December 2023

[Great Snow 1717]

13 minutes ago, jbenedet said:

Somebody get this guy a squirrel. Cheer em up.

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, Spanks45 said:

Anecdotally, from my perspective....Where have all the smaller snow events gone? Besides 2014/15, I feel like the 1-3/2-4/3-6 storms have all but disappeared. The so called bread and butter events. Growing up in the Mid Atlantic region, they have all but disappeared down there as well...

Would be interesting to see the rates of marginal events per year, I would assume they have decreased in frequency, but....

Snow days have been replaced with wind/flood days.. 

Well in the late 1980s/early 1990s during my formative snow weenie years, all we had was shitty 2-4/3-6 events....no biggies.

But what you need for those types of events is an active northern stream in conjunction with a western ridge and that type of pattern has been largely absent since 2015....we've had a lot of western troughiness. We did have a bunch of smaller clipper events in 2018-19 winter, but that was kind of an outlier amidst the larger boom or bust type winters of 2020-21 oe even 2017-18.

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Looks like only 2 years had 0" depth on 12/21--this year and 1969.  Think there are like 70ish years with recorded depth,with some other missing years since the COOP goes waaay back. So actually reporting 0" on 12/21 seems pretty unusual.

Whats funny is that 1969 has continually showed up as an objective analog on the ensembles. That year did have a huge turnaround that started with the Xmas night storm (though it wasn't good for a chunk of Maine because they got warm sectored)

[WinterWolf]

1 minute ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

 

I’m cool..everything is cool.. 

 

Was just stating my first hand experiences from actually being physically there.  
 

It’s all good…whatever. 

[Boston Bulldog]

41 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

Anyway , I was surprised to see how poorly Mammoth Mountain was doing .
 

26” inches to date . I imagine they have extreme variation from month to month and year to year but I was curious if anyone in the lower 48 had a decent December .
 

Maybe Jackson Hole? (edit yup 125” summit / 76” mid mountain ) they average upper 400’s up top 

Tetons and the Cottonwoods are the only good resort skiing in North America right now outside of Alyeska and the interior Canadian Rockies. Pretty brutal December for the Cascades and Coastal BC with extremely warm ARs bringing rain to the peaks and washing away snowpack. Sierras have been pretty high and dry so far, save for some warm cutoffs bringing some snow way up high (8-9k+), and mostly rain to the resorts.

The Northern Pacific is just so incredibly warm right now, outside of where the storms directing the ARs have been upwelling water southeast of Alaska. Mets more knowledgeable than me on this part of the world (Bryan Allegretto) have been attributing the lack of a strong PAC latitudinal SST gradient as one of the causes behind why the West Coast simply not getting the typical El Nino connection so far. Large scale ridging assisted by the warm pool has been directing moisture north of California, with no cold air around to tamp down snow levels when these features make landfall. When those warm ARs go away, cutoffs have been meandering just offshore and out of reach.

Moving into the new year it seems as though more windows will open, but the one lesson I've learned so far is no matter how strong an El Nino is in ONI, if you don't have that gradient in SST across the PAC throw away traditional ENSO climo for the West Coast. Synoptic fundamentals often win out, no matter how strong your subseasonal forcings are.

[dryslot]

Pathetic for 12/22

[WinterWolf]

Just now, dryslot said:

Pathetic for 12/22

It is. 

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

1 minute ago, WinterWolf said:

I’m cool..everything is cool.. 

 

Was just stating my first hand experiences from actually being physically there.  
 

It’s all good…whatever. 

We bust all in good fun especially when snowy times are this bad…we’ve got to laugh our way through it. 

[Lava Rock]

14 minutes ago, George001 said:

Yep, everything is completely normal. Nothing to see here, the average temps in New England being several degrees warmer than 30 years ago is completely irrelevant right? Good ol Wolfie knows more than the scientists who have been studying this shit longer than I’ve been alive.

you used to be laid back "we're gonna get a blizzard" kinda guy. what happened

[WinterWolf]

Just a few days ago before the washout..was looking nice. 

[mcglups]

A friend shared this map on social media and it even further tells the story of the lack of snow coverage. I believe VT has 5,000 miles of snowmobile trails, and there are 0 miles open.

https://vtvast.org/trails.html

[dryslot]

Jackman.

[512high]

Just now, dryslot said:

Jackman.

sad

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, Lava Rock said:

you used to be laid back "we're gonna get a blizzard" kinda guy. what happened

He went from one extreme to the other....

[Lava Rock]

2 minutes ago, WinterWolf said:

Just a few days ago before the washout..was looking nice. 

I saw that and thought they were wasting diesel

[dryslot]

1 minute ago, 512high said:

sad

Very

[STILL N OF PIKE]

10 minutes ago, Boston Bulldog said:

Tetons and the Cottonwoods are the only good resort skiing in North America right now outside of Alyeska and the interior Canadian Rockies. Pretty brutal December for the Cascades and Coastal BC with extremely warm ARs bringing rain to the peaks and washing away snowpack. Sierras have been pretty high and dry so far, save for some warm cutoffs bringing some snow way up high (8-9k+), and mostly rain to the resorts.

