New England Winter 2024-25 Bantering, Whining, and Sobbing Thread

[ORH_wxman]

5 hours ago, ncforecaster89 said:

The most difficult aspect of such a project I’m encountering, or struggling with, relates to how best to compensate for the large disparities in snowfall totals between coastal cities and those more into the interior localities. This is especially true as most within the general public are naturally most concerned with what occurs in their own back yard, quite literally.  What one might consider a “major” event at the coast could be quite different to another further inland…which is why I’m looking to devise a scale more refined than say, NESIS.  

Probably the most accurate way to build a classification model would also be the most labor-intensive. I’d probably take frequency thresholds into account at first order stations and start from that point. 
 

I know it’s easier for ORH to get a 12” storm than BOS or PVD. I know it’s easier for BOS to get one versus PHL or DCA. So you might calibrate the scale based on historical frequency of such events at each location…might kind of look like one of those maps of climate for plant hardiness. “You’re in zone 3 where you can’t plant tomatoes until this date, but if you’re in zone 4 you can do it a couple weeks earlier.”

[Typhoon Tip]

this is purely based on anecdotal history but i recall more numerous sa wind events back in the 1980s and 1990s.  i don't personally recall as many observed through the last 20 years, actually.   if there's validity to this latter aspect, that may atone for build up of fuels.  enter an 'out of control forestry' lapses of responsibility, as i think Will mentions.

the other aspect that kinda of irks me in this is that a sa wind event was an increasing confidence for occurrence over the week prior to the event.  were there no safe-guards and/or pre-planning strategies?  this is long becoming a tired leitmotif to me, where these disasters could have at least had some percentage mitigation  with planning and most importantly, actual implementation, but proved wilfully inadequate. 

it is really a societal scaled faulting and lapse of ownership and responsibility.  are we too affluent as a civility over here, and don't value our shit enough - and figure we'll just buy the future all over again?  i guess that's one way to live -

we were likely destined to an sa wind event in a geographic region that is highly susceptible to them.  that said, it is possible that we have not had a "house cleaning" event in enough years that the region was perhaps made to be too fuel rich and thus 'unfairly' prone - so to speak.   that really to me only doubles the onus on the regional municipalities. knowing their vulnerability to such events, to have sat on hands and what ... waited for this forecast to just be wrong instead?  - no, it is way more sus that there was negligence to even be paying attention.   did fema place at least a phone call, 'look, this is what you're facing; be advised and take precautions'.  perhaps it is a lapse of multiple agencies to be proactive.  

[Typhoon Tip]

straight up "firestorm" though

[OceanStWx]

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

this is purely based on anecdotal history but i recall more numerous sa wind events back in the 1980s and 1990s.  i don't personally recall as many observed through the last 20 years, actually.   if there's validity to this latter aspect, that may atone for build up of fuels.  enter an 'out of control forestry' lapses of responsibility, as i think Will mentions.

the other aspect that kinda of irks me in this is that a sa wind event was an increasing confidence for occurrence over the week prior to the event.  were there no safe-guards and/or pre-planning strategies?  this is long becoming a tired leitmotif to me, where these disasters could have at least had some percentage mitigation  with planning and most importantly, actual implementation, but proved wilfully inadequate. 

it is really a societal scaled faulting and lapse of ownership and responsibility.  are we too affluent as a civility over here, and don't value our shit enough - and figure we'll just buy the future all over again?  i guess that's one way to live -

we were likely destined to an sa wind event in a geographic region that is highly susceptible to them.  that said, it is possible that we have not had a "house cleaning" event in enough years that the region was perhaps made to be too fuel rich and thus 'unfairly' prone - so to speak.   that really to me only doubles the onus on the regional municipalities. knowing their vulnerability to such events, to have sat on hands and what ... waited for this forecast to just be wrong instead?  - no, it is way more sus that there was negligence to even be paying attention.   did fema place at least a phone call, 'look, this is what you're facing; be advised and take precautions'.  perhaps it is a lapse of multiple agencies to be proactive.  

I think Pacific Palisades in particular was a perfect storm of hazards are natural, disasters are man-made.

