LibertyBell

where do you find this stuff lol and what are they carrying? are those midget St Bernards going to rescue people?

But wasn't the 13th always the target date? Somewhere around that date was always supposed to be the first realistic possibility at snow.

well when we actually have important storms the weather moves from south to north or southwest to northeast. when storms are weak it moves from west to east-- that's a boring zonal pattern. North America is a puny continent, consider Asia, where no one ever talks about the influence of the Atlantic on their pattern, even though that is the Ocean to their west.

the "warming" of the -nao/-ao signal over time shows the impact of climate change moreso than the importance of the Pacific (also the Pacific is changing because of climate change.)

Reagan inauguration day in Jan 1985 was the coldest day I've ever experienced. No snow on the ground of course, which made it even more amazing that it went below zero in the morning and only reached single digits for the high in NYC (the only time in my memory that's happened here.) The theme of the 80s was mostly suppression events with cold and dry in January with the few outlying storms I mentioned above, and then it warmed up rapidly in February and the cold and dry was replaced with rainy and mild.

Unfortunately that's often too late for urban areas.

Yep, it created a nice suppressed pattern all the way up to DC where areas near there and south of there actually had real winters. I don't remember March 1980, but January 1982 was pretty big here, that one caused the downing of a jet in the Potomac if I remember correctly? Later, in April, we had a historic blizzard, that may be the only time I'll ever get to see that. February of 1989 was a blown call for us, as cold and dry air kept that storm south of us and ACY got 19 inches! December 1989 was another one....this time the storm was too close to the coast and we changed to rain with less than 1" of snow on the front end-- both were predicted to be 6-8 inches here. Do you remember the Veternas Day storm in 1987, and did you get anything from that? We only got 1-3 inches here, but that storm hit much harder both south and northeast of here. Jan 1987 was big here too, I think the biggest storm since the Feb 1983 historic 2 ft blizzard. Later, we had accumulating 2-4" snow after the middle of April which is almost unheard of here! Back to back Aprils with snowstorms!

That was a superclipper. I think the Millenium Storm was one of those too?

That became a more recent phenomenon, back in the 80s they were more likely to give a light to moderate snowfall. The last winter we had that kind of pattern that I can remember was 08-09.....remember that pattern (before the March 09 coastal)....it was cold with frequent light snowfalls. Nice wintry feel, an overperformer of a winter.

We had them at least once a month back in the 80s....they were good for 2-4 or even 3-5 inches sometimes.

There was a snowstorm in November too, and since we didn't get that if you subtract that from the totals, most of us are below average snowfall.

Yes there's an excellent book written by David Ludlum that mentions this, in the late 1700s and early to mid 1800s, there were a few winters where both NYC and Philly received 100" of snow and in the Poconos more than 12 feet of snow!

Look at all the cold we had in the late 1800s....if we had an even more complete climate record going back to when NYC was first settled, would any winter after 1917-18 be in the top 20?!

1976-77 was mediocre for snow though....one bonus of the new pattern is much less suppression and more bombing of coastal lows so more snow. That kind of extreme cold isn't good for snow in our area.

-nao is more of a cold signal for the south than it is for us in the northern midatlantic and northeast. It's good for slow moving storms with near average temperatures for us.

Right several recent winters have shown there is a disconnect between extreme cold and snow, you don't need it to be very cold to get snow. Not only that, extreme cold can be a deterrant to snow, as the 80s proved, with their much colder Januarys and very little snowfall.

Our first accumulating snowfall was a 4-5 incher a few days after Christmas (must have been the same one), I remember thinking it was a really good sign to get a storm like that in December and we had two storms a week for the rest of the winter, even though only a couple were all snow, we still ran out of salt that season!

2014-15 was more backloaded though and more pure snow vs 1993-94. Winter basically started around Jan 20 and continued until Mar 20.

in 2010-11 the snowpack somehow stuck around for the better part of two months though and shattered some records. That was the most snow I've seen on the ground at one time here on the south shore in my 40 years of living here.

But then again you could say the extremes can go in either direction-- 2009-10, 2010-11, 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2017-18 are proof of that.

Yeah and 2009-10 and 2010-11 lol

Winters like 2009-10, 2010-11 , 2013-14, and 2014-15 spoiled many people. I'd put 2017-18 in that same category, even with the mild February. It can happen but it's rare, if you get it once a decade you're lucky. We've had it way more than we should so expect a return to our once a decade type decent winters.

I'm not sure how much enso factors in, as I think you can find mediocre to bad winters in all types of enso. If you did a strict enso based breakdown of our under 30" snowfall winters (what I'd consider mediocre), I bet it doesn't matter whether you have a la nina, el nino or neutral, the majority of our snowfall seasons in all types of enso would be in that mediocre or less category.

At least it will snow in the mountains-- that's where it's really supposed to snow.

They are elevated after all. There's a reason you want to be in the mountains to see snow fall. Looks like my Poconos place is going to get some mighty fine skiing!