Daniel Boone

On 9/6/2023 at 11:18 AM, katabatic said:

I realize this board isn’t an IT HelpDesk but any thoughts on why this has crapped out? I’ve done the usual things (turn on/off etc) or has it just died? It’s about a year old..

I have one of those units and it has served very well for 2 years. Very accurate Station, all parameters other than wind speed of wich appears a bit low . I would think more than likely Batteries in outside unit. If new one's doesn't work, could be contact moisture within the unit as sometimes the seal around the internal components can crack or come unsealed. Happens with high end Stations as well. 

   I've had Sensor failures and they don't fail simultaneously unless for whatever reason the Unit gets fried. I have 3 Stations now and just lost contact with wind unit with one. Probably corroded or dead solar cell as it's been going for over 3 years. Dread the task of taking it down and getting it back up. 

On 8/31/2023 at 10:48 AM, Matthew70 said:

I’m starting to get concerned with the endless possibilities of no rain for the foreseeable future.  From wet to dry.  That’s how it goes. 

Yeah, we'll really be hurting in the Lee, Wise and Scott County area's as much of this Region missed out on the abundant Rains during Summer. 

9 hours ago, John1122 said:

Still coming down pretty hard here. Been steady moderate to heavyish rain since around 8pm, and it's still loaded up to my SW with virtually no movement other than training/re-developing from Crossville up to my area.

Amazing ! Wound up with a quarter of an inch here yesterday. 0.03" today. Paltry.  Same story since April. It's as if we have some kind of Shield around here this Summer.  August Total still above Average due to first half. 6.04" . May, June, July were each well below. 

12 hours ago, John1122 said:

It's crazy that we probably aren't much more than 60 miles apart as the crow flies and there's been that big of a difference. 

Sure is man. Totalled 0.27" yesterday. Enough to keep grass alive but, nothing for water levels. Sad. 

     The persistence of the Pattern this Summer is rather uncanny. Complexes continue to travel in pretty much the same path ; not much shift at all. Nino really showing it's print along with other rather anomalous parameters. 

      I'm thinking the massive Wildfires and the excessive smoke are having some effect, not only on sun filtering and T's but, also larger scale. What's your take John ? 

Amazing how this patterns been. Very dry here as have only received 1.54" this Month with under 2 inches last month ! 

On 4/24/2023 at 10:07 PM, GaWx said:

Does anyone know what happened in your area exactly 113 years ago?

Wise Virginia, recorded 3 inches of Snow May 7 1989. Pennington gap, Va a Dusting that Morning with an afternoon high of 42.

Eastern Ky and portions of extreme SWVA received up to 10 inches May 20, 1894. Even Lexington recorded 6 inches. Another System brought Eastern Ky several inches the 24th.

On 4/18/2023 at 2:28 PM, eyewall said:

Yep we always get the right setup when it is too late.

Yep, never fails when the pattern is what we had during Winter. 

2 hours ago, nrgjeff said:

The extended forecast storm track Apr. 25-30 would be nice in winter. 

Yep. We knew this would happen after the terrible non productive Winter we've had. 

3 hours ago, CAPE said:

 

Yep, sickening but, not surprising. 

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

@Terpeast looking at this made me think about our conversation wrt upstream v downstream cause/effect of the SER.  But the gulf/atl isn't really downstream.  As any wave crosses the CONUS there will be some southerly flow ahead of it.  We obviously need that flow to be suppressed to some extent by the NS or to have cold air in place as that flow gets started...but south of us is off the Florida coast!  And as any wave ejects from the Rockies the southerly flow it initiates in the plains is off the gulf of mexico.  If those areas are on fire...it just seems logical that the southerly flow will be able to press north more than it would have otherwise.  Hence...we get a stronger SER than historic analogs indicate we should have.  None of that is to say I think the effect of the pacific doesn't have a part here...yes a ridge in the central pacific favors attempts at a SER.  But historically there were things that could mitigate that SER.  Lately...NOTHING mitigates it.  When there is a central pac ridge its just game over and the SER goes ape no matter what else (-4 AO/NAO even) is going on.  I think the warmer SST's in the gulf and SE coast are part of that equation.  That added warmth just make sit even harder to beat down the SER and perhaps means we can no longer expect to mitigate a hostile pacific through other means.  That is of course problematic since it eliminates another way to get snow and would doom us to atrocious results in even more winters that previously.  It would not mean it cannot still snow when we get a favorable pacific though.   I do think a favorable pacific can still overwhelm and suppress the SER.  

