January 2022

[MJO812]

9 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Euro is definitely more amped so far for the end of the month storm

Feet of snow for Georgia and rain here

Big change of 0z

[White Gorilla]

Expect the unexpected over the next two months.  That's my forecast. 

[Brian5671]

7 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Feet of snow for Georgia and rain here

Big change of 0z

FL gets more snow than us lol

[MJO812]

2 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

FL gets more snow than us lol

Yes 

[EasternLI]

I'll be interested in the ensembles. That's a legit timeframe which has been mentioned. Multiple models hinting at brewing up something. Keep an eye on that one. 

[Blizzwalker]

11 minutes ago, CPcantmeasuresnow said:

Well I know you must be kidding because yesterday snowman19 guaranteed a torch beginning February 1, like has never been seen before and it would last through March and pretty much wipe out the rest of winter. It's not like him to make predictions like that unless they're a sure thing.

I actually took out all my spring clothes last night even though it's going to -5° here tomorrow morning. Other than his call in December for a torch in January and the virtual end of winter he's never steered me wrong.

Cautious descriptions of a trend are always informative. Terms like "mega-torch, torch on steroids, and thermal cataclysm" not so helpful.

They seem to imply a need to see extreme condtions that would disappoint others expectations...

[Yanksfan]

11 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Feet of snow for Georgia and rain here

Big change of 0z

God help us if that were to happen. At that point let the February torch commence and end this miserable winter.

[hooralph]

29 minutes ago, hooralph said:

Say what you will, but this winter has a sense of humor. Overproducing cold with midday high of 19 at CPK after our warm bust of white rain yesterday.

Teleconnections be damned: I fully expect a Feb torch and a damp miserable spring. This winter has strong late 80s early 90s in Mass vibes to me.

 

Or this...

 

17 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Feet of snow for Georgia and rain here

Big change of 0z

 

9 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

FL gets more snow than us lol

 

[MJO812]

Eps is offshore 

[North and West]

 

When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life.


.

[SnoSki14]

29 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Feet of snow for Georgia and rain here

Big change of 0z

Now watch that verify lol

[North and West]

Some GEFS Members start hitting 60 by the second week of February.        SD gives winter till the 10th.       The Sun-Angle-Boys will join the fray soon too.      But of course we still have that CFSv2 I posted yesterday.     That climate model messed up December I believe---but got January right.      
 
 
 

Our end of month storm has shifted 500 miles to the west from two runs ago and is Sigma -4 overhead---unfortunately with the warm sector on board--- cause it shows no snow and a lot of rain:

The Sun Angle Boys sound like a backing studio band from a country music documentary.


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[MJO812]

3 minutes ago, SnoSki14 said:

Now watch that verify lol

Epo stays negative on the euro

[Franklin0529]

Ensembles ensembles ensembles 

[EasternLI]

This is a fine look at this time. There's room to work with this look at day 9. We take. 

[brooklynwx99]

can’t ask for much better at this range

[SnoSki14]

Just now, brooklynwx99 said:

can’t ask for much better at this range

Personally I think a miss is more likely than what the Euro op shows. The trough is pretty far east. 

[romba]

10 minutes ago, Franklin0529 said:

Ensembles ensembles ensembles 

Except for this winter, smart money this year is unfortunately on the 'no snow' progs. As we saw a couple of weeks back, all the ensembles at 5-7 days, their $ range, were like SNOWWWW BOYYSSSSSS and the OPs, which are supposedly weaker that far out, all said to ef off. Guess who won 

[USCG RS]

Wrote this elsewhere as well

We need to stop focusing on the verbatim outcome at 7 days out. 

1) GFS and EPS are East of the Euro Op

2) Pattern Recognition. Just like the writing was on the wall for the first storm which torched the coast and today's storm which became suppressed to SC/NC/VA, the pattern for this wave is more likely to support a coastal over inland. You have an advertised pattern flip, yes, but in early Feb, not late Jan. Not to mention, pattern flips are notoriously delayed, not normally the other way around. I actually spoke to this weeks ago, patterns are rather hard to change once engrained. They flip, yes, however.... seasonal variability tends to help a lot more with that. 

That being said, the pattern would not support a storm torching into Canada, even if it exploded. You have a very cold and dense airmass preceding this storm with reinforcing shots. I know the Euro wants to just move the HP out of the way, however, this is not how physics works. With the storm a couple of weeks back, you had a stale airmass with nothing to reinforce behind it. With this, you have a negative AO and continual reinforcements of cold air. To think that this can just cut into that is just not taking into account physics. WAA is a killer, but only when you have retreating cold air, not when you have entrenched cold air. 

