ORH_wxman

Yeah I think some spots down there had over a foot. I had about 6.5-7” in ORH for that one. We never got into very strong banding but just a consistent moderate snow all night…really good storm for that early in the year.

Yes…could be a smaller type exotic animal farm too…or someone owning them as pets illegally (actually relatively common). This scenario is really unlikely any time soon though because the females rarely wander too far from their mother’s home range. Males OTOH will wander quite a bit further in search of their own territory. We’d prob need to see a breeding population within a couple hundred miles for it to be realistic. Most likely scenario is public support for a reintroduction program increases enough that it happens. They’ve had studies on it and estimate it would prob save 100-200 lives over a decade because of so many fewer deer collisions on the road…where would far outweigh any rogue cougar attack (it would be surprising to get more than a couple in a decade for a reintroduction program in New England). But we’re still prob a ways off some serious discussion.

Cold weekend and early next week…then potential torch for late next week/weekend…perhaps Tday timeframe and beyond looking a bit more wintry? EPS seems to continue to advertise the flip…we’ll see if it gets pushed back or not in the coming days

I used to be fascinated by this stuff (still am but less time these days to research it)….and the overwhelming majority of cougar sightings are just mistaken identity. A lot of times it’s just a large Bobcat where the tail may appear to be longer from a certain angle. But yeah, there are occasional confirmed sightings. Most of which are escaped captives in New England. In Massachusetts there have only been two confirmed sightings in modern times…the first I remember well back in 1997 they found scat near Quabbin reservoir and DNA analysis confirmed it was mountain lion. It caused quite a huge stir at the time but after deeper investigation, it was believed to be an escaped captive. The second confirmed occurrence was in 2011 and was believed to be the same mountain lion that was killed in CT a few months later that had traveled all the way from South Dakota. This was also spotted near Quabbin in the winter and trackers who went to investigate found clear cougar footprints in the snow that ended up being consistent with the paw size of the cougar killed in CT later that summer.

Yeah hopefully we can get a solid PAC pattern by mid-month. All of our issues near Xmas the last few years were directly related to a hostile pacific.

Yeah it really improved on the 5-day mean after about 12/17 or so….here’s the 5-day trailing mean on 12/15…you can see it’s still ugly And then the end of the run is 12/22 5 day mean which is a lot better…the pacific looks really good by then with the Aleutian low, -EPO/+PNA split flow with STJ …but obviously grain of salt that far out

Weeklies looked really nice for mid December and beyond too. I’m skeptical but nice look after a torch the first 10 days of the month.

Dec ‘88 and Dec ‘89 were like that. Though most of Dec ‘89 did have snow cover….but it was often very thin at 1-2”. But I remember so many brutally cold mornings with no snow in sight on the forecasts.

Yes, first half of next week is chilly....but then as the ridge builds in, we see big warmup....though there is still some model disagreement on the magnitude plus the GFS and Canadian have reinforcing cold shots late next week which would delay the warmth....but the Euro does not.

We'll have to re-cancel though when a reindeer farts in Siberia tomorrow and melts a few sq meters of pack.

A couple good days of snow cover in Eurasia have changed the calculus.

It wouldn't take that long to confirm breeding population...maybe a couple years max. I supposed it could be slightly longer if there was no active search for them and they remained in extremely low population areas....but typically breeding population will produce a LOT of sightings because the females stay in their established ranges and any adult offspring will then branch out into their own territories. You'll also start seeing evidence of kills by cougars....deer carcasses and stuff like that will start to be discovered relatively quickly if there's an established breeding population and they'd quickly be tested to see if it was a Mt lion kill or not. The breeding range is definitely moving east, but it would likely take decades to reach here without a reintroduction project. New England and upstate NY is probably the best cougar habitat in the country east of the Mississippi that could support a healthy population. It would likely be a huge benefit as a whole to get them back here (reduced car fatalities with deer, reduced disease amongst the deer population, etc), but a lot of public education would have to happen first.

Mountain lions don't have any breeding populations east of the Mississippi river other than the panther sub-species in Florida. But stray males can wander very far....the 2011 male that was killed in CT by a car had come from all the way in South Dakota. It had traveled through Wisconsin and Michigan before likely going into Canada before being spotted again in NY State and then it went SE into CT. You'll also get an occasional captive (legal or illegal) Mountain Lion escape that produces sightings in New England.

I'm not sure how we get a trimonthly value over 2.0 at this point.....Nino peaking in late Dec or Jan? Is November going to average over 2.0? If it doesn't, then you need BOTH Dec and Jan to average higher than 2.0C. The upper OHC down there looks pretty weak to be able to sustain those types of numbers....but I'm open to the possibility if everything breaks right I guess.

Next Monday could have some snow showers around too if that shortwave is deep enough.

Regression is a b**ch.

The hyperbole in here gets out of control.

Who said wintry through month-end? I feel like the mid-month warmup has been very well advertised. A couple GFS runs were trying to delay it a bit but it’s never looked like full winter through the whole month. This next week to ten days is decently cold in the means. I think people don’t get that climo is still highs in the 50s right now.

White Tday further inland at ORH: 2018 2014 2005 2002 1996 1994 1989 Mix of great winters, ok winters, and shit winters.

Yeah i have no idea why he was saying “MEI favors modoki”. That made no sense to me. It’s obvious this isn’t a modoki Nino but it’s also obvious the MEI is lagging this significantly compared to previous strong El Niños.

Super or Strong Nino December snowfall at ORH: Strong: 1957: 2.2" 1965: 2.3" 1987: 12.9" 1991: 14.5" 2009: 20.7" Super: 1972: 13.8" 1982: 6.4" 1997: 22.3" 2015: 1.4" A mix of duds, average, and good months. But there are twice as many duds as "good" months, which makes sense given Nino climo. But OTOH, 5 out of 9 were average or better.

Super...not strong. Last strong was 2009

GFS was a weird run....sort of delayed the ridge rolling over and allowed a couple reinforcing cold shots through 11/16

I made a comment in here about his posts....I don't follow him on twitter, but every time I see a post in here of his, it sounds really snarky and condescending. Not a good way to conduct scientific inquiry.

La Nina Decembers tend to be colder but that didn't work out the last 2 years. It's a crude rule, but probably doesn't work like 40% of the time. Also, at the end of the day, very few care whether the month was +2 or -1....they care if we got some good snow events....or even one well-timed snow event the week of Xmas or something. That's all 90+ percent of the posters care about. I can guarantee if we had a -1.5 December but a couple nasty cutters with little snow to show for it, the melts would be just as strong as if it was December 2022 all over again.