Winter 2020-2021

[ORH_wxman]

If it’s snow on top of deep snow, that’s pretty normal. Happened down here in huge snow pack winters like 2011 and 2015. Though I’d nitpick and say it looks like depth got up to 61.5” so that’s a 25.5” increase in a 47” fall...that last 2.5” on 3/2 was probably putrid with the disc of the sun showing and a rotted out airmass...I remember it just circulating like a spring wheel-o-rhea with no cold left at all.

Its when you get like 24” of LES fluff on bare ground and it’s 8” a couple days later is when it’s “fake”...and then vaporizes in 2 days when the temps reach 40-45F. 

[FPizz]

54 minutes ago, Fozz said:

Wasn't that storm more of a bust for the mid-Atlantic? It was supposed to be a big one in DC/Baltimore, probably 8-12" or so, but then it bypassed us completely while NYC and Philly ended the millennium with a major storm.

I'm guessing up this way it may have tracked too close and become a rainer. It was a very compact storm.

Where I was in NJ by Rutgers I think we got around 7" from this storm. 

[CoastalWx]

Just now, FPizz said:

Where I was in NJ by Rutgers I think we got around 7" from this storm. 

I think that is a different storm there. We meant 12/30/00.

[FPizz]

3 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I think that is a different storm there. We meant 12/30/00.

Correct thanks, I had the wrong year.  12/30/00 locally had around 18-22" from that storm. 

[powderfreak]

35 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

If it’s snow on top of deep snow, that’s pretty normal. Happened down here in huge snow pack winters like 2011 and 2015. Though I’d nitpick and say it looks like depth got up to 61.5” so that’s a 25.5” increase in a 47” fall...that last 2.5” on 3/2 was probably putrid with the disc of the sun showing and a rotted out airmass...I remember it just circulating like a spring wheel-o-rhea with no cold left at all.

Its when you get like 24” of LES fluff on bare ground and it’s 8” a couple days later is when it’s “fake”...and then vaporizes in 2 days when the temps reach 40-45F. 

I’m just joking, those fake things always crack me up.  Still busted out some decent ratios on the second half of that for how wet the atmosphere was.

That was a crazy elevation storm... I think we only got 20” in Stowe Village whole the mountain got destroyed.  It was like a 1,500ft and up type event for the big 40”+ totals.  I remember the line was right near the base of the ski area here.  Mansfield depth went from 54” to 102” up at picnic table level.

Looking at Cocorahs, the next closest totals during that to Randolph were actually near Logan11... there are a couple sites next to ALB above 1,000ft with 52” and 58” of cumulative snowfall.  Even a 40” one in western Mass too, but I think snow levels were a tad lower (not much) back out west that way than they were even in NNE.

The Randolph high elevation sites stand out compared to the lower sites.  Inches of rain elsewhere.  That 4.57” with 8.5” snow ob to the south of Wildcat must’ve been flooding rain while 500ft above them got 4 feet.

That was a crazy storm once you hit the all-snow elevation... even back into central NY.

 

[ORH_wxman]

7 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I’m just joking, those fake things always crack me up.  Still busted out some decent ratios on the second half of that for how wet the atmosphere was.

That was a crazy elevation storm... I think we only got 20” in Stowe Village whole the mountain got destroyed.  It was like a 1,500ft and up type event for the big 40”+ totals.  I remember the line was right near the base of the ski area here.  Mansfield depth went from 54” to 102” up at picnic table level.

Looking at Cocorahs, the next closest totals during that to Randolph were actually near Logan11... there are a couple sites next to ALB above 1,000ft with 52” and 58” of cumulative snowfall.  Even a 40” one in western Mass too, but I think snow levels were a tad lower (not much) back out west that way than they were even in NNE.

The Randolph high elevation sites stand out.  Inches of rain elsewhere.  That 4.57” with 8.5” snow ob to the south of Wildcat must’ve been flooding rain while 500ft above them got 3-4 feet.

That was a crazy storm once you hit the all-snow elevation... even back into central NY.

 

 

Once you got south of Phin and Alex's area, a lot of the snow was from the first wave on 2/24. I actually had about a foot of paste from that on winter hill in ORH...then round 2 was like 3 inches of 37F rain, lol.

[ORH_wxman]

This was 2/24/10 in ORH

 

[powderfreak]

12 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Once you got south of Phin and Alex's area, a lot of the snow was from the first wave on 2/24. I actually had about a foot of paste from that on winter hill in ORH...then round 2 was like 3 inches of 37F rain, lol.