It is an old neighborhood, one without the same building standards for fire as newer CA construction (fire resistant building material, safe zones around structures where no fuel sources can be planted, etc). They had prepared with three 1,000,000 gal water tanks for just that neighborhood, but the fire was so large and intense that they couldn't refill them fast enough. Fire fighting all over the city reduced the water pressure necessary to pump water back up into Pacific Palisades. It is also outside of the typical fire season and CA was lacking the usual resources at their disposal (seasonal fire fighters, and big tanker planes shared with Australia currently in their fire season). Then you have the age old dispute between CA and feds about who is to manage the land area (since the feds own way more of the land than CA does), since nobody wants to actually fund it. 

Altadena is its own unique thing too because they are usually sheltered from a typical Santa Ana. But this was a different beast altogether. More of a pure downslope windstorm than a gap wind event like most Santa Anas. So that was not an area where people were accustomed to fire. And there is just the fact that 80-100 mph winds are going to make fire do things that you just can't stop. It's not like the Palisades fire was contained, it just ran out of stuff to burn on its way to the ocean. 

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Probably the most accurate way to build a classification model would also be the most labor-intensive. I’d probably take frequency thresholds into account at first order stations and start from that point. 
 

I know it’s easier for ORH to get a 12” storm than BOS or PVD. I know it’s easier for BOS to get one versus PHL or DCA. So you might calibrate the scale based on historical frequency of such events at each location…might kind of look like one of those maps of climate for plant hardiness. “You’re in zone 3 where you can’t plant tomatoes until this date, but if you’re in zone 4 you can do it a couple weeks earlier.”

Well put.  The storm that's shutting down ATL would be a nothingburger at ORH.
I doubt that any system could cover all the angles.  NESIS measures the impact of inches of snow on numbers of people and is the best system out there IMO.  However, storm severity can vary by winds/drifting and by total depth including pre-storm pack.  Since I live in a state with relatively few people, severe storms focused on here aren't going to score very high.  As one example, the New Year's Eve 1962 storm dumped 30-45" on the Penobscot Valley and had winds gusting 60+ but is only a blip to folks outside of the impact area.  That system also brought damaging NW winds (maybe the strongest I've experienced, along with Nov 1950) hundreds of miles to the SW but outside of the snowfall region.  Seeing large oaks having been ripped out of semi-frozen ground illustrated the wind's power.

[CoastalWx]

3 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I think Pacific Palisades in particular was a perfect storm of hazards are natural, disasters are man-made.

It is an old neighborhood, one without the same building standards for fire as newer CA construction (fire resistant building material, safe zones around structures where no fuel sources can be planted, etc). They had prepared with three 1,000,000 gal water tanks for just that neighborhood, but the fire was so large and intense that they couldn't refill them fast enough. Fire fighting all over the city reduced the water pressure necessary to pump water back up into Pacific Palisades. It is also outside of the typical fire season and CA was lacking the usual resources at their disposal (seasonal fire fighters, and big tanker planes shared with Australia currently in their fire season). Then you have the age old dispute between CA and feds about who is to manage the land area (since the feds own way more of the land than CA does), since nobody wants to actually fund it. 

Altadena is its own unique thing too because they are usually sheltered from a typical Santa Ana. But this was a different beast altogether. More of a pure downslope windstorm than a gap wind event like most Santa Anas. So that was not an area where people were accustomed to fire. And there is just the fact that 80-100 mph winds are going to make fire do things that you just can't stop. It's not like the Palisades fire was contained, it just ran out of stuff to burn on its way to the ocean. 

Did they ever figure out how it started? Was thinking maybe a downed wire. 

[OceanStWx]

7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Did they ever figure out how it started? Was thinking maybe a downed wire. 

Seems the most likely given the strength of the winds, but so far all I've seen is still under investigation. I think they said the Sunset Fire in Hollywood was suspicious. 

[Typhoon Tip]

21 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I think Pacific Palisades in particular was a perfect storm of hazards are natural, disasters are man-made.

It is an old neighborhood, one without the same building standards for fire as newer CA construction (fire resistant building material, safe zones around structures where no fuel sources can be planted, etc). They had prepared with three 1,000,000 gal water tanks for just that neighborhood, but the fire was so large and intense that they couldn't refill them fast enough. Fire fighting all over the city reduced the water pressure necessary to pump water back up into Pacific Palisades. It is also outside of the typical fire season and CA was lacking the usual resources at their disposal (seasonal fire fighters, and big tanker planes shared with Australia currently in their fire season). Then you have the age old dispute between CA and feds about who is to manage the land area (since the feds own way more of the land than CA does), since nobody wants to actually fund it. 

