Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,603
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    ArlyDude
    Newest Member
    ArlyDude
    Joined

January 2023 Banter


George BM
 Share

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Jebman said:

Paleocene, there is no frackin' need for that hot dog right now. This is a BAD BAD situation for us Texans. Even with a quarter inch of ice, its BAD as hell is hot.

My apologies. My winter weenie is desperate, I'd take a 3/4 inch ice storm. But understood that's not a good deal for Austin. Good luck!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Paleocene said:

My apologies. My winter weenie is desperate, I'd take a 3/4 inch ice storm. But understood that's not a good deal for Austin. Good luck!

Jeb is a welcomed friend, we shouldn’t mind when he shares what’s going on in Texas 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

You should get a heat pump

We had a heat pump in our townhome when we lived in Arlington.  Then we moved to a SF home in Alexandria 2 years ago where we have hot water radiators (propane).  I hated the heat pump - anytime it got cold (usually below freezing which this winter wouldn't have occurred much lol), we'd have to turn on the emergency mode since it'd just blow cool air otherwise.  Our house we live in now was built in the 1930s and this radiator system is so much more efficient.  

I can't even imagine a heat pump out in Deep Creek...the house would be an ice box.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's to hoping. So far, our luck is in. temp is UP, to 34,  we are two whole degrees ABOVE freezing, isolated glaze on a few elevated objects BUT the drizzle has been very light. Dallas has been hit hard by steady frzra all day. Roads are fine so far. There have been numerous instances where rain was forecast and it missed Buda. I am hoping and praying this is one of them! The forecast is still foreboding with one half inch to three quarters inch of ice but so far we've done quite well in the Luck department.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Paleocene said:

My apologies. My winter weenie is desperate, I'd take a 3/4 inch ice storm. But understood that's not a good deal for Austin. Good luck!

Paleocene I hope you stay very safe, and that you also get smacked with about 30 inches of snow right in your own backyard, and that the entire Mid Atlantic gets destroyed by snow as well. You guys are DUE, wayyyyyyyy OVERDUE for several major massive BECS!

What needs to happen there is a slow moving massive Miller A, in a massively BLOCKY pattern, that goes stationary, and the entire Mid Atlantic, and your backyard, get stuck in a snow TROWAL for about nine days. Then a Siberian Express arrives with MORE snow then it just blows around.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll take anything but ZR.  We still have noticeable tree damage from Feb 2014 storm up here.  3/4" ice accretion was average.  Some folks without power for over a week!  It was an absolute mess.  Fortunately it wasn't super disruptive transportation wise as temps did warm enough and pavement temps were close to freezing.  The Jan 1999 storm was worse in that regard.

I will say this though.  When the winds pick up with trees coated in ice the crackling sound heard is absolutely beautiful.  Until the crack has the sharpness of a supersonic round which comes from a large limb breaking and coming right for you! ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Temp in Buda is 30 degrees. There's a nasty northerly breeze, laden with freezing drizzle. The entire back deck has become a world-class ice rink. Its icing up worse and worse, and the WSW has been extended into THURSDAY morning, and more counties to our southeast have been added to the WSW as well. NWS continues to insist that we will get a quarter inch to three quarters of an inch of ADDITIONAL ice accretion on top of what has already fallen and affixed itself to many surfaces here. Standard radar is showing a large area of freezing drizzle that has no back edge at all. It just keeps on undulating, kind of like the snow shield did on Jan 6,7,8 of 1996 over the Mid Atlantic. Rainshowers are embedded within this large area of FZDZ, and these showers are also freezing on contact. The water in the bird baths is also freezing up.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, nw baltimore wx said:

 Not to mention that if I have learned anything the past 15 years, it's that long range forecasting has a long way to go.

ENSO forecasts are pegging a Nino developing, but they’re always iffy until later in spring. And yes, whether it’s east-based (Nino 1+2) or west-based (Nino 3+4) makes a difference for us, but Nino years in general are reliably our best snow years. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

I am familiar with spring skiing up there.  What resort are you going to and what week of April? 

