The event of the season - 2 days of hell!

[Damage In Tolland]

3 washed and shined vehicles already . One more to go this afternoon!

[HIPPYVALLEY]

1 hour ago, HIPPYVALLEY said:

Multiple buildings downtown Greenfield with sprinklers going off this morning. 
Bummer. 

Well, the building my wife works in completely flooded except for the Solid Waste District office where she works.  
Great news for her and her coworkers. Their office didn’t flood because the sprinkler system was apparently faulty. Lol

Her building will probably be off-limits for a few days until all the inspections are completed.  It was unoccupied today so I’m not sure how long the sprinklers were going off.   Somebody walking by, looked in the office of the realtors on the first floor and saw water pouring out of the ceiling!

 

[drstuess]

Just shy of 50 running errands in Warwick. Feels tropical with the sun and greenhouse effect in the car; had to crack a window for the wife staying in the car with the kid.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[dendrite]

24° 

[Angus]

Went pond skating, the thickness is fine but the surface got too soft in the sun during the hour I was there... fear that may be it, the sum total of my outdoor skating this winter - 1 hour! 

[CoastalWx]

Upper 40s with arms hanging out window. 

[Modfan2]

-10 yesterday to 49 today….WTF 

[Damage In Tolland]

4 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Upper 40s with arms hanging out window. 

Wash those cars while the kids are out there ! Wipe down all that dust and fingerprints and snot from sneezes off inside windows,, shine the tires and clean the brake dust off the rims. Go go go 

[CoastalWx]

5 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Wash those cars while the kids are out there ! Wipe down all that dust and fingerprints and snot from sneezes off inside windows,, shine the tires and clean the brake dust off the rims. Go go go 

You want to do it for me?

[CoastalWx]

BTW, was at market basket in Hanover, and polar vortex was leaving his mark there. Some pipe burst and was flooding the area around the registers lol. 

[radarman]

34 minutes ago, Angus said:

Went pond skating, the thickness is fine but the surface got too soft in the sun during the hour I was there... fear that may be it, the sum total of my outdoor skating this winter - 1 hour! 

We got out early too.  4" of black ice, albeit not the smoothest ice.  I'd call it a B+ session.  But yeah, that's a wrap.

[Damage In Tolland]

2 minutes ago, radarman said:

We got out early too.  4" of black ice, albeit not the smoothest ice.  I'd call it a B+ session.  But yeah, that's a wrap.

One and done?

[MarkO]

balmy 50F. 

What's the official word from MWN?

Trying to decide figure skating world championships or flag football?

[SnoSki14]

3 hours ago, Modfan2 said:

-10 yesterday to 49 today….WTF 

Now that's what I call global warming 

[IowaStorm05]

22 hours ago, DavisStraight said:

Houses with crawl spaces are notorious for pipes freezing in this cold weather, actually had it happen to a rental house I owned, ended up insulating more and wrapped the pipes with a heating cord.

Are there lots of weird and creepy spiders down there during the warmer months?

[Ginx snewx]

12 hours ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Wet Fire Sprinkler Systems ftl

I have seen dry systems pop. No maintenance draining condensation and boom. There goes the air and here comes the water( unless double interlock)

[ORH_wxman]

21 hours ago, radarman said:

We got out early too.  4" of black ice, albeit not the smoothest ice.  I'd call it a B+ session.  But yeah, that's a wrap.

We were out on ice yesterday.....a lot of it was good clear black ice that went down a solid 3-4" so I had no qualms about my boys being on the ice with me. Lot of people playing hockey too.

All a dream in a couple more days. This winter may rival 2001-2002 as the least amount of pond ice I've seen during the winter.

[radarman]

29 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

We were out on ice yesterday.....a lot of it was good clear black ice that went down a solid 3-4" so I had no qualms about my boys being on the ice with me. Lot of people playing hockey too.

All a dream in a couple more days. This winter may rival 2001-2002 as the least amount of pond ice I've seen during the winter.

Nice job taking advantage of the oppy.  One thing I will say is that we've had two periods of good black ice, the first being in the higher elevations right after Christmas.  That is no guarantee in any year.  All it takes is one snow or mix event in the early formative stages of the pack and you're screwed.  Granted, white ice is skateable and we'd certainly take it, but there is really nothing like smooth black ice.

Anyway this was from yesterday.  Not terrible.

