January 2023

[eduggs]

CMC offers some hope for the end of week event, but I think it's going to be really hard to keep that one south of us. The ULL and primary are headed to the Lakes come hell or high water. Starting to lose hope that we get lucky for that one.

[USCG RS]

4 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Torch has to be 70 or higher.  50's is still just lukewarm at best.

 

The saving grace to this winter is heating oil. In October/November the Energy and Emergency Management community were preparing for the worst, including an inability of the average person to afford it while also being concerned about the need for rolling electric blackouts due to a lack of supply. 

Thankfully, the rather mild winter has negated this threat for the most part. 

2 hours ago, lee59 said:

Storm offshore tomorrow keeps inching a little closer. Looks like eastern Long Island may get something. Southeastern New England looks to get accumulating snow.

Yeah.. I don't think Central Suffolk and east should sleep on this 

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

Is our area more vulnerable to this ridging than other parts of the world at the same latitude?

 

I would argue in some ways yes and here's why: our area, LI especially, is directly abutting the water. All snow for us is essentially thread the needle, even in a great pattern (of course there are always exceptions). The WAR forces warm air towards the island without much to subdue it. Ie, southerly winds or pushing an LP too close to LI/SE CT/NYC is a recipe for disaster because of our proximity to the water.

There is, of course, a flip side to this. The WAR causes a plethora of baroclynicity and this can really benefit the area when the gradient is in the right location. 

1 hour ago, EastonSN+ said:

Now if we want to talk about not looking at modeling and turning to our environment...

One MET in the NE forum went against the models and said that since certain birds were still around it would be a warm winter. Amazingly he turned out right.

My dad who is 82 and has seen many winters told me in December that he was not changing the oil in his snow thrower as he had a feeling it was going to be a dud winter. Has seen this before. This was back in early December.

I am not a nature person, but makes you wonder.....

Humans are still more intuitive than machines when they listen to themselves. For now, anyway 

12 minutes ago, eduggs said:

I suppose it's possible  I'm in favor of anything that brings us snow.

Raindrops and snowflakes need nuclei - usually dust particles - to crystallize around and transfer vapor into the solid phase. I believe salt particularly near coastal regions, e.g., LI, coastal SNE, are very efficient at facilitating crystallization. My guess is this would promote flurries vs. drizzle but it's possible it could allow precipitation to form below the normal crystallization zone. 

Ya know... The USSR used to seed and play with salt for wx purposes... 

[eduggs]

So far this winter feels relatively active for such a snowless winter. In my memory a lot of our dud winters have long dry periods. The reason being that typically in Jan we can sneak an inch or two on the front end or back end.

[nycwinter]

snow flurries today and will be in the 20's tonight so that stretch is over...

[eduggs]

6 minutes ago, nycwinter said:

snow flurries today and will be in the 20's tonight so that stretch is over...

We're celebrating snow flurries on an above freezing, mid-January day 

I sure wish I had flurries here in NJ

[snowman19]

CMC offers some hope for the end of week event, but I think it's going to be really hard to keep that one south of us. The ULL and primary are headed to the Lakes come hell or high water. Starting to lose hope that we get lucky for that one.

That may start as some sleet but I agree, that probably is mostly a rain event. The midlevels torch very quickly. If there was a legit 50/50 low or a -NAO that would be a totally different story

[MJO812]

The friggin trough keeps digging over and over again in the west .

 

 

 

So annoying

[winterwx21]

11 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

The friggin trough keeps digging over and over again in the west .

 

 

 

So annoying

Rainstorm after rainstorm after rainstorm coming. Horrendous pattern. 

It's a huge football weekend. I say it's time to stop looking at this hopeless weather for a couple days and enjoy the weekend. 

[Monmouth_County_Jacpot]

3 minutes ago, winterwx21 said:

Rainstorm after rainstorm after rainstorm coming. Horrendous pattern. 

It's a huge football weekend. I say it's time to stop looking at this hopeless weather for a couple days and enjoy the weekend. 

Watch spring will be cool and wet again 

[jm1220]

24 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

The friggin trough keeps digging over and over again in the west .

