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It was a Flop... February 2024 Disco. Thread


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1 minute ago, Brian5671 said:

2012 was great once we all accepted it wasn't coming.    Morch had a couple days in the 80's here and the month as a whole was warm sunny and dry.   I'll take it again

I'll never forget March 2012.  I flew to South Africa for the month to escape the cold here.  But New England hit the 80s while I was down there.

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9 minutes ago, ChangeofSeasonsWX said:

So the 70s were just a fluke? Our temperature extremes nowadays definitely seem moderated compared to what we saw in the 70s which had lots of all-time heat and cold records.

Yeah I think we’re less extreme than we used to be. We have a lot more moisture in our airmasses the past 2 decades and thermodynamically that limits the heating and cooling potential of the airmass. We torch way more on mins than max temps. With the arctic warming faster that should make for shorter wavelengths and less meridional patterns too. 

It may be different in dry/drought areas, but in the northeast I think temps are less extreme. 

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1 minute ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I think we’re less extreme than we used to be. We have a lot more moisture in our airmasses the past 2 decades and thermodynamically that limits the heating and cooling potential of the airmass. We torch way more on mins than max temps. With the arctic warming faster that should make for shorter wavelengths and less meridional patterns too. 

It may be different in dry/drought areas, but in the northeast I think temps are less extreme. 

We need a central US drought to help give us a good source region for extreme heat on max temps in the summer…and then get the pattern to evolve in a manner where it advects into us instead of getting shunted south of NYC. I don’t think we’ve had a good one a while…we’ve been abnormally wet over the CONUS 

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8 minutes ago, ChangeofSeasonsWX said:

The funny thing about CC is that everyone expects it to create more extremes with the weather, but in actuality this is not always the case. If anything it seems like CC is moderating our climate. I mean, look at the 1970s. That was probably one of the most extreme decades in the weather database for heat, cold, and snow. PVD's third coldest ever temperature of -13F on 01/23/76. How about their 30 degree positive departure on 04/19/76, when PVD hit 98F? Or 08/02/75 when PVD reached an insane 104F with a dewpoint of 77F? Not only did that day have all-time record heat but also absurd dew point readings. What about the once in a 500 year snowstorm on 05/09/77 that dropped 7.0" in PVD? That decade also had some insane 24 hour temperature drops. 02/02/76 went from 51F to 5F and if you want to include Christmas 1980 just for the heck of it since it was close to the 70s, PVD went from 35F to -10F that day. Not to mention the blizzard of 78 of course during that decade. Why were the 1970s in particular so extreme around here and we haven't broken these records since then?

Further to this, warm periods in human history tend to coincide with periods of prosperity.  Interestingly and not unsurprisingly, we are in a relative period of prosperity going by population growth.  If humankind had to choose between a warming climate and a cooling one, and I mean humans across the eons, most humans would choose warming.  Most of human (talking homo sapiens sapiens here) history was cooler/cold compared to now with significant ice age periods.  There is 1 period in human history where temps were as warm or warmer than now, about 125,000 years ago.   I'm not saying CC is a good thing or anything, I'm just saying other options aren't as 'good' for prosperity.  I don't see a lot of climate periods that are just flatline temps for long periods.  I think humans will adapt to the new climate regime and ultimately reduce carbon emissions over the next 100 years, but the cost of removing carbon will basically make that a non starter.  A lot of carbon emissions are the result of heating in the northern climes, so maybe defacto we need less of that.  My heating bills are lower - though my heat is carbon neutral.  

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12 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I think we’re less extreme than we used to be. We have a lot more moisture in our airmasses the past 2 decades and thermodynamically that limits the heating and cooling potential of the airmass. We torch way more on mins than max temps. With the arctic warming faster that should make for shorter wavelengths and less meridional patterns too. 

It may be different in dry/drought areas, but in the northeast I think temps are less extreme. 

This is certainly true....I have always said that. I guess temps are less extreme, but the storms certainly are not...which goes along with increased moisture.

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5 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

We need a central US drought to help give us a good source region for extreme heat on max temps in the summer…and then get the pattern to evolve in a manner where it advects into us instead of getting shunted south of NYC. I don’t think we’ve had a good one a while…we’ve been abnormally wet over the CONUS 

Well, luckily for heat enthusiasts, they are is an excessively dry winter scenario that’s unfolded across the northern plains. 

And I think the northern plains is actually key for our heat source. I’ve never been really impressed looking at all historical analogues with regard to WAR heat transports because even back before we started suffering higher theta-E everywhere that was always a dewpoint bulk type of hot air mass. Heat index values might still be up there and it doesn’t diminish whatever… but our biggest T side heat tends to be over the top. 

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Just now, Typhoon Tip said:

Well, luckily for heat enthusiasts, they are is an excessively dry winter scenario that’s unfolded across the northern plains. 

