February 2023

[donsutherland1]

29 minutes ago, coastalplainsnowman said:

Nice pics, Don.  In that second one you certainly have their attention.  

Thanks. They were wary at first and even approached for a closer look at the camera.

[LibertyBell]

2 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

The Northeast saw near record and record cold temperatures this morning, as a fierce Arctic air mass moved through the region. That air mass is now rapidly departing.

Daily records included:

Binghamton: -13° (old record: -4°, 1996)
Boston: -10° (old record:-2°, 1886)
Bridgeport: -4° (old record: 5°, 1955 and 1996)
Hartford: -9° (old record: -8°, 1965)
Montreal: -21° (old record: -20°, 1963)
Mount Washington, NH: -47° (old record: -35°, 1963) ***new monthly and state monthly record***
New Haven: -3° (old record: 4°, 1963 and 2011)
New York City-JFK: 4° (old record: 9°, 1955 nd 1996)
New York City-LGA: 5° (old record: 10°, 1955, 1963, 1978 and 1996)
Newark: 5° (old record: 7°, 1985 and 1996)
Ottawa: -26° (old record: -22°, 1948)
Providence: -9° (old record: -2°, 1918)
Rivière-du-Loup, QC: -22° (old record: -19°, 1996)
Quebec City: -25° (old record: -21°, 1996)
Sherbrooke, QC: -24° (old record: -6°, 2009)
Trois-Rivières, QC: -25° (old record: -20°, 1996)
White Plains: 1° (old record: 4°, 1978)
Worcester: -13° (old record: -4°, 1908, 1918, and 1934)
Yarmouth, NS: -7° (old record: -2°, 1967)

As had been the case during the December Arctic shot in a winter of almost unbroken warmth, the current Arctic shot responsible for the near record and record cold will be a fleeting one. The temperature will rocket toward normal levels and then above normal levels tomorrow. Above normal temperatures will continue through Friday.

The potential exists for temperatures to run generally above to much above normal through mid-month. Both the CFSv2 and EPS weeklies show much above normal temperatures through the second week of February. A storm could impact the region during February 10-11 if some of the guidance is right.

The ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly was -0.2°C and the Region 3.4 anomaly was -0.6°C for the week centered around January 25. For the past six weeks, the ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly has averaged -0.32°C and the ENSO Region 3.4 anomaly has averaged -0.70°C. La Niña conditions are beginning to fade and they should evolve to neutral conditions during late winter or early spring.

The SOI was +19.41 today.

The preliminary Arctic Oscillation (AO) was -0.463 today.

On February 2 the MJO was in Phase 3 at an amplitude of 1.644 (RMM). The February 1-adjusted amplitude was 1.666 (RMM).

1996 was amazingly cold on this date....what a wonderful winter it was, had the big blizzard then a big thaw and then winter came right back in February and lasted through early April.

Was NYC in the single digits back then too? I see JFK and EWR were.

[MJO812]

I miss discussing model runs and the anticipation of the next run.

 

I also miss pulling all nighters

[Byrdhousebv]

24 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

I miss discussing model runs and the anticipation of the next run.

 

I also miss pulling all nighters

I empathize with you. I supose you could bifurcate your passion and place half interest on the Nets. They did have a nice win tonight...just sayin.................

[donsutherland1]

34 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

1996 was amazingly cold on this date....what a wonderful winter it was, had the big blizzard then a big thaw and then winter came right back in February and lasted through early April.

Was NYC in the single digits back then too? I see JFK and EWR were.

Yes, NYC was in the single digits on February 4-5, 1996.

[Rjay]

37 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

I miss discussing model runs and the anticipation of the next run.

 

I also miss pulling all nighters

Go read the boxing day thread 

[MJO812]

25 minutes ago, Byrdhousebv said:

I empathize with you. I supose you could bifurcate your passion and place half interest on the Nets. They did have a nice win tonight...just sayin.................

I'm not a basketball fan

[LibertyBell]

24 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

Yes, NYC was in the single digits on February 4-5, 1996.

I noticed that Quebec has many of their records on this date from 1996 too.  That was some arctic shot!

Straight down the Hudson?

 

[LibertyBell]

4 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

I'm not a basketball fan

Just read about past storms and past big events, in a way it's like reliving them.

