ORH_wxman

Ugh...that's the worst. We take our kids every year but keep flexible....usually pick the nicest weekday during out of our vacation in adjacent western Maine to drive over and spend the day. Although maybe you can luck out where the rain is delayed a bit or more spotty....we had a day like that one year and the threat of scared off all the crowds, and we basically had the park with no lines or very short lines. It was great.

That's one reason I'm annoyed they haven't fixed the sensor there yet...it's always a great proxy to use for the type of airmass we are in. Like when ORH hits 90F, it's a pretty legit hot airmass....when they start going 93-94F, it's a "high end" heat wave.

Yeah they only average about 2-3 90F per year. Some years they fail to hit it (last occurrence in 2014....though 2015 almost pulled it off too until a September 90-burger)

ORH hit 90 on 4/14 and hasn't since...in reality they probably haven't hit it all since they are running about 2F too warm still. They might squeeze out another one today. But I want to see like 92F for it to be authentic.

Official 2023 prediction on Arctic Sea Ice minimums: Area: 3.1 million sq km (+/- 300k)...this would rank 8th lowest Extent: 4.7 million sq km (+/- 500k)....this would rank 13th lowest This is based on years of using NSIDC area from the SSMI/S satellite which gets fooled by meltponding into thinking it's open water. This means that we can use NSIDC area as a proxy for meltponding and some of the most robust literature on predicting minimums in advance is using meltponding in May and June. I give more detail on my method here in last year's prediction, but didn't feel the need to repeat it every single year so I will just link it for those who are interested in how I make these predictions: I will include the graph I usually post, Keep in mind that this graph is not a graph of historical minimums....it is simply what 2023 minimum would be if we followed that previous year's melt rate AFTER July 1st. The reason this works fairly well is most of the decadal trend in ice loss has been due to increases in melting prior to July 1st, not after. But it gives us a nice distribution of possible results if we mirrored previous season's melt rate from post-July 1st.....from this graph, you can see that if we had a post-July 1st melt rate like 2016 (currently the biggest post-July 1st melt on record), then we'd end up with a minimum of 2.65 million sq km....that would still be over 400k above the record minimum in 2012 which is why we can rule out a new record this year. There just wasn't enough melting prior to July 1st to challenge the 2012 record. Likewise, you can see how even a higher retention post-July 1st would still produce a minimum below 4 million sq km....so it is safe to say that we will not have a 4 million sq km min for the first time since 2006. The distribution of this year's possible results looks quite mundane in the post-2007 context...and that is reflected in my predictions above.

We got smoked earlier. Not sure how much but it had to be over an inch in under an hour. We’ll see if any of that stuff to the west holds together.

Yeah the latest drop the past 2 days is going to put this more toward the middle of the pack in post-2007 than near the top retention years. I’ll have my official forecast out later today or tomorrow but I’m expecting a fairly mundane/boring season with no extreme results (high or low). But there’s always still the chance of a surprise.

For our forum https://wkevin.com/new_england_snow/

Update: On 6/29, NSIDC area was at 7.55 million sq km. This is lining up to be a higher retention year in the post-2007 context. Here's how other years compared at this point. I'll have my final forecast out in a day or two. 2022: -430k 2021: -390k 2020: -480k 2019: -710k 2018: +60k 2017: -120k 2016: -410k 2015: -20k 2014: -30k 2013: +130k 2012: -940k 2011: -460k 2010: -740k 2009: +480k 2008: +120k 2007: -610k

Trade winds don't look very favorable over the next few weeks. Things can change obviously later in July and August....but at the moment, I think something in the 1.6-1.9 range is more likely than low 2s.

Stronger Ninos are frequently boom or bust. But I’m feeling cautiously optimistic right now that we end up with something good. We’ll see what happens the next 4-6 weeks but it feels like a true super Nino is getting harder to obtain given the non-SST metrics right now. It will be hard to keep up with 1997 or 2015 I think over the next month. But ENSO is the ultimate humble pie…I’ve seen so many times where we were certain by mid or late summer and then it just didn’t do what we thought it was going to do.

The weird part is that the forcing has been consistently west so far despite the SST anomalies being skewed solidly east.

Update: On 6/25, NSIDC area was at 7.91 million sq km. Here's where other years compared at the same time: 2022: -110k 2021: -500k 2020: -570k 2019: -620k 2018: +80k 2017: -480k 2016: -570k 2015: -130k 2014: -60k 2013: +20k 2012: -800k 2011: -300k 2010: -910k 2009: +500k 2008: -230k 2007: -550k

Yeah south wind today which is one of the few directions they don’t downslope. So they shouldn’t be too much lower than surroundings like when it’s a N wind or any other wind with western component to it.

FIT airport is a downslope pit so they tend to run warmer on temps but colder on dewpoints with the adiabatic drying they get.

I'm surprised on '04-'05 but not surprised on '09-10 which occurred during a deeply negative PDO phase that had started with the back to back Ninas '07-'08 and '08-'09 and then continued right into the next couple Ninas of '10-'11 and '11-12. That PDO cycle didn't really break until 2014 IIRC when the weak El Nino started developing that summer.