Altadena is its own unique thing too because they are usually sheltered from a typical Santa Ana. But this was a different beast altogether. More of a pure downslope windstorm than a gap wind event like most Santa Anas. So that was not an area where people were accustomed to fire. And there is just the fact that 80-100 mph winds are going to make fire do things that you just can't stop. It's not like the Palisades fire was contained, it just ran out of stuff to burn on its way to the ocean. 

yeah, i don't down play the severity, therefore rarety ...and the 'unavoidables' that come with that sort of occurrence.

but i'm going to be sus about the regional 'maintenance' aspects until i hear otherwise, which is sort of intimated above here.

[OceanStWx]

7 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

yeah, i don't down play the severity, therefore rarety ...and the 'unavoidables' that come with that sort of occurrence.

but i'm going to be sus about the regional 'maintenance' aspects until i hear otherwise.

I think in this particular case maintenance wouldn't have made much difference. This type of terrain, vs the forests of northern CA, the fuel is too susceptible to rapid drying for prescribed burns to be effective in stopping fire spread, and 100 mph gusts are going to carry embers a long way. 

What's going to be bad is if, like Scott said, they find some jack off was chucking matches to see what would happen. 

It was a really good forecast. But like we've seen with other really good forecasts, sometimes that encourages people to head into the worst of it. High surf? Get swept off the rocks at Thunder Hole. River flooding? Head down to the water to see the "crest", etc.

[Great Snow 1717]

6 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I think in this particular case maintenance wouldn't have made much difference. This type of terrain, vs the forests of northern CA, the fuel is too susceptible to rapid drying for prescribed burns to be effective in stopping fire spread, and 100 mph gusts are going to carry embers a long way. 

What's going to be bad is if, like Scott said, they find some jack off was chucking matches to see what would happen. 

It was a really good forecast. But like we've seen with other really good forecasts, sometimes that encourages people to head into the worst of it. High surf? Get swept off the rocks at Thunder Hole. River flooding? Head down to the water to see the "crest", etc.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/01/10/alleged-arsonist-arrested-in-los-angeles-amid-deadly-california-wildfires-kenneth/

[Typhoon Tip]

9 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I think in this particular case maintenance wouldn't have made much difference. This type of terrain, vs the forests of northern CA, the fuel is too susceptible to rapid drying for prescribed burns to be effective in stopping fire spread, and 100 mph gusts are going to carry embers a long way. 

What's going to be bad is if, like Scott said, they find some jack off was chucking matches to see what would happen. 

It was a really good forecast. But like we've seen with other really good forecasts, sometimes that encourages people to head into the worst of it. High surf? Get swept off the rocks at Thunder Hole. River flooding? Head down to the water to see the "crest", etc.

i'm not just concerned with the infrastructural losses - btw - in my concerns. 

fire moves fast, particularly when it is flamed along by very strong winds...

but, it is still possible to not have mounting death tolls. when the ominous nature of forecasts were amply leading - it just wasn't heeded, or enough. that's part of the repeating theme in these disasters

but you know, didn't we just have a malibu oddity like this.  similar latitude.  different cause at the discrete level, but in principle? ...not really different.  you had +pp n of a pressure well after antecedent dry anomalies over an extended period.  

interesting    a smell an attribution paper.  heh

[OceanStWx]

3 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

i'm not just concerned with the infrastructural losses - btw - in my concerns. 

fire moves fast, particularly when it is flamed along by very strong winds...

but, it is still possible to not have mounting death tolls. when the ominous nature of forecasts were amply leading - it just wasn't heeded, or enough. that's part of the repeating theme in these disasters

but you know, didn't we just have a malibu oddity like this.  similar latitude.  different cause at the discrete level, but in principle? ...not really different.  you had +pp n of a pressure well after antecedent dry anomalies over an extended period.  

interesting    a smell an attribution paper.  heh

I think most people don't have the concept of how fast a fire can move when they get that evacuation order. I think I heard an estimate that Palisades was moving 2-5 football fields per minute at its peak. You aren't really outrunning that, and definitely don't have time to toss a go-bag together. 

