so_whats_happening

oh my its been sooo long since I have come to this. Im hoping to set my sights on rejoining come the new year!

DCA +1.7

NYC +1.9

BOS +2.2

ORD+1.8

ATL +1.2

IAH +1.4

DEN +2.1

PHX +2.3

SEA +1.1

On 7/25/2018 at 11:24 AM, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Mid Atl should root for a moderate el nino since Miller B cyclogenesis would be prevalent in the absence of a potent STJ.

Then you face warmth issues. Ill take my chances that a weak can still stir up STJ and throw in some right timing and we will be good. I only ever hope for just one big storm, usually hit our average that way (~27"). Things looking more and more weak nino this year. Might just barely scratch that threshold too.

24 minutes ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

Some decent water bans around here. Some small ponds are as low as I’ve ever seen them. 

Haven’t had any rains that do more than partially wet the pavement 

Gladly send some of the rains we have had down here your way. Probably around a foot for the month normally barely push around 3 we tend to have our "dry" season now until about september/october.

On 10/1/2012 at 8:47 AM, Eskimo Joe said:

You should check out Millersville University's met program too. There are tons of undergraduate research / internship opportunities that MU can assist you with.

Link to Earth Sciences dept: http://www.millersville.edu/esci/

Yes Millersville is ever expanding their programs now introducing emergency planning and I believe a few others are in prospects down the road.

1 hour ago, CoalCityWxMan said:

So I just stumbled across this thread, I’m going to Northern IL University in a month for meteorology and I keep seeing things like this that really want to make me reconsider. I know this was posted 8 years ago so I’m sure things have changed but if anyone has any insight into this I’d love to hear it, giving myself some other options just Incase sounds like the best bet to me right now but I’d love to hear any advice anyone may have. 

I would go with your gut. Meteorology is a tough field to get into but dont let that take you down. Network yourself study hard to understand the content and if it is something you truly love to do you will not regret it. As for when you graduate start looking into internships Junior year make yourself known in many of the businesses (in private sector and government) go to conventions (AMS is great) get as much experience as you in different aspects of meteorology without running yourself crazy, again the material can be challenging at times. I personally was unsure what the field would look like my senior year I often looked around at different job prospects, many of which have been in the broadcasting portion of meteorology, which if that is what your interest is in there are quite a few openings. I myself wanted to do forecasting and more along the research/behind the scenes type of job but in order for me to do that in mainly the government I needed to go for masters which is in the near future just not the right time right now for me. The private sector is great but the openings arent quite as open and sometimes can be rigorous, went for an accuweather position did the whole interview out of 50 or so candidates 6 were chosen to come to the HQ to do an interview and get to know them took tests, did interviews, wrote out discussions and of the 6 two were chosen from different schools all around the country. Unfortunately the downside of first time being there was the unsure what to expect and found out after the process the pay rate which is comparable I feel to many other private sector forecasting companies for starting just ended up not working out in my favor but I didnt let that get me down. I spoke with my advisor and he guided me into the job I currently have which is working for the FAA as a weather observer. Could not thank him enough and even though it is not forecasting it gives me the freedom to do some research myself and better fine tune my forecasting skills in different locals of the country. Forecasting will still be a passion of mine as well as storm chasing but this is a more practical thing for me at this point until I am done with a masters degree to better make myself standout in the crowds of folks that go into the application process. It is no guarantee of course, but I love learning more and more about the field and will continue advancing my knowledge whether at this job or the next.

Hope this helps

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

I'm not sure if there's any connection to the persistent low pressure up in the arctic the last month or so and the SSW late in the cold season.

 

If the AMO actually does plunge into negative territory on a multi-year scale, then we'd probably see less warm intrusion from the Atlantic. The negative phase of AMO has previously been linked to colder arctic temperatures, but it remains to be seen how much this would actually offset the underlying warming trend. There was some literature not too far back that had shown the recent arctic warming was amplified by 30-50% since the early 1990s due to the AMO shift. But with the loss of a lot of multi-year ice and the underlying warming trend, it's hard to say just how much affect a negative AMO would have.

