ORH_wxman

Still some differences with GEFS. The EPS are much colder that week than GEFS.

T-day week looks cold on EPS. Might get a snow threat out of that look.

There were other mets that were sounding the alarms, but Harvey was the TV met who hit it hardest on the major Boston networks. As we know, TV was the main source of wx back then. Radio to a lesser extent, and there might have been some guys on the radio who were hitting it hard too, but I am not aware of the history of the radio forecasts. I remember watching a montage of Boston network forecasts back in the late 1990s or early 2000s for the day prior to the 1978 storm and the other networks did a lot more hedging. That likely contributed to much of the public not taking the storm quite as seriously. The Cleveland superbomb bust also probably contributed too....so the public was like "eh, they screwed up the forecast 10 days ago, this one prob won't end up that bad"

There’s basically no confluence at all ahead of that system. It would help if we had a bit more baroclinicity. That said, some of these runs have a pretty vigorous s/w so we may see future runs show a bit more of a system.

There’s actually an old write-up somewhere I have to find about the LFM in that storm. It performed very well but most Mets didn’t really buy it. The GSM was more southeast and the LFM had really screwed the pooch in the Cleveland superbomb 10 days earlier. The 2/5/78 run was also a huge shift from the previous day. Most of the TV Mets (aside from harvey who was more bullish) were forecasting accumulating snow but not the extreme rates and fast start that occurred. The “wall” of heavy snow that came in around mid-morning Monday was the killer. Most forecasts were for a gradual increase in snow.

Another heavy frost this morning. There’s been a lot of them recently.

Yeah except Harvey was sounding the alarms a bit. That’s the storm he kind of made his name known. I think it was his first winter too on the air in Boston. Nobody thought it would be a 2-4 foot monster, but Harvey was skeptical of the graze job. He said something like “this could be a major storm”. Ironically, the models had the Cleveland superbomb 10 days earlier as a big nor’ Easter snowstorm but really screwed the pooch.

Pound town for the picnic tables. Prob down to valley floor eventually with that type of shortwave.

I just wait and then blow them all into the woods. I might do one refresher Tday weekend to get the stragglers but I’m not blowing leaves when the oaks are still clinging to 30-50% of their foliage.

10-18-09

I think the GSM went out to 4 or 5 says but the LFM was 48 hours. Or maybe 60. Not sure.

There were computer models but they weren’t very good. There was the GSM (global spectral model) and then in the 1970s they added the LFM (precursor to the NGM/ETA)

Why is modellab stuck on 06z

Accumulating snow for SE MA while Kevin gets rain in CT?

I'd actually probably take Dec 1970 over both. The first 4 or 5 days torched and then all hell broke loose and it never stopped. March 2001 is also prob better than either 1993 or 2018 if we're talking about Methuen.

This looks more like a La Nina than any of the other previous ones we've had since 2011.

If the winter is not a combination of December 1995, January 2011, February 2015, and March 1993, it's a failure.

I didn't see any real changes overnight to the D6 threat. As for late November, the guidance has been slowly warming because of eroding blocking up in the WPO/EPO region, but I wouldn't sweat it too much. It's not like there is a death vortex up there.

You prob had snow OTG in 1989? We basically didn’t go above freezing for like 3 weeks straight that month, lol...it wasn’t a very snowy month, but the snow that did fall didn’t go anywhere. The coast did get a little tainted in 12/15/89 event but I still think you got 3-4”. The interior managed snow pack on Xmas in both 1991 and 1992 as well. 1992 was the glaciated remains of the Dec 1992 storm but it was bulletproof, lol.

Yeah we were spoiled for a while there. Paying the piper a bit recently. I noticed Hingham had a rough stretch between 1976-1988. 11 out of 13 brown Xmas and 16 out of 19 between 1976-1994.

Hingham technically snuck in with 1" at obs time. But maybe they had 8am obs time...id have to look up their specs.

I may have officially still had an inch or two of slush at 7am last year....but it was so disgusting I'm not even counting that as a white Xmas. It was funny because Xmas eve was amazing....like 50-55 but still a foot of snow OTG and filtered sun. My boys were outside most of the day playing in it and we had a fire going in the fire pit outside. It was quite festive....almost a Reggae-fest atmosphere you see at ski areas in late March on those warmish days. If it weren't for the horrific rainstorm that started later that night, it probably would have just been a typical warm day that melts 3 inches of pack but not much else.

Getting back to the "threat" next week....as Tip said, this wave is probably going to cause some model waffling. It comes in screaming on kind of a "flat" flow. You can see it here at 90 hours on the Euro And even now the 84 hour NAM at 18z "sees" the wave as well. This is the one to watch....you have the lead deep trough out ahead of it and that wave will try to amplify into the back side of that large trough. That's kind of what you are looking for this early in the season because you typically want some fresh CAA to put a decent antecedent airmas in place. It's not the greatest airmass, but might be enough for interior and esp elevations. Something to watch at least....we'll see if it is still there in another 48 hours.

On the flip side, there were some places (mostly S of pike) that did not get a white Xmas in 2002 because they had bare ground and the snow didn't start accumulating until about 8-9am in spots. So that was deceptive too. I think some spots in far SE MA had this happen in 2017 too...the rain flipped to snow there around 7am but they didn't have an inch yet...so it officially goes down as a brown Xmas even though they prob were snowing 2" per hour between 7-9am.

For ORH, White Xmas happened in 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2019. That's 11 out of 21...so a little over 50%. if we use the Hingham coop in place of BOS since BOS doesn't keep snow depth data any longer, then we have white Xmas in 2000, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2017. That's 8 out of 21 or just under 40%.