December 2022 Obs/Disc

[qg_omega]

18 minutes ago, jbenedet said:

Very run of the mill cold here.

12/-1 DAW

Eastport Maine with a forecasted high of 31. Have to head to Savannah Georgia to find temps that warm today. Pretty awesome.

[jbenedet]

You want a make a cogent argument where a few degrees of warming has already made a huge difference in local climate—Buffalo NY. Lake Eerie open longer/later; slightly more instability with the warmer lake temps. These “anomalous” snowfalls will become much less so…

[dendrite]

Even if the lakes stay open longer there will still be anomalous events. The LES season will just get extended deeper into winter. 

[dendrite]

Unless you’re saying there will be more of these events so they won’t exactly be anomalous anymore…

idk. It’s just a lucky year for BUF. A storm and airmass of yore with strong CAA from the SW is perfect for them…it was pretty localized. It happens. 

[CoastalWx]

10 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Unless you’re saying there will be more of these events so they won’t exactly be anomalous anymore…

idk. It’s just a lucky year for BUF. A storm and airmass of yore with strong CAA from the SW is perfect for them…it was pretty localized. It happens. 

Been the pattern too. We’ve had a warm November and December while the west was cold. 

[OceanStWx]

20 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Unless you’re saying there will be more of these events so they won’t exactly be anomalous anymore…

idk. It’s just a lucky year for BUF. A storm and airmass of yore with strong CAA from the SW is perfect for them…it was pretty localized. It happens. 

 

9 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Been the pattern too. We’ve had a warm November and December while the west was cold. 

I could see that being a better argument in like February if Erie remains open. It isn't usually ice covered in December, so these kinds of events can happen if the pattern is right. But if the lake starts staying open through February, you're going to have a lot more higher end events then in BUF than they used to.

[ORH_wxman]

21 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Unless you’re saying there will be more of these events so they won’t exactly be anomalous anymore…

idk. It’s just a lucky year for BUF. A storm and airmass of yore with strong CAA from the SW is perfect for them…it was pretty localized. It happens. 

Yeah double edged sword when discussing LES and climate warming. You keep lake erie unfrozen more often but you also have fewer arctic airmasses. 

[mahk_webstah]

Regarding the bigger pattern, the year can always be a ratter, but there’s also a chance that we just had bad luck, and that we might have good luck even during bad patterns. Now that the grinch is here, it’s sort of like we can bottom out psychologically and then become hopeful again LOL.  It can only go up from here.

[BrianW]

1 hour ago, jbenedet said:

You want a make a cogent argument where a few degrees of warming has already made a huge difference in local climate—Buffalo NY. Lake Eerie open longer/later; slightly more instability with the warmer lake temps. These “anomalous” snowfalls will become much less so…

 

[Typhoon Tip]

15 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

The craziest thing about that is it looked so lame aloft. Obviously there was a reason models weren’t spitting out much. 
 

Though there was one met (I want to say it was Kevin Lemanowicz but it could have been someone else) that came on at 11pm the night before and said something like “there’s one model that went nuts just now and is giving a much bigger snow event for the interior….but it’s an outlier so I’m tossing it out” and he was holding the paper (prob from old difax machine) in his hand and crumpled it up and tossed it off the screen, LOL. But other than that one reference, there was zero indication that the storm would be what it was. 

(Merry Christmas to those that recognize.)

The amounts blew me away ... not the p-type.

I was interning at the time and I recall e-mailing my mentor that the forecast 'tone' from everyone was too warm.  I based that on ( admittedly...) just a 'feeling,' but in retrospect, one aspect the stuck out to me the day before was the ( then) ETA FOUS numbers.

The vertical temperature sigma values were something like +4, 0, -4C, which corresponds to 980, 900, and 800 mb respectively.  

Meanwhile, ...the forecast was wet snow, 1-3" in the Worcester spine...and something like cat paws on the coast.   Ahhh...no.   The other aspect that gave pause was the UVM in VVV column was like +15.    Meanwhile, over my shoulder on the Lab obs monitor the temp was like 39 over a DP of 19. That DPs was interesting...because the overnight RH values in the ceiling levels leading ( cloud level RH...) was < 50% ... in other words, clear overnight.

