2023-2024 Winter/ENSO Disco

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah maybe the Mar 13-14 storm last year is snowier into ORH city (huge gradient right there) in the days of yore....skeptical about it getting awesome much further east because of that nasty nipple low in CT driving those 925s inland, but maybe perhaps to 495ish could've seen 6-10" instead of mostly sloppy 3-6.

Yeah that's one of them. I'm thinking of a few of the smaller borderlines ones too. 

[CoastalWx]

This is anecdotal, but I will say it does seem a little harder to get a snow event on NE winds overall, unless you have a very cold antecedent airmass. Snow on NE winds shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it's been slowly getting harder to do. I'm speaking for the coast of course.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

This is anecdotal, but I will say it does seem a little harder to get a snow event on NE winds overall, unless you have a very cold antecedent airmass. Snow on NE winds shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it's been slowly getting harder to do. I'm speaking for the coast of course.

I think you will really see that this year.

[CoastalWx]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I think you will really see that this year.

Let's hope not. It's expected though in December.

[ORH_wxman]

5 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

CC probably cost me several inches last year...that is fair....especially in that early March-nipple event. What I have an issue with is people claiming a PV phased further west due to CC....while plausible, that is quite a leap that requires lifetimes worth of data to validate sufficiently.

I think a lot of people have an unrealistic view of the past when it comes to winter wx. It certainly was colder, but it wasn't Quebec City either and the snow climatology was not 1925 BOS being equal to present day ORH or even present day BED....and a lot of the warming doesn't manifest in cyclogenesis anyway....rather in the milder patterns intruding into the region during more unfavorable hemispheric longwave setups and in radiational cooling spots during calm nights.

CC really needs to be thought of in terms of probability on the tails which usually makes people's eyes glaze over, so I understand why its often dumbed down for the masses. But what it really means is that we've increased the chances of record warm events but this does not magically eliminate natural variability either. There's a reason we had our coldest month of all time in 2015 after over a century of CC....natural variation still is the dominant player on smaller timescales such as months and seasons. But when you get a canonical warm pattern, CC helps that become more likely to be record warmth versus 100 years ago. 

[ORH_wxman]

6 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

This is anecdotal, but I will say it does seem a little harder to get a snow event on NE winds overall, unless you have a very cold antecedent airmass. Snow on NE winds shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it's been slowly getting harder to do. I'm speaking for the coast of course.

Easy to torch on NE winds when the nearest high pressure is over the Flemish cap.

Get us some highs north of CAR that feed down some legit dewpoints and lets try it again. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

I think a lot of people have an unrealistic view of the past when it comes to winter wx. It certainly was colder, but it wasn't Quebec City either and the snow climatology was not 1925 BOS being equal to present day ORH or even present day BED....and a lot of the warming doesn't manifest in cyclogenesis anyway....rather in the milder patterns intruding into the region during more unfavorable hemispheric longwave setups and in radiational cooling spots during calm nights.

CC really needs to be thought of in terms of probability on the tails which usually makes people's eyes glaze over, so I understand why its often dumbed down for the masses. But what it really means is that we've increased the chances of record warm events but this does not magically eliminate natural variability either. There's a reason we had our coldest month of all time in 2015 after over a century of CC....natural variation still is the dominant player on smaller timescales such as months and seasons. But when you get a canonical warm pattern, CC helps that become more likely to be record warmth versus 100 years ago. 

Right...it largely augments already mild patterns and caps radiational cooling. While it can impact very marginal situations, it doesn't play much of a role during many precipitation events. I do think the record warm Atlantic could play a factor this season to a degree, though.

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

Easy to torch on NE winds when the nearest high pressure is over the Flemish cap.

Get us some highs north of CAR that feed down some legit dewpoints and lets try it again. 

Yeah those were like E-SE winds lol. Just speaking overall. Instead of near 31-32 it's more like 33-34 unless it's a good antecedent airmass. Doesn't help the Gulf of Maine being one of the areas that has spiked in SSTs.

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

Yeah those were like E-SE winds lol. Just speaking overall. Instead of near 31-32 it's more like 33-34 unless it's a good antecedent airmass. Doesn't help the Gulf of Maine being one of the areas that has spiked in SSTs.

Could be some pratty gnarly CFs this season....CJs so aggressive they cause chaffing.

[CoastalWx]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Could be some pratty gnarly CFs this season....CJs so aggressive they cause chaffing.

Like Will said, just give me a good high north of Maine.

[WinterWolf]

1 hour ago, dryslot said:

In any winter, Somebody gets shafted, Good example here is 2009-10 where everyone else was rejoicing to the south.

Not here. Mid Atlantic…we got shafted too, we were  just closer to the huge snow than you, but still missed out. So it sucked for all of NE. 

[weatherwiz]

At some point in the upcoming months (though this will probably have to be more of a spring project) I want to really dig into SST's off the East Coast during the winter months and compare SSTA's with seasonal snowfall totals and distribution along with storm track. These last few winters...or maybe several it seems anytime we get any sort of coastal two things happen:

1. It tracks so close to the coast we get destroyed with milder air

2. Rapid cyclogenesis occurs so early and close enough to the coast that we get flooded with milder air well ahead of the system. 

