 and 2017, seems to be back up to 100% this year). 

The past week produced two record lows, which makes a grand total of six from the past thirty years. There were two in January 1994, one in November 1997, one in March 2007, one in November 2017, and now the two just observed. Before that there were only record lows in 1972, 1976, 1980, 1981 and 1982, since the publication of daily temperatures and extremes that I used as my starting point. There have been of course a lot of new record highs although I've found that the frequency of them is not really different from the period 1910-1967 (the year when the publication came out). 

I will publish some links to the full results in a month or two, although the real target for ending the project is March 1, the 180th anniversary of the first records. Before that, I happen to have some data from Providence, RI to cover the 1830s, and some overlap with Toronto in 1840, from which it appears that the temperatures are quite similar if perhaps a day later in their arrival at Providence compared to Toronto. That probably wasn't always the case, but it seemed to be working that way in March,  1840 which oddly enough started out with record warmth in what turned out to be quite a cold year generally. 

The recent records for your interest are

Nov 12 ____ 16 F ___ breaks 17 F from 1894, 98

Nov 13 ____ 12 F ___ breaks 14 F from 1873

That 1873 record was perhaps a midnight low as the record low for the 14th was also in 1873 and was 11 F. The 1873 record lows were also the earliest in the winter season that the temperature went below 15 F which had been observed on the 4th and 5th in 1854. But that quickly escalated to 7 F on 15th-16th in 1933, then progressively lower after the 20th reaching -5 F on Nov 30, 1875 as the absolute low for November. 

The daily high reported on the 12th of 24 F appears to be the earliest such reading, the 1873 outbreak had 26 on the 13th. The high on the 15th in 1933 was 19 F, the earliest sub-20 recorded, but the absolute low once again went to Nov 30, 1875 with a high of only 5 F. The 1880 cold shows up big time also, with daytime highs continuously below 30 F from 18th to 27th and below 20 F from 21st to 23rd when lows reached 4 F. This part of November has done much better for record cold than most parts of the year in modern times, this being the third new record along with 21 F on 8th (1976) and 15 F on 10th in 2017.

The reason why so few records have fallen in the past half century is mainly the urban heat island effect which was already becoming evident in the data around the 1890s and 1900-09 decade. The rate of production of surviving record lows drops sharply after 1888 and even back around 1950 it was just about as difficult as nowadays to break a record, any time that a half decent cold air mass hit in the 19th century there was no city there to modify the radiational cooling, so the records set nowadays are mainly from exceptional cold air masses that have a bit of velocity to get them into the city's core without losing too much of their cold. 

Snowfall observations have become a bit problematic, it appears that two different observation programs are underway (since 2003) and one observer logs temperatures and rain/precip and snow depth, while another one goes to a slightly different location and logs rain and snow in the winter season only. This secondary site usually reports very similar rainfalls and snow depths match the snowfall amounts. So far I have not seen that secondary report and have only the 14.1 mm precip and 15 cm snow depth as guides to what fell on November 11th. That would edge out the previous record of 4.8" on Nov 11, 1933 (which was followed by record cold of 7 F on both 15th and 16th). The 1898 cold was preceded by 5.5" snow on November 10th. (15 cm is 5.9" but as the station has variable water content results for snowfalls I can only estimate that from snow depth). 

Daily rainfall records seem to have decreased slightly in frequency although match random expectation fairly closely (in the past half century). Daily snowfall records have fallen to about two-thirds the expected pace based on 50 of 180 years, but there are peaks around mid-November and early April (more heavy snowfall events than expected at random). The month where winter has been most visibly eroded is February, a lot of new record high temperatures and very few snowfalls of consequence. January by contrast has produced about the usual crop of cold records and snowfalls. 

I may get after that snowfall contest for the forum, last year the deadline for it was December 1st and was extended to about the 10th, so no rush on that. 

[michsnowfreak]

Still a Winter wonderland, what a week of scenes it has been. Seeing so many plowed snow banks this time of year is crazy.

Yesterday I attempted leaf cleanup...definitely a challenge this year lol. The rooftops are still covered with snow, glittering, but the ground is slowly sucking up the snow during the daytime hours. Depth down to 3" (deeper on elevated surfaces) from a high of 9" after the storm, still no grass showing yet.

[cyclone77]

Looks like the rain may change over to a period of wet snow before it ends early this evening.  

 

[Spartman]

50 Shades of November 2018 during the next 1-2 weeks. 

[RogueWaves]

7 hours ago, Spartman said:

50 Shades of November 2018 during the next 1-2 weeks. 

Not so fast.

[RogueWaves]

21 hours ago, Roger Smith said:

I am working on a project to extend the records of the (downtown) Toronto city weather station. This was a first order station back in the day and I have published records for it starting in March, 1840. I have recently updated all the daily record highs and lows for temperatures, and rainfall and snowfall. Some of that required taking estimates from nearby locations as there is not quite a continuous observation program (it was most incomplete in 2016 and 2017, seems to be back up to 100% this year). 

