40/70 Benchmark

Similar here....I think I am at .31" on the month.

Yea, beautiful.

Our definitions of wretched are different. It was a paltry month for snowfall and it was pretty mild, as I recall.

I think the issue is that its difficult to quantify and there are so many different ways to attempt to do so. That looks more realistic than the drought monitor, which seems a bit sensational.

I guess if I had to choose, I actually want the storm because its a bit of a warm up for the cold season and if nothing else, at least gets me accustomed to posting again. Break up the monotony a bit without the anxiety of being heavily invested like winter, when the stakes are higher.

I feel like droughts are a weather phenomenon that is almost always exaggerated.

That is what it has come to......brutal 7 month stretch since the blizzard that queefed in my face.

Part of me would like to see a nice nor'easter to just break up the monotony and set the stage for the cold season, but there is a more sinister side that would like to see how much vegetation we can kill. I guess I don't really care either way.

I posed this question to Raindance awhile back, which he blew off because he has a habit of doing that....but does anyone have any thoughts on the actual physical connection between tropical ACE value and the ensuing pattern during the following cold season? I have never seen it discussed much beyond the just maps illustrating the correlation... My rather crude, "no shit, Sherlock" guess is that the amount of latent heat energy released into the atmosphere can have an impact on shaping the hemispheric pattern for months ahead. I would guess higher ACE would generally support a tendency for greater heights near the pole for several months out. Interesting-

With the way everything is waffling, I'd just go with the national blend and ensembles...expect about 1/2 of liquid for most of eastern MA.

Looks like the blend map that I just commented on. Even a half inch of liquid would be significant.

Even that is a decent little drink out this way.

Yea, I have been thinking that...should be much earlier than last year.

Thank god this isn't winter, or I'd be full tilt.

I get the same vibe regarding December from a different methodology. The end of the 1976 season was actually pretty good, too.

That QPF gradient reminds me of the Dec 1981 nor'Easter that have my area like 20", and ORH like 5".

Slow starter....December was wretched.

First signs of seasonal change over the past week....can sense the sun getting lower, too.

They aren't mutually exclusive.

OMFG, Stein this, Stein that...will it be .03" of rain this week, or .04? Someone give me a pistol to swallow and then revive me when there is a hurricane to track. All ball busting aside, there should never be any mystery behind why any single person, aside from @CoastalWx's post count drops precipitously this time of year.

I am pretty confident that both la nina and the IOD are going fade relatively early on during the cold season.

I think we are going to see abundant signs over the course of this cold season that this particular cold ENSO event is "washed up", so to speak, so I wouldn't necessarily bank on text book la nina climo...especially later on in the season. The seeds of el nino have been planted long before it manifests onto SST anomaly charts.

I'm not sure why you view that as bad news...

The fact that we have been in a rather stagnant la nina state all year long makes it less likely that the IOD and ENSO are going to couple and mutually re-enforce one another to the same degree that they would if la nina had really began to blossom this summer and into the fall. I think this is part of the reason why a lot of guidance dissipates both events pretty quickly during boreal winter and think that makes the most sense, especially considering the self-destructive nature of ENSO in general. ENSO is an acronym for El Nino Southern OSCILLATION, which at baseline is exactly as the name implies, an oscillation back and forth. It is not meant to stagnate and there are certain atmospheric mechanisms in place to ensure that any said stagnation if fleeting. The resultant disconnect between the IOD and ENSO when the latter becomes stagnant is one of them, and the inherent dynamics of the Walker Cycle being the other prominent device that favors this oscillatory proclivity. A crude analogy is to consider this la nina akin to a post ERC hurricane on a smaller scale in that the window of time for it to exert its most profound influence on the ambient atmosphere has past. A stagnant hurricane is less equipped to rip a hole in the ozone just as a stagnant ENSO event is not as pervasive a hemispheric driver. Tropical systems and ENSO are both ultimately self destructive to a degree...remember that.

I haven't really got into analyzing the structure much yet....will be starting that this month, but 2000 appears to be a pretty good fit in terms of both being really far west-based.