Winter 2022-2023 Conjecture

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I honestly didn't expect that...wow. lol

I didn’t see anything that would elicit such a response…maybe he was having a bad day and took it out on you. I did that in FB this year lol.

[Snowcrazed71]

48 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

we barely even need human forecasters anymore

I disagree. I feel the local forecasters are definitely needed and add more detailed forecasting options that you can't get from the computer models.

[dendrite]

3 minutes ago, Snowcrazed71 said:

I disagree. I feel the local forecasters are definitely needed and add more detailed forecasting options that you can't get from the computer models.

Definitely in winter. But the models do pretty well during the warm season. I mean it's not exactly critical to the public to have a forecaster undercut 2m temps by 5F in a spring CAD situation when it's actually 45F and rain instead of 50F and rain. We're pretty much at the mercy of the models now since we're not doing billions of calculations per second.

[40/70 Benchmark]

34 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

I didn’t see anything that would elicit such a response…maybe he was having a bad day and took it out on you. I did that in FB this year lol.

Except that's his baseline.

[SJonesWX]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

That's a good example. Honestly, my first taste of how elevation mattered for ice around here, was during the '98 event. I may have said this before, but we tried going skiing during that lol. Nothing was open except Wachusett and I literally almost killed myself there..not a joke.  

In any case, on 93 near the Hooksett tolls..you have a little elevation. That's where I saw the ice building up. Down in Concord, there was no ice that I saw, but then getting north of CON and up a bit, all hell started to break loose. After realizing this was not working out, we went to Wachusett which was caked in ice. Not much noticeable until you get near the mtn towards 1K or so. 

i was driving around MHT during that '98 event. although it was all rain there, the antenna on my car gathered a very small amount of ice. i figured it would be a big event-somewhere

[dendrite]

4 minutes ago, SJonesWX said:

i was driving around MHT during that '98 event. although it was all rain there, the antenna on my car gathered a very small amount of ice. i figured it would be a big event-somewhere

I drove up to Lyndon during it. It was a little icy at my place in Auburn, but we kept bouncing between 31-34F during the 2-3 days. Like Scoot said, north of CON was a shitshow until the Notch. There it was mostly just wet in the trees so I assume we were above the inversion. Littleton area obviously wasn't bad either with the shadowing.

[ORH_wxman]

I remember at 1200 feet in Paxton had at least half an inch of ice one of the days when the cold drain came pretty far south. I think the whole town lost power for a while….similar in Holden. We had a light glaze in ORH at 600 feet where I was at the time…but even up on the hills above 800 feet you could see significantly more. 

[Typhoon Tip]

5 hours ago, It's Always Sunny said:

If there's a will there's a way, especially if you have a passion for something. It's unfortunate that the intensity of college math/physics deters some people with a true passion from getting the actual degree. My program started with like 30-40 people and there were 15-20 of us who actually ended up graduating; it's a common theme everywhere. There are several people on this board that know more than some degreed mets that I know, with the only difference being they're skilled in math, when in reality most of us professional mets seldom use math in our day to day flow.

It also depends upon one's curriculum counseling..    A good college program might assess a student's progress after Freshman year ...and offer different pathways more suited. 

If a student isn't pulling their weight in the advancing applied math aspects, they may be exposed to more media-related disciplines. Lyndon State College used to do that.  I interviewed to go there back in the late 1980s... A friend a bit younger than I went/graduated from there in the early aughts.  ...He started out in media and ended up going more research pre...while other kids opted more communications, with minors in Met.. the idea there to be a TV weather bunny. 

But ( LOL ) I know three TV Mets, and one has a Bachelor's, the other two have Masters in Meteorology.  But I guess that just comes down to the peregrinations of life and how ever opportunities present themselves along the way...blah blah.  

Up at UML ...back in the 1990s that school had no media prep at all. It was entirely prequel to graduate level.  It was intense.  The Senior requirement was to derive Navior-Stokes...free hand.  We didn't have "math cad" and whatever techy aids Millennials now walk and talk with this pathological entitlement attitude as a result.   Lol... ( just kidding Millennials) ... we also started out with 40 some odd Freshman and I think finished with 12 or 15.

I never went beyond that.   I was not a particularly good student.  I also graduated late... like, really late.  So finding some grad fit somewhere felt like a culdesac life anyway.  Things worked out much better as a forsaken Meteorologist misfit neglect, with an unrealized life passion as a circumstantially stuffed intellect instead ...  so yeah waaay better.  

[tamarack]

4 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

There really isn't a replacement for looking at models all the time and noticing what they do in winter storms.

Basically experience. That requires a lot of weenie-ism though as you said. You have to want to look at them all the time or you never will.

