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March 2024


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Jan 15-20 was my “get worried if nothing changes” timeframe this winter because Nino usually is best later, which is around when the pattern went back to Perma-Nina. So that was the time to get concerned. I hope next winter is better but looks honestly like more of the same unless the Pacific meaningfully changes or we get lucky with blocking like 20-21. Hopefully we have a very high ACE this summer.  

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41 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

Just to add, the arctic air staying locked in Eurasia ended up being one of the biggest red flags….that has been a staple in some of our worst winters of all time 

There hasn't even been much arctic air there either. Some small periods of outbreaks, but nothing sustained. 

image.thumb.png.444b4f53258aa7fb2b43d7a574d909cb.png

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Re Quebec wildfires of spring 2023 lasting into June, the area where fires broke out contains a few roads that extend in various directions from Chibougamau (that's the weather station about halfway from James Bay to western Labrador). It's a town of about 8,000 people and along those roads are a few other places with 1-2 k populations. There is a bit of active forestry but as some pointed out, a lot of the timber that far north is unsuitable for any kind of commercial forestry. Except within 10 miles of the sparse road network, it is also inaccessible. 

Disclaimer: I am not a big conspiracy theorist in general, but the fact is, several known cases of arson leading to forest fires have been prosecuted successfully in various Canadian provinces. There is a lot of suspicion in Canada that the enormous Fort mac (Alberta) blaze in 2016 started from a campfire on a forest access road about 25 miles west of t e city, whether that was human carelessness or deliberate arson is not known. No suspects were ever identified. The Quebec fires all appeared to start in a short 24-hour time window in locations near those roads I mentioned. It was warm and dry for a week or two and not particularly windy but satellite imagery showed no convection, and weather maps showed no frontal activity. A theory of arson as cause is perhaps more plausible here than in the western Canada wildfire seasons of recent years where you had all the usual natural factors in place. Even so, one or two of those fires were deliberately started. 

Who does this? Two groups would top the list. One would be regional residents hoping to start fires to get crew work. Another would be either random mentally ill people or (if you perceive a difference) radical eco-freaks who think perhaps a catastrophic wildfire outbreak would "bring public awareness of climate change" (not to mention actually creating climate change). A third less likely group would be terrorist cells attacking our two national economies (wildfires don't do much good to the economy, BC for example spent almost a billion dollars fighting fires in 2021 alone). 

Another possible cause of wildfires is sparking from passing trains. This has been identified as a possible cause of the burndown of Lytton BC on June 30, 2021 during the heat dome episode. But there are no railways in the parts of Quebec where fires broke out. I found it particularly suspicious that about a dozen separate fires all started in the same 24-hour period in Quebec last spring near road systems. This is bound to become a trend because even if only about one in two thousand people are susceptible to the various causal factors to act as arsonists, that translates to 5,000 people in a state or province with ten million people. That's a lot of potential arsonists. Now success in this sort of enterprise would depend on some knowledge of weather factors and forest dynamics. A potential arsonist who went out in the wrong weather or forest fire risk situation would probably leave no evidence of their efforts. 

When people say we can expect more of this, do they mean more climate stress or more social factors as the actual cause? If it is a 50-50 blend of both we are really in trouble. 

(two additional causes of wildfires, slash burning efforts that get out of control, and power line arcing in high winds, more of a problem in California in part due to misguided laws allowing full tree growth under power lines, something not done in most other jurisdictions where we clear cut power line corridors for this reason). 

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54 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

Well, Judah Cohen just stuck a fork in this winter/March in his new blog. And kudos to @bluewave saying that 72-73 was a very good match for this winter months ago. It looks like a very good match for March too:
 

I didn’t say 72-73 was a good match for this winter since that was a much colder winter than this one was across North America. We are in such a different global climate state now, that winter analogs before the 15-16 super El Niño are too different. I mostly focused on the record WPAC warm pool for such a strong El Niño presenting warmer risks to the winter computer model forecasts.

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37 minutes ago, bluewave said:

I didn’t say 72-73 was a good match for this winter since that was a much colder winter than this one was across North America. We are in such a different global climate state now, that winter analogs before the 15-16 super El Niño are too different. I mostly focused on the record WPAC warm pool for such a strong El Niño presenting warmer risks to the winter computer model forecasts.

