LibertyBell

It looks like the pattern gets more unfavorable every year, and that's regardless of whatever ENSO phase we're in.

Uncle, got anything from the April 1983 snow that was our latest measurable?

my favorite pattern is a trough on the west coast and a trough on the east coast with a ridge in between- it looks like the Greek letter Omega

we rarely get those kinds of arctic outbreaks here anymore so I didn't think it likely either. Highs near freezing are a good possibility though. why people like extreme cold is beyond me

yup early dismissal here too, about an hour before regular release time from school

I remember back then you did some investigating and concluded that the LGA ASOS especially was out of whack. And that the 40:1 ratios of the other stations were more reasonable but still probably off and the true ratio was probably more like 25:1 Does that sound about right, Ray? It was like a storm the midwest might see- surprised we didn't get a blizzard warning here, but I guess the winds weren't high enough for long enough.

It sounds like small hail outside

well tonight is pretty interesting lol. we had weather like this about a week or two after the Jan 1996 blizzard.

Yeah I outlined that bust in my previous post. I was so angry about that bust that I nearly punched a hole through my bedroom door back then lol. I wonder if there's a way to find out if Feb 1989 and Dec 1989 storms would still be busts today with our modern models but using the data from back in the days leading up to those notorious busts? Feb 1989- suppressed more than modeled....8 inches predicted nothing delivered, hours of virga while ACY got 20 inches Dec 1989- secondary intensified too close to the coast......8 inches predicted nothing delivered after initially starting as snow, turned to rain with thunder Apr 1997- intensified too far north..... 16 inches predicted, 1-2 inches delivered, mostly rain Mar 2001- intensified too far north.....2-3 feet predicted, mostly rain, 4-6 inches delivered on the back end Jan 2008- our last heavy snow warning.....8 inches predicted, mostly rain with a coating of snow here on Long Island Jan 2015- intensified too far east...... 2-3 feet predicted, about a foot of snow actually fell (got reprieved exactly a year later.)

Indeed....I intensely hated that 89-90 winter more than any other winter because of that brutal dry and cold weather that lasted for a month. I think we also had a big bust in that month that was supposed to deliver 8 inches of snow and it ended up being rain lol. Rain and thunder! That was after the Feb 1989 bust which dropped 20 inches in ACY and nothing here, just hours of virga. And then my mom passed away in June 1990 so she never got to experience the big snow winters and she loved to walk outside during snowstorms! I wonder if there's any way to remodel those big busts with the same data from back then but run them on today's models to see if they'd be busts today too?

I think LGA had like 80:1 ratios while the rest of the area was around 40:1 ratios. I think that was the "sunrise snowstorm" I remember with the snow looking pink as it fell in front of the rising sun. And then in winter 2009-10 in February we had the "sunset snowstorm" where pink snow fell at sunset!

I remember Uncle mentioning this year. What's the least number of total snow events we've had in a season, Don? I think it might have been 1997-98 with 2.

time to start digging that lake to our NW

December 1989 and that happened after a big snowstorm in November.

and February started out horrible with the worst suppression of ALL TIME haha

aren't we in a long term multidecadal -PDO/-PNA pattern? I remember the people in the West being really excited because of this. Tacoman in Albuquerque sure loves it lol.

Is that why, in a previous era, Baltimore and DC used to get big snow storms in patterns like these? I distinctly remember several times during the 80s when they feasted while we were suppressed. A notable example is winter 89-90....especially December!

I like astronomical winters over meteorological ones. Astronomers are real scientists who make real predictions that actually are correct most of the time lol. Winter ends at the spring equinox not on a day at the end of a month, which is just a matter of calendar convenience.

this fits in with the pattern of all or nothing winters which started in 2015-16

It depends. I thought the April 1996 and April 2003 snowstorms were a fitting end to amazing winters. Both were really good snowstorms on Long Island. So was the one we had a few years ago after a historic March. April 2018.

how did you feel about the October snowstorm lol

I'd rather have 60s and sunny right now.

But statistics shows us that there is such a large variation there is no such thing as a "mean" Average snowfall years are actually the rarest. I'm actually hoping we are on the final downward spiral that gets the average person to finally recognize the dangers of climate change. A sad commentary is that awful things (like the pandemic) need to happen to get the average person to actually care. So if we dont get big snowfalls anymore, that may be a good thing in the long run.

But if it's all you know you get used to it. Also 1979-1993 had a historic snow drought that had never happened before. By the way climate change was integral in the 2002/03-2015/16 winter patterns too, if you look at how warming SST drive quickly intensifying storms. We've seen an increase in big rainfall events as well as big snowfall events.

I have seen something amazing like this in a nature documentary. It was a male bonobo who adopted a baby whose mother had died. He took the baby up into a tree with him and when the baby fell asleep the older bonobo stayed awake looking at the stars and watching over his now adopted son. From everything I've seen, animals have amazingly complex and evolved emotions, some even moreso than many humans. Another one that I saw was the matriarch of an elephant family burying her dead and returning to the spot year after year and pausing there as if lost in thought.