January/February Mid/Long Range Disco IV: A New Hope

[jayyy]

We can only look back so far in time where records are kept…maybe 1610-1634 was a bad stretch of winters that was part of a normal cycle…we don’t know.  

Bingo


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[Jebman]

I want you guys to get a lot of snow SO BAD. I used to live there. I know how it feels.

[Ji]

Not giving up on winter. We're probably tracking stuff post feb 15. Anyone know how much snow we had in 2014-15 heading into mid Feb? I feel like we'll get some high latitude help soon

[CAPE]

22 minutes ago, Ji said:

Not giving up on winter. We're probably tracking stuff post feb 15. Anyone know how much snow we had in 2014-15 heading into mid Feb? I feel like we'll get some high latitude help soon

Rolling the currently advertised pattern on the EPS forward, the latest edition of the weeklies brings this look for the last week of Feb.

[Ralph Wiggum]

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

Rolling the currently advertised pattern on the EPS forward, the latest edition of the weeklies brings this look for the last week of Feb.

So a deep west coast trough and a muted SE ridge that will flex as we get closer. K, got it. Current longwave base isn't going to work for us, period. We can hope we score on some fluke March uber convoluted thing, that's my thinking attm. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

6 hours ago, BristowWx said:

We can only look back so far in time where records are kept…maybe 1610-1634 was a bad stretch of winters that was part of a normal cycle…we don’t know.  

Nonsense. This is the worst it’s ever been. Haven’t you been paying attention?

[jayyy]

So a deep west coast trough and a muted SE ridge that will flex as we get closer. K, got it. Current longwave base isn't going to work for us, period. We can hope we score on some fluke March uber convoluted thing, that's my thinking attm. 

Triple phaser or bust?


.

[BristowWx]

23 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Nonsense. This is the worst it’s ever been. Haven’t you been paying attention?

I have I just don’t want to believe things won’t get better or that we will never have some good stretch of years ahead of us.  Maybe we won’t.  My area was never that good when it was better.  

[anotherman]

33 days in a row of above normal temperatures….I wonder how many of those days never got below freezing. I bet it was 20, at least.

[WinterWxLuvr]

14 minutes ago, anotherman said:

33 days in a row of above normal temperatures….I wonder how many of those days never got below freezing. I bet it was 20, at least.

The base state is 73 was bad too 

[dallen7908]

It's ironic (but only to me) that 1972-1973 was such an horrific winter here because the April 8-9 storm of that year is why I became a meteorologist.  Fond memories of our dad roping my two siblings and I together as we searched for and fed our livestock.  

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/picture-gallery/news/2019/04/09/iowa-weather-forecast-blizzard-of-1973-april-snowstorm-snow-stranded-motorists-farmers-livestock/3415449002/

Hopefully that late February pattern will produce.  Southeast ridges and northeast troughs can produce ... and if I squint I can see split flow as opposed to just a southwest trough. 

 

[psuhoffman]

@BristowWx @WinterWxLuvr but how is this relevant and who is even arguing with these points?

Even if we had records that go back 5,000 years it wouldn't really change this discussion at all because our expectations now are determined by this generations frame of reference which is greatly impacted by the generation before (we get a lot of our norming from our parents and elders) but very little as you head further back in time beyond 2-3 generations.  This is not just weather, its true of everything.  Our expectations in terms of what our life will be like in most ways is based upon the recent past not 500 years ago.  Plus if we did have records that went back 5000 years and we knew, oh we had a run of snow this bad a couple times before and this is just a 1 in 700 year snow drought not WORST EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE PLANET (which no one is saying anyways) that doesn't make this current period any less awful, so what is the argument?

Second, we do know that there were significantly warmer periods in the past.  Judging by what we do know about the climate in Europe and Asia during the medieval warm period its likely this regions went 150-200 years without getting much snow at all.  So lets say we are simply heading back into another cycle like that.  How is that supposed to make me as a snow lover feel any better?  "Oh...its ok that you're not going to get much snow for the rest of your life because it happened 1200 years ago so its normal".  Thanks but I don't feel any better about that.