 

[Volcanic Winter]

1 minute ago, LibertyBell said:

Just read about past storms and past big events, in a way it's like reliving them.

 

I’m going back to our slant sticked .4 inches and reliving that in all its glory. What a flizzard. 

[Heisy]

00z cmc has the progression that we’d need. Doesn’t phase in the NS, nice hit for you guys


.

[eduggs]

Interesting 0z runs so far. CMC, ICON, and GFS with markedly different outcomes, particularly after 132hrs of so. All three appear more threatening to me than 12z or 18z. And the GFS, despite showing mostly rain for coastal areas, is so amplified that it gets sub 546dm 500mb heights to northern Florida. It also develops a slightly negative trof tilt and shifts the 500mb low center a bit further south. Not much help this run on the GFS, but it's workable.

[Heisy]

Ukie actually looks somewhat interesting at 144 too. See if euro shows changes tonight


.

[Heisy]

Interesting 0z runs so far. CMC, ICON, and GFS with markedly different outcomes, particularly after 132hrs of so. All three appear more threatening to me than 12z or 18z. And the GFS, despite showing mostly rain for coastal areas, is so amplified that it gets sub 546dm 500mb heights to northern Florida. It also develops a slightly negative trof tilt and shifts the 500mb low center a bit further south. Not much help this run on the GFS, but it's workable.

The big help would be if the NS piece doesn’t dive into trough like GFS but runs ahead like cmc


.

[CPcantmeasuresnow]

The closest that I could find was Sussex approaching -30 on 3 days in late January 1994 which was their coldest on record. That was the last of the historic Arctic outbreaks to affect our area. The big ones in recent years missed to our west like in 2021 and 2019.
https://www.wunderground.com/article/storms/winter/news/2022-12-16-most-extreme-arctic-outbreaks-us

Data for SUSSEX 1 NW, NJ
Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending.

Date	Min Temperature
1994-01-20	-16
1994-01-21	-29
1994-01-22	-28
1994-01-23	4
1994-01-24	M
1994-01-25	30
1994-01-26	9
1994-01-27	-15
1994-01-28	-15
1994-01-29	-28
1994-01-30	19
1994-01-31	5

 

Time Series Summary for SUSSEX 1 NW, NJ - Jan through Dec
Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending.

Rank	Year	Lowest Min Temperature	Missing Count
1	1994	-29	137
2	1961	-25	1
3	1912	-24	9
4	1967	-23	6
5	1981	-22	1
-	1968	-22	40
6	1984	-21	9
7	1948	-20	3
-	1943	-20	7

Thanks for this Chris.

So I’m assuming the -26 low in Sussex during the January 1994 outbreak became the lowest officially recognized low in NJ during this time frame.

What I was referencing was my memory of a -32 reading in NW Jersey during January 1994, which is mentioned in the article below. It was in a town called Hainesville in Sussex. I’m assuming now that reading was never officially recognized by the NWS.

https://www.njherald.com/story/news/2014/01/22/county-s-coldest-day-came/4017599007/


.

[CIK62]

The next 8  days are averaging     40degs.(34/47) or +5.

Reached 27 here yesterday.    I got down to 5 for about two hours yesterday AM.

Today:     44-46, wind sw., variable clouds, 40 tomorrow AM.

Not many pages are going to be used here in the next 15 days talking about winter.

Chance of Snow is Nil till first week of March---when it might be BN:

31*(59%RH) here at 6am{was 26 at midnight}.      32* at 7am.       34* at 9am.       40* at Noon.      42* at 1pm.      45* at 3pm.        46* at 6pm.      47* at 9pm.      45* at 10pm.