Update: As of 6/22, NSIDC area was at 8.11 million sq km. Here's how other years looked compared to that on the same date: 2022: -20k 2021: -540k 2020: -450k 2019: -410k 2018: +330k 2017: Tied 2016: -500k 2015: +10k 2014: +50k 2013: +250k 2012: -670k 2011: -160k 2010: -500k 2009: +690k 2008: +30k 2007: -480k

I'm hoping we get a colder look to this Nino given the -PDO being somewhat stubborn.

Yeah of course....sometimes we run incredibly lucky too. ORH literally had 17 consecutive winters of average or better snowfall between '55-'56 and '71-72....simple regression and statistics would've said after like 4 or 5 of them we were way overdue for a ratter, but we waited another 12 years before it happened in '72-'73. We were eventually "repaid" during the 1979-1992 sadastic torture ritual for snow lovers in New England. This is proof that we do regress given enough time, but 5 years is nothing....even if at the time, it was unprecedented. One last example....ORH had never had more than 2 seasons in a row failing to get a 10" snowstorm until it happened in 1988-89 through 1990-91....so you would have thought there is no way it would happen again after an unprecedented 3-in-a-row, right? Wrong....we got a 4th consecutive winter that failed to have a 10" snowfall in 1991-92. As for this winter...if we can get a west-based El Nino, even if strong, I would strongly bet against another shit snowfall winter....but all bets are off if it's a canonical strong El Nino.

I don't feel like we've had an unusual dearth of high pressure to the north in recent years outside of last year. If anything, we probably got too many of them compared to climo for many years during the aughts through mid-2010s. Seriously....how many SWFE warning events on would-be lakes cutters did we get in those years? Probably more than the previous 25 years combined. For the period circa 2019-2022 I wasn't noticing a lot of rainers with -3C 850 temps....maybe the occasional one like we get every year but not a parade of them like last year. Maybe it's a new paradigm, but I'd want to see years worth of data supporting it outside of one torturous winter.

Last winter had one of the most consistent large delta-Ts between mid-levels and the low levels I can remember....just storm after storm after storm where you'd have like -4C 850 temps and places like ORH were struggling to accumulate snow. It was ridiculous. Typically that might happen like once per winter where you have some torch 925-950 BL flow off the water from the southeast and your snow level sits up near 2k or something, but last winter it seems to happen all the time. We could not buy a low level high pressure in a decent spot to save our lives. We didn't even need fresh arctic highs, just something that funnels some polar dewpoints into the airmass and gives you 29F snow. We couldn't even get that.

Yeah I don't see a reason to think it's going to be above average yet more than below average....the previous 5 winters aren't really relevant to affecting the 2023-24 winter. Flipping heads 5 times in a row is pretty rare, but it doesn't mean you have a better shot at tails on the 6th flip. But you get enough trials, it eventually evens out....like it wouldn't be surprising if we went on a run of like 6 out of 8 winters being good (or better) soon. But it could also wait until the 2030s to do that....the stench of the 1980s and early 1990s didn't really get paid back fully until the 2000s/early 2010s....despite seeing some monster winters like '92-'93 or '95-'96 right after that period. We still saw plenty of ugly winters too mixed in like '94-95 and the '97-'00 period. We consistently started getting better winters in the 2000s surrounded by the occasional ratter ('01-'02, '11-'12, etc).

Update: NSIDC SIA stood at 8.31 million sq km as of 6/20/2023. Here's where other years stand now: 2022: +80k 2021: -500k 2020: -640k 2019 -390k 2018 +170k 2017: +30k 2016: -340k 2015: -90k 2014: Tied 2013: +140k 2012: -660k 2011: -250k 2010: -370k 2009: +790k 2008: +150k 2007: -530k We've picked up the pace of losses in the past 3 days. We're still on the slow side but not quite as much as a few days ago. There's been some solid losses in the Beaufort/CAA during that time, but the next few days look quite cold there so we may see it slow again...but then it's possible another surge of warmth could advect in for this later weekend and early next week.

Update: On 6/16, NSIDC SIA stood at 8.85 million sq km. This was actually a slight increase from 6/15 as the slow June continues. Here’s how other years compared on the same date: 2022: -200k 2021: -520k 2020: -610k 2019: -720k 2018: -150k 2017: -80k 2016: -530k 2015: -270k 2014: -50k 2013: -90k 2012: -1.0 million (-1000k) 2011: -530k 2010: -390k 2009: +470k 2008: -20k 2007: -370k

Scooter's gone off the deep end with Kevin....most normal people like 70s and lower dews unless maybe you are having a pool or beach day. Even on this forum it's true....I remember I ran a poll on this and overwhelmingly people voted against heat and humidity. I don't mind a few mini-heat waves mixed in....they are pretty classic summer feel. Just don't give us DC/Philly weather where it's weeks straight of 90F and humid.