LibertyBell

it's absolutely amazing especially considering how much snow and cold there was in 2013-14 and 2014-15 (likely from the -EPO). We have other snowy/cold winters since then too, another example was 2017-18 (cold and snowy in January and March and even early April) and 2020-21.

Flagstaff, Arizona might be a better choice. Lots of snow + no light pollution = great starry skies !

That said, cheer up! It's bright and sunny and gorgeous blue skies! This is a lot better than rain or even just clouds at any temperature!

mountains near san diego get more snow than we do heh

any similarities between that and 2017-18?

what made 2010-11 so cold and so snowy in a moderate to strong la nina? we had very strong nao blocking for 2 years (2009-10 and 2010-11), maybe there was a carryover effect (la ninas after el ninos tend to be snowy.)

That's very interesting, we used to have a lot of below zero temperatures right up to the 80s. Since then it's only been in 1994 and 2016 that it happened and that's it. We used to average a below zero temperature every other year, now it's like once a decade lol.

It makes me wonder if it is happening at a slower rate well inland vs on our coasts (obviously Florida is a flaw in that theory lol.) Other factors could be that a stronger la nina encourages a stronger SE Ridge which would explain why they are not usually very cold. Something I've noticed with la ninas is that they encourage more huggers/runners (because of the stronger SE Ridge). But if a la nina happens after an el nino we tend to get more snow.

Maybe because of CC or some other factors, the area of extreme cold is becoming much smaller with time?

Yes stronger events definitely increase the correlation, I was a little confused by the *if a very strong el nino is very warm then a very strong la nina must be very cold* assertion, because it's a lot more complicated than that, we have to deal with ridge trough patterns, which depend on an interplay of more than one factor even in a very strong event.

Yes the best part is sunshine and no more rain. I hope we dont get any more rain for the rest of the month I am tired of it. I hope we have a giant ridge that moves everything well to our north like we used to get in the good old days (1991, 1993, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2010, etc.)

look at the 1910s as examples of that, maybe the 1800s too.

Yes, I read that the influence of enso state on our weather is around 20%. So it's not huge, but it does matter.

Looks like the pattern change to real spring weather happens by Monday. Sunny and 60s to near 70 all next week will be absolutely awesome!!

Looks like the rain will end Saturday and the sun will come out later Sunday per my local forecast. Next week looks nice, warm and sunny!

It makes it really unscientific. =\ You had such a high total from March 2018, I wonder if it displaces April 1997 as your greatest spring snowstorm? What did you measure in that storm, Ray, and what method did you use for measuring it?

wow so the generally accepted method now is to only measure snowfall at the end of the storm (or when it changes over in case of a mixed precip type event), Ray? I wonder how this affects past storms.... how much did you measure in the April Fools Day storm in 1997 and what method did you use for measuring it, Ray?

Funny thing is that was a winter with very little snow, all the fun began later in Spring. One of our weirder years! What caused that arctic outbreak accompanied by snow in May? Did we have some sort of big SSW? I was in the Poconos for that we went from rain to snow Friday night and 1-3 inches and then snow squalls all day Saturday with an additional inch. The temps were in the teens for lows and in the 20s for highs with wind chills near 0! Then spring came back by Monday and we had thunderstorms with hail! One of the weirder but fun weekends I've experienced in May. We had snow on May 9-10 1977 and this happened on the 43rd anniversary of that, which was also interesting.

I'm wondering if we had these in the 1910s? There were extremely cold and very snowy strong la ninas back then. Also, was 2010-11 like this? That was a very cold and very snowy stronger la nina that had people looking at analogs from the 1910s.

Oh wow then they want to protest lol. I remember that happening a few times and the other thing is when the fans sit in the rain and the game doesn't get canceled until 3+ hours later and it's been raining the entire time.

Thanks! I've also noticed they have problems with drier snow that happens in windy conditions so a lot of our big blizzards get undermeasured. We have several examples of this both more recently and in the distant past. February 2003* January 1996* February 1978 February 1969* February 1961* March 1888 This is just an off the top of my head list, I'm sure there are many more. Sometimes we cross check the data with the airports to see what the errors might be. The ones marked with a * show significantly higher totals at the airports (JFK, LGA, EWR) than at the park. Of course there were no airports before the 1930s lol.

The Mets game that was supposed to be tonight has been rescheduled for 1 PM today. I've advocated for this for a long time now too. Like, in the spring and summer, if you know it's going to rain, why not schedule a game earlier? One of the most frustrating things about baseball is when you have an off day and the weather is nice and sunny and the next day it's going to rain and everyone knows it, and then you have two days off instead of just one. The game should be rescheduled earlier, to the off day the day before (if the other team also has that day off of course), instead of sitting around doing nothing for two days.

It sounds like we need way more than one axis to delineate the differences between different enso states. In other words, instead of recording weak/moderate/strong we should also distinguish them in the data west vs east based vs basin wide. It reminds me of the arguments made for nao needing to be defined as more than just positive vs negative, we also need to know whether it's west based or east based.

This is something I've always advocated for, use precipitation totals to account for snowfall measuring errors. I would use a sliding scale snowfall to liquid ratio based on temperatures. 8:1 for heavier wet snow, 10:1 for normal snow and 15:1 for dry and fluffy snow.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I've always thought that strong of both is really bad and what you want is a weaker version of either so other factors become more important.