The whole thing struck me as forecast' too warm.   I'm sort of painting the picture like it was obvious here? But ...you know... 'in the weeds' at the time, things can be more obscuring, I guess.  So as it were, we bottomed out at 19 ( interestingly enough) that night. Then, the clouds came in heavy like chalk board density right at dawn, over calm winds with ( if all this wasn't enough ...), even a modest high pressure N of Maine nosing damming SSW through the region.  Case closed! 

What caught me completely dumb struck was 15 to 24" of it...  wow!  We've had fun talking about this event a hundred times at this point ( haha) but you know, some legends can be revisited I guess.   The snow type was uniform small flakes falling so dense that you could not see across the street, in zero wind.  Straight down mid 20s choking fall rates.   We ended up 16" in Acton...but just up toward N. Middlesex county had closer to 2' ... all of which fell in like 5 hours.   Crazy....

 

[wx2fish]

15 hours ago, dendrite said:

Today's the 25th anny of the 12/23/97 quick morning thumper for NE MA into S NH.

One of my favorites, helped solidify my emerging snow weenie. I rememeber being at school, staring out into <100 yard vis all morning. Teachers dumbfounded over what was happening outside. Busses stuck all over trying to get kids home with 20" otg. 

[ORH_wxman]

13 minutes ago, wx2fish said:

One of my favorites, helped solidify my emerging snow weenie. I rememeber being at school, staring out into <100 yard vis all morning. Teachers dumbfounded over what was happening outside. Busses stuck all over trying to get kids home with 20" otg. 

Where were you living during that? ASH area? They had around 20” there down to Tip’s area in Ayer/Bolton/. We had a little less in ORH at 18” but still ridiculous. The moment i felt a huge bust is when all that yellow and Orange on radar reached us and it wasn’t sleet. BDL had been reporting sleet the prior hour. I assumed the entire time we were about to flip to sleet as it got closer and closer and being happy that we already “banked” like 4-5” for a white Xmas but then it just went insane. 5-6” per hour for prob 90 minute period and then 3” per hour for another hour on the backside of that. 

[SJonesWX]

2 hours ago, Damage In Tolland said:

I bet at least one day is 65-70 in that stretch  Ahhh .. the elusive 10 day away change. Can’t wait !

why so conservative? 80 is possible, maybe even 90

41 minutes ago, BrianW said:

 

Now go back another 50:years 

[jbenedet]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

Unless you’re saying there will be more of these events so they won’t exactly be anomalous anymore…

idk. It’s just a lucky year for BUF. A storm and airmass of yore with strong CAA from the SW is perfect for them…it was pretty localized. It happens. 

That’s what I’m saying. The chances are up. 

[BuffaloWeather]

1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

 

I could see that being a better argument in like February if Erie remains open. It isn't usually ice covered in December, so these kinds of events can happen if the pattern is right. But if the lake starts staying open through February, you're going to have a lot more higher end events then in BUF than they used to.

I agree with this. But the lake has stopped fully freezing over the last few years. What we see is the up and down pattern where we will get arctic air for a few days and then it warms up quick which slows down the freezing process. We are going to see that this weekend with temps in the 50s which will allow more opportunity for LES events further into the winter season. There is not enough data as far as I can tell to prove that hypothesis. For instance, Buffalo had a major LES event in February last year, which would rarely occur in a normal winter due to it being frozen by then historically speaking. Buffalo is getting LES events well into February that otherwise rarely occurred if looking at historical data. Are they happening enough to make it a pattern not a coincidence, I'm not sure about that yet. A few events from last year in February.

https://www.weather.gov/buf/lesEventArchive?season=2020-2021&event=F

https://www.weather.gov/buf/lesEventArchive?season=2020-2021&event=I

[Henry's Weather]

On 12/1/2022 at 9:59 AM, Henry&#x27;s Weather said:

I'm feeling the spirit, so I'm going to make a proclamation (especially since the pope seems to be absent, gotta step up):

I am about 80% confident that there will be significant EC cyclogenesis during the period from Dec 16 to Dec 21. Prior to that, I think there will be a lower impact storm, probably an inland/NNE event (btween Dec 12-14) which forms a 50-50 low that will entrain future cyclogenesis to the east coast, as well as **brings the baroclinic zone farther south**.

