ORH_wxman

There really isn't a replacement for looking at models all the time and noticing what they do in winter storms. Basically experience. That requires a lot of weenie-ism though as you said. You have to want to look at them all the time or you never will. You can read stuff from a textbook, but it is not always going to help....or you might even get the wrong idea if it's not applicable to our area. I know Chris (Oceanstatewx) and I have discussed in the past on here how reading about ice storm climo/setups in a text book will probably get you into a lot of trouble in New England because a lot of that climo and literature was based off the midwest/plains where the undercutting airmasses are typically shallower....so they all say "the ice will be the worst in the valleys and hold there the longest".....whereas in New England, we typically have a normal lapse rate in the lowest 2000-2500 feet so elevation actually helps in most cases up to that level while a lot of times the valleys could be raining. If you didn't look at obs all the time, soundings all the time, or drive around like a weenie during marginal ice events, you might never really learn about our icing climo and still think the cookie cutter textbook is the way to forecast here.

Given how uncertain LR forecasting is, the math becomes less and less useful and learning to analyze, quality-check, and weight data becomes a lot more important. There is definitely a bit of art to LR forecasting. The physics/math seems to become more important in shorter term forecasts where we have a lot more certainty on certain parameters....like, I can say "jesus, there is a 75 knot low-level jet slamming into a dead calm cold dome over the interior.....I don't care what certain QPF forecasts look like, someone is going to get a fronto death band". But even these days, the models have gotten so much better, you don't have to augment them as much as we did 15 years ago. Back in the late-aughts, we still had model guidance that would print a half inch of QPF in the cold sector of a coastal when you had dynamics that would easily support double that and we had to tell everyone to stop being QPF queens. Nowadays, the discrepancies aren't as large, though they obviously still do exist.

It's going to be hard to run a correlation on temps alone that mean much.....mostly because the Antarctic SPV was affected by the ozone hole for so long which cooled the stratosphere down there. So you are prob going to get an inverse correlation for the rest of the globe.....which can be explained by that. If we could somehow remove that influence, it would be helpful.

Yeah that was an ugly Ukie run...+EPO/NAO pattern....woof. Prob something like '98-99 or '99-'00.

What model ensemble is that? That NAO looks pretty ridiculous.

Update: On 9/6, NSIDC SIA fell to 3.2 million sq km...this puts 2022 slightly below 2018's 3.23 million sq km minimum. The low concentration ice near the pole has yet to refreeze which allowed the losses on the periphery to add up enough to pass 2018. The next one on the list is 2021 which had a min of 3.16 million sq km. As for extent, the NSIDC extent is currently at 4.85 million sq km. We'll see how much lower this goes in the next few days...we haven't had a min above 4.8 million sq km since 2014 (though last year was close at 4.72 million sq km). My guess is we drop below 4.8 million sq km and perhaps below last year as well, but no guarantees.

Yes agreed....that would be frigid in Canada with that H5 pattern....and hopefully we'd get some better timing to allow for more SWFEs and keeping the cold locked into New England over the top. Hopefully we see that Aleutian ridge beef up a little more on future runs which would help push the cold a little further south.

No it was mostly rain into the Berkshires too except a bit of snow at the onset. I think the high terrain of VT/NH got at least some paste in that one. You might be thinking of the 2/24/10 storm. That one crushed ORH county back to the Berkshires. MPM had like 2 feet. I had about a foot in ORH before it mixed while 495 eastward had zilch. Then the retro-rainstorm the next day ruined a lot of it but it changed back to snow pretty quickly in the Berkshires and they picked up another 10-15”. I think even Hubbdave got another 8-10” too and I couldn’t believe it since I wasn’t that far from him but only got 2-3” after it flipped back.

I always say that was the week a toddler-aged Bryce learned all the swear words.

I think my one melt in the middle of an event was the firehose rain storm in mid-March 2010. We missed a 2-3 foot paste bomb by like 1C over the interior. (We actually had a little wet snow at the beginning) Everyone has at least one. Some have hundreds, lol.

Might be one last hurrah…not sure if it will be enough for 3 tenths but it has a chance if you can get under one of the heavier echoes and they don’t weaken.

You had a mini melt before 3/4/19. You were all “congrats powderfreak. Congrats dendrite” every run that wiggled north. Then we made fun of you for b**ching your way to 17-18 inches, lol.

About 3.60” right now. Over an inch in the past 3 hours. Just steady heavy rain but nothing torrential.

That’s just the beam being blocked by something close by to the tower.

Looks like wxwatcher91 finally got some good rates in HFD too…a nice region-wide soaker

Triggered.

If that was the radar in a 25F airmass in December you’d be floating face down in your local salt marsh.

Radar looks like status quo for the next 4-6 hours.

About 2.5” here now. Just steady moderate to heavy rain since midday yesterday with one lull mid afternoon.

Wow nice. Looks like plenty more where that came from too.

Yeah this area of LL convergence was over the pike region earlier this morning when we saw that initial area of convective training…it’s been sinking south all day. No surprise it’s now training down there where it has settled.

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The best convective rains right now are lining up with the low level front