Chinook

hey everybody. somebody from another part of the country here. Anybody remember a very special storm called the "Millennium Snowstorm." It happened on 12/30 to 12/31 in 2000 and rolled into New England but screwed Pennsylvania. Shown here is the co-op snow totals to 1/1/2001. Technically 1/1/2001 is the true changeover of the millennium. It's a bit of a debate, really. But that's not important. What was important: if you're old enough, everybody was worried their computer or technological systems based on computers would crash on 1/1/2000 at midnight. Anyway, this huge snowstorm for NYC had some similarities to the 1888 snowstorm of NYC. Actually, I'm not sure about that, as I might have to actually get Kocin and Uccellini (2004) out of my storage boxes to confirm anything about the evolution of the 1888 storm.

last year on 12/21/2022. Last year had a cold air mass that has not yet existed this winter. Were you ready for the drop to -9 degrees and snowing? Wind chill was -28 at Cheyenne and Denver for the evening hours on 12/22/2022.

a year ago

when the wind goes backwards in December and it's not even snow

while we're all bored, I ranked all of Toledo's coldest monthly temperatures (Not sorting by month.) https://great-lakes-salsite.web.app/ToledosColdestMonths.html an example of one of the cold ones, as per NOAA climate divisions, anomalies

just to remind you of what should happen with El Nino, but I'm sure won't be exact

Here is my new surface loop of our northern Plains storm. The storm was kind of a combination of upper level troughs. Now, it's stuck between the northern and southern jet streams and there's not a very cold air mass. Because there's never a very cold air mass. But there was a blizzard for some. https://great-lakes-salsite.web.app/Dec_24_27_2023_surface_loop.html

other ENSO correlations, precipitation vs MEI index or SOI index monthly (winter Nov-March)

We are nearly one month into winter for the long-expected El Nino. How close are we to the typical impacts on precipitation? Not a whole lot of precipiation for E Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Nevada. So, not necessarily 100% correlation on the precipitation. Also, a drought has developed at my place in the last US Drought Monitor

this is what the NWS says for the snowfall as of last night

This is the meteorological code for "raisin". But seriously, a major city in our area is getting raindrops and snowflakes at the same time, or the airport is confused, maybe. KSTL 271651Z COR 12008KT 4SM RASN BR SCT008 OVC016 03/01 A2986 RMK AO2 SNB44 SLP118 P0010 T00280006

The forecasts for this snowfall continued to be shifted westward. I saw there are blizzard warnings in the area. So, I guess this is happening

yikes

59 deg yesterday

some people say, "cut-off low, weatherman's woe."

expanding level of winter storm information / blizzard warnings for the northern Plains

The NWS is broadbrushing this snow event for Christmas Eve, which seems right. The current models have pretty much zero for Weld County, though.

New loops https://great-lakes-salsite.web.app/Dec_1_10_2023_250mb_loop.html https://great-lakes-salsite.web.app/Dec_11_20_2023_250mb_loop.html loop specific to our combination storm of the last few days. I find it just fascinating that storm elements combine in wintertime scenarios. https://great-lakes-salsite.web.app/Dec_15_20_2023_500mb_loop.html

The 00z models are still showing a lot of variations as to how the Christmas Eve snow event will happen. The GFS says that some snow will come in to the Front Range cities as early as 12/23 at 8:00 in the evening. Here is the GFS for 09z, which is 2:00AM on Christmas Eve. Some areas of heavy snow will be in the southwestern portion of Colorado, with southerly flow on the San Juans. There should be varying amounts in the rest of the mountains. The Plains/cities will have a more challenging forecast for snow amounts throughout the entire 24-hour period on Christmas Eve. The models will try to figure out the snowfall rates and maybe try to decide if the temperature will be below freezing, or something helpful like that.

this ridge is 99th percentile

constant lake-effect snow band onshore, with little offshore

Here's something kind of neat. This storm's top analog for this evening's charts is 1/1/1987, also an El Nino winter. Would've been a washout for maybe New Years eve celebrations like it was a washout for Florida this morning

there we go we have a category 3 non-surface wind non-hurricane, but impressive nonetheless. I wonder if the NWS wind warnings for such areas as Rhode Island will be too low with values of 60mph mentioned. Edit: the latest HRRR has around 60kt for parts of New England, max gusts, and that is over 60mph, but also, probably overdone a bit.

what is 103 knots on the Saffir-Simpson scale (which doesn't apply)? I forgot.

Now that's what you all filling the radar scope with rain, and with 56mph wind offshore