[TauntonBlizzard2013]

Phil came to my work over the weekend. Multiple pipe burst in the walls, whole building was flooded with several inches of water, found by cleaning crew yesterday.

 

probably several hundred thousands of dollars worth of damage.

 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

5 hours ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

Phil came to my work over the weekend. Multiple pipe burst in the walls, whole building was flooded with several inches of water, found by cleaning crew yesterday.

 

probably several hundred thousands of dollars worth of damage.

 

 

The Greenfield FD guys told me they lost count of how many calls they went out on for sprinklers and burst pipes.  I know of at least a dozen businesses just in Greenfield that were water damaged.

[tamarack]

13 hours ago, HIPPYVALLEY said:

 

The Greenfield FD guys told me they lost count of how many calls they went out on for sprinklers and burst pipes.  I know of at least a dozen businesses just in Greenfield that were water damaged.

Biddeford Middle School was rendered unusable by frozen/burst sprinklers, damage to most rooms.  Alternative facilities are being arranged but that building may be down for much of the rest of the school year.

[OceanStWx]

On 2/4/2023 at 9:40 PM, RCNYILWX said:

I work at NWS Chicago (originally from Queens in NYC). Don't want to speak for anyone from NWS BTV and [mention=44]OceanStWx[/mention] can comment but wanted to mention our usual protocol. Also for us, we are much more rigid in making sure the data is as good as possible for our 2 primary climate sites (Chicago-O'Hare and Rockford, IL) vs. the non primary climate ASOS sites in our area.

Re. the MPV error, for that noticeable and sudden a temperature error, we might be contacted first by AOMC, who oversees sensor errors and opens trouble tickets for the electronics techs to perform the maintenance and then clear the tickets. If they don't contact us, we would contact them to open a trouble ticket and then probably set the data to missing if there's no observer to take manual obs as backup. The problem with the sites without observers is that there's no form of backup that can be substituted in for that data, so it unfortunately would probably have to stay as missing data.

For the MPV data, if it's not fixed over the next few days (we do almost always notice and discuss errors like these), there would be nothing wrong with emailing the BTV public email account to let them know. Since it appears the low temp was way off, that data can at least be set to missing and not stand as official for that site for the date, if it's found to be erroneous.

For a persistent seeming warm bias like ORH, that one is tougher. ORH is I assume a long running primary climate site like BOS and is probably routinely checked for calibration by the ETs. There's a rather large error bar (+/- 2F) for passing calibration checks, so if the sensor passes and has no other known issues, it's less likely to be "fixable". We have seen cases in which a sensor routinely passed calibration checks, still seemed too warm or cold, but then the issue went away when the temperature sensor was fully replaced. Full replacement is I believe done on an amount of time since installation or on a routine replacement schedule vs the sensor being persistently slightly warm or cold.

Yeah, that pretty much covers it. We've had the techs out a few times to check calibration of temp sensors. Usually because it's within the +/- 2 degree threshold nothing ends up getting done.

[ORH_wxman]

4 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Yeah, that pretty much covers it. We've had the techs out a few times to check calibration of temp sensors. Usually because it's within the +/- 2 degree threshold nothing ends up getting done.

2 degrees seems like a ridiculously broad threshold. You can literally have a sensor running 2F warm or cold and nothing gets done but it utterly annihilates the accuracy of the climate record. 
 

 

[OceanStWx]

Just now, ORH_wxman said:

2 degrees seems like a ridiculously broad threshold. You can literally have a sensor running 2F warm or cold and nothing gets done but it utterly annihilates the accuracy of the climate record. 
 

 

At least in the MPV example, it's so far off you know it's likely bad data.

We have to jump though quite a few hoops to change ASOS data for the climate sites though. ASOS is king, and we really need hard evidence it's not to get it changed or thrown out. So if the observer sees snow but the ASOS doesn't, the climate is recorded with the ASOS "0". Likewise on temps, if it's "just" 2 degrees we're obligated to keep it.

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

At least in the MPV example, it's so far off you know it's likely bad data.

We have to jump though quite a few hoops to change ASOS data for the climate sites though. ASOS is king, and we really need hard evidence it's not to get it changed or thrown out. So if the observer sees snow but the ASOS doesn't, the climate is recorded with the ASOS "0". Likewise on temps, if it's "just" 2 degrees we're obligated to keep it.

That is bordering on insane to me…at least from a climate accuracy perspective. I know there are limited resources but it seems like there is WAY too much deference to ASOS than the empirical evidence would support. 
 