[SACRUS]

 

Records:

 

Highs:

LGA: 70 (1991)
NYC: 70 (1991)
EWR: 69 (1991)

 

Lows:

EWR: 3 (1996)
LGA: 6 (1995)
NYC: -6 (1918)

 

Historical:

 

1745: Today is National Weatherman/Meteorologist day, commemorating the birth of John Jeffries in 1745. Jeffries, one of America's first weather observers, began taking daily weather observations in Boston, MA, in 1774, and he made the first balloon observation in 1784. You can read a narrative from the Library of Congress of the two aerial voyages of Doctor Jeffries with Mons. Blanchard: with meteorological observations and remarks.  The first voyage was on November 13th, 1784, from London into Kent. The second was on January 7th, 1785, from England into France.  (NWS)

1887 - San Francisco experienced its greatest snowstorm of record. Nearly four inches was reported in downtown San Francisco, and the western hills of the city received seven inches. Excited crowds went on a snowball throwing rampage. (David Ludlum)

1920 : An intense nor'easter dumped 17.5 inches of snow over three days in New York City Central Park, New York. Boston, MA, saw 12.2 inches of snow on this day.  (NWS)

1987 - Thunderstorms in the Southern Plains Region caused flooding in parts of south central Texas. Del Rio TX was soaked with two inches of rain in two hours prior to sunrise. (The National Weather Summary)

1988 - Cold and snow invaded the southern U.S. Roswell NM was buried under 16.5 inches of snow in 24 hours, an all-time record for that location. Parts of the Central Gulf Coast Region reported their first significant snow in fifteen years. Strong winds in Minnesota and the Dakotas produced wind chill readings as cold as 75 degrees below zero. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)

1989 - Severe cold gripped much of the nation. Thirty cities reported new record low temperatures for the date. Morning lows of 9 above at Astoria OR and 27 below zero at Ely NV were records for February. In Alaska, Point Barrow warmed to 24 degrees above zero, and Nome reached 30 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)

1990 - For the second time in two days, and the third time in a week, high winds plagued the northwestern U.S. Winds in Oregon gusted to 60 mph at Cape Disappointment, and wind gusts in Washington State reached 67 mph at Bellingham. The first in a series of cold fronts began to produce heavy snow in the mountains of Washington and Oregon. Ten inches of snow fell at Timberline OR. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)

2006 - Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire reaches a high of 41°F, the warmest February 5th on record at the summit and two degrees off the monthly mark, where records have been kept since 1932. The Weather Doctor

2008 - The deadliest round of tornadoes in nearly a quarter century kill 58 people in the south. The storms kill 32 people in Tennessee, 14 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and five in Alabama. Damage is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The Weather Doctor

2010 - A mega-snowstorm, which President Obama dubbed Snowmageddon, buried the Washington D.C. area with more than 30 inches of snow in some areas. At American University in Washington the official snowfall was 27.5 inches. Snowfall totals in the Washington DC area range from a low of 17.9 inches at Ronald Reagan National Airport to 40 inches in the northern suburb of Colesville, MD. Dulles Airport reported 32.4 inches, which established a new two-day snowfall record. The Baltimore-Washington International Airport, MD, measured 24.8 inches from the storm breaking the record for the largest two day snowfall there. It is one of the worst blizzards in the city's history.

 

[donsutherland1]

New York City's snow season futility rankings through February 4th:

[rgwp96]

On 2/4/2023 at 1:25 AM, JerseyWx said:

5° here.  Pretty cool to follow the Mt. Washington conditions.  As if -40° or more isn't bad enough, the 100mph winds just make it insane.

Got down to -.4 here 

[donsutherland1]

With no snow expected today, Winter 2022-2023 is just one of three winters will have seen less than 1" of snow through February 5th. Both prior winters had little or snowfall through all of February. Some other winters that ended January with less than 2.5" of snow wound up with snowy outcomes in February.

[SnoSki14]

28 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

New York City's snow season futility rankings through February 4th:

We should move up the chart by mid Feb. Very mild with no snow next 2 weeks. 

[SACRUS]

More on the 1996 cold outbreak

Arctic blast : https://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/2016/02/1996_arctic_blast_37_below_zer.html ; https://iowawx.com/2009/01/30/the-arctic-cold-of-1996

 

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/assessments/assess_96/winter.html ;

One prominent aspect of the 1995/96 winter season was a recurring pattern of enhanced northwesterly flow, which extended from northern Alaska and the Bering Sea to southeastern Canada and the north-central United States. This flow brought a series of major winter storms and severe winter outbreaks to the northern and eastern United States, resulting in record-breaking cold and snowfall totals in many regions. The season also featured considerable variability over large portions of the United States and Canada, with periods of extreme cold and snow followed by brief periods of warmth and rain.