Yup same in Stowe down at 750ft.  We got 20” (11.5” and then 8.5”) on the first wave and then rain after, whereas 1500ft and above kept piling up snow day after day.

The higher els looked like the Sierra, caked in rime and like 4 feet of elephants snot, probably what Alex and Phin’s yards looked like too lol.

[Hoth]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

You had 12/30/00 PTSD in the 1/12/11 thread....you got convinced you were screwed. Here's where it starts, but the real melt happens a couple pages later.

 

Lol, I totally remember this melt! I was panicking myself that the dry slot was going to get me. It did for a half hour, but still managed like 27".

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Once you got south of Phin and Alex's area, a lot of the snow was from the first wave on 2/24. I actually had about a foot of paste from that on winter hill in ORH...then round 2 was like 3 inches of 37F rain, lol.

Elevation-related in our area too.  Farmington co-op recorded 8.8" at 420' while the Temple cocorahs observer, 6 miles west and 800' higher, had 26.4".  Heard rumors that 'Loaf summit had about 5 feet; those idiots who went thru the barriers thinking they would ski down the back side were up to their ears in damp powder, the woods too thick to ski.  IIRC, they got the bill for the rescue $$.

[michsnowfreak]

3 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Must be fake snow, look at 50” of snowfall the snow depth only increased 23”!

<duck and run>

*Note I love when people comment on that stuff regarding northern snow.  “They get a foot of snow but only 5 inches of depth between the two days. Fake.”

It's all about settling & compacting. We actually tend to get a lot of powder here, of course we get some fluff and some heavy wet snow too. Everyone talks about how quickly the lake effect fluff settles, and it's very true, but powder does the same thing. You can have 3" of powder on the ground that has more density than a fluff pack, so let's say the next day is cloudy and dry, you might lose hardly any of that depth. But let's say the next day has another 3" of powder, your depth may only finish that 2nd day at 4 to 5" rather than 6", it just now has more water content.  But if that was a wet 3" of snow on the ground, you can bet your depth would be 6". I'll go up to the snow belt of northern Michigan in February when they had months of 40:1 lake effect fluff compacted into one heavy slab of snow. The depth might be 3' with a 5 or 6" water content.   No matter how much snow is on the ground when it's powder on powder it always compacts.  That is why the 2' snowpack in 2014 was so impressive here. It was like walking in ice cold quicksand. I'm a big guy and got stuck in a chest high drift that I had a hard time getting out of when I decided to venture off.  The heavy water content of East Coast snows makes a huge difference.

[backedgeapproaching]

6 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Yup same in Stowe down at 750ft.  We got 20” (11.5” and then 8.5”) on the first wave and then rain after, whereas 1500ft and above kept piling up snow day after day.

The higher els looked like the Sierra, caked in rime and like 4 feet of elephants snot, probably what Alex and Phin’s yards looked like too lol.

Woodford VT reported 62" during that 5 day stretch. Savoy Mass 57". Mitch would have been buried in his current spot if he was there, probably near 60" also I would guess. I wasn't here obviously yet, but I heard it was 16-22" with a lot of rain mixed in here in the low lands of SVT.

[Typhoon Tip]

Starting to see the 'continental folding' effect beginning to emerge more and more in guidance.  What I mean by that is a large, hemispheric -scale Kelvin-Hem. wave effect from huge velocities ripping the mid latitudes and folding over the ridge over western N/A.

In fact, this early cool pop over the next 36 to 48 hours is really part of that, and in my mind is integral in the same propensity ... increasingly more commonplace since ~ 2000 ... lending snow in Octobers and Novembers with increasing frequency. These are exaggerated shots across the bow ladies and girls -

I suspect this is contributing to why we are observing unusually large temperature gradients either side of the mean polar jet, as was in part recently demoed over the eastern front range of the Rockies, in part exaggerated/augmented by elevation/mountain upslope effects.  With +16 to even +20 C synoptic -scaled 850 mb thermal ridges ridging within 200 km of -2 to +3 C early season anomalies... Doing so at all is not hugely unusual; doing so relative to September climate is definitely not normal.  The Denver 90s to 30s in 24 hours in snow, to these present modeled cinemas of 20C ( GGEM ) over Michigan not three or four days after being -2 C, over that area... these are fantastic roll-out events.. 