I would really love to see hard data on SSTA's during snowier vs. least snowier winters with a focus on storm track. The answer I'm sure is pretty obvious but actually seeing the results is a different ball game. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

At some point in the upcoming months (though this will probably have to be more of a spring project) I want to really dig into SST's off the East Coast during the winter months and compare SSTA's with seasonal snowfall totals and distribution along with storm track. These last few winters...or maybe several it seems anytime we get any sort of coastal two things happen:

1. It tracks so close to the coast we get destroyed with milder air

2. Rapid cyclogenesis occurs so early and close enough to the coast that we get flooded with milder air well ahead of the system. 

I would really love to see hard data on SSTA's during snowier vs. least snowier winters with a focus on storm track. The answer I'm sure is pretty obvious but actually seeing the results is a different ball game. 

That would be tedious because in reference to what Scott said, you have to find a way to control for synopitc patterns, as well.....no one worries about SST when you have a 1050 over Montreal.

[weatherwiz]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

That would be tedious because in reference to what Scott said, you have to find a way to control for synopitc patterns, as well.....no one worries about SST when you have a 1050 over Montreal.

Well yes, but how many times does that actually happen? 

Events have to be separated and categorized. You have to have one category designated to your classic, textbook setups and events and one category that isn't classic or textbook. When you have your classic, textbook setups you know what's going to happen...and that is true for anything (winter, severe, tropical). 

However, how many times do we actually get those classic, textbook setups? Not very often. So analyzing the non-textbook setups and trying to find as many different discriminators as possible and determining which of those discriminators holds significant weight (which is going to differ by setup) can be quite telling. It's absolutely very tedious work, but IMO understanding this would significantly improve forecasting at least in the medium-range (3-6 days out).  

[ORH_wxman]

Congrats ACK/MVY this year based on SSTAs?

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, ORH_wxman said:

Congrats ACK/MVY this year based on SSTAs?

 

Of course, the warmest anomalies are on a fetch due NE of Methuen, MA.

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Of course, the warmest anomalies are on a fetch due NE of Methuen, MA.

Lets get a 12/29/12 middle finger into metro BOS while it changes to snow at EWB. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Lets get a 12/29/12 middle finger into metro BOS while it changes to snow at EWB. 

Next year is another big la nina, so this may be my one shot to get the first good season since 2017-2018.

[ORH_wxman]

17 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Yeah those were like E-SE winds lol. Just speaking overall. Instead of near 31-32 it's more like 33-34 unless it's a good antecedent airmass. Doesn't help the Gulf of Maine being one of the areas that has spiked in SSTs.

How many events recently have we had like 0C 925mb temps at the onset? Having a semi-real airmass over Quebec into NE would help....which has been like pulling teeth the last few seasons...and it was especially comical last season when getting a Scooter high was like trying to get NBC to stop showing Taylor Swift in the luxury suite. Goes back to some of the regional analysis I was doing with the temp anomalies when we break down the last few decades into subsets.

[CoastalWx]

13 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

How many events recently have we had like 0C 925mb temps at the onset? Having a semi-real airmass over Quebec into NE would help....which has been like pulling teeth the last few seasons...and it was especially comical last season when getting a Scooter high was like trying to get NBC to stop showing Taylor Swift in the luxury suite. Goes back to some of the regional analysis I was doing with the temp anomalies when we break down the last few decades into subsets.

 .

One of these days will get good HP. 

[CoastalWx]

I feel like the 90/128 demilitarized zone is coming for part of this winter. 

[Typhoon Tip]

We've been getting over top high pressure over the past 3 weeks.  Heh...  only trouble is, at 560+ hydrostats

[WxWatcher007]

21 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I feel like the 90/128 demilitarized zone is coming for part of this winter. 

[CoastalWx]

2 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Worked out for HFD area. But it was a tough stretch for about 5 weeks or so for the coast lol. The snowpack rapidly built up N and W of that interchange. You went from about 1-2" if that of crust where I lived in Marshfield to about 2' of meaty pack near Lowell. It finally changed locally after the surprise 2/7/03 dump.

[CoastalWx]

Need to see if I can find some sort of snowpack map prior to early February 2003. I've talked to Will a lot about it, but it was a brutal cutoff driving back and forth in that area.

[ORH_wxman]

4 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Need to see if I can find some sort of snowpack map prior to early February 2003. I've talked to Will a lot about it, but it was a brutal cutoff driving back and forth in that area.

[CoastalWx]

This was in 2003 so not sure how good the data was, but you get the idea. Definitely over 20" in Lowell. And a crusty 1" maybe at home. 

 

[CoastalWx]

 Ninja'd. 

[ORH_wxman]

I reall wish that site went back to March 2001....that gradient would have been even more ridiculous....you had 40+ in ORH county and almost nothing in SE MA.

[WinterWolf]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

This was in 2003 so not sure how good the data was, but you get the idea. Definitely over 20" in Lowell. And a crusty 1' maybe at home. 

 

A crusty 1’? Or 1”?