ORH_wxman

2009 was the coldest June/July combo on record at Logan. That’s a tough bar to breach. Hard enough getting the entire JJA period BN in this regime so that alone is a nice change.

It’s been a few years since we had a legitimately good pacific for an extended period during the winter. You can maybe argue for a couple weeks in January 2022 but that’s really been it. The nice period of late Jan through mid Feb 2021 was mostly Atlantic-driven with a great NAO block but a -PNA (but that -PNA didn’t dig for oil in Baja CA so it was fine) Hoping we can get a standing wave near dateline for several weeks this winter.

The 2019 cold shot had bad wind too. It was a high of 1F with wind. Doesn’t get much worse than that. Jan ‘94 was not as windy iirc but still really nasty.

Jan 2019 had a daily high of 1F at ORH which tied 1994 for the coldest since Jan 1981 when a high of 0F occurred. Only Jan 1968 (high of -2F) was lower. The coldest reading since the 1950s was the Feb 2016 -16F reading....you had to go back to Jan 1957 to beat it.

We had a decent December in 2020 before the all-timer Grinch storm ruined it. But in terms of pure snowfall, it was a good month...but I know that isn't the only criteria around the holidays. But yeah, you gotta go back to Dec 2017 for a solid month area-wide....though Dec 2019 was decent for some in SNE...esp interior MA. During those classic La Nina (or neutral) 2007-2013 years, we seemed to get a good December almost every winter which probably really spoiled us. You could actually extend that back to 2002....between 2002 and 2013, ORH only had 2 Decembers where snowfall was below average....you could maybe count 2004 too but I consider that average since it was only about 1.5 inches below normal.

Yeah area tends to be at a minimum near the end of the first week of September or early in the 2nd week. Right now, we're about 40k above the min two days ago. We'll see if that 9/3 min holds.

The CONUS pattern isn’t that similar. The 2009 western ridge was way better placed for cool anomalies over the east and you had a simultaneous NAO block that kept it trapped in the northeast. If we had a 2009 pattern this year, it would be much colder. Not as cold as 2009 but a lot closer than this year was.

NSIDC SIA has seen a strong decline late in August and early September. Now down to 2.78 million sq km. That gets this season into a top 5 year. We need about another 100k to get into top 3 to beat out 2020. We’re running out of vulnerable ice but if we can decline another 2-3 days in a row, then we’ll have a chance.

Ok that's pretty awesome right there....almost all of that looks like sustained winds too.

74 knot (85mph) gust at Perry airport KFPY 301215Z AUTO 01054G74KT 1SM +TSRA OVC008 25/24 A2828 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT N AND NE P0029 T02470240

I heard from him about 45 min ago....said he was losing signal. The strongest part of the eyewall looks like its going to go right over him in Perry, FL....ironically the strongest part of the eyewall in this storm was the NW side.

Yeah…Pinatubo was the most climate-altering eruption since probably Tambora in 1815. The 1912 eruption in Alaska was bigger but not in the best spot to affect the global climate.

Looks like the 12z hurricane model guidance shifted back east a little from 06z late run....more in line with the 00z forecast

That has to be near record territory. You're not even right near Philly....inland north of Lancaster seems like getting less than an inch is record material....I wonder how much they got in '72-'73 or '97-'98.

Snowfall has significantly increased in New England as we've gotten warmer. There is an eventual threshold where that stops happening, but don't exactly know where that number is. We do have some unique geography that helps with snow and so far, the increase in moisture has outweighed the warming temperatures. Places like interior Northern New England likely will never see big snowfall decreases because the warming wont be enough up there even through the end of the century. But SNE could...it remains to be seen. There's also plenty of natural variation on top of underlying warming....we have had pretty warm/snowless periods a long time ago too (think of some periods in 1930s and esp late 1940s/early1950s)...so that is why we try and use longer periods than just a few years to determine whether there's more permanent change....but that is hard this day and age with people wanting to link short term weather events or seasonal numbers to climate change. A lot of these fluctuations are due to larger scale pattern variability like the AO/NAO. We saw this even back in the early 2000s when we had been on a long-ish run of +NAO winters going back to the 1980s....they all said climate change was responsible for the +NAOs.....then all of the sudden right when they published a lot of those papers, the NAO started going more negative culminating in the very negative period from 2009-2013 which prompted a whole new set of papers that claimed lower sea ice was actually responsible for the more frequent -NAO patterns....then of course, the NAO started going more positive again after that, which shows that some of these things are bit too stochastic to be making pronouncements about on short term trends.

Why?

2015 will be known as "2024-lite" when we're done.

In our best month? Sure, why not. Strong Nino STJ juiced with a big PNA this winter....

That dataset has been around for years....and they haven't fixed December yet. Every December reading is corrupted as -99.9 The other months are good though....one caveat on this dataset though is that the EP/NP has the opposite sign of the traditional EPO index. So a positive EP/NP here means a negative EPO (i.e, check those frigid months like Jan 1994 and Feb 2015 which had huge -EPOs....they are huge positive numbers on this dataset). So just as long as people remember that when looking at the values.

NSIDC area is currently at 3.34 million sq km. This is 110k higher than the to-date min on 8/18 of 3.23 million sq km. It is highly unlikely we've reached the min that early as it would break the record for earliest minimum by 11 days. There's still a shot we can sneak into a top 5 melt season, but it needs to pick back up soon.

A bunch of seasonal forecasts went bullish for cold/snow in 2001-02 and of course that caused quite a lot of mea culpas and it likely caused the '02-'03 forecasts the next season to be much more conservative in the aggregate. Back then, the tools weren't nearly as plentiful as now, but ENSO was still a huge consideration in most forecasts.

So was 1925-26.

Looks like it weakened some. Prob not gonna get much wind.

Some decent rotation just SW of me now. Wonder if that will tighten up a bit more.

About to get crushed here