No worries always wonders we arent fully sure of yet in this changing climate. Cool stuff to try and get an idea for in the future with such fairly drastic patterns changing and locking in for time periods up there. And thanks for the info on AMO ill have to go back and check things out then but that is a concern even with the change that things might have already changed enough to counteract that -AMO phase. 

2 minutes ago, fountainguy97 said:

Yeah looks like trade winds will slowly relax as we get into August. I’d say by early/mid August we see a steady warming trend happen. Won’t be fast but a slow warming. 

 

At at this point weak niño is a very solid bet. Moderate not out of the question either but not as likely.

 

The question isn’t really will El Niño happen it’s more of how delayed will it be.  It could be mid/late August and we have a weak El Niño or very very close to it.  Or it could be much later.

 

 Either way weak/mod El Niño for end of 2018-19 winter is a good guess. 

Yea only reason Im not sold on moderate status is because we keep getting this to fight back with upwelling taking place on the eastern side, hence why i feel many like the idea of modoki, but we should see how things go as we move along the MJO has been getting "stuck" it seems at times causing these enhancements to occur. Ill take warm neutral to weak nino this winter tends to bring more moisture into our area (mid atlantic) for winter time and just need it to link up with some cold patterns and we are in business.

Warmth seems to be building again in the western Pac so we may have the warming from this into early winter then another maybe into end of winter early spring time?

I feel it was probably already mentioned but what may be the reasoning of the prolonged low pressure over the CAB and into Canada/Greenland area? I think I had seen the idea of the late SSW being a possible reason. It is interesting to see of course and does this mean that this upcoming winter season may feature something different than we have seen in recent years?

Not necessarily recovery by any means but less harsh conditions then we have seen. Also with the possibility of AMO flipping or showing signs it may what impact will this have in ice conditions particularly on the Atlantic side.

Thanks for any comments trying to get better at understanding what is occurring up in Arctic

2 hours ago, fountainguy97 said:

DIVE DIVE DIVE!!

 

inpressive cooling over the past week. Completely lost all ground made since mid-June and could continue for a little while longer.

 

You can see the growth of cold pool in 1.2 and 3 by end of animation!

 

probably just a blip or delay in our eventual weak warming trend but this sure has put a big hold on the El Niño occurrence into August.

Yea had a fairly decent enhanced trade wind event take place might see another burst if you will as the waters try to re-establish themselves and maybe get a move on the MJO wave. Looks like we should probably get back into motion soon and by about August start to warm things up again? Thinking weak nino the way to go with this one.

Happen to have a loop and know what time of day it was? Most likely either a dying thunderstorm that went splat and created the outflow that stirred up bugs and other animals (birds, bats,etc) or it could have been the end of daytime scenario with similar animals and bugs that happened to get caught in concentration. 

Hard to tell though without a loop.

could always give meted a try.

https://www.meted.ucar.edu/

Sign up for free and start taking whatever might peak your interest. As for starting from the beginning im sure you can find a PDF of something out there. Meteorology Today is a good book for basics.

2 hours ago, BillT said:

the wishcasting about the sea ice was hilarious, so many saying lowest ice ever this year were so wrong and silent for weeks now.......

Well it did hit lowest extent maximum in the middle of winter, from recorded data, so that is enough in itself let alone the still distinct lowering of ice volume is still quite noticeable. Recently it has been about on par with refreeze nothing too crazy from what I have seen thus far so, rather uneventful but hey thats a good thing so far we will see how it plays out in about a month cause things started weird in mid november.

2 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Since 1851, 15 hurricanes made landfall in Puerto Rico. 60% went on to make U.S. landfall. However, 2/3 of then were at or west of 70°W longitude when they reached 20°N latitude and 78% were at or west of 74°W longitude when they reached 25°N latitude. Almost all of the guidance has Maria passing east of those benchmarks. Therefore, based on those benchmarks and the guidance, there is a much lower likelihood of U.S. landfall than what might be implied solely from climatology.

You kill it everytime with the stats I love it. Gotta figure out what you use to come up with those because that is really interesting.

We need those warmer subsurface waters to calm that are being pumped into Arctic or massive release of heat from those waters, which seems unlikely more of chipping away process, as well. System cant sustain something if the region it is at has to work with has also been on average 1-2C warmer.

