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First Winter Storm to kickoff 2025-26 Winter season
TauntonBlizzard2013 replied to Baroclinic Zone's topic in New England
Looks way more amped than 18z -
December 2025 Short/Medium Range Forecast Thread
jaxjagman replied to John1122's topic in Tennessee Valley
Next year could be quite interesting if ElNino develops into summer into late fall,there is alot more correlation with ice storms,ive been doing some research the past few days of ice storms with the ENSO,Typically you'd expect Ice storms with ElNino but i found is when ElNino develops into summer-winter the odds dramatically increase. -
Thank you
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Well out of both of their ranges though. Grain of salt
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Icon way back north so I’m sure gfs will go south now lol
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First Winter Storm to kickoff 2025-26 Winter season
CoastalWx replied to Baroclinic Zone's topic in New England
00z icon pretty far offshore. Decent hit away from the coast. edit wrong run. 0z definitely a hugger. -
First Winter Storm to kickoff 2025-26 Winter season
AstronomyEnjoyer replied to Baroclinic Zone's topic in New England
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Seems like models are leaning towards a type of overrunning event. This might be better than the coastal comming up the coast.
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First Winter Storm to kickoff 2025-26 Winter season
Snowcrazed71 replied to Baroclinic Zone's topic in New England
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Nam and rgem come in colder at 00z
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First Winter Storm to kickoff 2025-26 Winter season
AstronomyEnjoyer replied to Baroclinic Zone's topic in New England
Ran the 00z ICON from my basement. -
Surprised I haven't seen much if any mention of this lurking around the forums. As everyone knows NoVa and specifically Ashburn, VA is *the* hub of the AI data center boom going on right now. And as everyone also knows, data centers use a ton of water and electricity - most of which ultimately ends up in the atmosphere as waste heat and water vapor. Thinking about this from an urban heat island perspective, you could chalk it up as typical development in an area that's been sprawling for decades, except you'd be way off on scale. These things are unprecedented in terms of energy and water throughput density, they compare absolutely none to any other type of development we've seen before ever and I highly suspect if people looked closely we'd already see some unique effects on regional climate that will continue to grow as more of these things come online in a very concentrated area. How do data centers compare to other sources of UHI? Scale - around 6 GW of capacity used for existing data centers in Loudon county alone, future plans might require upwards of 20. Roughly 2 billion gallons water consumption. Total VA build out, most of which is in NoVA would consume 66 to 100 TWH per year, which is comparable to the state of Tennessee. This isn't normal sprawl. It is the energy usage of entire states, concentrated into waste heat and moisture in a few square miles. It dwarfs the energy consumption of DC proper. The water usage otoh is about 5% of what DC consumes - not off the scale - but consider how it's used. Interaction w/ Environment - New build data centers tend to be built using closed-loop cooling systems, featuring roof-top cooling towers that use airflow + evaporation to chill an internally circulated coolant. I can't find an actual source, but chat GPT suggests that roughly 80% of the waste heat handled by these systems is offset by latent cooling, with about 20% remaining in sensible heat to the atmosphere. All of that water is for the most part being output to the atmosphere rather than being flushed to the bay like most urban water supply - so that 5% figure is actually quite significant. And since these cooling towers are quite low/not that hot, unlike the direct cooling towers on power plants, the moisture output is all going into the PBL rather than the free atmosphere. Long story short, gigawatts and gigawatts of energy is being used to humidify the lower atmosphere in NoVA. It's important to note that this waste heat and humidity is being output in a suburban area, so it will express itself in unfamiliar ways compared to traditional urban UHI. From most studies I've seen, daytime urban UHI is primarily SW albedo + transpiration effects, whereas nightime UHI is attributed to radiative inefficiency (urban canyon + higher heat capacity of surfaces) and waste heat from buildings and vehicles. The night-time effects notoriously