For a storm to form -and maintain- you need several things with one of them being a constant temperature gradient. When you have a locked in cold air mass, that gradient tends to be off the coast due to the land having less of an ability to hold onto heat and water having the ability to do so. This is why you see cold fronts stall off the coast and see LP develop along coastal waters - the cold air and warm air meet over the water rather than over land when you have continual shots of cold air. 

Models are tools, not gods. As such, forecasting is using these models as the tools they are. When a model shows something which does not fit the overall pattern, it needs to be seriously questioned. Can it be right? Sure. Yet, as forecasters, it is your job to find out what is changing to support the solution. If it doe not make sense, take it with a HUGE grain of salt. 

Lastly, it needs to be recognized which models are handling the patterns the best. This pattern has been handled the most correctly by the GFS. It does not mean that the GFS is the gold standard, however, it needs to be taken into account. The Euro has had a hard time handling this pattern, and this too must be taken into account. It should be questioned as to why each model is handling a given pattern better than another. Then, use this knowledge to help you interpret. 

Models are tools. Treat them as such. 

[jm1220]

1 hour ago, SnoSki14 said:

Now watch that verify lol

Something not terribly far from that verified once already this winter so why not again? Sun night’s storm dumped a foot of snow in W NC and mostly rain here. 

When whatever this is gets within 72 hours and it looks like a good threat I’ll pay attention. Way too much chaos from the fast pattern this year. Suppressed garbage like today/tomorrow is always another possibility if there’s a kicker or missed phase. 

[LibertyBell]

3 hours ago, hooralph said:

Say what you will, but this winter has a sense of humor. Overproducing cold with midday high of 19 at CPK after our warm bust of white rain yesterday.

Teleconnections be damned: I fully expect a Feb torch and a damp miserable spring. This winter has strong late 80s early 90s in Mass vibes to me.

Makes me want to look into geoengineering to put an end to La Nina once and for all-- especially the multiyear events.

I went back into that simulation and programmed ENSO to alternate between weak la nina and weak el nino with no multi year events and no neutral events and it spit out an average snowfall of 35 inches a year for NYC.  Slowing down the gulf stream by 30 pct on top of that raised that average to 40 inches.  Time to put an end to these multiyear la nina events once and for all.

[LibertyBell]

2 hours ago, Blizzwalker said:

Cautious descriptions of a trend are always informative. Terms like "mega-torch, torch on steroids, and thermal cataclysm" not so helpful.

They seem to imply a need to see extreme condtions that would disappoint others expectations...

He doesn't want it in summer though so I would love to see an endless 100 plus summer torch

 

NOW that would be a real torch instead of a weaksauce 60 degree winter "torch"

[LoboLeader1]

Currently 18 here after topping at 20 today.

[donsutherland1]

A cold and dry weekend lies ahead. Overnight and tomorrow, a storm will move offshore well to the south and east of the region. No precipitation is likely.

Next week will feature a continuation of generally colder than normal temperatures. A strong cold shot is likely around midweek. Afterward, the cold will likely ease.

A pattern change toward persistent milder conditions could begin to evolve during the first week of February. The extended range of the EPS already shows the start of a warming trend in the closing days of January, so the timing remains somewhat uncertain. Moreover, the currently forecast drop in the AO, should it verify, provides additional uncertainty.

The PNA is positive and is likely to remain positive through at least January 27th. A positive PNA is associated with more frequent snowfalls in the Middle Atlantic region. However, big snowfalls typically occur when the AO is negative.

The ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly was -0.4°C and the Region 3.4 anomaly was -0.8°C for the week centered around January 12. For the past six weeks, the ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly has averaged -1.20°C and the ENSO Region 3.4 anomaly has averaged -1.03°C. La Niña conditions will likely persist through meteorological winter.

The SOI was +6.46 today.

The preliminary Arctic Oscillation (AO) was +1.135.

On January 19 the MJO was in Phase 6 at an amplitude of 0.399 (RMM). The January 18-adjusted amplitude was 0.365 (RMM).

Based on sensitivity analysis applied to the latest guidance, there is an implied 97% probability that New York City will have a colder than normal January (1991-2020 normal). January will likely finish with a mean temperature near 30.5° (3.2° below normal).

 

[EasternLI]

Gfs trying to cook up something at 18z again for same timeframe. H5 is loaded. 