 

You can read stuff from a textbook, but it is not always going to help....or you might even get the wrong idea if it's not applicable to our area. I know Chris (Oceanstatewx) and I have discussed in the past on here how reading about ice storm climo/setups in a text book will probably get you into a lot of trouble in New England because a lot of that climo and literature was based off the midwest/plains where the undercutting airmasses are typically shallower....so they all say "the ice will be the worst in the valleys and hold there the longest".....whereas in New England, we typically have a normal lapse rate in the lowest 2000-2500 feet so elevation actually helps in most cases up to that level while a lot of times the valleys could be raining.

In my experience, when the wind direction is north of east, elevation increases ice (to a point - MWN had RA in 1998), but when the direction is south of east, valleys hang on longer, especially if there are hills to the southeast.
Apart from the Gorham to MWN elevational sequence (RA-ice-RA), the 1998 system had an amazing N-S gradient. 
--Northern Maine had 20-27" of 8:1 cornmeal over 5-day period, with temps ranging from singles at Allagash to near 20 at HUL.
--Western Maine mountains/foothills had significant ice but most of the precip was IP at mid-upper 20s and catastrophic damage was avoided. 
--Central Maine and inland Downeast had almost all ZR at 28-32, damage bad to historic, and within those regions, higher elevation and/or northeast aspect meant more ice.
--Southern Maine had a mix of ZR and cold RA with temps 30-35, with some places getting a lot of ice, like NW York County, and some coastal sites little ice at all.
--SNE had cold RA at 30s and 40s.
--NYC and areas nearby had moderate RA at 50s/60s.
 

[ORH_wxman]

10 minutes ago, tamarack said:

In my experience, when the wind direction is north of east, elevation increases ice (to a point - MWN had RA in 1998), but when the direction is south of east, valleys hang on longer, especially if there are hills to the southeast.
Apart from the Gorham to MWN elevational sequence (RA-ice-RA), the 1998 system had an amazing N-S gradient. 
--Northern Maine had 20-27" of 8:1 cornmeal over 5-day period, with temps ranging from singles at Allagash to near 20 at HUL.
--Western Maine mountains/foothills had significant ice but most of the precip was IP at mid-upper 20s and catastrophic damage was avoided. 
--Central Maine and inland Downeast had almost all ZR at 28-32, damage bad to historic, and within those regions, higher elevation and/or northeast aspect meant more ice.
--Southern Maine had a mix of ZR and cold RA with temps 30-35, with some places getting a lot of ice, like NW York County, and some coastal sites little ice at all.
--SNE had cold RA at 30s and 40s.
--NYC and areas nearby had moderate RA at 50s/60s.
 

That is mostly correct for down here too....the rare in-situ icing event with light SE winds or something is when you'll actually see the CT River valley hang on the longest. Usually these events aren't huge though because they only last a few hours and below freezing layer is very thin so accretion is not very efficient.

If we're talking situations where an ice storm warning may be necessary, it's almost always going to be worse with elevation (at least up to a point like you said...usually around 2k feet or so)

[Typhoon Tip]

34 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That is mostly correct for down here too....the rare in-situ icing event with light SE winds or something is when you'll actually see the CT River valley hang on the longest. Usually these events aren't huge though because they only last a few hours and below freezing layer is very thin so accretion is not very efficient.

If we're talking situations where an ice storm warning may be necessary, it's almost always going to be worse with elevation (at least up to a point like you said...usually around 2k feet or so)

Well yeah ... ( sorry not in the conversation) but just look at the typical ZR sounding.  It's I think I read 3,200?   typically..  before the +C's interval

Much shallower and the drops have more therms and you start losing - but it also matter how cold the inversion layer is, too..etc.  

But if the cold layer extends higher, PL start occurring.    

So any elevation say 2.8K might be in the coldest region of the inversion integral, prior to the temp started to rise much above that - so you're getting glom accretion.

[Ginx snewx]

Sticking with 83 here . Think 2000-2001 is a strong contendah for best analog year

[ORH_wxman]

2 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Well yeah ... ( sorry not in the conversation) but just look at the typical ZR sounding.  It's I think I read 3,200?   typically..  before the +C's interval

Much shallower and the drops have more therms and you start losing - but it also matter how cold the inversion layer is, too..etc.  

But if the cold layer extends higher, PL start occurring.    

So any elevation say 2.8K might be in the coldest region of the inversion integral, prior to the temp started to rise much above that - so you're getting glom accretion.

Yeah typically you want to see about 500m of below freezing to start refreezing into ice pellets, but there are caveats which often apply to New England ice events…hence the frequent ice events where the layer is more like 800-1000m thick….if the warm layer is greater than 6C, then you will not refreeze into ice pellets. This happens a lot in our siggy icing events…we’ll be blasting +8 to +10C at 850 while we wedge a cold layer of -5 or -6C at 925 underneath it (translating to -2 or -3 at the sfc…or -1C in the case of 2008, lol)

On the flip side, if you have a warm layer that is merely +1 or +2C, you will have a hard time getting straight ZR and usually that’s a scalp-fest. 

