ORH_wxman

We've had big area increases over the weekend, so pretty safe to call the area minimum now too at 2.7055 million sq km.

We've potentially reached the extent minimum on Jaxa (4.55 mil sq km on 9/8). We're about 50k above that now. We'll see if there are enough drops in the coming week to offset gains. If we have indeed reached the extent minimum, it would rank 14th lowest. Area is even murkier...we're only about 10k above the min of 2.70 million sq km. We're currently 5th lowest for area. We'd need to drop below 2.63 million sq km to reach 4th lowest.

Years ago, we ran strong -QBO against cold ENSO and there number of cold Decembers with fast starts was pretty significant. 1956, 1970, 1974, 1981, 1983, 1989, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2011, 2017, 2021 The only duds in that group are 1974, 2011, and 2021....and 2021 was a weird one with extreme bitter cold in Canada not that far away from the northern tier of CONUS. Only '74 and '11 had true awful death vortex pattern.

2012 (lowest), 2016 (2nd lowest), and 2024 (third lowest) are the top 3 lowest area minimums. 2016 and 2024 were quite close to eachother whereas nothing as come particularly close to 2012 since then. Area in 2025 is currently 7th lowest on record for this date. edit: I think you meant highest minimums..... Highest mins for area since 2007 are: 2013: 3.61 million 2014: 3.57 million 2009: 3.54 milion 2018: 3.23 million 2022: 3.21 million

I think there’s another force here too….we overestimate our ability to forecast winter previously as well. We had some “classic” behavior in the 2003-2012 period where the El Niños and La Nina’s were acting very much like we “expect”…so maybe we created a recency bias for a time until things “broke down” circa mid-2010s…some will argue 2013 with the big N ATL changes and others will argue Super Nino 2015-16, but either way it was around that time. However, one only needs to look back to decades past to see how many ENSO events/winters didn’t act like we “expect” them to. Some of the early 1950s winters behaved very similarly to our recent winters but just a warmer baseline now. They were still very warm in the means, especially over New England and SE Canada. The El Niños in the late 1960s basically acted as La Niñas (particularly 1968-69)…even the super Nino in 1972-73 was not like others. Probably a lot of -PDO hangover influence. The 1980s had their own bizarre quirks and then we have the famed ‘95-96 winter which was a La Niña but had an active STJ more akin to El Nino which contributed to the wildly positive snow anomalies in the mid-Atlantic. Those are just the ones off the top of my head. I try to keep the early 1990s in their own category due to the influence of Pinatubo. There was some radical stuff going on there (we’ve talked about this previously but the extreme cold in the 1992-1994 period was likely not a coincidence.) There’s definitely new quirks going on as we warm different parts of the planet at different rates, but I’m not convinced we truly have some permanent new paradigm where most of the old rules don’t apply. History tends to rhyme including weather history…we might have an underlying baseline that is warmer, but I hesitate just throwing out previous references and rules. Not saying you are going that extreme, but more just a general comment on winter forecast and it’s a sentiment I’ve seen elsewhere.

I'm actually growing more and more optimistic by the week for this winter. Small positives adding up like QBO, N ATL SSTA, negative ENSO anomalies concentrating east of 140W....still super early and seasonal forecasting is still super high variance, but I'd rather have small positives in our favor than not.

Here's what the prediction on July 1st would have been using this year's data: The sea ice area was at 6.868 million sq km on July 1st which if you take the melt from that point forward of every year since 1979 would give us a final minimum average of 3.0 million sq km. However, whereas the trend for post-July 1st area loss was pretty flat until about 2013-2014, it has since developed into a statistically significant trend, so in recent years, I've used post-2007 numbers to make the forecast. Using post-2007 melt after July 1st would produce an average sea ice area minimum of 2.8 million sq km. We'll see where it ends, but the forecast would've been 2.8 million sqkm (prob around 2.6-3.0 with error bars). For reference, the top 3 lowest are 2.22 million sq km (2012), 2.46 million sq km (2016), and 2.47 million sq km (2024). Area is currently 3.26 million sq km....this late in the season, a top 3 is unreachable. I don't think I'd change the final prediction from what it would have been...maybe shade it toward the higher end of the 2.6-3.0 range.

I’ve been super busy this summer so forgot to issue a forecast but I’ll run the numbers later this week retroactive to July 1st to see what it would’ve been but just glancing at it, we wouldn’t have predicted a new record low min. Right now, area is running 8th lowest. Forecast looks pretty favorable for good melt in the coming week so a top 5 melt season is still on the table. We’d need to set a new record for loss from this date though to finish lower than 2012.

That’s quite the ratio for mid April and a min temp of 32F….34” on 1.25 of liquid that one day. Wonder if they left the core boiling over the fire too long, lol

Yeah kind of a positive spring bust of yore…interestingly, guidance was generally more aggressive earlier in the overnight period but that part kind of failed. But then we got that blob of monster omega around 5am and things went gangbusters for roughly 2-3 hours and that’s when 90% of the accumulation happened.

Yeah Ashburnham had 9” so top of Watatic likely broke double digits.

Jackpot was right along the eastern spine of ORH hills. Ashburnham down to Princeton to Holden, Paxton/Leicester (and adjacent far W and N ORH city proper). Pretty consistent 6-9” totals.

I’d bet top of WaWa had 10+….best was slightly south of you too.

One more deck pic

Over 6” on winter hill