Good post . It appears we're honing in on what the cause of the SER on every Steroid there is, IS. 

     We were thinking it probable the western Atlantic SST'S were at least part of the culprit. The linking of the SER with the big - NAO has been the puzzle, really, as in times past was almost unheard of.

    I think you've came up with the main reason PSU. Makes sense with those boiling Gulf SST'S. 

On 3/28/2023 at 8:44 AM, psuhoffman said:

We used to be able to do ok in a -PDO.  We've had some blockbuster -PDO seasons.  1962, 1966 and 1979 were all -PDO seasons with huge snowfall totals in our area.  But notice...none of them are recently.  The problem is that over the last 30 years or so a -PDO almost always leads to a horrible snow season.  

Speaking of 1979. You are spot on and it was strong upstream blocking that produced for us 

19 minutes ago, jaxjagman said:

MJO is leaving the IO back into the COD  then seems to resurface back into the WP,this could mean a big hydro problem with April showers.This pattern seems eerie 2018 written all over it.Chance of some strong storms as we head into April then right now the Euro shows a better chance as we head towards the Mid month.The Euro in 8-9 days shows maybe a strong POTENTIAL strong ULL around North East China with a Upper level ridge towards the proximity of Northern Japan.This isnt a forecast,just my beliefs of the upcoming pattern that might evolve

 

 

 

https://www.etsu.edu/cas/geosciences/tn-climate/documents/2018_04.pdf

Yeah, looks pretty similar. 

12 hours ago, Terpeast said:

And, this is just a bit of speculation (mods, feel free to move this if warranted)… have you observed less separation between NS and SS?

With the hadley cell expansion (if that’s indeed happening), are these two streams increasingly being squeezed together to produce just one dominant stream instead of two separate ones? Or am I going too far out on a limb?

You know, you have a good point there as it does appear to be moving that way. Some odd but, interesting things going on for sure. 

12 hours ago, Terpeast said:

If I remember correctly, the Jan 96 storm was a NSer that dove from canada far enough south to become a miller A monster. And that was technically during a weak-mod nina. It was a very cold storm, too. 

Yep. Sure sure was and did . 

7 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

What's pushing them north then? Warmer climo or something else?

Probably a combination of that plus other factors like the warm western Atlantic SST'S and possibly some fairly unknown driver's as Terp alluded to. The SER dominance and occasional NAO block hookup for instance used to be rare. If this continues during Nino then we can speculate, research and see what we can come up with as far as cause and maybe get a clearer picture.

     The warmer climo would play a part as far as the NS diving as the deeper the cold up north the more the press as we know. Also, the PNA Height of course. Even with that, the SER seems to still want to block anymore it seems. 

5 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

You bring up a legit hypothesis and I can’t say for sure. But a counter point…it was a bit of both.  There were some storms during that period where temps did limit snowfall.  Several storms in 2001 that hit NYC did give DC appreciable precip but we’re too warm. Dec 2003, Feb 2006, Feb 2007, March 2007, Jan 2008, Jan 2011, Dec 2012, March 2013, all featured storms that would have been more significant in DC if it was a few degrees colder and that’s why NYC got way more snow. 
 

But yes there were a lot of NS systems that just tracked to our north in that period. But is that actually uncommon or did we used to simply hit on more NS systems back when the mean NS was further south decades ago?   The “miller b” thing is overblown Imo. It’s not some weird thing. Or some travesty. We don’t get “jumped” it’s just that they track to our north and the snow west of us is upslope on the westerly flow hitting the 4500 ft mountains. A west flow here is downslope. But the actual synoptic precip from a pure NS wave simply goes north of us because the storm tracks too far north for our latitude 90% of the time.
 

Pure NS waves were never the best here but when I was doing that case study if all warning events at BWI I noticed what seemed a lot more of them back in the 50s, 60s and 70s than recently.  If we went from a 30% hit rate to a 15% that makes a huge difference. I don’t know though. That would be a headache to quantify. 