[Nibor]

26 minutes ago, EasternLI said:

Gfs trying to cook up something at 18z again for same timeframe. H5 is loaded. 

GFS and Euro agree on some sort of storm in the timeframe. Similar evolution. Worth watching.

[EasternLI]

3 minutes ago, Nibor said:

GFS and Euro agree on some sort of storm in the timeframe. Similar evolution. Worth watching.

Yes, it's a valid period with some PNA amplification. All models showing some potential. Def worth watching. 

[MJO812]

Watch the Tuesday event 

[wdrag]

If we get any more threadable events the remainder of Jan (25-26? 29-31?) it will have to have GGEM support. Tough to beat the conservative GGEM.  Keeping an eye on things. 

[bluewave]

9 hours ago, Volcanic Winter said:

I’ve often tried to research weather reports from the LIA (Little Ice Age) and the magnitude of the cold during the worst winters of that period I can’t even fathom, and I’ve no idea how modern people today would adjust. It was just such a different climate back then. 
 

Despite my name I don’t subscribe fully to the notion that the LIA was “caused” by large scale volcanism, rather it was enhanced in certain years. Even very large eruptions haven’t conclusively been proven to impact the climate for a period longer than a decade at the extreme end. The LIA was just a very cold oscillation that got punctuated by additional forcings. 
 

Regardless, I routinely daydream about what that period would’ve been like in our area. 
 

(If stuff like this is better served in the banter thread please ignore, I’m still a bit new here and this is quite a slow period). 

From all the historical accounts, the winter of 1779-1780 was the coldest winter on record during that era. 

https://www.nps.gov/morr/learn/education/classrooms/upload/HARD-WINTER-P.pdf

ALL REPORTS INDICATE THAT THE WINTER OF 1779-80 IS THE WORST WINTER EVER KNOWN IN THE NORTHEAST UNITED STATES
David M. Ludlum in his book Early American Winters 1604-1820, in the chapter on “The Hard Winter of 1779- 80” writes that it was“the most hard difficult winter....that ever was known by any person living. There has been only one winter in recorded American history during which the waters surrounding New York City have frozen over and remained closed to all navigation for weeks at a time...the Hard Winter of 1780.”
According to Ludlum, January 1780 rated as the most persistently cold calendar month in the history of the eastern United States and “The severity of the 1780 season reached all parts of the colonies Reports from Maine southward along the seaboard to Georgia, and from Detroit down through the interior waterways to New Orleans, all chronicled tales of deep snow, and widespread suffering.”
Ludlum believed that his research definitely showed that the season of 1779-80 in the eastern United States well deserved  the name given to it by the people that experienced its effects....The Hard Winter

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS SUPPORT THIS BELIEF
William Smith (a loyali<t living in New York City) record< in his diary that on January 16, 1780, people were walking across the frozen Hudson River from New York to Paulus Hook (today Jersey City) New Jersey.
A Hessian <oldier, Johann Dohla recorded in hi< diary on January 30, “The North (Hudson) and East rivers were frozen solid. The ice was checked and found to be eighteen feet thick. All ships  were frozen in, and it was possible to cross over the North (Hudson) River on foot, riding or driving, without fear.” Later, (on February 22) Dohla wrote “Today the North River ice began to break, after having been frozen for nearly seven weeks.” A German officer, Major Baurmei<ter wrote, “The severe winter covered the North River with ice early in January; even where the current of the rivers <wifte<t, the ice was eleven feet thick, in spite of the fact that it is 1,800 yard< wide between Fort George (today Battery Park, New York City) and Powles Hook.”
February 1780 seems to have been even colder: On February 10, William Smith mentionsin his diary that a few days earlier a “24 Pounder” (that i<, a cannon that fired a solid ball weighing 24 pounds—the entire cannon weighed three tons) was rolled across the Hudson  River to PaulusHook (today part of Jersey City, New Jersey.) Smith goes on to say that even a heavy load as this  it

made no impression on the ice. On the night of February 10th, Smith heard that four to five hundred British cavalry rode their horses across the river
IIIIIIIIIII
MANY ACCOUNTS MENTION UNPRECEDENTED CONDITIONS
A teacher in Yale College (New Haven, Connecticut) recorded approximately twenty days with snowfall, and a total of 95 inches of snow that winter. People walked across the Sound from Stanford, Connecticut to Long Island . Others walked from Rhode Island mainland to Block Island. Chesapeake Bay and the York River in Virginia froze over for the first time since Europeans settled there. Many people mentioned in letters that
they could not remember a winter as bad.