All Activity

I’m just going to enjoy it for now. 50s and 5pm sunsets will be here soon enough.

They always predict an average to above average hurricane season unless el nino is present. However, they do seem to break out a little more science to try to figure out the land falling part.

I circled the station moves: Coatesville 1946 and 47, Phoenixville 1949 and West Chester 1970. Each move caused roughly 2F cooling. Easy to spot the station changes as the year-to-year temperature change at each move station differed from the other two stations. As I have shown previously, take out the station moves by plotting before and after move data separately and NOAA is a close match to the raw data.

12z EURO past hr 360 would of been fun

Op Euro still has no definitive frost threat through the end of the month other than high mountain areas.

We all need more rain but I'd prefer if we'd dry out from the latest rainfall along the coastal areas. Further inland could definitely use some rain, as they missed out on the Nor'easter.

83!

A warmer enso actually correlates slightly warmer for us, but what makes a warm enso "snowier" is that it gives us multiple ways to "win". We can still get a colder pattern sometimes in warm enso...and then it's a possible 2003, 2010 type thing. Those are the once in a blue moon blockbuster winters. But even in a warmer year we can still "win" if we just time up one of those STJ storms with a rare colder period. 1983 and 2016 for example. And of course we get lots of years somewhere in between...but with an active STJ we just have more chances to get snow, even if overall the winter isn't cold...we just have to time up a couple of the storms. The problem with a fading nina is that we don't get the advantage that actually makes warmer enso better...the stronger STJ, which typically doesn't take effect until we get an actual warm enso. So I dont think there is really an advantage to a fading cold enso for our snowfall. That said, I do think a fluke can always happen. Something like 2014 for example, which was a wall to wall enso neutral year, could happen but it's just so rare it likely wouldn't show up in such a small sample just by random probabilities. If we had records that went back longer we probably would eventually see a snowy winter in a cold enso fading to neutral, IMO. But I think we can say it's not MORE likely that if the enso simply stays cold since we do have some examples of a snowy winter in a wall to wall cold enso winter...and absolutely NONE in a cold enso fading to neutral. Again, due to small sample I think that is somewhat a fluke, so saying it is WORSE is a step to far imo, but saying it is better also has no support.

I want a refund on today's sunny forecast. Sunny to me means at least 80% sunshine, not 40% (and that's being generous). Probably more so a Frederick thing than for areas to the east.

We don’t need more rain…

Welp they've already lost most of the rain

Finger nails embedded in the walls of the well as victims try to climb out?

I had a few minutes so I found my data regarding a cold enso fading to neutral during the winter...and it's FUGLY, as I thought I remembered. Now, this is an extremely small sample size so it's always possible this is a fluke, but there is no actual results based data to support the idea a fading nina is a good thing. All the years where we had a weak cold enso heading into the fall that faded to neutral by the JFM period and BWI snowfall that winter. 2022-23: 0.2" 2016-17: 3" 2001-02: 0.3" 1983-84: 14.5" 1971-72: 13" 1964-65: 18.6" 1956-57: 19.1" The last 3 examples of this were some of our worst snowfall winters ever! Additionally, while snowfall was somewhat better with the older analogs, snow climo was significantly better then also so make sure to consider that. For example, that 18.6" total in 1965 might seem nice, except that was the least snowy winter of the entire 1960s for Baltimore! You have to apply context. A year with 14 or 18" of snow might seem ok now, but in a time period when BWI averaged close to 25" it would have been the equivalent of a single digit snowfall season now.

"Scary" is your description. "Sobering" is mine. But that's where the science is. On your point about verification, sea level forecasts have fared very well, so far. A paper that was published this past summer revealed: With an acceleration of global sea-level rise during the satellite altimetry era (since 1993) firmly established, it is now appropriate to examine sea-level projections made around the onset of this time period. Here we show that the mid-range projection from the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC (1995/1996) was strikingly close to what transpired over the next 30 years, with the magnitude of sea-level rise underestimated by only ∼1 cm.

We had a chilly low this morning of 40. A backdoor front arrives overnight will reinforce cooler temperatures and a chance of some showers Sunday with the arrival of a stronger front. The leaves in the Valley should be near peak this weekend. I'm seeing a trend in the longer range guidance suggesting stronger cold fronts pushing through until the end of October. Even some hints a snow showers in the longer range!

The -PNA tendency is alluded to in the follow up tweet. 2nd year Niña would support it:

That wind is roaring.

wind kicking up here with partly sunny now 65 degrees

really like the rustic look of the cabin, especially with the fall colors

Sunny now...

a pattern similar to last winter but with more -pna tendancies would be great. while it was fine here in the lake effect zones, there wasn’t much synoptic. i don’t think most here would complain about a more active pattern even if it brought more periods of warmth

At least it's a more active pattern moving forward.

i agree with webb’s take. i would lean strongly to a pattern similar to last winter. several peer-review studies, such as liang et al. (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/30/22/jcli-d-17-0149.1.xml) link a strong indo-pacific warm pool to downstream western us/goa ridging, sometimes even independent of the enso state, especially if it is weak.

Scary for sure....but like all these longer term forecasts to date...highly unlikely to come close to reality!!