Yeah, it does appear NS Systems are not diving as far south overall as they did back in the day.  There's been some fluke , throw back years (i.e,95-96) that Miller B's and Clippers dove well South but, not many. 

11 hours ago, Jed33 said:

That makes sense then about the airport. In Morristown, where the office is, the airport is only maybe a half mile away, if that from the weather station. Also, the elevation is virtually the same.  So would be similar in the temp department. Unfortunately, what is probably going on with the precip is they have the sensor mounted on a deck or porch and it’s unable to record the precip bc it’s covered and blocking the sensor from reporting the correct readings. You would think the NWS would say something about it, but I guess they can’t really do anything if the airport isn’t interested in fixing it.

The NWS COOP Station's are owned and setup by them. You are correct in some of those not being set up to meet their "official guidelines". One example is the Pennington gap station. It's TH Sensor is about 12 Feet from a metal building (heat source). That is way off the 30 ft away structure guideline, let alone a metal structure.

     As far as the Airport problems, there are more than one. The Temp. FAA Guidelines we know are one, another is siting as well. The Lee County Airport ie is located fairly close to a Metal Hangar, thereby getting heat from it occasionally.

      It is no wonder our Model's have issues and our Climate Data isn't accurate, let alone some of the less than par Observer's at some Co-op Station's. 

8 hours ago, Stovepipe said:

I'm biased I guess because I'm contributing, and I know cheaper equipment is not always super reliable, but I'm quite fond of the Weather Underground network of stations.  I can get a pretty good idea of what's going on locally looking at the site.  I'll trust the crowd sourced data going forward before single official stations' observations when possible.  I do very much appreciate MRX and the Weather Service in general, don't get me wrong.

17 degrees yesterday morning here between the ridges in Halls.  Microclimates are always interesting.  

Yeah, for the most part they are accurate and many are high end Stations. I have 3 in the Network at various locations. 

On 3/18/2023 at 1:30 PM, Terpeast said:

The stats

Here are the temp anomaly stats at IAD in F:

Dec: -0.8
Jan: +8.4 (!!)
Feb: +8.2
Mar: +2.3 (through 17th)

Well, what can I say? After correctly predicting a warm Nov and cool Dec, my outlook completely fell apart as soon as the post-Dec cutter arctic cold left the building. Although it didn't feel like an all-out torch, we had constant 50s through the whole winter, including prime climo for snowfall. We hardly got below freezing most nights. 

 

What the hell happened?

Here are the NCEI anomaly maps for DJF. 

 

 

It's one thing to have a winter with slightly above normal temps (+1 to +3), but THIS is a whole another level. No wonder we got no real measurable snow.

Remember, our climo 850mb temps are around -4 to -5 C in Jan-Feb, and even if we were +2 or +3, we would still have gotten snow albeit less than climo. Or a big storm with 0 to -1 850s hugging the fall line putting us above climo.

But this was what we were up against (credit to CAPE):

Highly anomalous aleutian high that rarely pushed east or poleward, helped dump cold air from Siberia (which had record cold) into the West. 

What caused this anomalous aleutian high? 

- Expanded hadley cell (credit to Chuck and PSU)
- A moderate but very well coupled La Nina (with a modoki-ish look = terrible for us)
- Extremely and deeply negative PDO (record values leading into the winter)

So it was no surprise that we had a persistent SER/WAR throughout the whole winter. Even when we had a PNA ridge "trying" to develop over the west, a constant stream of troughs thanks to that aleutian ridge kept pushing the PNA ridge over east, suppressing any preceding wave, then pushing the boundary north of us, and allowing any succeeding storm to cut.

I'm sure the warm Atlantic waters did not help us either, but I think that has more of a downstream effect - worth noting that Europe had a record warm winter as well. Could be an effect of the warm ATL SSTs.

Even a SSWE could not save us. It did for NE, but the W trough / Aleutian ridge successfully ran the clock out on us.

 

Okay, so where do we go from here?

I think the lesson learned here is to not rely too strongly on analogs from the past, earlier than 1990 or so. More weight should be on analogs in the past 10-15 years, even though the sample size is so tiny.

