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March Long Range Discussion


stormtracker
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Eh, 10 year averages are a pretty sketchy way to determine climate normals. So are 30 year averages but I guess it’s what ever definition you want to use. 
 

I know where I grew up the 80’s and up until the winter of 92-93 the winters were very mild and snowless. Yeah there was a year or two that was decent but I remember us talking then about why winters had changed so much. Since that time the winters there have been much snowier and more consistent.

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11 minutes ago, Ji said:
32 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:
 

It all starts with a strong nino

I do believe in that correlation. The last several super ninos (1973/1983/1998/2016) were all followed by multiple year hostile pacific patterns. But at the same time let’s not pretend the larger trend isn’t there either. The 99-02 period was worse then the comparable post nino 80s and 70s periods and the 17-21 period now was worst of all. And the frequency of sub 10” winters is increasing even independent of those post nino periods. So like I’ve said our recent problems are a combo of both. Both a shorter term hostile period coinciding with the continued degradation of our larger scale snow climo. There will still be peaks and wins but imo the valleys are going to be lower and more frequent. 

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3 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Eh, 10 year averages are a pretty sketchy way to determine climate normals. So are 30 year averages but I guess it’s what ever definition you want to use. 
 

I know where I grew up the 80’s and up until the winter of 92-93 the winters were very mild and snowless. Yeah there was a year or two that was decent but I remember us talking then about why winters had changed so much. Since that time the winters there have been much snowier and more consistent.

I’ll have to confirm but I think the 13.8 is the new 30 year. If it’s 10 I agree that’s sketchy. I think 30 is necessary since we know the climate is changing. Anything longer will skew cold/snowy compared to the current situation. 

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^ another fun stat for the past 5 years is that Richmond has surpassed DCA for snowfall 4 out of 5 times. I believe they might've done the same in 10-11, 11-12, and even 12-13 too (I can't find the page to back that up but that's what I remember seeing). So that's seven out of the past eleven years where Richmond has outmatched DCA in snowfall. Some of that has to be attributed to bad luck, but the rest? I'm not too sure. 

So in short, we're a glorified Richmond climate with the caveat that we luck our way into a 20" snowfall every decade or so. Nice lol. 

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48 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I’ll have to confirm but I think the 13.8 is the new 30 year. If it’s 10 I agree that’s sketchy. I think 30 is necessary since we know the climate is changing. Anything longer will skew cold/snowy compared to the current situation. 

I'd have to think that's a 30 year mean, the same type they always update at the end of each decade (e.g., 1971-2000, 1981-2010, 1991-2020, ...).  But would be nice to confirm that.  The other thing is they mention the average from a century ago, which I don't necessarily think is a very fair comparison; the measuring location I believe had been somewhere in northwest DC (near Georgetown??) for some time before the current DCA location.  Though wouldn't be surprised if the average in northwest DC has dropped too.

And holy cow, it just hit me that the early 1990s are now three decades ago!! :oldman:

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1 hour ago, Cobalt said:

^ another fun stat for the past 5 years is that Richmond has surpassed DCA for snowfall 4 out of 5 times. I believe they might've done the same in 10-11, 11-12, and even 12-13 too (I can't find the page to back that up but that's what I remember seeing). So that's seven out of the past eleven years where Richmond has outmatched DCA in snowfall. Some of that has to be attributed to bad luck, but the rest? I'm not too sure. 

So in short, we're a glorified Richmond climate with the caveat that we luck our way into a 20" snowfall every decade or so. Nice lol. 

Part of this is due to bad luck; the other part is that DCA doesn’t know how to measure snow.

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