LibertyBell

This is a GREAT snapshot of the 80s and 90s, Chris- the first time I've seen someone do something like this. So in a nutshell there were two periods devoid of meaningful snowfall. One was 88-89 to 91-92 (with the exception of 90-91) 3 out of 4 winters with 5.6 inches or less of snow. Then we have the sequel: 96-97 to 01-02 (with the exceptions of 99-00 and 00-01) with 3 in a row with 8.2 inches or less of snow and 4 out of 6 with 8.2 or less inches of snow because I'm going to include 01-02 since it was the warmest winter I've ever experienced and just as historic as 95-96 was in the other direction. To have 97-98 and 01-02 in the same stretch was truly horrendous. On the other hand we can't complain since we also had 93-94 and 95-96 in (50"+ winters) 2 out of 3 winters or 02-03 to 05-06 (40"+ winters) 4 straight or 09-10 or 10-11 (50"+ winters) back to back or 13-14 and 14-15 (50"+ winters) back to back and 3 straight (40"+ winters) if you also include the JFK total in 15-16. By the way please double check my numbers since I'm doing this off the top of my head. And can you do a list for the 2010s decade also please (I want to see how feast or famine we've been over the last 10 years.)

so wow I do have the right to brag that when I was in HS I experienced the least snowy period in NYC history..... 88-89, 89-90 and 91-92 all had 5.6 or less inches of snow! I wonder what happened to 90-91, how much in that season Chris?

Chris, what about 91-92? It was in your list (and pretty high up!) in the previous post.

Wasnt the period between 83-84 to about 91-92 much less snowy though? Also what about 96-97 to about 99-00? edit- in that list I see that 89-90 to 91-92 had 2/3 that were 5.0 or below. I put that in the HOF of least snowiest because of how snowless the 70s and 80s generally were. Also look at 97-98 to 01-02 which had 2 that were 3.5 or lower (that streak was broken up by 00-01 though which was a decent winter with the Millenium storm).

6" snowfall might be a good dividing line. I read in the Weather Almanac that NYC gets a 6" snowstorm in 50% of its winters and a 8" snowstorm in 33% of them.

Basically looks like high winds to 60-70 mph and heavy rain between about 4 PM and 10 PM EST west to east across our area with no one location experiencing these conditions for longer than 30 min?

The funny thing about the PAC is with the string of bad winters we've had, you'd expect a city in the NW like Seattle to be cashing in, but they've been in a long term snow drought (much longer than ours.)

Well in my experience not getting 6"+ snowstorms have happened in the majority of winters. If you want to be optimistic, the best we can hope for is one big snowstorm for the winter and that's it.

This is a very stable pattern and I would go so far as to say this is the dominant weather pattern for our area (the one that lasts the longest). In all my years on the east coast that I can remember, going back to the early 80s.....this is the pattern that recurs more often than any other.

This is the very familiar late 80s early 90s type pattern we've been getting the last few winters.

In the 15-16 winter we didn't have a SE Ridge in either Jan 16 or Feb 16? Should've done better with snowfall than just the one HECS we got.

Wow, I'd be curious to see what my favorite Northern Hemisphere research station hit- Summit Camp, Greenland. It's the coldest spot in the Northern Hemisphere, as it is at the very top of the Greenland Ice Cap.

with higher rainfall totals, coastal areas are just becoming an extension of the ocean.

Chris is that 60 mph winds near SW Nassau? We had 1.30 inches of rain over the last 3 days.

This is definitely causing the lobster population to migrate north.

Never heard of this place before lol, is 49 impressive for them?

What I want to know is why would the Indian Ocean have more weight on the NAO pattern (why is it warming more quickly?) than either the Pacific or Atlantic would? What exactly is the Indian Ocean doing and do the Pacific and Atlantic have an influence on the Indian Ocean too?

Is it me or did we just begin talking about the Indian Ocean a few years ago? It seems like before, say, two years ago, the Indian Ocean wasn't even talked about- as if what happened there didn't matter to global patterns?

Yes all the extreme weather was October to December. Any idea what caused all that extreme weather and what caused the rubber band to snap around New Years? March was amazingly warm, but the 40 degree avg for Jan-Feb was also really weird. December was the most frustrating month, because despite it being wall to wall cold, snow was limited to these tiny 1-2 inch clippers once a week or so. There was a blown forecast in the middle of the month when a storm that was supposed to give us 6-8 inches of snow had a secondary form too close to the coast and it all changed quickly to rain accompanied by thunderstorms. It was the opposite bust from February 1989 when we had a prediction of 6-8 inches of snow and we got all virga instead as Atlantic City got buried with 20 inches of snow. I see 1988-89 was one of the analogs you were looking at, and I sincerely hope we dont get a repeat from that frustrating era. I thought Boxing Day 2010 was nature putting things right and making up for the February 1989 debacle. I think that storm was the greatest positive bust of my lifetime.

That was a really stormy period. I remember the October-November period had lots of extreme changes from warm to cold and back to warm and then cold again with big extremely windy storm fronts, massive severe weather outbreaks and the leaves coming down earlier than I had ever seen them before and then an extremely cold and dry December to cap it all off. Do you remember this Don? I think all the leaves came down around Halloween when we had a big windy front come through.

70s is getting boring let's shoot for 80.....

Funny thing is even with this anomalously mild November it will still only be slightly warmer than December of 2015.....

Wow that water vapor graph reminds me of the spike in 75+ dew points JFK experienced a few years ago

and like 8-10 inches from Atlantic City to Long Island

Newark is notorious for being inaccurate in terms of temps higher than anywhere else in the region- but not that out of whack lol.