The past week produced two record lows, which makes a grand total of six from the past thirty years. There were two in January 1994, one in November 1997, one in March 2007, one in November 2017, and now the two just observed. Before that there were only record lows in 1972, 1976, 1980, 1981 and 1982, since the publication of daily temperatures and extremes that I used as my starting point. There have been of course a lot of new record highs although I've found that the frequency of them is not really different from the period 1910-1967 (the year when the publication came out). 

I will publish some links to the full results in a month or two, although the real target for ending the project is March 1, the 180th anniversary of the first records. Before that, I happen to have some data from Providence, RI to cover the 1830s, and some overlap with Toronto in 1840, from which it appears that the temperatures are quite similar if perhaps a day later in their arrival at Providence compared to Toronto. That probably wasn't always the case, but it seemed to be working that way in March,  1840 which oddly enough started out with record warmth in what turned out to be quite a cold year generally. 

The recent records for your interest are

Nov 12 ____ 16 F ___ breaks 17 F from 1894, 98

Nov 13 ____ 12 F ___ breaks 14 F from 1873

That 1873 record was perhaps a midnight low as the record low for the 14th was also in 1873 and was 11 F. The 1873 record lows were also the earliest in the winter season that the temperature went below 15 F which had been observed on the 4th and 5th in 1854. But that quickly escalated to 7 F on 15th-16th in 1933, then progressively lower after the 20th reaching -5 F on Nov 30, 1875 as the absolute low for November. 

The daily high reported on the 12th of 24 F appears to be the earliest such reading, the 1873 outbreak had 26 on the 13th. The high on the 15th in 1933 was 19 F, the earliest sub-20 recorded, but the absolute low once again went to Nov 30, 1875 with a high of only 5 F. The 1880 cold shows up big time also, with daytime highs continuously below 30 F from 18th to 27th and below 20 F from 21st to 23rd when lows reached 4 F. This part of November has done much better for record cold than most parts of the year in modern times, this being the third new record along with 21 F on 8th (1976) and 15 F on 10th in 2017.

The reason why so few records have fallen in the past half century is mainly the urban heat island effect which was already becoming evident in the data around the 1890s and 1900-09 decade. The rate of production of surviving record lows drops sharply after 1888 and even back around 1950 it was just about as difficult as nowadays to break a record, any time that a half decent cold air mass hit in the 19th century there was no city there to modify the radiational cooling, so the records set nowadays are mainly from exceptional cold air masses that have a bit of velocity to get them into the city's core without losing too much of their cold. 

Snowfall observations have become a bit problematic, it appears that two different observation programs are underway (since 2003) and one observer logs temperatures and rain/precip and snow depth, while another one goes to a slightly different location and logs rain and snow in the winter season only. This secondary site usually reports very similar rainfalls and snow depths match the snowfall amounts. So far I have not seen that secondary report and have only the 14.1 mm precip and 15 cm snow depth as guides to what fell on November 11th. That would edge out the previous record of 4.8" on Nov 11, 1933 (which was followed by record cold of 7 F on both 15th and 16th). The 1898 cold was preceded by 5.5" snow on November 10th. (15 cm is 5.9" but as the station has variable water content results for snowfalls I can only estimate that from snow depth). 

Daily rainfall records seem to have decreased slightly in frequency although match random expectation fairly closely (in the past half century). Daily snowfall records have fallen to about two-thirds the expected pace based on 50 of 180 years, but there are peaks around mid-November and early April (more heavy snowfall events than expected at random). The month where winter has been most visibly eroded is February, a lot of new record high temperatures and very few snowfalls of consequence. January by contrast has produced about the usual crop of cold records and snowfalls. 

I may get after that snowfall contest for the forum, last year the deadline for it was December 1st and was extended to about the 10th, so no rush on that. 

I appreciate your excellent write-up. Via early settler reports/stories the winter of 1842-43 across SMI was very early and incredibly harsh. Do you have any indication from your data if those kind of conditions extended eastward as far as Toronto? So little official data that far back. Lansing is the oldest record I'm aware of around these parts, and it stops in the 1860's. 

[RogueWaves]

Had biz in Kzoo Saturday and it was so nice afterwards decided to head west into Van Buren where they only had a few inches of system snow, but took a nice hit with that LES streamer the next morning. 

I'm sure it was more impressive several days ago, as LES compacts so quickly, but it was still impressive for early Nov and gave off that mid-winter vibe. 

 

 

[weatherbo]

Around 20" of snow has fallen so far imby... pretty close to average.  Def enjoying the more normal temps of late.  Wasn't before, and am still not ready for mid-winter temps to settle in.  Some more snow would be nice tho.

[michsnowfreak]

On 11/17/2019 at 9:25 PM, RogueWaves said:

Had biz in Kzoo Saturday and it was so nice afterwards decided to head west into Van Buren where they only had a few inches of system snow, but took a nice hit with that LES streamer the next morning. 

I'm sure it was more impressive several days ago, as LES compacts so quickly, but it was still impressive for early Nov and gave off that mid-winter vibe. 

 

 

 The scenes here this past week were incredible for early to mid November.  Grass is starting to show now, but lots of piles remain.