A couple years back in summer of 2020 I think it was, BOS had a record warm month (think it was July) when the other 4 major BOX climate sites weren’t even sniffing top 15….the record still stands today despite everyone with any QC experience knowing it’s a completely bogus “record”…you prob remember all the asterisk jokes during that year with BOS temps. It lasted a long time too…maybe even a year or more. One of the events months later in winter they were moderate or heavy snow with a 34 temp while everyone surrounding them was 32 and it became comical. I think NWS BOX finally got the sensor changed despite it “passing” multiple IT calibration checks (this part is coming back to me now as a result of this discussion). Not sure who they finally convinced it was wrong, but it obviously was. The funny part was when they replaced it, the new one had a cold bias of about 1F but I think it finally went away after a few months. Not sure if they changed the sensor a second time or if the error disappeared on its own for some other reason. 
 

 

[OceanStWx]

5 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That is bordering on insane to me…at least from a climate accuracy perspective. I know there are limited resources but it seems like there is WAY too much deference to ASOS than the empirical evidence would support. 
 

A couple years back in summer of 2020 I think it was, BOS had a record warm month (think it was July) when the other 4 major BOX climate sites weren’t even sniffing top 15….the record still stands today despite everyone with any QC experience knowing it’s a completely bogus “record”…you prob remember all the asterisk jokes during that year with BOS temps. It lasted a long time too…maybe even a year or more. One of the events months later in winter they were moderate or heavy snow with a 34 temp while everyone surrounding them was 32 and it became comical. I think NWS BOX finally got the sensor changed despite it “passing” multiple IT calibration checks (this part is coming back to me now as a result of this discussion). Not sure who they finally convinced it was wrong, but it obviously was. The funny part was when they replaced it, the new one had a cold bias of about 1F but I think it finally went away after a few months. Not sure if they changed the sensor a second time or if the error disappeared on its own for some other reason. 

PWM did the same thing. I think we had a record warm summer month, that didn't feature any blazing heat. It was just a steady +2 every day.

[dendrite]

5 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

PWM did the same thing. I think we had a record warm summer month, that didn't feature any blazing heat. It was just a steady +2 every day.

Are these 1-2F discrepancies usually instrumentation error or siting issues? (ie CON years ago with the dark mulch)

[CoastalWx]

24 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That is bordering on insane to me…at least from a climate accuracy perspective. I know there are limited resources but it seems like there is WAY too much deference to ASOS than the empirical evidence would support. 
 

A couple years back in summer of 2020 I think it was, BOS had a record warm month (think it was July) when the other 4 major BOX climate sites weren’t even sniffing top 15….the record still stands today despite everyone with any QC experience knowing it’s a completely bogus “record”…you prob remember all the asterisk jokes during that year with BOS temps. It lasted a long time too…maybe even a year or more. One of the events months later in winter they were moderate or heavy snow with a 34 temp while everyone surrounding them was 32 and it became comical. I think NWS BOX finally got the sensor changed despite it “passing” multiple IT calibration checks (this part is coming back to me now as a result of this discussion). Not sure who they finally convinced it was wrong, but it obviously was. The funny part was when they replaced it, the new one had a cold bias of about 1F but I think it finally went away after a few months. Not sure if they changed the sensor a second time or if the error disappeared on its own for some other reason. 
 

 

Pretty sure they had an few obs of ZR at 33-34F too. It's not CSI detective work either. You can clearly see when they go astray. I like 1/4SM FG with a T/Td spread of 3F. But hey, it passes the calibration test. Nothing wrong here. 

[ORH_wxman]

30 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

PWM did the same thing. I think we had a record warm summer month, that didn't feature any blazing heat. It was just a steady +2 every day.

So the PWM one was also not legit…it was running about 2F warmer than it should? Did it get fixed? Or was it some local siting fluke?
 

The BOS one was clearly not legit but it will look legit to anyone who casually glances at the data without any other context. That’s the unfortunate part. But only sickos like us who scrutinize the data will know the truth. I remember the month was warm…but it was absolutely not that close to being record warmth. Prob more like between top 10-20 type month based on surrounding sites. 

[ORH_wxman]

Fwiw, here is the BOS MADIS graph back to mid 2018 when the drift warmer started…you can see it persisted for well over a year before the correction…and then the initial cold bias after replacement. It looks like the BOS error got almost to 3F before they replaced it.