40/70 Benchmark

Agree.

That period from around Thanksgiving through mid January was about as solid as you will ever get that time of year....uninterrupted cold and snow. The big thaw at the end of it sucked, yes.

1995-1996 remains number one IMBY because it was more equally distributed throughout the season....as epic as that 45 day period was, punting through mid January and then all of March was fatal in that regard. I would still take the epic 45 days over the record, though.

Yea, I was just saying that.

March 2015 was serviceable south of the pike, but for us, it was just a slow rot out of an epic pack. I was convinced by mid Feb that I would overtake 1996 for my snowiest ever, but March cost me that record...fell about a foot shy. Boston got it.

I agree.

I mean, it doesn't look great, but I don't expect March 2012, either.

I think we will probably end up with one more plowable event.

Last two pages is talk of six years ago...sums up the state of March 2021. lol

Trick to say that, though......extrapolating like that can be tricky. I see what you are saying...

In other news, the sun is getting stronger.

Owwwwwwwwwww.....werewolves of Southington.....

Yep. You will get used to all of this. You have a good foundation of knowledge from which to build.

How did the 2015-2016 super el nino suck, we had such an awesome set up in Feb 2015.

What does the MEI in April have to do with the preceding winter?

Incorrect. 1.0 is marginal weak/moderate, but MEI peaked at .77...decidedly weak. https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/data/meiv2.data

Seems extreme...I would say more like 25-26".

I only even remembered because that was probably my best outlook....nailed that sucker-

It was actually weak la nina...but, yea...ENSO was not a huge player.

Yea, I understand....what I mean is that its almost as though the planet has a built in safety valve (increased gradient owed to HC expansion) to avoid weekly blizzards in the face of global warming. I remember that prescient thread...great pattern recognition.

Well, I am not suggesting that March will feature a February 2015 pattern....my point is that +AO is not prohibitive to mid latitude winter weather. Its a curve ball, yes.

I think you are onto something with the bookends becoming more severe at the expense of mid winter....and if you think about it, may tend to expand the ceiling for high end events due to increased baroclinicity....lends itself to increased frequency of blockbusters. Not only are we getting warmer, and injecting more energy into the atmosphere, but as mother nature tries to compensate for that by shearing storms with a greater frequency....the ones that do succeed are more likely to occur early or late in the season, when the compressed flow is less likely to be an issue and potential is already higher relative to the seasonal nadir.

While a huge blizzard is indeed very unlikely in a +AO pattern, you can still have winter storms. A huge blizzard is relatively unlikely in any pattern at this latitude. I am willing to bet that you would consider the seasons of 1993-1994 and 2014-2015 as having been fairly wintery....both +AO.

https://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2021/02/verification-of-nuisance-variety-monday.html Verification of Nuisance Variety Monday Snows The forecast was decent overall, but it was too paltry across west-central and southwestern CT This is due in large part to the fact that the forecast did not weigh the diurnal impact heavily enough. More specifically, the forecast map underplayed the fact that the early onset of snowfall to the west limited solar heating, this extending snowfall to the south and allowing it to accumulate more at lower elevations. This resulted in a general 1-2" across all of the western half of CT, and not just the higher terrain of the NW portion of the state. The rest of the forecast was accurate. The late start time afforded more time for solar irradiance, as well as more warm air advection from the intensifying system. Final Grade: B-

HC is not the primary reason why we had a couple of subpar winters, climo is. We don't avg 80" of snow....never have, and probably never will. What he is saying is valid, but its not the reason that we don't have a blockbuster winter every season.