[michsnowfreak]

6 hours ago, weatherbo said:

Around 20" of snow has fallen so far imby... pretty close to average.  Def enjoying the more normal temps of late.  Wasn't before, and am still not ready for mid-winter temps to settle in.  Some more snow would be nice tho.

 It's just the beginning. What was your peak snow depth so far this season?

[Roger Smith]

Rogue Waves -- about the winter of 1842-43 ...

The Toronto records for some years in the 1840s have either lost their snowfall data or the observers didn't record it for a few winters. It becomes a complete record of both rain and snow after 1848 but there are some partial records for years between 1845 and 1847. Some of this material may be recoverable. For example, old published annual summaries (from the 1950s) gave all-time records that included 12" of snow in October 1844, but this did not make it into the published records or the on-line historical weather section on the EC website. I don't know why that happened, the snow matches the coldest temperatures for October recorded on the same days (end of the month). 

As to the winter of 1842-43, we do have all temperature and rainfall records. I don't think the rainfalls are anything but rain, no melted snow seems to be in them, because in those first few winters all the rainfall reports are on mild days only. There was some sort of almost singularity type storm on January 31st, 1843. Apparently there are some accounts of it in the Midwest, perhaps others reading this will know where they are sourced. I can see that the temperature dropped sharply from that date to early February and the reported rainfall for the date was 2.50" which is considerably larger than any other one-day January rainfall at Toronto. Basically it seems to have been fairly mild up until that storm and quite cold for February through April afterwards. I assume the storm must have been a blizzard to the north of its track and must have had some severe lake effect bands during the transition. Perhaps it had some similarities to the Jan 1978 storm although I imagine it ran more southwest to northeast than south to north. The high for Jan 31 is given as 36 F with a reading of -3 F by early Feb 2nd. Combined with the very heavy rain that suggests some sort of track where the warm sector stayed over western New York, and perhaps part of the rainfall event was freezing rain. With that moisture signal it would not surprise me to learn that the snow side of the storm was also quite heavy and there may have been some very strong winds wrapped around the system. 

There was another rainfall around the 10th and 11th of February with one brief return into above freezing temperatures, after which it stayed around 20 F most of the time with some subzero nights, not as cold as some months back in that era like Feb 1855 which had some days entirely below zero F. 

(later edit)

Spent some time googling the winter of 1843 and the period in question, didn't find much except for this account from Minnesota:

https://www.climatestations.com/minnesota-weather-for-1843/

and also a New York City newspaper reporting gales from south to southwest on (Tuesday) Feb 1, 1843, spreading up the coast to Boston. 

I searched some old newspapers from the Great Lakes region, nothing was available in Michigan, anything else I could find had no references to recent news of any kind and the contents were either political reports, advertising or short stories and poems. However these were not major city newspapers of that period so perhaps a search of Detroit or Chicago newspaper files from the days after the storm. Perhaps the severe period was later than just this one big storm, as evidenced by how the weather was described in Minnesota, certainly the storm in question began the severe period but it seemed to become worse later in February there. 

 

[weatherbo]

10 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

 It's just the beginning. What was your peak snow depth so far this season?

10". Now there's like 3", likely to all go away if the forecast holds.

[OrdIowPitMsp]

34-35F with a cold rain and I’m sure a few stray snowflakes overnight in Minneapolis. Have a dusting up at the office in White Bear Lake.

[IWXwx]

FWA is sitting at -10.3° for November going into today. Even with the next few days being predicted to be near normal, we could still end the month with a respectable negative departure.

[Jim Martin]

 

[michsnowfreak]

On 11/19/2019 at 8:03 AM, weatherbo said:

10". Now there's like 3", likely to all go away if the forecast holds.

 Crazy to think that our peak was just 1" under that, and the non lake belt areas of northern MI are well behind SE MI out of the gate. I It is still one month before the Winter Solstice, but still.

[A-L-E-K]

Quality soaker this am

[OrdIowPitMsp]

All night rainer, changed over to snow just in time for morning commute. 1/2” down in the last hour.

Northern Minnesota cashed in, some reports over 8” already so I’d expect a widespread 6-10” up there.

[Cary67]

1 hour ago, A-L-E-K said:

Quality soaker this am

A preview of the upcoming pattern

[Jim Martin]

[IWXwx]

Somewhere in East Central IN and Central/NW OH is going to score later this afternoon.

[Jackstraw]

Well it ain't here lol.  Proverbial kitchen sink stuff, snow, ice balls, sleet, and rain all falling at the same time for the last hour.

[cyclone77]

Had a burst of snow grains early this morning.

[IWXwx]

Just started snowing lightly here, but GIANT dendrites are quickly making everything white.

[Jim Martin]

 

[IWXwx]

Ended with 0.8" on the ol' snow board. It was my favorite, large flakes and not much wind made for about 3 hours of winter wonderland, although I-69 was telling I-65, "Hold my beer."

[Jim Martin]

 

[Hoosier]

Should be a decent wind event with the Tuesday-Wednesday system, especially post fropa.  Definitely looks advisory criteria worthy at minimum if latest runs end up close to reality.