 

 

 

So annoying

Yyyyyyep. That’s why I’m happy it’s at least not pointlessly cold. If snow isn’t happening at least it’s tolerable outside. Cutters to frigid to cutters is the worst. 

[wdrag]

1 hour ago, eduggs said:

I didn't see any models with measurable today - could have missed it though. Although I did notice the HRRR indicating flurries tonight. Glancing at soundings, the snow looks to be forming at a low level. Maybe models were assuming no crystallization at those temperatures. It could be the salt nuclei facilitating snow growth and crystallization. Hopefully flurries/snow showers continue all day into tomorrow.

Hi!  Please go back to the 06z/RGEM northeast region and lock on to 10/15z. Then go back 10 prior cycles for this 10z/14 time. Impressive?  Note also you can do the same with total snowfall though that incorporates the entire time from init.  Hope this is useful. 

I agree about low level... temp initializing from about 0 to -7 in the layer at or below 700MB which is nearly saturated.  Bottom line, problematic modeling by most models, for something that has caused icy spots in CT and apparently Poconos.  We have a ways to go on modeling.  Fact that HRRR caught on very-very late, I think is partly due to obs/radar?

[MJO812]

16 minutes ago, Monmouth_County_Jacpot said:

Watch spring will be cool and wet again 

Most likely 

[Dark Star]

46 minutes ago, eduggs said:

We're celebrating snow flurries on an above freezing, mid-January day 

I sure wish I had flurries here in NJ

Had them in Garwood NJ (central Union County) on and off.  Woke up to a slight dusting...

[Stormlover74]

If we don't go below freezing tomorrow or Monday may have to wait til the 29th when the gfs sends us into the ice box

[Stormlover74]

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

we don't get many sidewinders anymore do we?

 

also what's a stemwinder? same thing?

 

omg its snowing now and the sun is out at the same time

 

big flakes looks like bird feathers slowly falling from the skies and the birds seem to love it too lol

 

 

 

 

 

 

@stemwinder would probably know

 

[Big Jims Videos]

Walked to a phenomenal brunch on the lower east side today. Flurries. Second time I saw snow this "winter." GFS showing 5 cutters. Looking forward to my Florida and Caribbean adventures in February at this point.  

[SnoSki14]

1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

Most likely 

If there's a Nino influence then spring may be quite pleasant 

[Allsnow]

11-15 day really pumping the Aleutian ridge 

[Brian5671]

4 minutes ago, Allsnow said:

11-15 day really pumping the Aleutian ridge 

Too far west to do us any good-that's a cutter pattern...

[psv88]

Snow!

[snowman19]

11-15 day really pumping the Aleutian ridge 

Yea. Textbook La Niña pattern to start February. The upcoming eastern IO and Maritime Continent forcing supports it too. That look has the typical February tropical convective forcing you normally see in Nina’s

[snowman19]

Too far west to do us any good-that's a cutter pattern...

Anytime you have a +NAO along with a -PNA/SE ridge pattern you are going to have a very high risk of cutters and inland runners. You may be able to thread the needle with a transient strong 50/50 low to act as a pseudo block and create confluence in that setup, but it takes some good luck and timing

[Brian5671]

Just now, snowman19 said:

Anytime you have a +NAO along with a -PNA/SE ridge pattern you are going to have a very high risk of cutters and inland runners. You may be able to thread the needle with a transient strong 50/50 low to act as a pseudo block and create confluence in that setup, but it takes some good luck and timing

We're down to hoping for a fluky storm like some of our worst winters had.....this one is DOA-last night's Euro EPS going to what the GFS has was the final nail...

[Rtd208]

I am curious to see what Larry Cosgrove has to say in his weekly newsletter tonight because he has been less then stellar so far this winter IMO. But its been a tough winter for the seasonal, long term forecast meteorlogists out there. 

[Stormlover74]

2 minutes ago, Rtd208 said:

I am curious to see what Larry Cosgrove has to say in his weekly newsletter tonight because he has been less then stellar so far this winter IMO. But its been a tough winter for the seasonal, long term forecast meteorlogists out there. 

All week he's been saying winter's returning to the east in a couple weeks

[Rtd208]

1 minute ago, Stormlover74 said:

All week he's been saying winter's returning to the east in a couple weeks

I have a hard time buying that.