My apologies, I stand corrected. My memory is going already lol It was actually @40/70 Benchmark

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34 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

My apologies, I stand corrected. My memory is going already lol It was actually @40/70 Benchmark

No problem. I think the reference to 72-73 came up in discussion about this being a rare case of a -PDO with such a strong El Niño. Not that the actual 500 mb and temperature pattern would be a carbon copy. We are even seeing changes with the -PDO due to so much warming in the entire Western Pacific Basin.  In addition to the record tropical marine heatwaves in the warmer WPAC MJO phases for us, the ongoing marine heatwave near Japan has been a compounding warm factor also. I saw a great post recently on twitter on how this is a different flavor of -PDO than we used to see before. 
 

 

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3 hours ago, bluewave said:

I didn’t say 72-73 was a good match for this winter since that was a much colder winter than this one was across North America. We are in such a different global climate state now, that winter analogs before the 15-16 super El Niño are too different. I mostly focused on the record WPAC warm pool for such a strong El Niño presenting warmer risks to the winter computer model forecasts.

 

2 hours ago, snowman19 said:

My apologies, I stand corrected. My memory is going already lol It was actually @40/70 Benchmark

As I am sure both of you understand, asserting that a particular season is a good analog does not imply that it will be an exact replica in any, never mind every facet. I stand by my claim that that season is a very viable analog, especially for March.

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15 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Looks like a warm and wet pattern going into March as this is another example of these south based blocks linking up with the Southeast ridge. 
 

March 4-11

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My focus now turns to actually wanting warmer weather and avoiding Spring and Summer Drought.  Winter is over and I'm ready to move on.

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55 minutes ago, MANDA said:

My focus now turns to actually wanting warmer weather and avoiding Spring and Summer Drought.  Winter is over and I'm ready to move on.

High pressure will dominate east of New England in early March so plenty of easterly flow with clouds and rain potential. It looks like the kind of pattern where the warmer days are into the 50s to lower 60s around EWR and NYC but clouds and onshore flow limit the 70°+ potential for a while near the metro.

 

AB796805-D866-48C9-93A4-5A3BF876BA08.thumb.png.b5c7c564be185b0ea838af02858ffdf0.png


 

 

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12 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

 

As I am sure both of you understand, asserting that a particular season is a good analog does not imply that it will be an exact replica in any, never mind every facet. I stand by my claim that that season is a very viable analog, especially for March.

only big difference besides the temperatures was no big snowstorm in the SE, that also probably had to do with the warmer climate

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30 minutes ago, bluewave said:

High pressure will dominate east of New England in early March so plenty of easterly flow with clouds and rain potential. It looks like the kind of pattern where the warmer days are into the 50s to lower 60s around EWR and NYC but clouds and onshore flow limit the 70°+ potential for a while near the metro.

 

AB796805-D866-48C9-93A4-5A3BF876BA08.thumb.png.b5c7c564be185b0ea838af02858ffdf0.png


 

 

hopefully we get rid of this in March so we go to very warm and dry in April like the last two years .

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13 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Did 2011-12 have any snow from this point forward? I remember there was a little snow in March that season?

We only had 1.1 inches of snow in 1918-19 to this point? How much did that season finish with, Don?

No.  March 2012 was a dry torch with a day or two near 80.

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12 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Did 2011-12 have any snow from this point forward? I remember there was a little snow in March that season?

We only had 1.1 inches of snow in 1918-19 to this point? How much did that season finish with, Don?

2011-12 had no additional snowfall. However, yesterday's late evening temperature was enough to push NYC to a 40.6° winter mean temperature (0.1° above 2011-12). As a result, Winter 2023-24 now ranks worse than 2011-12. Winter 1918-19 finished with 3.8" of snow.

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1 minute ago, donsutherland1 said:

2011-12 had no additional snowfall. However, yesterday's late evening temperature was enough to push NYC to a 40.6° winter mean temperature (0.1° above 2011-12). As a result, Winter 2023-24 now ranks worse than 2011-12. Winter 1918-19 finished with 3.8" of snow.

I noticed that a February average of 40.0 has become likely.... I wonder how many JF average temperatures of 40.0+ or higher we have seen in NYC climate history?

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