[Damage In Tolland]

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah typically you want to see about 500m of below freezing to start refreezing into ice pellets, but there are caveats which often apply to New England ice events…hence the frequent ice events where the layer is more like 800-1000m thick….if the warm layer is greater than 6C, then you will not refreeze into ice pellets. This happens a lot in our siggy icing events…we’ll be blasting +8 to +10C at 850 while we wedge a cold layer of -5 or -6C at 925 underneath it (translating to -2 or -3 at the sfc…or -1C in the case of 2008, lol)

On the flip side, if you have a warm layer that is merely +1 or +2C, you will have a hard time getting straight ZR and usually that’s a scalp-fest. 

Besides 73.. has there ever been the type of Icestorm that I covet here in NE CT? What I’m looking for is something similar to the ORH storm ? There’s got to be some type of setup that would deliver that here in NE hills. I guess 73 really is the only way isn’t it?

[ma blizzard]

prob nov 1921

[ORH_wxman]

47 minutes ago, ma blizzard said:

prob nov 1921

Yeah that one was very widespread too. Got into BOS and PVD. 
 

Tolland prob came close in Nov 2002 as well but the real high-end stuff was more in NW CT. I think Tolland prob had more like a third to a half inch of accretion in that one. There was another in early January 2005 that dropped similar amounts to the 2002 event in N CT at elevation…we actually had mostly/all snow in ORH in that one with like 8-10”. 

[Typhoon Tip]

4 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah typically you want to see about 500m of below freezing to start refreezing into ice pellets, but there are caveats which often apply to New England ice events…hence the frequent ice events where the layer is more like 800-1000m thick….if the warm layer is greater than 6C, then you will not refreeze into ice pellets. This happens a lot in our siggy icing events…we’ll be blasting +8 to +10C at 850 while we wedge a cold layer of -5 or -6C at 925 underneath it (translating to -2 or -3 at the sfc…or -1C in the case of 2008, lol)

On the flip side, if you have a warm layer that is merely +1 or +2C, you will have a hard time getting straight ZR and usually that’s a scalp-fest. 

That -1 (2008) actually ruined that (or saved it depending upon one’s point of view) from being truly extraordinary. 
 

 

[DavisStraight]

I remember one in the early 70's in my area in December near Christmas, I don't remember the extent just that we had no school and the trees in our yard were iced up pretty good,

[TheCloser24]

I remember January 2009 had a significant ice storm in interior CT that had 1/4”-3/4” ice accretion. 

[Damage In Tolland]

8 hours ago, DavisStraight said:

I remember one in the early 70's in my area in December near Christmas, I don't remember the extent just that we had no school and the trees in our yard were iced up pretty good,

That’s the Dec 73’ storm I asked Will about and what setup we need here to get that again 

[ORH_wxman]

2 hours ago, Damage In Tolland said:

That’s the Dec 73’ storm I asked Will about and what setup we need here to get that again 

I mean it almost happened again in 2008. It was just a more marginal airmass in ‘73. You have to walk a fine line between too much cold (which causes more sleet/snow) and not enough like ‘08 south of ORH. 
 

Usually a pretty epic setup happens once per decade or 15 years and then you have to see if you cash in. We really haven’t had a great setup in a while so we’re kind of due. 12/23/17 was close but not quite. 

[Typhoon Tip]

On 9/10/2022 at 7:22 AM, ORH_wxman said:

I mean it almost happened again in 2008. It was just a more marginal airmass in ‘73. You have to walk a fine line between too much cold (which causes more sleet/snow) and not enough like ‘08 south of ORH. 
 

Usually a pretty epic setup happens once per decade or 15 years and then you have to see if you cash in. We really haven’t had a great setup in a while so we’re kind of due. 12/23/17 was close but not quite. 

I remember that event as moving too fast ... It was in an out in 8 hours.  Synoptic wave with a ZR sounding around the N cyclonic arc. If I am not remembering that synoptic behavior right, I'm not remembering it right.  But, I have seen a lot of those in the past 5 years... where we halted accretion about .1" below warning level, not because of warming but because the event ended. Certainly pretty, with llv pixie dust in the evening street lamps kissing the mood.

Good ice storms require a quasi static synoptic set up .. protracted over days even.   It would be very unlikely ( like a return rate of 1000::1) to observe the coveted dystopian fantasy of perpetuating 19 F while heavy liquid super cooled droplet water freezes with exceptional phase transition efficiency so high it's hard to measure much loss...  fantasy. 

But ..it's about 'making up for it in the aggregate' - and time being a key factor.  Ice storm mayhem enthusiasts should prefer reality, where is more apt to set up 29.8 F with somewhere between (light+moderate)/2  ZR.   And the synoptic features are not moving fast.   