I know I didn't even really have a concept of how large these fires are either. You hear 1,000 acres and it just isn't a scale you deal with often. I was on a 19 acre prescribed burn in Maine last year and it was pretty damn big. 

[WxWatcher007]

 

[Ginx snewx]

1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

I think most people don't have the concept of how fast a fire can move when they get that evacuation order. I think I heard an estimate that Palisades was moving 2-5 football fields per minute at its peak. You aren't really outrunning that, and definitely don't have time to toss a go-bag together. 

I know I didn't even really have a concept of how large these fires are either. You hear 1,000 acres and it just isn't a scale you deal with often. I was on a 19 acre prescribed burn in Maine last year and it was pretty damn big. 

I looked at Paradise and my first impression is fire tornado.  I think death toll goes up

[OceanStWx]

7 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

I looked at Paradise and my first impression is fire tornado.  I think death toll goes up

I don't think you're wrong. Just based on the traffic jam evacuating, I think there were a lot of people who couldn't outrun it. I think the saving grace was that it happened before it was dark.

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

I think most people don't have the concept of how fast a fire can move when they get that evacuation order. I think I heard an estimate that Palisades was moving 2-5 football fields per minute at its peak. You aren't really outrunning that, and definitely don't have time to toss a go-bag together. 

I know I didn't even really have a concept of how large these fires are either. You hear 1,000 acres and it just isn't a scale you deal with often. I was on a 19 acre prescribed burn in Maine last year and it was pretty damn big. 

The most recent wildfire over 1,000 acres in Maine was in 1977, about 3,000 acres, nearly all in Baxter Park and in the blowdown of November 1974.  With all that fully dried fuel, the fire was burning downhill on a calm night - a very uncommon fire behavior.  (The Park wanted to clear out the fallen wood but was stopped by a lawsuit that claimed such action would violate Governor Baxter's deeds of trust.  Only the roadside areas were cleared; the rest was a bomb waiting to explode.)

[das]

3 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

I think Pacific Palisades in particular was a perfect storm of hazards are natural, disasters are man-made.

It is also outside of the typical fire season and CA was lacking the usual resources at their disposal (seasonal fire fighters, and big tanker planes shared with Australia currently in their fire season).

This is a real thing.  The fire weather and mitigation process in CA, as flawed as it is, is on a periodic cycle meant to extend their limited resources.  This tragedy hit at a down time meant for preparation and mitigations for the upcoming fire season.  (The negative impacts of climate change, poor fire fuel management, etc... are very clear over the represented timescale but the yearly fire weather low period is very clear regardless).

There is always risk, of course, but the risk is historically much lower this time of year so it is the natural time to plan and prepare. 

The perfect storm of increased hydroclimate volatility (perfectly at play in SoCal with two years of well above rainfall enhancing the growth of underbrush followed by anomalous dry in the 5 weeks leading up to this event):

...was a recipe for disaster.  Here's a recently published paper by Swain et. al., from UCLA on the subject.  SoCal is one of the study focus areas:

hydroclimate volatility Swain et al.pdf

California was second only to Idaho in total acres per square mile burned each year over the last 4 decades with a sharp increase in the last few years.  Clearly, what they are doing is not working.

...and, that ignores the human-centered impacts with their propensity to build in places that they should not and fight fire fuel mitigation activities.  Which is a whole 'nother discussion.  This trend is only getting worse as time goes on:

And, finally, having nothing to do with sharp increases in human population and encroachment into fire-prone areas, actual wildfire extents are increasing:

...but, as well, the intensities are increasing: 

Unfortunately, unless humans drastically change their short and long term behaviors, their desire to live in places that are fire prone, exacerbated by a upwards trends in the periodic cycles of climate and downstream effect on fire behavior, this will continue to be a volatile cycle of poor human and ecological outcomes.

 

[radarman]

8 hours ago, amarshall said:

Friend in DFW area



.

Most of my friends in DFW would beg to disagree.  They were stoked on the snow.  Neighborhood kids having snowball fights and making snowmen.  4"+ north and west of Ft Worth into Denton county especially.