Lastly, it's not even relevant to the discussion about our snow climo because when we say our snow climo is degrading it is implied we mean compared to what the normal during our recent frame of reference was.  We are not comparing our current period to 800 years ago.  We are saying our snow climo is deteriorating compared to what our expectations were calibrated to which was the normal over the most recent climate period.   It is very possible we are just in a longer term cycle that operates on a scale (like 1000 years) too large to be captured by our current records.  But that doesn't change whether it is getting warmer RIGHT NOW and snowing less RIGHT NOW compared to 30 or 50 years ago which is the discussion being had NOT whether its warmer or snowing less than some random period in history so long ago that no one alive today factors it into their calibration of norms and expectations.  

I know I am an oddball and sometimes just don't get stuff that others do...this isn't meant to be an attack, I know sometimes my posts come off that way when I don't mean them to be.  I just keep seeing these points made and I honestly don't get it.  

[BlizzardNole]

DCA is going to end up about 53/38 for Jan with the lowest temp for the month of 29!  What makes this so bad is the last three winters snowfall totals were 0.6, 5.4 and 13.2.  HORRIBLE

When talking about where to live for retirement I never wanted the Carolinas because I hated the idea of months of bare trees and dreary, windy, rainy coat-wearing weather, but with no snow most years.  We have that HERE now!  I'd rather be in a very warm place and travel once a winter for snow.  [Sorry for bantering]

[Wonderdog]

19 minutes ago, BlizzardNole said:

DCA is going to end up about 53/38 for Jan with the lowest temp for the month of 29!  What makes this so bad is the last three winters snowfall totals were 0.6, 5.4 and 13.2.  HORRIBLE

When talking about where to live for retirement I never wanted the Carolinas because I hated the idea of months of bare trees and dreary, windy, rainy coat-wearing weather, but with no snow most years.  We have that HERE now!  I'd rather be in a very warm place and travel once a winter for snow.  [Sorry for bantering]

Isn't 13.2 inches of snow very close to normal for the Capital City?

[psuhoffman]

17 minutes ago, Wonderdog said:

Isn't 13.2 inches of snow very close to normal for the Capital City?

It is but a couple near normal years surrounded by a lot of awful years makes for an awful stretch. And that 14” normal is already historically low due to the awful snowfall over the last 10-20 years and part of the deteriorating snow climo.

[87storms]

6 hours ago, Ji said:

Not giving up on winter. We're probably tracking stuff post feb 15. Anyone know how much snow we had in 2014-15 heading into mid Feb? I feel like we'll get some high latitude help soon

We were already cookin' that winter by this time.  In my archives, I've got a coating on Nov 26, 2014, several inches on Jan 6, 2015, and a couple of coaters on Jan 21 and Jan 26.  That was a classic, wall to wall winter...this winter has been absolutely nothing like that in any way, shape, or form.

[pazzo83]

47 minutes ago, BlizzardNole said:

DCA is going to end up about 53/38 for Jan with the lowest temp for the month of 29!  What makes this so bad is the last three winters snowfall totals were 0.6, 5.4 and 13.2.  HORRIBLE

When talking about where to live for retirement I never wanted the Carolinas because I hated the idea of months of bare trees and dreary, windy, rainy coat-wearing weather, but with no snow most years.  We have that HERE now!  I'd rather be in a very warm place and travel once a winter for snow.  [Sorry for bantering]

53/38 is climo for places along the coastal plain about 200 miles to the south.  I guess that is largely our future.

[87storms]

To round out the snow we received 2014/15...

Feb 14 - the infamous snow squall that put down a couple inches in about an hour or two.

Feb 16 - several inches of powder

Feb 21 - the storm that didn't have a great track, but attacked a stubborn, eroding arctic high.  Dropped at least 4-5".

March 1 - ice event

March 5 - Few more inches

[Its a Breeze]

12 hours ago, BristowWx said:

We can only look back so far in time where records are kept…maybe 1610-1634 was a bad stretch of winters that was part of a normal cycle…we don’t know.  