The Northern Pacific is just so incredibly warm right now, outside of where the storms directing the ARs have been upwelling water southeast of Alaska. Mets more knowledgeable than me on this part of the world (Bryan Allegretto) have been attributing the lack of a strong PAC latitudinal SST gradient as one of the causes behind why the West Coast simply not getting the typical El Nino connection so far. Large scale ridging assisted by the warm pool has been directing moisture north of California, with no cold air around to tamp down snow levels when these features make landfall. When those warm ARs go away, cutoffs have been meandering just offshore and out of reach.

Moving into the new year it seems as though more windows will open, but the one lesson I've learned so far is no matter how strong an El Nino is in ONI, if you don't have that gradient in SST across the PAC throw away traditional ENSO climo for the West Coast. Synoptic fundamentals often win out, no matter how strong your subseasonal forcings are.

I didn’t realize the cascades were getting skunked as well . I know the skiable elevations don’t go up that high and usually 5k is buried . How high have snow levels been for Whistler and just South (In Wash) during the warmer AR’s 

[dendrite]

3 minutes ago, dryslot said:

Jackman.

Almost time for the lawn thread up there. 

[George001]

2 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

you used to be laid back "we're gonna get a blizzard" kinda guy. what happened

We didn’t get a blizzard. 

[WinterWolf]

20 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Looks like only 2 years had 0" depth on 12/21--this year and 1969.  Think there are like 70ish years with recorded depth,with some other missing years since the COOP goes waaay back. So actually reporting 0" on 12/21 seems pretty unusual.

It’s kind of like the whole 1” before 7 am on Xmas morning thing…   I mean if you have a crusty half inch to an inch, or maybe a tad more with bare ground and frozen dirt and grass all over, is it a whole lot different than zero??   It’s Splitting hairs. It sucks either way. But they’ll get back on track soon…we just wait to ride a little longer. 

[mreaves]

6 minutes ago, mcglups said:

A friend shared this map on social media and it even further tells the story of the lack of snow coverage. I believe VT has 5,000 miles of snowmobile trails, and there are 0 miles open.

https://vtvast.org/trails.html

About 4,500 miles.  There was some riding available opening day (December 16th) but that was washed away.

[Lava Rock]

14 minutes ago, Boston Bulldog said:

Tetons and the Cottonwoods are the only good resort skiing in North America right now outside of Alyeska and the interior Canadian Rockies. Pretty brutal December for the Cascades and Coastal BC with extremely warm ARs bringing rain to the peaks and washing away snowpack. Sierras have been pretty high and dry so far, save for some warm cutoffs bringing some snow way up high (8-9k+), and mostly rain to the resorts.

The Northern Pacific is just so incredibly warm right now, outside of where the storms directing the ARs have been upwelling water southeast of Alaska. Mets more knowledgeable than me on this part of the world (Bryan Allegretto) have been attributing the lack of a strong PAC latitudinal SST gradient as one of the causes behind why the West Coast simply not getting the typical El Nino connection so far. Large scale ridging assisted by the warm pool has been directing moisture north of California, with no cold air around to tamp down snow levels when these features make landfall. When those warm ARs go away, cutoffs have been meandering just offshore and out of reach.

Moving into the new year it seems as though more windows will open, but the one lesson I've learned so far is no matter how strong an El Nino is in ONI, if you don't have that gradient in SST across the PAC throw away traditional ENSO climo for the West Coast. Synoptic fundamentals often win out, no matter how strong your subseasonal forcings are.

Revelstoke looks pretty good

[CoastalWx]

It's like a funeral home in here.

[CoastalWx]

How is Newington NH going to be 40 today? Unless the thermometer is on the grill of his Pope-mobile.

[WinterWolf]

6 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

I saw that and thought they were wasting diesel

Too bad cuz it was starting to shape up too. 

 

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

It's like a funeral home in here.

Lol…

[radarman]

I swear it isn't a matter of schadenfreude when I say that should the skiing out west be lackluster this year, after the true epicosity that was last year, I can't get too worked up about it.   

That said I was happy to see powder alert emails showing up in my mailbox yesterday from Sugar Bowl.  

[WinterWolf]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

How is Newington NH going to be 40 today? Unless the thermometer is on the grill of his Pope-mobile.

I wonder what the Branford CT guys temp  read this morning…saying he hadn’t been below 30 this year yet last evening. 

[CoastalWx]

2 minutes ago, WinterWolf said:

I wonder what the Branford CT guys temp  read this morning…saying he hadn’t been below 30 this year yet last evening. 

Maybe he moved to Central Park.

[jbenedet]

5 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

How is Newington NH going to be 40 today? Unless the thermometer is on the grill of his Pope-mobile.

 

7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

It's like a funeral home in here.

Man. No kiddin'. 40F in Newington is like the 2nd most popular topic in this dumpster fire.

[ORH_wxman]

6 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

It's like a funeral home in here.

Almost unreadable....the funny thing is I don't think Decembers like 2011 or 2015 ever got close to this awful on the posting level. Maybe we were just deleting more stuff back then, but I don't really recall having to do that.