I'm not a professional nor a seasoned forecaster, so I only stand to gain reputation or to retain my rank as a member of the "Weenie" class. 

Dec 12th/13th storm:

- coincident with PNA positive delta Dec 10-12

- Coincident with NAO retrograte from Greenland to Davis Strait

- poor antecendent airmass/lack of well-positioned baroclinic zone leads to angst for EMATT weenies

In between:

- renewal of cold

- establishment of favorable baroclinic zone

- establishment of favorable confluence

For December 16-21 storm:

This will be the storm that occurs as Pac ridging that starts near the 10th peaks and begins to disintegrate. Things could go wrong, disclaimers, allegedly-speak, yada yada. I think that this is a period with high potential. If I were to guess storm evolution, I would predict something southern-stream, sort of like a Dec 2009 deal. The coincidence of ridge peaking and decaying with NAO decaying and retrograding is very promising.

 

I accept any weenie tags thrown my way, and it will be fun to verify my prophecy. If the pope is gone, i sorta feel like a deranged and less coherent Martin Luther, yet instead of nailing my theses to the door of a church, I am scrawling in red crayon my manic and redbull-fueled ramblings all over the walls of the hallowed halls housing the northeastern American weather intelligentsia.

Fun fact: Martin Luther was constipated for most of his life. This is another differentiator: my access to diuretics, as hinted at above, sets me apart from Martin Luther in this specific dimension

 

This was wrong 

[wx2fish]

44 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Where were you living during that? ASH area? They had around 20” there down to Tip’s area in Ayer/Bolton/. We had a little less in ORH at 18” but still ridiculous. The moment i felt a huge bust is when all that yellow and Orange on radar reached us and it wasn’t sleet. BDL had been reporting sleet the prior hour. I assumed the entire time we were about to flip to sleet as it got closer and closer and being happy that we already “banked” like 4-5” for a white Xmas but then it just went insane. 5-6” per hour for prob 90 minute period and then 3” per hour for another hour on the backside of that. 

I was in Windham still, so east of ASH. We may have have been closer to 18-19", but I was still a fairly young weenie and cant remeber exactly. I just looked at the old PNS ...Dracut 23.5" and ASH 20.5". 

 

 I didnt have access to radar or anything at school (5th grade I think) and had no clue wtf was happening. I remember forecasts of 1-3", then wmur saying 2-4" as I left for school. It was all over by the time school got out, but a mess. I doubt we ever see a bust like that again, and wonder what today's models would have been showing. 

[Sugarloaf1989]

The warmest temperature I can find right now in the United States is 61F in Los Angeles.  Miami is currently 50F.

[Sugarloaf1989]

This cold outbreak is massive in scale and size.

[WxWatcher007]

13.0/0 at noon here.

[moneypitmike]

7 minutes ago, Sugarloaf1989 said:

This cold outbreak is massive in scale and size.

That's what she said.

[nianticct]

Very very light snow here on the water in waterford

[moneypitmike]

8 minutes ago, nianticct said:

Very very light snow here on the water in waterford

Stay safe!

[wxeyeNH]

Looking at the 12Z GFS for snow.  No snow through 384 hours.  

[TauntonBlizzard2013]

3 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

Looking at the 12Z GFS for snow.  No snow through 384 hours.  

Sad state of affairs.

[TauntonBlizzard2013]

How did North Conway area make out with this cutter?

Looks like at least one more Rainer on the way; maybe even two in the next 10-14 days or so.

If the conditions are crap by the second weekend of Jan we are just going to cancel the trip.

Im not paying $100 a day to ski on a frozen ribbon of snow. 

[qg_omega]

2 minutes ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

Sad state of affairs.

Winter of Yore

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, Sugarloaf1989 said:

This cold outbreak is massive in scale and size.

Reminds me of Jan 1985.

[moneypitmike]

41 minutes ago, qg_omega said:

Winter of Yore

Winter of bore.

[WeatherWilly]

It's accumulating pretty fast on the south coast. RI news completely ignored the ocean effect snow we knew was a good possibility.