I mean, aren't we still technically still recovering from the last ice age?   What if...snowy periods are the anomaly.

Aren't we on basically the same latitude as places like Sacramento, Lisbon, Athens?

[Wxdood]

12 hours ago, BristowWx said:

We can only look back so far in time where records are kept…maybe 1610-1634 was a bad stretch of winters that was part of a normal cycle…we don’t know.  

The eastern half of the country has had a bad winter, no doubting that. The western half has had a fairly good winter. Tahoe has had 330 inches of snow this season, usually all we hear from California is doom and gloom drought talk, but haven’t heard much about that or all the snow this year. 
 

just because we are having a bad winter doesn’t mean winter is over for forever. Doesn’t mean climate change or global warming is ruining our winters for forever. It’s like a broken record in here. Long time reader, barely ever post.  

[WinterWxLuvr]

Somebody please start a new thread. 

[CAPE]

10 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Somebody please start a new thread. 

The gloom and doom is pervasive. It will just engulf the new thread lol.

[Ji]

3 minutes ago, CAPE said:

The gloom and doom is pervasive. It will just engulf the new thread lol.

i create one so we can track all the new cutters

[Wxdood]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

It is but a couple near normal years surrounded by a lot of awful years makes for an awful stretch. And that 14” normal is already historically low due to the awful snowfall over the last 10-20 years and part of the deteriorating snow climo.

Washington dcs least snowiest decade was in the 1930s. Long time ago. 

[psuhoffman]

10 minutes ago, Wxdood said:

Washington dcs least snowiest decade was in the 1930s. Long time ago. 

I think you made a mistake.  The 1930's was bad by that periods standards...maybe if you are using standard deviation it was the worst.  But DC accumulated 182.5" in the 1930 and only 171.9" in the 2010's for instance.  The biggest difference was the median though.  DC had 5 years with over 20" in the 1930s and the median snowfall was 19" for that decade.  DC's median snowfall for the 2010's was only 13".  

[Solution Man]

13 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I think you made a mistake.  The 1930's was bad by that periods standards...maybe if you are using standard deviation it was the worst.  But DC accumulated 182.5" in the 1930 and only 171.9" in the 2010's for instance.  The biggest difference was the median though.  DC had 5 years with over 20" in the 1930s and the median snowfall was 19" for that decade.  DC's median snowfall for the 2010's was only 13".  

Measuring in that snow hole at DCA doesn’t exactly help the median in the 2010s

[Wxdood]

45 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I think you made a mistake.  The 1930's was bad by that periods standards...maybe if you are using standard deviation it was the worst.  But DC accumulated 182.5" in the 1930 and only 171.9" in the 2010's for instance.  The biggest difference was the median though.  DC had 5 years with over 20" in the 1930s and the median snowfall was 19" for that decade.  DC's median snowfall for the 2010's was only 13".  

Weather underground has stats for most big cities on their website, I think they averaged out all 10 years combined. Don’t think they had a median. Good info. Thanks 

[Wxdood]

3 minutes ago, Wxdood said:

Weather underground has stats for most big cities on their website, I think they averaged out all 10 years combined. Don’t think they had a median. Good info. Thanks 

Edit - 8 big cities according to weather underground had their least snowiest decade in the 1930s, none of those cities had their snowiest. 2010s 7 cities had their least snowiest decade, but 5 had their snowiest. 
 

what year did they start using dca for spring obs and data?

[psuhoffman]

48 minutes ago, Solution Man said:

Measuring in that snow hole at DCA doesn’t exactly help the median in the 2010s

It doesn’t which is why I tend not to go back prior to DCA records. But he did so…. If you only start at DCA the trend is still down.

[WVclimo]

12 minutes ago, Wxdood said:

what year did they start using dca for spring obs and data?

The Weather Bureau obs shifted first to Bolling Field in Anacostia in 1929.  Then to Washington-Hoover Airport (near where the Pentagon is now) in 1931.  And then to Washington National Airport in 1941.