ORH_wxman

A relatively snowless Feb 15-Mar 15 period is by far the worst. Way too early to think about actually doing much non-winter activities outside (unless you golf on the Cape or something)....and the snowpack just wilts in the sun. That happened last year in the final week of February and first week of March....we had like a 20"+ pack after 2/19 that just rotted and slowly sublimated/melted. Painful and boring as hell...especially knowing that you can get some absolute monster storms during that period.

There were some pretty good events in late February (2/25-26 and 2/27, then icing on 2/28) but they were admittedly more interior and N of pike.

Area increased 45k to put us about 120k above the 9/1 min. Still too close to call the min, but another 100k or so increase over the next 3 days would probably do it.

1992 had one on 8/31. This is for area though...not extent. Other early area minimums: 1983 9/2 1987 9/2 1988 9/3 2000 9/3 2005 9/3 (this used to be 8/30 until a recent revision put it at 9/3) 2019 9/4 (barely beat out 8/24 which would have been an unprecedented early minimum) My guess is we sneak below the 9/1 figure in 2021....we've had a bunch of other years that had a strung-out double-dip which it looked like an initial minimum had been achieved either in very late August or the few couple days of September only to have it dip again sometime between 9/8-9/14 or something. But we'll see. Each day that it stays above the 9/1 value, the more likely it is to hold up.

Yeah there is no way to defend that Euro forecast last September....it was horrendous. The only consolation was that basically zero seasonal models were able to pick up that type of Atlantic blocking.

Totally whiffed on the all the NAO/AO blocking up north....we never really got a SE ridge either.

Last year was mostly stale airmasses and we had that weird Nino-esque pattern for a while. OF course the one time we got a legit arctic airmass, that zone just N of the pike got the mini-screwjie in the Dec 17th storm. But yeah, if this is going to be more of a gradient pattern that is classic for La Nina, then it would be surprising to see another southern seasonal jackpot.

Often can be the case when there is a strong cold source just to the north. But it doesn't always happen within New England itself. Saw it in the '93-'94 winter where the best snowfall anomalies were prob along and just south of the pike into N CT/RI and SE MA. Though things would likely be shifted a little north if another '94 pattern happened today given that we were still in a post-Pinatubo world back then with an obscenely crushing Arctic PV.

February 1981 might one of the ugliest patterns you'll ever see for winter wx across the CONUS.

We may have reached the area minimum on 9/1....we're currently about 75k above the 9/1 value of 3.19 million sq km. Still a bit too precarious to call it, but if we had a 9/1 area min, that would be the earliest min since 1992.

Frigid December look. Torch February though there would be some cold lurking close on that.

Yeah I'm sure it is different up there. For ORH, after that 1960s blitz, they had a total of 2 measurable October snowfalls between 1964-1999. Then starting in 2000, they had 8 events (1 in 2000, 1 in 2002, 1 in 2003, 2 in 2009, 2 in 2011, and 1 in 2020)....and probably had one in 2005 that got measured as a trace, but that could have happened in previous years too so I won't count it.

Yeah the ECMWF seasonal look has a frigid Canada and we rarely get skunked when there's ample cold to tap into there. One of the few exceptions might be 1988-1989.

Esp in Dec/Jan....looked like El Nino with the southern/southeastern US having the lowest heights

The October snow aspect has gotten way more frequent for whatever reason....though previously when we had October snow, it was pretty common to torch not long after. The October 1979 snowstorm was followed up mid 80s like 10 or 12 days later.

Feb 1994?

Trough isn’t super ideal there but that is an active look with absolutely frigid cold in Canada and that H5 look means we’d likely be on the cold side of the boundaries more often than not.

That’s actually a fairly cold look for New England.

Yeah it’s like pulling teeth to get merely a below average September these days...nevermind a -2 or -3 like we could pull back in the day. I feel like the last true cold September was prob 1995. 2009 was kind of chilly iirc but not like some of those others. I feel like ‘09 was chilly during day but didn’t have those biting frosts. I think 2000 had some cold nights...that whole autumn was really cold actually. Last year’s cold shot (even if it didn’t represent the month as a whole) was impressive though for sure relative to current climate.

No you aren’t losing it....there were definitely some frigid autumns back during that period. The mid-1990s actually had some very cold Novembers which were absent for a while until we’ve recently matched them in years like 2018 and 2019. We had some brutally cold Septembers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We haven’t seen those since.

Yeah the autumns are definitely warmer now (particularly early autumn). Especially compared to the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was a string of obscenely frigid autumns back then which were cold even relative to the 20th century climate. The funny part is that we rarely ever got snow despite how cold some of those autumns were...lol.

EPS def looks warmer toward mid month...but seasonably cool before that. Above normal is nice though once well into Sept/Oct...back broken by then so a +10 day is fine.

Gonna feel like fall for the foreseeable future. Maybe a brief muggier day on Sunday? Otherwise that's a lot of football weather on the Euro. GFS tries to rebuild some heat toward mid-month but that is out in clown range.

"Drought in New England" is typically an oxymoron.

Yes! He’s back!