And I think the northern plains is actually key for our heat source. I’ve never been really impressed looking at all historical analogues with regard to WAR heat transports because even back before we started suffering higher theta-E everywhere that was always a dewpoint bulk type of hot air mass. Heat index values might still be up there and it doesn’t diminish whatever… but our biggest T side heat tends to be over the top. 

Probably going to be a scorcher of a summer.

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5 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This is certainly true....I have always said that. I guess temps are less extreme, but the storms certainly are not...which goes along with increased mositure.

I guess it depends on how you define “extreme” wrt storms. If we’re talking the amount of precipitation, sure. If we’re talking temp gradients, pressure gradients, wind, min slp, etc…I don’t know about that. 

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14 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I think we’re less extreme than we used to be. We have a lot more moisture in our airmasses the past 2 decades and thermodynamically that limits the heating and cooling potential of the airmass. We torch way more on mins than max temps. With the arctic warming faster that should make for shorter wavelengths and less meridional patterns too. 

It may be different in dry/drought areas, but in the northeast I think temps are less extreme. 

This is a great post, it is short, sweet, and I think portrays perfectly how the idea of climate change should be viewed. While I do believe human activities have escalated the rate warming during this Earth's warming cycle, I can't stand how every major weather catastrophe gets blamed on climate change. 

When I view climate change and try to understand how human induced activities have contributed, I stick to the basics of what we know about weather. Your example there makes perfect sense. We know that CO2 and H20 are heat trapping gasses and we know these gasses are not good absorbers of shortwave radiation and we know they are excellent absorbers of longwave radiation. Given this understanding alone, it is very easy to see how an increase in both would result in warmer overnight temperatures. 

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21 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I think we’re less extreme than we used to be. We have a lot more moisture in our airmasses the past 2 decades and thermodynamically that limits the heating and cooling potential of the airmass. We torch way more on mins than max temps. With the arctic warming faster that should make for shorter wavelengths and less meridional patterns too. 

It may be different in dry/drought areas, but in the northeast I think temps are less extreme. 

I agree with this. Something I found interesting though is how the 1970s actually had very high dews in the summer, and yet still were able to set all-time records. Take for instance the 104F reading at PVD on 08/02/75 with a dewpoint of 77F. That sounds like a pretty moist airmass to me. The all-time dew point record for PVD is 81F set on both 07/16 and 07/21 of 1977.

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Takes some pretty succinct timing to get that combination of T and TD in our geography... 

We are closer to sea level, where it is harder to expand BL to the same hgt as land locked interior continental places like Iowa and Kansas.  We just don't have the solar power to heat it enough at our latitude.   Interior SE U.S. can do a buck-2/ 75 much easier where the solar max sun is up over 75 deg in azimuth

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I almost think of 101 F in summer as the antithesis to breaking the 30" snow pack ambient depth in winter ( excluding mountainous region obviously )

It can be done ... but the return rate is pretty rare.

We need a 25C 850 mb plume timed with sun up and only light WNW wind, and the ensuing rising sun shines through a pure unadulterated blue flame sky.  One cirrus smear and it's game over and your 99.5 ... it's that touchy around here.  That may change in CC ...I don't know

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4 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I almost think of 101 F in summer is the antithesis to breaking the 30" snow pack ambient depth in winter ( excluding mountainous region obviously )

It can be done ... but the return rate is pretty rare.

We need a 25C 850 mb plume timed with sun up and only light WNW wind, and the ensuing rising sun shines through a pure unadulterated blue flame sky.  One cirrus smear and it's game over and your 99.5 ... it's that touchy around here.  That may change in CC ...I don't know

It’s funny how we regularly pull 97-100 no problem, but we’ve really only managed to blow through that once regionally since Jul 95 (Jul 2011). 

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Just give me 90-95 with dewpoints 70-80 and a large EML advecting in from the Southwest to coincide with a strong impulse at 500mb racing across the Great Lakes enlarging our hodographs with morning convection along the warm front producing golf ball sized hail then supercells develop 1-2 PM followed a derecho plowing through between 5-7 PM and getting to view the descending sun glowing beautifully off the 60K cloud tops 

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Just now, weatherwiz said:

Just give me 90-95 with dewpoints 70-80 and a large EML advecting in from the Southwest to coincide with a strong impulse at 500mb racing across the Great Lakes enlarging our hodographs with morning convection along the warm front producing golf ball sized hail then supercells develop 1-2 PM followed a derecho plowing through between 5-7 PM and getting to view the descending sun glowing beautifully off the 60K cloud tops 

Move to Iowa.

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26 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I know Hot Saturday was humid, but some of those sling psychrometers were juiced back then. I know ASOS has its issues, but at least all of the sites are on the same automated playing field today. 

What is Hot Saturday?  Is that like Eggplant Thursday?

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