My best analog was 1985-86. But that winter was much MUCH colder than this one. It turned out to be a disastrous mismatch, and a failure on my outlook. A better match would have been 2011-12, which was on my analog list. But my personal bias prevented me from putting more weight on it as I should have. 

As it stands now, this winter is in its own league with EXTREME warm anomalies with no comparison to any winter of the past. It is now a new analog to base future winter outlooks next time we have a La Nina coupled with +QBO.

 

So... is it ever going to snow again?

Yes. 100%. 

But will we snap back to climo again? 

I agree with PSU that no, we won't. I believe our new normal is 60-70% of previous climo. Meaning ~14" for IAD, or ~10" for DCA should be the benchmark of what to expect in winters going forward given the warmer climate.

However, that doesn't mean we won't get a 2' blizzard ever again. 

Remember our climo 850s, even if we adjust for the warmer climate, are still below 0 for a solid 2 months. 

If we get an El Nino, -QBO, a sustained +PNA ridge, and an active STJ, we just need a good wave to traverse the south without overamplifying too soon. Then we get hit even with the 0 line straddling the I-95 corridor. 

And all we need is one good hit to reach climo or above. 

I don't think we've reached the tipping point where 850mb temps cannot be 0 or below for our area when we get a wave to approach us. The 3-4 bomb cyclones that struck the immediate MA coast in the last several years is proof of that, in my mind.

Maybe someday we reach that tipping point and the only place it snows is in the mountains above 2k ft. But I don't think we've reached that point yet.

That said, the smaller events we used to get from clippers or from front-end dumps with primary lows to the NW, are fast dwindling and I don't think we get those back.

The next El Nino will be the real test of this, though. 

Could it bring back big winters like 02-03, 09-10, 13-15, or will it just flood the NH with more and more warmth and set a new climate baseline? 

 

 

 

Anomalies Map looks alot like Jan. 1950.

7 hours ago, WEATHER53 said:

Whatever mechanism prevents cold high pressure from setting up from Montreal to NY state was the culprit

We has good frontal passages with record setting day  in December and bout 3 more windy, very cold shots but in Every case they were 1 day affairs as the high did not drift off the New England coast but rather plunged rapidly toward Bermuda. 
90% of the lows therefore were cutters even though models did not recognize the pattern half the time 

The missing 50-50 early on looked like the culprit. However, even with it the HP still didn't do as you'd want. 

54 minutes ago, Carvers Gap said:

They can just use spy balloon data as backup.  

Well, problem is it might get shot down 

57 minutes ago, Carvers Gap said:

Well.   So basically those averages should be three degrees lower than what they are reporting?

Yeah, sad. He also said the reason NWS didn't have their own Stations was funding. 

    Sad on all accounts. 

3 hours ago, Heisy said:

So I’ve finally checked out lol, but it’s really amazing to me how the pattern of waves tracking from around Alaska down to the Southwest continues until the end of month and shows no signs of stopping. What is it going to take to get a stable +PNA?

Here is the 12z euro at the end of the run. Does this pattern look familiar to anyone?!?! A developing block, but we have a SE ridge bridge connecting to it. An overly strong wave coming out of the southwest and seemingly another ready to head that way too. Feel like we’re stuck in purgatory. We’ve been unable to mute the SE ridge all year.




.

That da**ed deep western Trough. 

21 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

La Niña 

Exactly. Even though many have said it's been more Nino like. The La nina augmented Ridge has been very evident and potent. Other factors created a Ninoesque pattern of sorts in some area's. 

8 hours ago, Jed33 said:

Might as well talk to them about their own station. The temperature seems fine, but if you’ll notice on their webpage they never record precipitation of any kind falling. The most you’ll see is mist. It could be a thunderstorm outside and it will show mist. It’s been that way for years.

If you take a look at the MADIS and COOP station's around KTRI you can see a difference.   I spoke with the Chief Met at KMRX and he said it was about 3 degree's high . It is governed by the FAA and they allow a 4 degrees swing either side of actual with their Temp. Sensor's. NWS just uses FAA's Equipment. 

    So, there you have it. No just speculation on my part. 

    I agree in the precip reporting from some of the Official Station's. If it's Airports they're owned and governed by them unfortunately.