LibertyBell

And it's rather funny all three of them never faced the same direction it was either two of them pointed at me and one pointed away or two of them pointed away and only one pointed at me lol

Well now they don't even seem to make it here. The one we had last week was just mostly cloudy skies for a bit. On the plus side....I got to take a picture of an amazing sight. Even in all this cold weather....the wild parrots are doing well, just huddled together trying to stay warm lol.

Forky will love it!

When I rewatched the Matrix....I felt a sense of dejavu....and not just because I was watching it again lol. Because it really feels like we are headed down this path.

Why is research so slow? Humanity seems to be so slow in developing new technology both for space and for energy-- it seems like we have plateaued in these areas and all the new technological development is happening in computers and other consumer technology. Is this just not well funded? I've also read that particle physics and high energy physics isn't well funded either-- therefore-- nothing happening there after the Higgs Boson was discovered, nowhere close to a Theory of Everything.

So Jan 1977 ranks with Jan 1994 then. Was the high 7 in Jan 1985? So 1980 and 1985 had the only two single digit diurnal highs in my lifetime then.

Chris, I talked about 83-84 in the December thread in relation to the other wonderfully extreme years that resulted from going from an el nino to a la nina (extremely hot summers-- actual heat not just high mins-- to very snowy winters.) Although 83-84 wasn't extremely snowy it did have more frequent snows and of course the arctic cold was there. What were the other two 20"+ snowfall cases besides that, were any of them multi year la ninas? I see years in there where the AO either wasn't low enough (not lower than -2) or they weren't snowy enough to qualify. How many do we have where the December AO was both lower than -2 and they had 20"+ of seasonal snowfall?

How low did it get in 1885-96, Don, lower than -2?

why can't we actually get a block to block stuff away from us lol

Hopefully mild weather and sunshine, I dont want to see rain every other day.

2010-11 is in an entirely different category because it was a la nina after an el nino I posted on this extensively in the December thread as being the ideal combo if you love extremes (going from extreme summer heat to extremely high snowfalls.)

So basically an extended fall and shorter winter.

This probably also explains why DC has gotten into a much worse snow drought than we have, they depended on that for their snowfall more than we do (we get most of ours via coastals.) Combine this with warming oceans also changing the trajectory of arctic airmasses and that's another reason you get the cold being dumped into the west and the central parts of the continent the vast majority of the time first now.

The connection between the extreme enso swing of going from el nino to la nina resulting in some of our biggest extreme summer heat AND best snowfall winters is pretty well established, but we should also try and analyze to see what happens in the reverse case (going from la nina to el nino) as this may be of more importance in the near future when we finally do swing towards the warmer phase of the enso.

Some of these past ones you mentioned in the 1910s and 1930s also featured major swings between la nina and el nino if I'm not mistaken. That may be the common pattern here. Very hot summers (that come from extremely high daytime temperatures) commonly come after major heat release going from el nino to la nina or el nino to neutral and going from el nino to a colder enso state also gives us some of our best snowfall winters (because the STJ is still juiced up from the prior el nino and combines with arctic shots which are more common during colder ENSO phases) so that may be what we're looking for. Note: 1982-83 going from very strong el nino to 1983-84 la nina was another major swing year and although we didn't get the major snows, we did get more frequent snows and the arctic cold sure was there.

This would be fun to experience again-- I look forward to the next strong el nino, whenever that may be lol.

I think there might be but it has to fit a certain kind of heat. Like 1993, 1995, 2002 and 2010 kind of heat. The kind of heat where you have extreme high temperatures not high heat that is solely the result of high mins. I think either Don or Chris or both came up with something a year or two ago that would be something worth investigating in terms of the "why"-- this kind of heat actually results from a -NAO in the summer so it makes sense if it was persistent blocking it would also help make the winter cold/snowy too. That's what happened in 2010. This is accelerated by when we go from el nino into la nina. Another winter from the past which fits this category is 1966-67, which was very snowy and came after the exceptionally hot summer of 1966. While all our summers are very warm to hot now, when we're trying to figure this out, we have to look beyond the numbers and look at what kind of heat we are talking about. We are specifically looking for heat that comes from extreme high temperatures, not just high mins. 1966, 1977, 1993, 1995, 2002, 2010 all fit this category. Also noteworthy is that of this list 1966, 1977, 1995, 2002 and 2010 were all either el nino going into la nina, two year el nino, or el nino going to neutral.

Yes it's destroying the lobster season in Maine too, as both the summer and winter greatest warm departures have been well north of us. It also makes it more likely for tropical threats to be steered into our region. In that way it's a little bit similar to the 50s (which also had the most snow in March.)

You would have really enjoyed the 80s (not) lol. My sister who's a bit older than me was relating her experiences of how much colder it was back then and how windy, but with much less snowfall (more events but much smaller in quantity). She said an inch or two of snowfall turned into an icy slushy mess that constantly refroze and made both driving and walking treacherous. We basically had 1-2 inch light snowfalls in between major arctic outbreaks, or rain in between them which created puddles which promptly froze right near the curb and caused lots of slips and falls when the arctic airmass slipped back in. 2-4 or 3-5 inch snowfalls were considered a major luxury back then and usually came right before winter was supposed to end, a parting "gift" from winter, as it were.

Thanks Don, so if you go by diurnal range, let's say 4 AM to afternoon high, it was more like a -1/6 degree split? And January 1985 was -2/7 right? What was January 1977, also -2/7? Those would be the only three days in my lifetime where the high temp remained in the single digits for the diurnal range (ignoring midnight madness-- officially only January 1985 and January 1977 qualify if you go by official recordkeeping.)

Wow! Did it snow everywhere that day or was it very spotty? I'm going to put Christmas 1980 on my short list for underrated and underrappreciated extreme winter days. So far it's that, the January 1985 extreme arctic outbreak and PD2 on the list. I didn't know the afternoon high was so low, that puts it up there with the elite of the late 1800s and early 1900s as some of the coldest days we have had here all time. I would love to know what kind of airmass that was and how it compares to the January 1985 extreme arctic airmass which was the only single digit high temperature at NYC I can remember (-2/7 split). I was way too young in January 1977 to remember that at all.

Wow some of these winters happened a long time ago. It would be interesting to see if the first four chronologically 1877-78, 1885-86, 1891-92 and 1943-44 were very cold winters and had any below zero lows (like 2015-16 did in February)?

You mean both the highs and the lows?

Plus a lot of cold to keep that icy mess on the sidewalks and side streets for weeks on end.

Why did clippers back then bring 2-4 or 3-6 inches of snow and now it's like an inch or two at most and usually not even that?