Jay Peak (our Wisp passes get us comp tickets!) on April 2. Figured we do a day in the water park and a day or two skiing. If you have any suggestions for other activities in the area i am all ears. We have a 5 and 10 year old. I can handle anything on the mountain but they stick to blue/greens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, H2O said:

Even if a Nino sets up next winter there can be another factor that makes it snowy or not. There always is. Nino is just one thing but all things have to play nice to get winter wx here

You are 100% correct!!  Some people pray for El Nino but in truth a Nino can be disappointing for snow in our region.  Looking at 3 snowy winters in my area during the last 65 years, 2 were El Nino's and 1 La Nina. 1957-58: 50 inches snow was a +1.8 Nino.  1986-87: 52 inches snow was a +1.2 Nino. 1995 - 96 at 66 inches snow was a -.9 Nina............  Least snowy 1991-92 : 3 inches snow was a +1.7 Nino,  1972-73: 5 inches snow was a +1.8 Nino.

Be careful what you pray for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

ENSO forecasts are pegging a Nino developing, but they’re always iffy until later in spring. And yes, whether it’s east-based (Nino 1+2) or west-based (Nino 3+4) makes a difference for us, but Nino years in general are reliably our best snow years. 

His post makes no sense because we don't know yet what kind of nino it may be, if we even get one, and he fails to mention that for the southern mid atlantic (south of 40) a neutral winter is even worse than a nino. 

However, if you filter nino's simply by where they are centered he has some nugget of truth.  Purely east based nino's where 1+2 is significantly warmer than 3-4 are pretty awful on the whole and offer us no improvement over being in a nina or neutral in terms of snow probabilities or temperatures.  Basin wide nino's are ok, they tend to be warm but also tend to offer an increased chance of big snowstorms, and west based nino's are the one enso state where we have a very very high probability of cold/snow. 

But his post doesn't get into all that and taken the way he said it, its misleading.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, stormy said:

You are 100% correct!!  Some people pray for El Nino but in truth a Nino can be disappointing for snow in our region.  Looking at 3 snowy winters in my area during the last 65 years, 2 were El Nino's and 1 La Nina. 1957-58: 50 inches snow was a +1.8 Nino.  1986-87: 52 inches snow was a +1.2 Nino. 1995 - 96 at 66 inches snow was a -.9 Nina............  Least snowy 1991-92 : 3 inches snow was a +1.7 Nino,  1972-73: 5 inches snow was a +1.8 Nino.

Be careful what you pray for.

There is variance within every pattern.  But it is true that on the whole el nino's give us the highest probability of increased snowfall.  But if you dig deeper the problem is its really only a specific type of nino, a west or central based one, that causes that anomaly.  East based nino's tend to be warm and just as likely to be awful dud years as an enso neutral or la nina year.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another way we could simplify our struggles recently would be to break out climo down this way....

If you look at all 100+ years or records until the last 30 years or so la nina's were always pretty bad for snow, and strong east based Nino's were always pretty warm.  But we got a lot of snow from both enso neutral and central/west based nino's.  That gave us closer to a 50/50 spread of enso states that produced snow and ones that did not.

However...recently suddenly enso neutral winters have been awful, even worse than la nina's over the last 30 years.  So more recently the reality is we only have one type of one enso state that produces snow reliably.  If we get a nina bad.  If we get a neutral bad.  If we get an east based nino bad.  The deck is just very stacked against us now with less base states that have been working recently.

I think a discussion we should be having is why have enso neutral winters gone from averaging 24" to 12" in the last 50 years at BWI.  That is really the cause of our degraded snow climo.  We lost 1/3 of our snow climo because enso neutrals used to be snowy and now they aren't.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, nw baltimore wx said:

Just saw this picture from the storm down south.  Oh, Texas.

 

image.png.ea6a58c63cb21e764347218b99c9a762.png

So far main roads are not bad. But the deck is an ice rink, you can see ice all over the trees and on just about every elevated object, and the wood steps are very dangerous. I damn near took one hell of a pratfall last night while I was trying to get an ice reading. Light freezing rain continues and a lot more of it on the way. Still expecting Brobdingnagian amounts of ice thru Thursday morning.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, stormy said:

You are 100% correct!!  Some people pray for El Nino but in truth a Nino can be disappointing for snow in our region.  Looking at 3 snowy winters in my area during the last 65 years, 2 were El Nino's and 1 La Nina. 1957-58: 50 inches snow was a +1.8 Nino.  1986-87: 52 inches snow was a +1.2 Nino. 1995 - 96 at 66 inches snow was a -.9 Nina............  Least snowy 1991-92 : 3 inches snow was a +1.7 Nino,  1972-73: 5 inches snow was a +1.8 Nino.

Be careful what you pray for.

No matter what we still have more good niños than bad. Since neutral doesn't work anymore, it's still better to roll the dice on those than other enso states!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...