roardog

22 hours ago, Hoosier said:

Jim Ramsey passed away.  Anyone familiar with WGN in Chicago will remember him.

https://wgntv.com/news/former-wgn-weatherman-jim-ramsey-dies-at-69

We always had WGN on our cable provider around here. Tom Skilling was the only good source for getting an idea on how the medium/long range looked. Even though it was obviously Chicago based, Tom would talk about possible pattern changes two weeks out. You weren't getting that information anywhere else. The NWS forecast was always biased toward climo. Tom would be the only met daring enough to do something like put a temperature 20 degrees below/above normal on a 7 day forecast. This was great information before the days of the internet with all the model data available. I was always disappointed when Tom would be on a 2 week vacation and Jim Ramsey was filling in. Not that Jim Ramsey was bad but he was no Tom Skilling. lol

53 minutes ago, Torchageddon said:

Why not? It was the freeze in April that caused the damage. It brings an interesting point up whether its possible to have Morch and then a April/May that are also above normal or even avg in temps - I asked a met this and the answer was simply no. You can predict a monthly avg just based on the magnitude departure of a month before it?

Yesterday did actually reach 18C but it was mostly filtered sunlight and then cloudy by evening. Waterloo ON got to 19C, Windsor and likely other towns in extreme SON got their first 20. Its very dark this morning.

There could be an above normal April and still have hard freezes so another March 2012 would pretty much doom the plants/trees again. 

1 hour ago, A-L-E-K said:

the first green tips of the season starting to come up in the courtyard garden, so it won't be long now

The tropics of Illinois.

9 hours ago, SolidIcewx said:

I was expecting a little more rain last night but I see a big rain shield moving back into Michigan from the south. Im definitely going to enjoy the near 60 degree temps

At least you got to experience some nice temperatures. I had to deal with mid 30s, pouring rain and NE winds. I hope you enjoyed your S winds and nice temps. 

It’s still 3 days or so away. The SE and weaker runs should start anytime. lol

24 minutes ago, Harry Perry said:

Seems like this didn’t happen as much growing up, but I remember a few times where 6-10” was forecast and woke up to less than a dusting on the ground.

I think it was November 1997 when there was a Winter Storm Warning for 6-9 inches of snow here for the next day. This was back when The Weather Channel had the NWS forecast on the local forecast and that was how I saw the NWS forecast as I didn’t have the internet yet at the time. So the next morning I woke up to find the Winter Storm Warning gone and a forecast of 1-3 inches. We never had a flake from that storm. The Detroit area ended up getting the 6-9 inches and the northern edge made it up to around Flint where they got a couple of inches. 

The NW trend back in the day used to be as much of a guarantee as the SE trend is today. I wonder if the model updates over the years are the reason for that. Maybe changes were made to “fix” that issue and have now resulted in the opposite problem. Now we just need a model that understands how far south an MCS will track in the warm months. 

I think the ensembles look interesting going forward. Both the gefs and especially the eps have higher heights building in Alaska and NW Canada in the medium range. That would push/bleed cold air into the SE ridge. The red colors on the height anomaly maps don't always mean warm at the surface in a pattern like that, especially the more north you go. 

I have kind of a random question. Before the NWS changed the format of the daily temp/precip records there used to be a lot more stations in what I think was called the daily almanac or something like that. Now, with the new format, not all of those stations are on the list. Is there a way to still access that data? I know some were from waste water treatment plants so I would assume they’re still recording data. 

4 minutes ago, Brian D said:

Right in town within a mile of the water.

Sounds like a miserable place(weather wise) to be in the Spring. lol

7 minutes ago, Tallis Rockwell said:

For some who don't know, Tonga produced a huge eruption around a VEI 5 or 6, and if we find that this volcano has ejected a significant portion of SO2, volcanic winter is on the cards!

Doesn’t a “volcanic” winter have a tendency to produce a positive AO and positive NAO with mild mid latitudes? I don’t think most people posting here would like that. 

1 hour ago, madwx said:

you really manifested it into existence.  Also seasonal/AGW trends die hard

If the AGW trend has been dry in the Midwest, I’d hate to see what wet is considering all the precip that seems to fall each year. A hot and dry year like 2012 feels impossible. 

I like the text from the high wind warning out of North Platte. It says holiday decorations will be damaged or blown away. lol

Generally speaking, most winter lovers in the east probably don’t want Valdez to break a record as that’s usually bad news for eastern winter lovers.

2 hours ago, tamarack said:

My Fort Kent experience says that's bogus.  The nests I saw in summer 1982 were all 8-12" off the ground, and the following January had a thaw that left grass sticking up thru an inch of armorplate.  Summer 1983 nests were low enough to be raided by skunks, and winter 83-84 I had to add an extension to my 61" snow stake.