But, I don't think it is just this season. I think these sort of occurrences are part of the morphology of the large circulation eddy associated with climate change.  Fast velocity has plagued even the summers - just not as readily observable ( more subtle ..). But all this is/has unusually registered/able R-wave coherency ... and that has been happening in summers since really the super Nino of 1998 ... however much or less notwithstanding. This coherency has lent to early season, western North America exaggerated +PNAP flow constructs, which in turn is why we have seen a frequency up tick in early cold intrusion events in Octobers and Novembers.  This is at the transition where just the hemisphere is cooling ... yet several weeks prior to when the deeper gradient saturation of winter settles/compresses the flow; which triggers the "real" pattern emergence for that winter.  But, I have noticed that we have had a lot of +PNAP high velocity pattern biases.  We dont' seem to really deviate much from that - remove the 2015 anomaly from the data set since 2010, most of these winters in a fairly "smoothed" objective sense have not really deviated their patterns too tremendously obvious.  It would all account for opportunity windows for strange cold incursions in the autumns, that would in fact roll out and swing wildly back mild ... due the expanded HC.   "Packing pellet" virga CU October cold snaps followed by 70s has happened too often since 20 spanning 20 years...some half the seasons.  

It's anecdotal to add the following, but ...in the previous 30 years of my life, if I saw a grapple pellet in October ( May for the matter) it was arresting. Now ... it's like when is it not.  That's enough to trigger acclimation and expectancy .. usually, that's climate impacting at a personal level when that more human response to change can be noted.   

[Typhoon Tip]

So based on all that ... 

If one were to forecast normal temperatures for October and November, ...obscuring and hiding the fact that there were a couple of cold and snow anomalies ... just because interceding air masses were dry and hot, ... Wouldn't shock me.  Yup...totally "normal" October and November - just look at the 2 month totals/N-terms - nothing to see here. Nothing out of the ordinary... Hiding climate change     ...Then, followed by a velocity stolen winter that claws and scrapes to snow averages in between ice events that fall short of warning by virtue of the fact that they can't hang around longer than 6 hours before their structures are smeared and sheared and blown open halfway to England ...Then, we even exceed "seasonal" totals because of May blue bomb on Memorial day in an apr/may combo that is -6 from norms due to the same folding afflicting springs - 

Obviously there's some sarcasm to this ..but...  early and late cool snaps with snow out of calendar climo with an iffy mid winter gradient problem .... too repeating across both NINO/NINA/NADA ... and varying solar cycles... for me to assume these latter as primary in seasonal outlook philosophy.  The empirical results can be explained by early hypothesis/relationship to changes that are already being actually measured and papered re climate change ...  

[Damage In Tolland]

What in the sam hell?

[Snowcrazed71]

1 hour ago, Damage In Tolland said:

What in the sam hell?

So.. What he is trying to say is that some sort if Winter season is coming.

[8611Blizz]

I read this thread hoping to see someone post actual weather related content regarding a forecast for this upcoming season.

 

And then Tip posts and I go back to realizing I'm better off reading about winters past...

[Typhoon Tip]

24 minutes ago, 8611Blizz said:

I read this thread hoping to see someone post actual weather related content regarding a forecast for this upcoming season.

 

And then Tip posts and I go back to realizing I'm better off reading about winters past...

Lol - 

nah don't fret ...  2015's can still happen - just not so predictable... I mean that whole ordeal back during that fateful February was actually even intraseasonal in temporal scale .. The whole season wasn't really terribly below normal in temperature... And as far as snow, I remember remarking in snark back then that for a lot of cases, if it did not snow a single flake for three consecutive years immediately going forward ( which wasn't the case, just sayn' ), than those locales would in fact only be normal snow for the 5 year climate sojourn - 

Anyway, ... I'm just saying in would not surprise me to see similar playout...  some odd cold snaps early and late, with plausible snow chances ...with an extended period or something related to gradient/velocity surpluses doing weird things in DJF proper .. It would be keeping with both trend over recent years/decades, as well as actually fit other empirical based reasons - 

But we'll see...  It's going to get colder as the daylight gets dimmer - 

[MJO812]

Why does the NAO have to go negative right now ? SMH.

[Snowcrazed71]

1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

Why does the NAO have to go negative right now ? SMH.

I'm not too worried. It's already going right back up. As long as the Nao goes negative December through March at least a few times we're set

[dryslot]

Good luck.

[Fozz]

5 hours ago, MJO812 said:

Why does the NAO have to go negative right now ? SMH.

You're saying this as if the -NAO were some limited resource that we have to conserve. I don't think it works that way.

[ORH_wxman]

NAO went steeply negative in October 2009 and basically stayed that way for 15 months. It doesn’t always swing back. 