combine in various ways, and so for waste heat in a suburban areas you may not see the dramatic increase in over-night minimums that are usually the hallmark of UHI, since there aren't the same kinds of surfaces to trap spatially and temporally varying fluxes of waste heat and dispense them out evenly over the AM hours, and the fluxes from data centers are not as uniform in the first place as cars and buildings that ring every block of a city. Questions Do observations so far indicate anything odd around NoVA? Temperature wise, but also dewpoints How widespread would any effects be? Would it be hyper-local within NoVA or would we get significant downstream transport? If the waste heat and moisture output of data centers is significant, will it express itself in changes to regional convective season climo? This seems reasonable since PBL moisture distribution is a huge factor I plan to dive through the data at some point and post updates, but right now I thought I'd get some input to make sure it's not crazy Here are some articles on NoVA data centers and their electricity/water usage: https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-data-center-construction-boom-amazon-2025-10 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-network-powering-us-data-centers/ https://www.itbrew.com/stories/2024/08/26/northern-virginia-s-data-center-alley-is-thirstier-than-ever
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Nov 28-30th Post Turkey Day Winter Storm
Jackstraw replied to Chicago Storm's topic in Lakes/Ohio Valley
Best disco for those of us on the southern edge. Shallow warm layers in these setups tend to produce little liquid. Takes a little more umph/depth in temp rise right along the transition to produce more robust liquid, especially with a fresh snow pack preceding. I've rarely seen more than light drizzle in setups like these, better chances of a full light or heavier rain switch with temps above 34 and at least a +freezing 850 nose to help. Not saying it cant but this setup is half my winters lately. Now where and how long does it last? Starting to call my area Kitchen Sink Canyon lol -
Looks like amounts really dropped off south of I-89. Judging from webcams, probably 1-2 windblown inches at MRG/Sugarbush
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Nov 28-30th Post Turkey Day Winter Storm
Harry Perry replied to Chicago Storm's topic in Lakes/Ohio Valley
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9" measured on elevated surfaces within 24 hours is a solid snowfall (1-1.5" before the flip). Closing in on a half inch per hour average over an entire calendar day. That's a good shot of snow for the northern Greens as the trough moves through.
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First Winter Storm to kickoff 2025-26 Winter season
MegaMike replied to Baroclinic Zone's topic in New England
I completely agree. It was recently made operational (Feb. 2025) and its primary purpose (imo at the current moment) is to provide an efficient (few resources and fast to simulate), medium/long range ensemble... I consider it a less accurate version of the CFS, honestly. They're years, if not decades, away from making the AIFS comparable to any traditional NWP modeling system. I'm not even fully sold on that being a possibility either... I'll take it seriously when the AIFS outperforms the IFS at the surface and not 500-50mb Vendors will provide any modeling system to stand out, unfortunately... At this range, I'd primarily consider the ECMWF, GFS, CMC, ICON, and UKMET (with more emphasis on their ensembles). Maybe look at trends of the AIFS for S&Gs. -
Tuesday morning could be interesting for the escarpment and immediate lee.
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8 new 9 24 hrs nice recovery on the slopes
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Nov 28-30th Post Turkey Day Winter Storm
ChiTownSnow replied to Chicago Storm's topic in Lakes/Ohio Valley
IMO the low placement favors Wisconsin shore more than Illinois. Between mke and Sheboygan in WI look money with those SE winds -
Nov 28-30th Post Turkey Day Winter Storm
homedis replied to Chicago Storm's topic in Lakes/Ohio Valley
From what I see on most guidance, it’ll increase QPF but will also reduce the ratios due to the warmer lake waters, so it’s almost a net zero. Not sure what will actually happen -
Nov 28-30th Post Turkey Day Winter Storm
TheNiño replied to Chicago Storm's topic in Lakes/Ohio Valley
What are the thoughts on lake enhancement? MKE is mentioning it will increase totals but LOT seems to disagree. -
Nov 28-30th Post Turkey Day Winter Storm
cyclone77 replied to Chicago Storm's topic in Lakes/Ohio Valley
Probably backing down more towards reality. Still high-end event nonetheless.