Yeah not sure why he thinks blizzards are a norm. You can go years without one.

I've had only 6 events meeting blizzard criteria in the 36 years since moving from Fort Kent.  Probably 10-12 in my 9.7 winters up there, half of which were cyclonic NW gales playing with new snow.

The question is what actually determines how high they build their nest? 

45 minutes ago, Stebo said:

Just remember most early cold Octobers end up being lousy winters for snow, so I am very happy to see a warm early October. 07/10/17 immediately come to mind

Plus early cold Octobers are pretty useless.

There’s no reason to think this is the start of any kind of long term recovery but if somehow we ever did get into a long term recovery, a gradual increase is how it would begin. You aren’t going to get back to the 1980s or even 1990s average minimum anytime soon with the loss of so much MYI. It would probably take a decade or more of consistent ice increases to build up enough MYI to get us back to those kind of minimums. I think it’s kind of interesting though if we end up higher than the 2010s average. 

Isn't it your immune system that causes the issues that lead to serious complications or death just like the 1918 flu pandemic? Basically the virus does it's thing and after about a week to 10 days, you either recover or get seriously ill, correct? So, the vaccines basically allow your immune system to recognize Covid as something it's seen before which allows your immune system to be more prepared for it as opposed to completely caught off guard. This makes sense as to why most vaccinated people don't get seriously ill from it. The same thing should eventually occur naturally as the virus burns through the population. It won't go away but it'll just be another virus that causes cold symptoms. Unfortunately, it would seem to me that measures to curb the transmission of the virus is just delaying the ability for it to burn through the population and become endemic. 

13 minutes ago, dendrite said:

COC of summer yore on the GFS.

I remember you posting about how you can't get weather like that in July anymore. Maybe you still can.

1 minute ago, PhineasC said:

This should be handled at the community, business, and family level. Businesses can feel free to close down to unvaccinated if they choose. Very few to none have done so, however, which is pretty telling IMO.

A business owner would be a fool to only allow vaccinated people into their business if they want to stay in business.

We are just going to have to learn to live with the virus. It isn’t going away. We have a vaccine and that’s about the best we can ask for. It sucks that so many people died but we are still living in a great time medically speaking overall compared to what people dealt with in the past. There should not be anymore restrictions put into place. 

I don’t know enough about Hadley cell expansion but why was that the cause of the well above normal temperatures on the east coast during that Nina February but didn’t hold back the brutal stretch of cold that winter from mid December to late January here in the Midwest? It just seems like so much of this stuff only works when it’s convenient. Remember when declining Arctic sea ice was causing high latitude blocking? How about Siberian snow cover advancement in Autumn determining high latitude blocking for winter? It only works when it’s convenient. I’m not saying there isn’t some truth to these ideas but i just feel like people have a tendency to simplify the atmosphere too much sometimes.

5 minutes ago, George001 said:

I’m not super knowledgeable about this stuff, the Meteorologists here would be able to explain in more detail than I can. Based on what I have read though, the Hadley cell sits on both sides of the equator, up to 30N and 30S latitude, and due to climate change, the size of the Hadley cell is increasing. Right now they are predicting that the Hadley cell will expand 2 degrees of latitude on both sides, however historical climate change predictions have underestimated the increasing acceleration of the warming. Due to this it is very possible if not likely that the Hadley cell expands even more than that. If the acceleration in global warming doesn’t stop, in my opinion the Hadley cell will expand enough to engulf the whole planet. This is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, but still a very real concern that cannot be ignored, as we don’t want to screw over future generations and humanity as a whole. In my opinion the Hadley cell expansion is responsible for the pacific jet blasting the country with mild air, leading to  areas as far north as central New England seeing 70+ degree and even 80s in mid winter. 70s and 80s in mid winter was unheard of until a decade or so ago, and it seems like we get a stretch like that at least every other year now. Climate change induced Hadley cell expansion is the most likely culprit for this. If anything I said here is inaccurate, those who are more knowledgeable about this stuff feel free to correct me.

It gets into the 80s in mid winter in New England every other year? 

1 hour ago, frostfern said:

Feels more like a repeat of 2018 to me.  Very warm on average, but no extreme heat or good severe weather due to "tropical" type airmasses from the GOM.  No death ridge, no strong cold fronts, and boring moist-adiabatic lapse rates most of the time away from the high plains.

If there is a summer that has potential for extreme heat around here, this might be the one with the dryness. I would say highs in the 90s in early June for possibly several days in a row is actually pretty extreme.

1 hour ago, Mogget said:

Tomatoes seem to be okay but some of the watermelon seedlings show significant leaf damage.  Bummer.

On the other hand, it’s early enough that I’ll just stick a few more seeds in some of the hills.  

Watermelon have a hard time with cold. Sometimes it’s hard to get them growing even without frost if it’s relatively cool.