ORH_wxman

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

gracias amigo

I lost the link to the RAOB records....what are the coldest readings at GYX in August for 850mb? IIRC, late August 1986 had a brutal cold shot where 0C 850s got down to ORH-BOS

I was in Dubai in 2014 and it's gross there. It's humid in the low levels but with a ridiculous cap so you get no convection. I think we had a reading of 105/83 at one point without a cloud in the sky.

Yeah that is a brutal white faced hornets nest in that pile. My guess is several hundred hornets at minimum based on the frequency of the traffic in and out of the nest. Dig into that wood pile on a 20F November morning and see how big the nest remnants are.

Condolences @dryslot Hopefully you're hunting big game still at 91....carry on his legacy.

We've had a ton this summer in the woods behind my house....definitely more than I normally see in the summer. Usually I see them more in winter because it's easier to spot them with no foliage/undergrowth. But this summer, I've glanced into the woods many times and saw them moving. Also on a brighter note, the yellowjackets this summer have seen quite a bit fewer than normal. I'm wondering if some of the ground nests got flooded out during the heavier rain events. I'm sure I'll step on a nest in September now that I said this.

Wonder if the hottest temps of the year are going to end up being that mid-April hot spell. Many stations haven't beat that yet.

That would loosely fit with winters like '57-'58 and '65-'66.

I'm a little concerned about a roaring PAC STJ sort of juicing up with the PJ off the west coast. Some of the seasonal guidance tries to show this. I only said I'm a little bit skeptical of a big winter....not that the winter will be a full ratter. If we got something a little better than '97-'98, it would be a decent winter in New England (different story further south). That said, if we continue to see no sign of forcing migrating eastward into the autumn, then I'd start getting more optimistic for something bigger this winter. A juiced PAC jet with forcing near the dateline with modest blocking would be pretty awesome to roll the dice on here.

Melting accelerated a lot since my last post to be closer to the higher melt years, but then slowed down again the last couple days....so we're kind of back in the middle of the pack again...maybe a little below the mean. On 8/10, NSIDC area was at 3.82 million sq km. Here's where other years were in comparison on the same date: 2022: +430k 2021: +80k 2020: -420k 2019: -400k 2018: +240k 2017: +50k 2016: -160k 2015: -130k 2014: +850k 2013: +510k 2012: -770k 2011: -260k 2010: +370k 2009: +650k 2008: +140k 2007: -170k

Our sample size is poor on these things which is really the inhibiting factor. I’m fairly skeptical of a big winter at the moment for reasons Webb says, but I’m also not projecting nearly as much confidence as some of these people because we’re talking about a very limited sample of similar ENSO events…and so far, this one is not behaving atmospherically like any of the SST analogs. Will that end up mattering? I don’t know the answer to that and my guess is most LR forecasters don’t either.

The funny thing is most of the long range guidance didn’t show much of a -AO/NAO in December last year. The month still sucked but it was “for the wrong reasons”. That’s part of the problem with seasonal forecasting….the AO/NAO are stochastic enough in nature that guidance can’t really predict them accurately which makes it a problem being accurate in the winter pattern for the northeast.

There’s been almost a hiatus in the last week or so. Not quite like 2013’s 10 day hiatus but definitely a slow down big enough to put 2023 back into the lower melt years post-2007. There’s a good amount of vulnerable ice though in the ESS/Chukchi/Beaufort so my guess is this is still going to be more of a “middle of the pack” type season. I’ve been on vacation the past week but will give a numbers update when I return.

Might get an airmass of yore this weekend/early next week. Pretty impressive cP airmass there.

Update: On 7/23, NSIDC area was 4.85 million sq km. Here's how other years compared on the same date: 2022: +550k 2021: +210k 2020: -460k 2019: -290k 2018: +180k 2017: +50k 2016: -50k 2015: +150k 2014: +460k 2013: +90k 2012: -340k 2011: -250k 2010: +240k 2009: +560k 2008: +590k 2007: -90k Area loss has been pretty strong so far this month putting us slightly below the 2007-2022 mean. We may be able to sneak into the top 5 if strong losses can continue into August.

Yep, wasting that block was a huge downer....but it's happened before and will happen again. Kind of reminded me a bit of the December 1987 pattern where we wasted an awesome NAO block too. It's the reverse scenario of when we get hammered by storm after storm despite a +AO/NAO and -PNA...sometimes we end up lucky but times like last December, we get the shit sandwich instead.

Yeah you caught the tail end of them IIRC before they died....I think towns like Groton/Pepperell/Townsend/Dunstable had 2-3"