December 2023

[HIPPYVALLEY]

21 minutes ago, kdxken said:

Did the sun even come up today? Talk about gloomy.

I plugged the outdoor Christmas lights back  in. 

[dendrite]

29.9° and my road is glare ice. Looks like we had some ZL on top of the coating of snow overnight.

[moneypitmike]

Since December can't end fast enough, I've started a January thread.  Hoping for some good juju.

 

[dendrite]

5 hours ago, yoda said:

I thought @weatherwiz was in FL, not MT

 

Wow. Congrats Billings.

[Damage In Tolland]

Lots of breaks of blue up there and it’s feeling festive and cheery despite the non winter 

[dendrite]

4 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Lots of breaks of blue up there and it’s feeling festive and cheery despite the non winter 

 

[CoastalWx]

I guess we watch next week perhaps inland? Seems like enough guidance hints maybe at a little snow.

[dendrite]

Just give me 4-6” depth to protect my fruit tree roots in case that motherload of cold in the extended GFS ever comes to fruition.

[Brian5671]

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate.   Turn off the computer for a couple days and enjoy the time with family and friends!

[weatherwiz]

What luck

 

[dryslot]

12 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Just give me 4-6” depth to protect my fruit tree roots in case that motherload of cold in the extended GFS ever comes to fruition.

You will need to get that snow pretty quick before the Mid Atlantic goes above their climo avg on snow the next couple weeks.

[Typhoon Tip]

32 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I guess we watch next week perhaps inland? Seems like enough guidance hints maybe at a little snow.

Yeah It's a long shot.  06z GEFs degenerated the appeal in a weaker/suppressed direction.   It's a mess, too. Not only squashing/weakening SE, too warm to snow.

yuck

[wxmanmitch]

Season's Greetings! I will admit I haven't been on here much of late, but Twitter/X has been such a s***show since Musk's hostile takeover of the platform that gleaning weather info off of there has become an increasingly difficult proposition. 

My feed which was once a global town square of sorts with weather enthusiasts and professionals interacting with each other has turned into a cesspool of misinformation and junk that I have zero interest in. That said, as bad as it has gotten, it is still the best of the major social platforms for late breaking weather info as there are still relevant posts in my feed from time to time, and not the several days old stuff that I typically see on Facebook. Thanks to Musk X is dying, and may not be around much longer for better or worse IMO.

I had high hopes for this winter with a weakening Modoki style El Niño taking hold, but those are beginning to fade some in light of the fact that we've had our warmest and least snowy December since 2015, and I'm not convinced this upcoming colder pattern can deliver the goods. It will be better than the status quo regardless. Hopefully we can get a good back loaded winter.

I struck out with three storms earlier this month and late November with 32.5-33° F rain and "snain" that didn't accumulate to more than an inch of slop. Stratton and points north of there did considerably better with those. I guess this is payback for that epic 42" dump I had in mid March.

In other news I've finally got decent internet up here with the installation fiber optic internet (~1.2 Gbps down/1.1 Gbps up) that blows even Xfinity and Spectrum out of the water. The aforementioned companies would never bring their services to my area and the incumbent provider Consolidated Communications (formerly FairPoint) wouldn't bring in their own fiber service, Fidium. Being on the wrong side of the digital divide, many of Vermont's towns banded together to form a series of regional communication union districts (CUDs) to chase after federal broadband infrastructure money and form non-profit community operated ISPs. As one of the least served towns in my respective district, we were one of the first to get fiber from Deerfield Valley Fiber (DVFiber). It's so nice to be off of that 10/1 Mbps bonded DSL connection where websites loaded like it was 1999. That speed may have been adequate in 2003, but not in 2023.

I'll leave you with an epic sunrise shot from yesterday morning. It will be a totally brown Christmas here in the highlands of southern Vermont as well.

 

[Torch Tiger]

saw the Sunday river webcam, quite shocking scenes up there. wow just wiped

[STILL N OF PIKE]

2 minutes ago, Torch Tiger said:

saw the Sunday river webcam, quite shocking scenes up there. wow just wiped

Have they not been making snow like everyone else 

[Snowcrazed71]

Just now, STILL N OF PIKE said:

Have they not been making snow like everyone else 

You know TT, he likes to make everything look super bad. Yes, there's no natural snow on the ground, but the trails are all covered and they have been making snow.

[Typhoon Tip]

38 minutes ago, wxmanmitch said:

Season's Greetings! I will admit I haven't been on here much of late, but Twitter/X has been such a s***show since Musk's hostile takeover of the platform that gleaning weather info off of there has become an increasingly difficult proposition. 

My feed which was once a global town square of sorts with weather enthusiasts and professionals interacting with each other has turned into a cesspool of misinformation and junk that I have zero interest in. That said, as bad as it has gotten, it is still the best of the major social platforms for late breaking weather info as there are still relevant posts in my feed from time to time, and not the several days old stuff that I typically see on Facebook. Thanks to Musk X is dying, and may not be around much longer for better or worse IMO.

I had high hopes for this winter with a weakening Modoki style El Niño taking hold, but those are beginning to fade some in light of the fact that we've had our warmest and least snowy December since 2015, and I'm not convinced this upcoming colder pattern can deliver the goods. It will be better than the status quo regardless. Hopefully we can get a good back loaded winter.

I struck out with three storms earlier this month and late November with 32.5-33° F rain and "snain" that didn't accumulate to more than an inch of slop. Stratton and points north of there did considerably better with those. I guess this is payback for that epic 42" dump I had in mid March.

