ORH_wxman

We’re definitely getting color on the leaves earlier than my previous 3 years here at this house.

I've usually used a longer term average (they have an option for 1951-2010) to compare the years. That idea might need to be reassessed though as we continue to warm....once you warm enough, a solidly below average winter based on 2001-2030 normals might not be below average at all in 1950. Right now, the seasonal variance is still significantly more than the underlying warming trend, but it becomes ever closer as the years go by.

Yeah I wasn’t making a moral stance on it...death sucks no matter what...just throwing out an empirical way of measuring it. If you all of the sudden had, say, 70k less deaths than usual over the next 2 years after a theoretical vaccine next year, then you would be able to more accurately figure out how many were killed who weren’t likely to die very soon. You just subtract that number from the overall death toll. If the virus did not “pull forward” a ton of short terms deaths, and most were medium term on the order of a decade, then you would not see the excess deaths lower much at all.

I think a real measure will be if when this virus passes us, do we see a lower number of excess deaths. That would imply we sped up a bunch of deaths that might have occurred in the next, say, 2-3 years. I’ve seen that theory thrown around too. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to do that unless we have a widespread vaccine.

Yeah let’s keep the politicians out of this thread. We’ve already went down that rabbit hole too far months ago.

I mean technically everything is upstream of eachother since we're going around a spherical object.... But yeah, Tip is parsing the difference between what an index says and the "responsible party" for that pattern. I wasn't doing that....I'm merely stating that often a -NAO will be paired with a +PNA/-EPO type pattern, but when it isn't, it's really helpful to have. I'm not here to dispute that something in the PAC is causing that -NAO to occur....I'm just pointing out how helpful it is to occur during a shitty PAC pattern. I've actually often stated that our best snow patterns are -PNA/-NAO/-EPO....kind of a weird trifecta on first glance, but think of something like Jan 2011 or Feb/Mar 2013. But obviously you can do the big snow thing other ways too....see 2015.

It seems you are implying there is a covariance and correlation between the EPO/NAO...or PNA/NAO or both....which is reasonable. They both exist and we've talked about it over the years. But I think the discussion was more centered around when the EPO/PNA aren't doing us a lot of favors....that's when a -NAO in the means can help out a lot. We're talking when they are "out of phase" with eachother. An anecdotal occurrence off the top of my head was early January 2009....we had a nice vortex sitting over AK (very temporary I'll add), but we developed the best NAO block of the season during that time which prevented us from torching away all our snow and dealing with storms tracking through Marquette. Instead, we stayed more on the seasonable side of temps and dealt with a couple transition snow/ice events. The same assistance occurred to a lesser extent right before the Feb 2013 blizzard.

A -NAO in the means helps keep the cold further southeast than otherwise would happen. I agree with Tip that you want an NAO that fluctuates a lot in it's magnitude to increase storminess, but you still want in negative in the means...or at least neutral. It provides some level of "cushion" when the EPO/PAC side isn't very favorable.

Or just get a black hole so strong and displaced south that we get Dec 2007.....

There also wasn’t a lot of spread because most summer activities aren’t conductive for spreading the virus. Esp when places like bars and restaurants aren’t open or have restrictions. There’s very little spread in outdoor environments.

They can run hot and cold (no pun intended)...sometimes they are nailing it for a couple months in a row but then sometimes they are just clueless. Right now they seem to be clueless. Its also harder in general during the warmer season for models to perform consistently well. Their verification scores are higher in cold season.

Weeklies have been utter trash. They whiffed on the cold in mid September too.

Is that house old enough to have measured snow up to thy knickers in 1717?

You can order them fully assembled and get it delivered for like 7-8k I’ve seen. If you’re willing to do a little work yourself, it’s like 3-4K.

Are we convinced we don’t see a coolish shot Friday/Saturday? Euro’s not too impressed but other guidance shows potential. Are we also convinced FROPA on the deep trough doesn’t happen 9/29ish?

Early October looks cold on EPS.

40F at CEF too. BDL hasn’t decoupled yet though.

OWD 40F and TAN 39F already. CON/ASH haven’t decoupled yet and still hanging near 50F.

Find a little elevated hollow on the edge of the ice gulch forest near him at 2k feet that probably radiates to -40 every winter. LOL.

Yeah when the temps matter the most, you’d rather trade radiating ability for elevation. I couldn’t radiate worth a damn on winter hill in ORH but it was always one of the single best spots in town for snow.

That was the main cabin. The bunkhouse is separate.

Oh nice. Yeah a space that small and insulated well won’t take much to make it very warm.

I gotta ask him....is the bunkhouse heated? I didn’t see a wood stove, lol.

Yeah as great as that winter was, I’m always left with the “what could have been” feeling.... There’s some alternate universe where we avoid the epic cutters post-January 15th and instead maybe get a couple of “front enders” that CAD into 31F ZR over the interior and 35F along the coast and then we FROPA into a net gain of pack each cycle. That’s the winter where we finally achieve 50-60” pack on the level....of course, there’s always something to “ruin” it whether it is “too cold” like Feb 2015 with higher ratio powder that settles too quickly or the hellacious cutters of 1996 that beat down a 40-45” pack that was primed to crack 50” as it already had pretty high water content going back through those layers of storms from late November, December, and early January. Or 2011 where the music stopped after the February 1-2 storm...then we had a tepid thaw that settled most people back into the 18-20” range and that was all she wrote when the rest of the winter was nickle and dime and Ptype transition events. I did measure over 50” in a few spots in March 2001 but I never thought it was a true 50” pack because I also had spots in the low 40s. It averages out to around 46 but I even re-litigate that because there was such an obscene mess cleaning that snow up that I am never confident it was non-contaminated even 20-30 feet from walks/roads.

Yeah these dews are anomalously low. Add on the dryness of the ground and it’s a very good recipe for MOS being too conservative. This airmass is producing the classic Typhoon Tip “cobalt blue sky” right now