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

I posted some links further up:

 

https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/48618-arctic-sea-ice-extent-area-and-volume/?do=findComment&comment=4619754

 

You can also check the arctic sea ice forum...there's a thread that lists the area and extent:

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?board=3.0

 

You might have been looking at the NSIDC interactive graph which actually plots a 2 day mean I think and not single daily values. The daily value is actually up to 4.65, but the daily min a few days ago was 4.61.

 

Gotcha thanks for the little tidbit on the interactive graph and yea i have frequented that forum quite a bit to get an idea and has immensely helped.

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

Looks like area bottomed out at 2.94...so it managed to squeak below the 9/1 minimum of 2.99....the 2.94 ranks behind 2016, 2012, 2007, and 2011. So 5th lowest. We have since rebounded back up to 3.15 so we almost certainly reached the min...very tough to go back down over 200k from here.

 

NSIDC extent will finish 8th lowest if it cannot decline another 60k...so far the minimum is 4.61 which is a measly 20k above the 2010 minimum. We could still decline though in extent on NSIDC enough to catch 2010...but it will need to happen within the next few days. Jaxa is still hovering not too far above the 9/9 minimum too...so it's possible we still go below that 4.47 number as well.

 

PIOMAS hasn't updated their volume yet, but they usually do so a little after mid-September when they think the minimum has occurred...so we'll probably see an update from them in the next few days I'd think. Sometimes though, we don't get the update until early October...hopefully they decide to do the mid-month update.

Where do you get your area data from? and im guessing the 4.61 was from today? because last i saw it was 4.636 but yes Jaxa is hovering still right around that 4.48-4.5 region so yes that will have to be monitored.

Thanks for the thoughts still trying to understand all about the arctic and its influences among many other things.

If I am seeing it right it looks like 9/9 for extent at 4.47 according to this one

https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent

NSIDC has 4.636 as of 9/13 with slight gains yesterday

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

Cant seem to find a good interactive map for area or volume but im pretty sure someone posted area may have been back at the beginning of september?

Since we are getting real close now we have to ask the question do we see the large increase in extent as we have seen over the past couple of years at the beginning of the season or do we actually allow some heat to escape into the atmosphere from the ocean.

5 minutes ago, WidreMann said:

It is an anomaly chart, so what you are really asking is why doesn't the anomaly just get worse and worse. My guess would be that the sun angle starts to lower at the end of June and southerly parts of the arctic begin to have night, so heating effects lessen as the summer goes on. That means there's a sort of upper limit to how much warming will happen.

Basically the apex of summer heating up there is currently happening. Makes sense also have noticed that the Atlantic side of the arctic has been experiencing rather cool surface waters as of late is this due to the melting process that occurs or is it something else that could be causing this because on the Pacific side near chuchki(SP?)  sea there are have been persistent anomalous warm waters for quite a while.

7 hours ago, chubbs said:

PIOMAS is out for June. As expected volume loss was slower in May and June than 2012 and other recent big melt years, but 2017 has retained the lowest PIOMAS volume, not far from 2012 in the last week of June.

curious what causes the low around the beginning of july to not continue does it have to do with at this point most of the outer regions have melted out and you just have the core which usually maintains?

17 minutes ago, Sundog said:

AGW should be treated as any other insurance scenario. Nobody expects their house to burn down but I bet almost everybody out there (and everyone with a mortgage) has home insurance against several highly unlikely scenarios. 

Now we're talking about our whole planet, the only place we can call home. It's just a little bit more important than a few walls made of wood and brick yet we are currently playing with matches in a home with no insurance. 

Even if the uncertainty level regarding AGW was much higher than what it is now, we should still be all doing every damned thing possible to stop any type of GHG emissions.

The risk of doing nothing is enormous. The gain even if AGW was not real is having a totally transformed energy economy with countless new jobs that will support it. 

 

There are literally no negatives. 