In other news I've finally got decent internet up here with the installation fiber optic internet (~1.2 Gbps down/1.1 Gbps up) that blows even Xfinity and Spectrum out of the water. The aforementioned companies would never bring their services to my area and the incumbent provider Consolidated Communications (formerly FairPoint) wouldn't bring in their own fiber service, Fidium. Being on the wrong side of the digital divide, many of Vermont's towns banded together to form a series of regional communication union districts (CUDs) to chase after federal broadband infrastructure money and form non-profit community operated ISPs. As one of the least served towns in my respective district, we were one of the first to get fiber from Deerfield Valley Fiber (DVFiber). It's so nice to be off of that 10/1 Mbps bonded DSL connection where websites loaded like it was 1999. That speed may have been adequate in 2003, but not in 2023.

I'll leave you with an epic sunrise shot from yesterday morning. It will be a totally brown Christmas here in the highlands of southern Vermont as well.

 

 

I'm very much agreeing on two aspects above: 

- the pattern changing may not pay out as the hopefuls want. I'm looking at this with guarded optimism... I'm with y'all. I certainly enjoy the big winter experience.  However, trying to be objective ... there are too many examples of poorly performing longer term air, and/or air-sea coupled teleconnectors in recent years to ignore.  Be it, the ENSO phases have observed as uncoupling at times.  EPO's not lasting as long in any given negative phase state(positive), because the flow speed is causing unusual RW instability ...  The machinery of the system is different ( leave it at that), enough so to not be as confident in any given intraseasonal pattern variance/projection.   Having said all that... the AO projection has trended negative at CPC in recent days. Lot of spread, but every member in said spread is negative. The mean looks pretty depressed.  So ... if the +PNA decays ... and then we see a new -EPO onset to reset the relay cycle/relationship between those two domain spaces, while the AO is negative, that's actually converging telecons    maybe  enough to overcome the above tendencies of lower performance.   

- X needs to go away.   Elan Musk is doing great things for humanity - his sacking of that enterprise is not one of them. 

[Torch Tiger]

33 minutes ago, Snowcrazed71 said:

You know TT, he likes to make everything look super bad. Yes, there's no natural snow on the ground, but the trails are all covered and they have been making snow.

The 21 trails open aren't even "all covered".  most everything is bare minus the snowmaking, even near the summits.  Besides perhaps one or two winters, not since the 80's and pre-snowmaking tech/coverage has it looked so rough

[Torch Tiger]

Anyway Merry Christmas!

[mahk_webstah]

24 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I'm very much agreeing on two aspects above: 

- the pattern changing may not pay out as the hopefuls want. I'm looking at this with guarded optimism... I'm with y'all. I certainly enjoy the big winter experience.  However, trying to be objective ... there are too many examples of poorly performing longer term air, and/or air-sea coupled teleconnectors in recent years to ignore.  Be it, the ENSO phases have observed as uncoupling at times.  EPO's not lasting as long in any given negative phase state(positive), because the flow speed is causing unusual RW instability ...  The machinery of the system is different ( leave it at that), enough so to not be as confident in any given intraseasonal pattern variance/projection.   Having said all that... the AO projection has trended negative at CPC in recent days. Lot of spread, but every member in said spread is negative. The mean looks pretty depressed.  So ... if the +PNA decays ... and then we see a new -EPO onset to reset the relay cycle/relationship between those two domain spaces, while the AO is negative, that's actually converging telecons    maybe  enough to overcome the above tendencies of lower performance.   

- X needs to go away.   Elan Musk is doing great things for humanity - his sacking of that enterprise is not one of them. 

And maybe the antisemitism 

[CoastalWx]

It’s interesting in that the ensembles have shown this secondary regeneration and now the ops show it. 
 

I thought we don’t use ensembles anymore?

[jbenedet]

Warmer during the extended Christmas weekend, than it was during the extended thanksgiving weekend.

[qg_omega]

2 minutes ago, jbenedet said:

Warmer during the extended Christmas weekend, than it was during the extended thanksgiving weekend.

November was a much better winter month than December which has been horrid.  

[qg_omega]

7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

It’s interesting in that the ensembles have shown this secondary regeneration and now the ops show it. 
 

I thought we don’t use ensembles anymore?

This?  Not real

[CoastalWx]

I guess all guidance is wrong 

[ORH_wxman]

57 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

It’s interesting in that the ensembles have shown this secondary regeneration and now the ops show it. 
 

I thought we don’t use ensembles anymore?

Ukie and GFS both trying to get some accumulating snow into southern zones. Really close there. Nice feed of colder 925 temps pulled into the secondary. 

[CoastalWx]

9 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Ukie and GFS both trying to get some accumulating snow into southern zones. Really close there. Nice feed of colder 925 temps pulled into the secondary. 

This would be one of those examples where something would go right for once. I don’t have high hopes, but would be nice to grab something.

[ROOSTA]

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!
To one and all. I pray that you'll enjoy the Season and the days are filled with memories!

 

[WinterWolf]

16 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

This would be one of those examples where something would go right for once. I don’t have high hopes, but would be nice to grab something.

You’d think at some point…something has to break in the more positive direction..no? I mean if it’s not this next one…the ones after  may? If nothing else, At some point the law of averages catches up with everything….this is no different. 

[CoastalWx]

5 minutes ago, WinterWolf said:

You’d think at some point…something has to break in the more positive direction..no? I mean if it’s not this next one…the ones after  may? If nothing else, At some point the law of averages catches up with everything….this is no different. 

As much as Tblizz doesn’t want to hear it, a lot of things have gone right around here up until last winter. So for these parts we are due to go through a shit stretch. But yeah overall, would be nice to see something break right.