The most notable cold-air outbreak occurred during 29 January-6 February 1996, when temperatures averaged 11°-17oC below normal from the southern Canadian prairies southeastward through the northern and central plains and western Great Lakes and more than 6oC below normal throughout the rest of the United States with the exception of the Southwest. Temperatures dropped below -40oC throughout interior Canada during the period and below -46oC in some portions of central Canada. In the United States, all-time record low temperatures were set in four states (Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Rhode Island), and nearly 400 daily record lows were either tied or broken. Additionally, the cold temperatures were accompanied by strong winds that produced extreme wind chill temperatures below -50oC over much of Canada and large portions of the northern United States. The upper-level height and anomaly fields (Fig. 48a) reveal that the Arctic outbreak was associated with a highly amplified flow, featuring above-normal heights across the high latitudes of the central North Pacific and well below normal heights throughout central North America. Within this flow pattern, height contours originating in Alaska, eastern Siberia, and the Arctic Circle covered central and southern Canada and extended southeastward across the upper one-third of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. This pattern resulted in a sustained flow of pure Arctic air into central and eastern North America.

This Arctic outbreak was immediately followed during 6-10 February by much milder air across central North America. During this 5-day period, temperatures reached 21oC in the plains states, more than a 50oC increase from the record-low readings observed the prior week. At Tulsa, Oklahoma, new February extreme minimum (-24oC) and maximum (32.2oC) records were set within 18 days of each other in association with the Arctic outbreak and subsequent warm-up. This warm-up was associated with a large-scale transition in the upper-level flow to below-normal heights and a deep trough over western Alaska and an amplified ridge over the intermountain region of North America (Fig. 48b). This pattern resulted in a strong and extensive flow of marine air from the central North Pacific into virtually all of North America.

[EastonSN+]

I know there is a lot of disappointment with this winter, however you have to feel good for the western half of the country. Banner year for them!

We raked for almost 20 years while they roasted, they were due.

[MANDA]

26 minutes ago, EastonSN+ said:

I know there is a lot of disappointment with this winter, however you have to feel good for the western half of the country. Banner year for them!

We raked for almost 20 years while they roasted, they were due.

For sure.  It will certainly help, at least for now, with the drought conditions out there.  Good Spring melt season ahead.

[Stormlover74]

50 today woo hoo!

[eduggs]

Next weekend continues to look to me like the best winter threat we've had in a while. There are red flags everywhere... namely the near total displacement of cold air prior to a potential coastal SLP. But the recent model runs of the GFS, EC, UK, ICON, and CMC all look potentially interesting. Certainty interesting enough to maintain tracking interest.

[vegan_edible]

1 minute ago, eduggs said:

Next weekend continues to look to me like the best winter threat we've had in a while. There are red flags everywhere... namely the near total displacement of cold air prior to a potential coastal SLP. But the recent model runs of the GFS, EC, UK, ICON, and CMC all look potentially interesting. Certainty interesting enough to maintain tracking interest.

finally, less than 7 days out too... maybe just maybe we can pull one off!

[MJO812]

9 minutes ago, eduggs said:

Next weekend continues to look to me like the best winter threat we've had in a while. There are red flags everywhere... namely the near total displacement of cold air prior to a potential coastal SLP. But the recent model runs of the GFS, EC, UK, ICON, and CMC all look potentially interesting. Certainty interesting enough to maintain tracking interest.

Gfs got warmer at 12z

[Stormlover74]

28 minutes ago, eduggs said:

Next weekend continues to look to me like the best winter threat we've had in a while. There are red flags everywhere... namely the near total displacement of cold air prior to a potential coastal SLP. But the recent model runs of the GFS, EC, UK, ICON, and CMC all look potentially interesting. Certainty interesting enough to maintain tracking interest.

Nah it's gonna be way too warm 

[eduggs]

6 minutes ago, Stormlover74 said:

Nah it's gonna be way too warm 

Yeah as soon as it became clear a few days ago that the initial shortwave was going to push into Ontario following the seasonal pattern, we knew we'd be facing an uphill battle with temperatures. That much is a given. But what we do have on most guidance is a high amplitude ridge-trof combo. The base of the trof reaches the GOM. Anytime we get that it catches my attention. Certainty more interesting than tracking the potential for a few tenths of snow that gets sublimated in 20 minutes.