LibertyBell

Jan 1996

I hope he's okay, you know he'd be here when everyone was panicking and jumping ship.

How low did the AO/NAO get in December 2010, Don? Below -5 SD?

Those 80s Decembers were amazing for cold.....December 1980 may have had our coldest Christmas of all time, -1, and even a white Christmas (although it was just a dusting), December 1983 was another very cold December as was December 1989 (coldest overall December which was amazing to get in the late 80s but a historic flip for January, February and March after what we had in November and December.)

I can't believe no one mentioned or even talked about (not even in the media) the very rare perihelion Mars occultation by the Moon last night! I don't think it was visible from NY but it would have been a close call. It was cloudy when it happened anyway but I didn't even know about it until this morning! Next one is in Jan 2025 and that's going to be an aphelion occultation so Mars won't be as bright. https://www.newsweek.com/occultation-mars-eclipse-full-moon-1765312 Mars is about to pass behind a full cold moon in an occultation Wednesday night that can be seen across a large portion of North America and Europe. Mars' occultation is essentially an eclipse of the red planet, with the moon passing directly between the Earth and Mars. The planet will be seen starting to dip behind the moon Wednesday at around 10:30 p.m. ET, reappearing about an hour later. Even outside of the occultation viewing area, stargazers will be able to see Mars passing close by the full moon in what's known as an "appulse," near the eastern horizon, as seen from North America. This event marks the coincidence of three rare astronomical events: a full cold moon (December's full moon), the occultation of Mars and Mars' "opposition." https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20221208_16_100 The Moon will pass in front of Mars, creating a lunar occultation visible from parts of the Americas, Europe and Northern Africa. Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon. This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

Didn't we also have it in 2013-14 and 2014-15 though?

wow Upton hasn't been the jackpot area since 2013- that's a big change! Between 1996 and 2013 all they did was win!

Wow 2002-2003 was certainly very active. One of our most underrated winters ever (and PD2 was one of our most underrated storms ever.)

it reminds of a snowy version of the coastal fronts in Fla lol.

Has any place been better than ISP for those big snowfalls on Long Island? BNL or somewhere on the north shore in eastern LI might be doing even better (like somewhere around Mt Sinai.)

I was just going to say that Ocean and Monmouth County are the new big snowfall capitals of NJ lol

What date is the cutter on? The 15th?

It still somehow has 3.2" around Islip lol

Was Feb 2003 the last time we had a snowstorm that delivered for most of the area? Seems like storms like Jan 1996 and PD2 have become the ultimate unicorn in our pattern as most of our storms over the past decade or more have had haves and have nots and storms like Feb 1983, Jan 1996 and PD2 have become the rarest type of snowstorm. Extreme snowfall totals, but very sharp cutoffs and much smaller total snowshield area....I wonder if anyone has done research on this and is this also related to the warm pool in the NW Atlantic? I noticed two of the above three were in strong el ninos so maybe that also factors in, which makes Jan 1996 the outlier amongst outliers, but that was a la nina after an el nino, which are known to be very snowy too.

This is exactly why the Maine lobster season is going out of business. Decades ago it used to be the Long Island lobster season, then the lobsters migrated to Maine when our waters started to get warmer and now they are in Atlantic Canada.

Think the index can get down to -5? Is that the lowest it's gotten in a long time?

Wow the last third of December is MUCH worse than even the first third of the month!

The increase in big precip events (both rain and snow) is very noticeable.

It's noticeable in urban areas where it's become much harder to get a big event in March

But also much bigger snowfalls, I'll take that trade off

the early 00s were notable for big December snowfalls though

it's not the same as before though, the cold AMO phase in the 80s featured much colder northern Atlantic SSTs.

Triple phasers can track further east....there was one in 2004 or 2005 I think it was that hit Nova Scotia really hard. One could argue that the tracks of triple phasers have been moving east with time if you track the historical progression of their storm tracks.

Sounds like you think the possibility of a BM track triple phaser has increased with climate change, maybe this is why you think we still have a chance to one day break our all time snowfall records.

Would love the CMC to score the win. Based on the "downgrade" of the GFS might mean that the CMC moves ahead of the GFS for accuracy.