Those were the days (really up through 2013) when everyone started thinking that NAO blocking “was the new normal”. Didn’t take long for that idea to bust. 

[michsnowfreak]

8 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Lol - 

nah don't fret ...  2015's can still happen - just not so predictable... I mean that whole ordeal back during that fateful February was actually even intraseasonal in temporal scale .. The whole season wasn't really terribly below normal in temperature... And as far as snow, I remember remarking in snark back then that for a lot of cases, if it did not snow a single flake for three consecutive years immediately going forward ( which wasn't the case, just sayn' ), than those locales would in fact only be normal snow for the 5 year climate sojourn - 

Anyway, ... I'm just saying in would not surprise me to see similar playout...  some odd cold snaps early and late, with plausible snow chances ...with an extended period or something related to gradient/velocity surpluses doing weird things in DJF proper .. It would be keeping with both trend over recent years/decades, as well as actually fit other empirical based reasons - 

But we'll see...  It's going to get colder as the daylight gets dimmer - 

So actually one way of looking at your thoughts is that winters in the North will just be getting longer. If we're having unusually early and late cold snaps with snow, that's prolonging the season. In the middle of Winter, even mild and unfavorable patterns are still good for snowfalls in the North, just not solid retention. 

[raindancewx]

Some people asked about me about NE snow and ACE. This only seems to work in La Ninas, but the correlations are not that strong for Boston. Philly has never had a good snow year in a La Nina if the ACE is low enough, in ~14 tries. There does seem to be a soft limit in Boston around 60 inches until the ACE in a La Nina hits 130 or 140 (no values over 60" in 17 tries below 135 or so).

Similar for NYC - no seasons more than +50% for snow if the ACE is under 130-140 (in 17 tries).

Philadelphia has no good seasons with low ACE La Ninas:

Even last week, I was hopeful that the ACE would finish around 90 this year, but I think 95-175 is pretty safe for like a 90% confidence interval, given we'll be ~2/3 through the season end of day tomorrow and around 90 ACE. I can't imagine we'll finish with ~40 storms like we're on pace to do, but we'll see. 2007 had 15 storms and only 72 or something for ACE (~5/storm), so the ~88 for 22 is similar so far (4/storm). I should have had more faith in my tentative winter analogs over the statistical stuff, they had 135 ACE or so for 2020. NHC seems to like to name a lot of subtropical and borderline storms now, so I could see 30-35 storms named by year end, and still around 4 ace/storm.

[Typhoon Tip]

10 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

So actually one way of looking at your thoughts is that winters in the North will just be getting longer. If we're having unusually early and late cold snaps with snow, that's prolonging the season. In the middle of Winter, even mild and unfavorable patterns are still good for snowfalls in the North, just not solid retention. 

It'd be one way ..but unfortunately, not really what I was after  Lol. I sense the focus there is because the word snow was inciting ?

I wouldn't go so far as to characterize "...winters in the North will just be getting longer"  

Firstly the plural use of 'winters' sort of suggest a 'permanency' ... I am not intending to extend winter. You were responding to a paraphrased version of an early post, which lacking context may have sounded a certain way perhaps. 

Just making empirically based discussion points:  We have in fact observed more snow(snow supportive atmospheres) in Octobers and April ( even May ) over the last 20 years, than %-relatively combining the previous 50 years.  I was discussing climate - I'm not sure how one would logically tool an interpretation of 'winter as a season.'  Having said that... I don't think winter as a season is being necessarily extended, no, now that the idea is floated - 

What I originally intimated: the transition seasons are being marred by cold interruptions that are offsetting an otherwise warmer than normal trend, but provided a canvas for plausible-why that is taking place.  But these cold offset by virtue of happening in an above normal rest state, are making for very dramatic variances. 

I am not sure in an objective sense that means "winter" per se, as much as just means a new transition season behavior that's emerged in the last 20 .. particularly 10 years. 

The philosophy over human conventionality vs what is real in Nature comes to mind.  As the ends of season blur those temporal conventions by patterns and sensible impact... it exposes the faux conceit in calling summer summer and fall, fall, and winter winter...when the boundaries are often seamless...  I think of 70F Octobers with two packing pellet virga cu cold snaps fitted squarely into a categorization of no category - Lol...    

 

[michsnowfreak]

15 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

It'd be one way ..but unfortunately, not really what I was after  Lol. I sense the focus there is because the word snow was inciting ?

I wouldn't go so far as to characterize "...winters in the North will just be getting longer"  

Firstly the plural use of 'winters' sort of suggest a 'permanency' ... I am not intending to extend winter. You were responding to a paraphrased version of an early post, which lacking context may have sounded a certain way perhaps. 

