ORH_wxman

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"

Yeah the arctic cold behind the Buffalo blizzard wasn't that great by the time it got to New England....one of the worst cold deliveries for us is W or WSW. Works a lot better further west.....that said, ORH with its recent 2F warm bias ASOS still put up a 14/5 on Xmas Eve which is no slouch....it's not record-breaking, by any stretch, but a windy 14/5 day isn't going to earn many high marks amongst those who hate brutal cold. It was sort of the nail in the coffin for a shit-sandwich sensible wx solution in that pattern though....screws us by cutting the storm west, but do it in a manner where the brutal arctic cold behind it is hitting DC and Richmond VA long before it hits us as to minimize any chance of intriguing anomalies....but still be cold enough to find it excessively annoying to walk outside. We probably wouldn't mind a still/calm Christmas Eve morning at 5F where a snow packed sidewalk is squeaking under our feet and woodstove smoke rising straight up until it hits an inversion 100 feet up, but of course we don't get that kind of 5F morning on Xmas Eve last year....we get a windy 5F with bare ground and maybe a rogue frozen puddle in the driveway to remind us we had a driving rainstorm 24 hours earlier....like I said, a shit sandwich. I think a few lucky souls to the north of Rt 2 had that rogue snowsquall hit them with 2-3" though....

Yes agreed...and that is going to be true of any variable as well. Like for example, usually we aren't overly concerned about a -PNA in New England....EXCEPT when it's going nuclear that it's digging for oil in Cabo San Lucas, then we can start worrying which is what happened to us in Dec 2021 and even parts of last winter. Yeah this is an incessant problem with our geography when it comes to winter forecasting (hell, throw summer heat domes in as well where they "shunt" south at least excuse imaginable).....we don't have very strong correlations with any single index like, say, the northern plains, PAC NW, or SE does. We have a conveniently non-dominant blend of indices that seem to affect us and we have to figure out which one is going to be the most impactful at any given lead time....all while using tools that can't really predict these indices very well more than 10 days out. And the coup de grâce is sometimes we identify the correct pattern at good lead time and STILL fail to get the sensible wx to materialize that we'd expect in such a pattern (take the big NAO block from last December as an example)....we first narrowly missed a Dec '92 redux on 12/16, and then a nuance with the PV lobe dropping into western Canada pulled the rug on our East Coast KU threat and turned it into a Buffalo blizzard on 12/23-24. Hey, at least we froze our asses off with the cold front for a couple days....yay. I will say this though....learning to forecast in New England is great. It makes many other areas a cakewalk by comparison.

I don't think the old norm was good either....there's a reason people who were right 55-60% of the time in seasonal forecasting were basically considered elite (and really still are). We've seen two very similar ENSO events in the past behave very differently. Weak east-based El Nino in '76-'77? How about the coldest winter over the northeast since 1917-18. Ok, lets a take a more favorable weakish or low-end moderate modoki Nino in '94-'95....I don't have to tell you how shitty that winter was, lol. I remember the hype around that one too.

Update: On 7/16, NSIDC area was at 5.42 million sqkm. Here's where other years were on the same date: 2022: +420k 2021: +130k 2020: -300k 2019: -420k 2018: +370k 2017: +220k 2016: -100k 2015: +180k 2014: +360k 2013: +190k 2012: -480k 2011: +60k 2010: +150k 2009: +490k 2008: +610k 2007: -170k

Yeah I can’t remember how many times it screwed me over back around 495 which doesn’t usually happen. You’ll see it a couple times per winter but not almost every storm…lol.

Looks like this morning’s MCS screwed us for this afternoon despite the good dewpoints. Satellite looks like a lifeless wasteland for convection around here.

I’m still going to be amazed by that in like 30 years if I’m still around. Just storm after storm after storm where we had a high over the Grand Banks…I think one storm had a good high (Jan 23rd I want to say? And that high built in kind of late so it was a rain to snow deal) Even a high retreating over Nova Scotia would’ve been adequate on a few of those events. At least you get good front enders sometimes on those highs even when it doesn’t stay 100% snow.

Yeah I’d be shocked if your area was worse than last year. The only silver lining to such a shitty season is that even a merely run-of-the-mill subpar season will feel like a decent winter in comparison. Even in my area, I’d be surprised if we were as bad. I had something like 33” which was the lowest since probably ‘99-00 here.