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Morning day 1 from SPC

Nothing to see there. Completely normal

Insane

My ideal would be 3 good months of winter weather with the rest of the year 70-75 degrees and only as much rain as necessary.

It's been like a summer evening. Still 72 at midnight at MLI, 70 at DVN.

Agreed. La Nina’s generally being drier east of the appalachians would probably be a true statement however. Northern stream dominated systems that get shredded by the mountains.

They were too warm the past 2 Winters in the east - but not before that. The past 10 Winters they actually have a slight cold bias in the east. Seasonal models played -PDO and PNA persistency, popping a SE ridge for the Winter, however if you extended these DJF forecasts the last 2 Winters to March, there is not as much colder than forecast verification. Despite what many believe, La Nina is actually not warmer in the NE. A west-based La nina may be, but La Nina's usually have cold Decembers and their main effect is on the north pacific high pressure (NPH), which is net neutral temps in the NE in the cold season. La Nina's and Strong El Nino's aren't both warm..

Yeah they are off with their conservative anomalies compared to the 91-20 average. It should realistically be +1F everywhere. To make that dark red is kind of weird, if you judge this last Winter's forecast on their temp anomalies, it was a huge bust in the Mountain west. They aren't in tune with where we are as a whole compared to the 91-20 average.

I still haven't seen any guidance today that suggests that SVR is possible in this area, except for those in southern PA or possibly western and northeastern MD. We might, however, get some thunder very early Monday. SPC might retain the MRGL where it already is for continuity, but the timing for most of us for this event is way off.

We are now a couple of storms deep into our current March series of what the weather modeling suggests will be about a half dozen systems. The resorts of the Northern Greens are generally reporting 6-12” of accumulation from the first couple of events, with the one that moved into the area yesterday being the most vigorous. Snowfall yesterday afternoon was in the 1-2”/hr. range even in the valleys, and for those out on the roads, driving was very difficult due to both the accumulations and the limited visibility in the intense snowfall. As of this morning, Bolton Valley was reporting 7 inches of new snow from the most recent storm, so I headed up to the hill for some turns. It was a beautiful late winter day out there at the resort, with temperatures in the 20s F, a mix of clouds and some sun, and occasional flurries as well. Compared to last weekend, the number of visitors wasn’t quite as high, since there weren’t as may events taking place at the resort; I arrived around opening time and parked in the upper backcountry lot, which was about half filled at that point. I started the first half of the morning with a lift-served ski session, and up at the main mountain neither the Vista Quad nor the Wilderness Double were running due to planned closures and mechanical work. I did take a couple of quick runs off the Mid Mountain Chair and the Snowflake Chair to get a feel for the snow. My snow analyses from the valley indicated that the storm had left about a half inch of liquid equivalent in the area, so it had the potential to be a moderate resurfacing of the slopes. Compared to what we picked up in the valley, the snow at elevation was notably drier, and it didn’t seem to bond as well to the subsurface as last weekend’s snow. At least up at Bolton’s elevations, it was cold throughout the storm, so there wasn’t any of that extra dense snow at the start to improve the interface with the old snow. Similar to last weekend, the storm made for a decent resurfacing of low and moderate-angle terrain, but it just didn’t hold up quite as well as last time. If you didn’t get first tracks, you were quickly down to the very firm subsurface, and the snow not bonding well meant that the skiing just wasn’t great with repeat traffic. Groomed surfaces were actually quite good though, so the snow being cold throughout the storm seemed to set it up for being tilled into the base extremely well. I ventured over to Timberline after those fist couple of runs, and that was definitely the place to be. Skier traffic was lighter and with the Timberline Quad in operation, there was just so much more terrain open that fresh tracks were plentiful. There was still the issue of the quality dropping off quickly on tracked terrain, but with the relatively low skier density, that took a while. I skied at Timberline until about midmorning when it became harder to find untracked snow on piste, and then I headed back to the main mountain for a tour on the Nordic and Backcountry Network. I spent the rest of the morning ski touring, and my route was in the 2,000 – 2,800’ elevation range from the lower Village area up past Bryant Cabin. There were a couple of water bars near the bottom of the Bryant Trail that had been blown out during last week’s thaw, but people have made bypass routes to quickly get around them. Even though the water bars have been filled in somewhat with new snow, with vertical gouges cut into 5 to 6 feet of snowpack, the physical dimension of the trenches make it just too awkward to try to climb down into them and then climb back out the other side. At least as of this morning, skier traffic on the Nordic and Backcountry Network had been very low, so you had access to untracked lines just about anywhere you went. To that point, I was breaking trail this morning as the first one out onto North Slope, so everything out past there was untracked. The powder skiing was great on low and moderate angle terrain. As PF mentioned, there wasn’t much elevation dependence with respect to new snow accumulations. I did find the very best depths with 7 to 8 inches of fresh powder up around 2,800’ above Bryant Cabin, but even down at the lower elevations of Timberline around 1,500’ there was a good 6 inches of new snow, and it was slightly denser so it may have had just about the same amount of liquid in it. All morning, people I talked to at the resort spoke about this next storm coming into the area tonight as being even bigger, so at least that’s the perception that the general skiing public seems to have. Some of the models do have twice as much liquid forecast for this next system, and there are projected accumulations through Monday morning to match, so we’ll see how this next one plays out.

Just continues and continues

Why is it always the GFS starting crap, bruh lol

In theme with the record shattering heat in the west-central US, I eye Flagstaff AZ to find they got to 29C/84F yesterday the 20th! The WUN avg shows 12C and the daily record of 21C...beat the record by 8C/18F+!?

Screwed 6 ways from Sunday

I'm not convinced that the Pacific circulation goes so far into El Nino. SOI this March is way higher than all other Moderate+ El Nino's (later in the year) on record (since 1950). This is March SOI rolled into the max ENSO time of year.. this is a +NPH-feedback pattern in the Hadley Cell, and slight cooling on the equator. April SOI, however, makes a much bigger difference:

I wouldn't mind the QPF but keep the snow in ski country at this point.

The previous earliest 3 consecutive day stretch of 105 days was May 2-4, 1947.

NAM is little snow too. Not complaining.

The warmest March on record for the CONUS, 2012, is going to be broken by quite a lot this March. Here is how Apr-May 2012 evolved:

Still 75 at MLI as of 9pm. Hard to believe it was in the single digits just 4 days ago. Amazing turnaround for sure.

I'm in short sleeves at 930pm in March. Less than a week after having a historic blizzard. What a strange month, even for March. It's frankly kind of unnerving just how warm it is outside rn.

Low of 54, high of 82. Much warmer today than the last 2.