The big ones in history... usually the icing sounding scenario got stuck,  "trapped" in the speed of planetary wave contention. Such that the wedging high imposed a steady state low level input of ( very important!) lower wet-bulb air.    This latter factor cannot be underscored enough, as latent heat of phase change self destructs in-the-bank cold air to 32.1    

There's two critical moving parts.   However a region gets it done with the sounding structure ...that's 1.   2 is the ability to sustain it over an extended period.      As far as 1 is concerned, ...that gets into local studies surrounding topographic and geographic features that augment in either direction.   You're right that around here we have unique circumstance for rather intensely inverted soundings.  The mountain orientation leaving a 'void' from D.E.M. to N NJ ( save for the ineffectually tall Watchusett region), 'sucks' the atmosphere back SW - usually this manifest in the 925 mb as a countering jet ...which we've talked about ad nauseam in the past.   But that jet gets cranking and can impart -4C air in solid slab to the surface, with +8 at 800 mb...and that's actually too much ...you get micro inefficiencies in accretion due to weirdly warm particles, or you get PLs .. either direction depending on how deep the cold layer is.  

Point is, "relative" to a regions limitations or advantages, the over arc synoptic theme has to be compensating.  I think there is a reason why places like SW over the continent are better ...because they don't have to have special compensating synoptics - they're are closer to an idealized flat surface rendering, while being circumstantially situated near the mean terminus of the wintertime polar boundary.

[tamarack]

On 9/10/2022 at 10:22 AM, ORH_wxman said:

I mean it almost happened again in 2008. It was just a more marginal airmass in ‘73. You have to walk a fine line between too much cold (which causes more sleet/snow) and not enough like ‘08 south of ORH. 
 

Usually a pretty epic setup happens once per decade or 15 years and then you have to see if you cash in. We really haven’t had a great setup in a while so we’re kind of due. 12/23/17 was close but not quite. 

Our last "decent" ice storm was 3/7/11, with 2" IP followed by 1/2"+ accretion.  (Eustis had 19" SN.)  I was at a forestry meeting in Orono that day and my wife was house-sitting 2 towns south from BGR.  When I got home about 8 PM all was dark, and the inside temp was off the thermostat scale, probably mid 40s as it was upper teens outside.  Perhaps a side effect of my spinal stenosis (fixed late the next month by fusion surgery), my usual high tolerance for cold was totally absent and I had a miserable night even as the Jotul was warming the house.

The 1973 storm was one of the weirdest of my experience.  We lived in BGR at the time and the event began with 4" snow then changed to cold RA during the overnight.  The next day RA became heavy with a few IP (liquid precip was about 3" with trace IP), then the temp shot up to 54 in 2 hours and by 6 PM it was 56 with howling SE wind.  Hearing that NYC was 25 with ZR, we called my parents in NNJ and they said it was 15 there with ZR.  At 11 PM we were still 51 and news noted that NYC was 18 so we called NNJ again (knew they would still be awake) and learned that it was down to 9 with IP.

That -1 (2008) actually ruined that (or saved it depending upon one’s point of view) from being truly extraordinary. 

Either that and/or a much thinner layer of <32 saved us in 2008.  We had similar precip, about 2.2" after switching from SN, at similar temps (30-31) but only 1/4" accretion.  For about 3 hours RA was heavy - probably well more than half that 2.2" fell during that period.

[sebastiaan1973]

Is this okay for you guys? For us, in western Europe this is terrible. Glosea (UK)

[sebastiaan1973]

Other form

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, sebastiaan1973 said:

Other form

No, it sucks here, too.....it goes wild with la nina....that's why that monster Aleutian ridge is so flat.

[MJO812]

 

[Great Snow 1717]

On 9/9/2022 at 8:38 PM, ma blizzard said:

prob nov 1921

The ice storm of 1898 would rank as one of the worse in CT history. If my memory is serving me well, I believe the greatest impacts were in western and northwestern CT

[ORH_wxman]

5 minutes ago, Great Snow 1717 said:

The ice storm of 1898 would rank as one of the worse in CT history. If my memory is serving me well, I believe the greatest impacts were in western and northwestern CT

Mostly confined to Litchfield county...so I don't think it can be considered in the same league as a storm like 1921. It was pretty devastating where it stayed ice though....just not a huge area like some other storms.

[Great Snow 1717]

7 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Mostly confined to Litchfield county...so I don't think it can be considered in the same league as a storm like 1921. It was pretty devastating where it stayed ice though....just not a huge area like some other storms.

As I mentioned I was going off of my memory...I recall reading about the storm but it has been a while. I'd have to through the 2-volume set of Early American Winters to find any other significant ice storms in CT.