The hardest part of this is not here or in many 1st world countries that can have the opportunity to change their energy systems, its a matter of if they want to or not and then that just brings in political ideals and whether they will be able to make money off it or not. It is countries like India in particular as they are trying to become a foot hold in the world economy but do not quite have the means to sit there and give many of their citizens the basics of electricity and heating/cooling as needed. So many go to cheaper forms of energy such as oil and coal to help their needs and places like India easily rank 3rd in emissions in the global sense with China being number 2 and they have the worse emission laws out there they just do not seem to care at all. They even went as far as to say issues such as smog, which is known to be a human caused weather phenomena that happens from stagnation in the pattern, as a natural disaster. How can one sit there and say this occurs naturally when we know what its being caused by. So in esssence yes in thought it seems fairly simplified to change over to something clean but the reality is if regions are not willing to change many will also follow suit and hold the ideas of using fossil fuels.

We would need to be one of the leaders in this change but we are too far gone in politics for this to occur right now. I believe India is trying to take great leaps in fixing this and honestly if a developing country is able to accomplish such a feat there is no reason the developed countries can not produce. If you go around and ask many citizens of the developed countries a good majority would say a change needs to happen but yet we continuously put ourselves back in the hole in which we are trying to dig out of. It will happen it is just a matter of when. 

I think if we talk anymore about stuff like this we should open a thread or DM as we are straying away from arctic sea ice talk. 

2 hours ago, Sundog said:

Can any natural mechanism explain the dramatic increase increase in temperatures on land and in the oceans over the last few decades?

 

When you show me one that can, let me know. 

Regionally yes there have been quite the dramatic temp rises, as we all know the arctic for one has been the leader in the largest anomalies. One thing though that can really shake up the warming idea is a simple volcanic eruption in mid to high latitudes, though only temporary and very variable in when it will happen, but it just goes to show how sensitive the atmospheric changes can occur and how quickly they can take place. While the release of GHG pollutants and the up tick over the past 30-40 years can certainly make the argument with a nice increase in temps I feel there is something that is taking place that we are not quite catching onto. We may be in the midst of an amplification pattern that we have not experienced before. Anomalous PDO pattern another record setting ENSO, but the el nino pattern lasting for almost 3 years with not much return to a cooler la nina pattern after the el nino. We have seen quite the heat pump to the arctic since, as someone had pointed out, 2005 time frame when things really took a hit in the Arctic. Larger meridonial flow moisture increasing temps wont decrease if we have a higher moisture content. Im still unsure about the whole idea AGW I feel it has impacted somewhat but was just a trigger to cause other things happen in as we see it a shorter time span there are just too many variables and too many uncertainties that have yet to be figured to know for certain how things will play out in the near future. We should take actions to reverse our pollution for sure but we are too uncertain of the future and predictions are just predictions to give us a better idea.

Just thoughts from what I have gathered thus far.

4 minutes ago, Jack Frost said:

 

My dear sheople:

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
—Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841

 

But enough about this - we have a legit plowable snowstorm to track in the NE!

 

 

 

 

 

What does this have to do with anything here? lol I mean you tell us to be nice to one another and post factual evidence yet you are calling people --> sheople. Come on with that if you want anyone to take you seriously post something validating your points other then obscure quotes.

Just now, Msalgado said:

Wait, so now Obama is behind this too?  Amazing.  I never understood the follow the money argument.  Scientists - especially those working for government agencies like NOAA, are far from rich.  And why does that logic never apply to people like Lamar Smith and his campaign contributions from oil companies?  Where's the critical thinking here?

I was just thinking that lol to me it just seems like dirty money got into some peoples pockets to put the hush factor out there or to overblow the situation. There is no denying the Earth has been warming the biggest issues have always been how much influence humans are putting on the system and in what ways that is being done. Its nice to see the back forth but it does become very much a nuissance when same things get said over and over without data properly backing things up. 

I personally have no climate studying besides my basic for Met classes and a 400 level undergrad class, that is why I ask some of these questions and yes I have doubts of my own but personally am not established enough to go on a full on rant about topics like climate change. I get some honk the horn a little too much and some go way over into parking lot of a baseball stadium to get their points across. Just is frustrating if we can not just get factual information out there without people always throwing their opinions based off the data when its right in front. lol

I dont get it what would be the purpose in lieing about Climate Change? Is it for funding purposes? Im not swaying one side or the other but just what would be the reason for having to change data, what would it prove?