Just making empirically based discussion points:  We have in fact observed more snow(snow supportive atmospheres) in Octobers and April ( even May ) over the last 20 years, than %-relatively combining the previous 50 years.  I was discussing climate - I'm not sure how one would logically tool an interpretation of 'winter as a season.'  Having said that... I don't think winter as a season is being necessarily extended, no, now that the idea is floated - 

What I originally intimated: the transition seasons are being marred by cold interruptions that are offsetting an otherwise warmer than normal trend, but provided a canvas for plausible-why that is taking place.  But these cold offset by virtue of happening in an above normal rest state, are making for very dramatic variances. 

I am not sure in an objective sense that means "winter" per se, as much as just means a new transition season behavior that's emerged in the last 20 .. particularly 10 years. 

The philosophy over human conventionality vs what is real in Nature comes to mind.  As the ends of season blur those temporal conventions by patterns and sensible impact... it exposes the faux conceit in calling summer summer and fall, fall, and winter winter...when the boundaries are often seamless...  I think of 70F Octobers with two packing pellet virga cu cold snaps fitted squarely into a categorization of no category - Lol...    

 

You always have a way with words lol. I guess I could say the snow season is getting longer, not winter. But I mean...if youre saying that autumn and spring snows are increasing in frequency, i wouldn't think of it any other way than an extended snow season. Mild to warm winter patterns still produce many snow chances north of 40N. Then again...I don't necessarily agree with your entire assessment anyway so we can agree to disagree. Despite very minimal warming here locally during winter, I wouldn't call anything a trend. Less than 10 years ago we were in a stretch of very heavy snowfall during the winter months but unusually paltry Novembers. Yes the past handful of years have seen some impressive early and late snows but I wouldn't call anything a trend yet. I think some attribute far too much to climate change when it comes to the ever changing weather. 

[uncle W]

here in NY the two best winters of my life have been la nina's...1995-96 and 2010-11...the two worst winters were el nino's...1972-73 and 1997-98...a typical horrid winter like last winter was an el nino winter...la nina has seen its share of clunkers but were colder on average and clunkers were around 12" for a season while el nino clunkers averaged under 10"

[Typhoon Tip]

3 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

You always have a way with words lol. I guess I could say the snow season is getting longer, not winter. But I mean...if youre saying that autumn and spring snows are increasing in frequency, i wouldn't think of it any other way than an extended snow season. Mild to warm winter patterns still produce many snow chances north of 40N. Then again...I don't necessarily agree with your entire assessment anyway so we can agree to disagree. Despite very minimal warming here locally during winter, I wouldn't call anything a trend. Less than 10 years ago we were in a stretch of very heavy snowfall during the winter months but unusually paltry Novembers. Yes the past handful of years have seen some impressive early and late snows but I wouldn't call anything a trend yet. I think some attribute far too much to climate change when it comes to the ever changing weather. 

Part of all that  ?  ... we need bigger sample sizes...sure.   However, this is a bit different than a 'black-box' series of values coming out of a system we no nothing about, and then having to assess the significance of a series of aberrant values. 

We see other systemic morphology lending to causality. Such as speedier flows in increased hypsometric gradients between 35 N and 70 N in winters... As well, taller hypsometric ridge altitudes in summer... These are happening concurrently more so, with the advent or increasing frequency of snow in early and late.  That sort of begs a causal link there, ...certainly suspicion.

It's also counter-intuitive because higher heights should mean warmth...but, the increased wind is causing the flow to tip S over Canada early and late... due to the continental atmospheric bulge being enhanced in the rest-state PNAP.   ...

Anyway, it helps reduce the uncertainty of randomness when a driving mechanism can be identified - even though there's still supposition and theoretical debate there too. ugh -

I just mean there's really no such thing as seasons ... not really.  These are human conventions ... it's what we do as engineering, math-solving and language orchestrating artistic species, we fancifully create 'boundaries' and domain spaces out of reality.  But reality is really more like cloud technology in a sense...

 

[Chrisrotary12]

On 9/18/2020 at 5:17 PM, MJO812 said:

Why does the NAO have to go negative right now ? SMH.

Because the Hadley cell. At least I think that's what Tip told me over in the September thread. I mused about how recent fall seasons from mid-September to mid-November the last few years featured winter-like patterns with continuous low pressures passing near or through the northeast bringing us bountiful rain opportunities which had they been 3 months later would have been a weenies dream.