[Allsnow]

19 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

Too far west to do us any good-that's a cutter pattern...

Any type of ridge in that location will be bad for us. Gefs did a good job with this as the other ensembles wanted to bring the cold east 

[snowman19]

I have a hard time buying that.

Larry has been real bad this entire winter. He’s been saying winter is going to lock into the east and we’re going to have a locked in +PNA/-EPO/-AO/-NAO pattern since November. He was calling for a 95-96 type winter. Even is recently as 2 days ago he was saying the east was going to flip to deep winter and get cold and snowy. He won’t budge either, real stubborn, this is the 3rd month in a row he’s been wrong

[Roger Smith]

People have been discussing Jan 1932, which is currently the top January at both NYC and Toronto by the way. There was a very deep trough over the west coast during the warmest part of that month (around now), while records were falling in the east, snow was falling at low elevations in Los Angeles, one of their rare measurable snowfalls near sea level was reported. 

The month (Jan 1932) was the tail end of a long stretch of anomalous warmth, Nov 1931 ranks quite high also, with a particularly warm spell around 18th to 23rd. Sep 1931 had a brutal heat wave in the second week, after a relatively warm summer. So the anomaly in Jan 1932 didn't come out of the blue. 

I had a look at some other Canadian data. Unfortunately few arctic Canada weather stations were up and running before 1945. Calgary AB had a relatively mild January, the only cold weather was during the interval around the Los Angeles snowfall, and the last four days of the month which was probably a precursor of the later shift in eastern regime which stayed mild in early February and transitioned to a cold March-April. Other than those two spells the temperature was indicative of weak chinook conditions that occur in patterns like the one we are now in, highs in the 5-10 C range rather than the 10-15 C of a strong high-amplitude ridge chinook. I think this indicates the western trough was a cutoff low over the desert southwest region much of the time.

At Winnipeg MB it was relatively mild also, except for the last four days. Combined with Calgary, this would indicate an absence of strong arctic air mass penetration of any part of west-central southern Canada. The lowest temperature at Winnipeg before the colder last four days was -20 F which is not very cold for that location over snow covered ground. There was about 8" of snow during the colder mid-month spell which is a bit more than Calgary saw, while it was snowing in the southwestern U.S. Before that started though it was above freezing around the 11th-12th. 

There are some data for Cambridge Bay in the western arctic islands. Those show a fairly normal January (mostly -30s F) with deeper cold (-45 to -50 F) by end of the month. That cold intensified in February with the coldest reading of the winter -56F (-49C) on the 9th. 

Then on the east coast of Canada, Halifax had basically the same pattern as NYC, except that there were two or three occasions with indications of the storm track running between there and Boston, for example 9" of snow on the 10th, before the warm spell mid-month. Toronto while staying very mild almost all the time, started the month with a large dump of snow followed by a heavy rainfall. The month is also the wettest January for Toronto, mostly rain other than that first day event. 

Overall, I would picture the upper level regime as being a strong ridge near 70W, probably a cutoff low southeast of Newfoundland, and out west a cut off low near southern Nevada and a fast flow inland from the Pacific across southern Canada with confluence of subarctic and polar jet streams near Lake Superior. 

On the other hand, very mild Jan 1950 had a different component in the west, rather than the cutoff low, there was a strong full latitude trough full of record cold arctic air. Jan 1950 is the coldest month in weather records of any length for most locations west of Winnipeg. It was about 12 degrees below normal in most of Alberta and BC and holds all-time records that are far lower than second place values at many weather stations, also it had two or three cracks at those. The winter of 1950 was so severe that it destroyed the local fruit growing industry in several regions of inland southern BC and in some of those it never returned (orchards around Creston BC where the Kootenai River enters Canada from the US were wiped out, the damage done in the Okanagan valley further west was eventually overcome and that region now has all the fruit production). Prince George BC dropped to -50F in that spell and it was below -40 in most of Alberta. Snow and arctic cold extended out to the coast all month and Vancouver had its lowest reading of 0 deg F. 

 

[bkviking]

Snow flurries in Port Jefferson , LI.