ORH_wxman

Weird start to the melting season....the Beaufort is getting preconditioned and melting out quickly. It's the lowest since 2020 at this point, and 2020 was a big melt season. The only other two lower in the Beaufort at this point were 2012 and 2016, also huge melt seasons. Though 2008 was fairly close. OTOH, the Chukchi and ESS are the slowest start we've seen post-2007. In fact, both have area higher than the 1980s mean at this point in June. The only other post-2007 years that started even close to that slow in Chukchi/ESS were 2008 and 2014. We'll see how these competing forces behave in the next 2-3 weeks. Overall, ice area is currently 3rd highest in the post-2007 context....only 2009 and 2013 were higher at this point. I wouldn't predict that type of season though yet because of the Beaufort situation. All the slow melt seasons since 2007 had slow early melting in the Beaufort and this year does not. I suspect that is going to help eat into the Chukchi positive anomalies quickly over the next few weeks. 2008 which was mentioned above could give us a good clue. That year had pretty high area in Chukchi/ESS in June but the Beaufort was low. That year ended up close to the middle of the pack in the post-2007 context.

Slow start to the season for melt in May so far. The updates will be more interesting as we get into mid-June. The next week looks pretty slow too except up in the Laptev where some warm air could start eating into the pack there and create meltponding. The Beaufort looks a bit vulnerable this year, so if a dipole pattern can set up, then we could see a chance to make up some ground since the Beaufort/CAA region is always crucial for trying to go big in a melt season.

Kind of sucks we cleared out near sunset but the numbers don’t look that good. Maybe we’ll spike back up later into the evening but it seems the best might be closer to morning and clouds may be a bigger issue by then.

Here’s a pic we got. Obv exposure-enhanced but that pink/purple pillar was very visible with naked eye and the glow around it actually got decently bright for a couple min. The green lower down you couldn’t see with naked eye.

Just got back from going to top of the street where there are no street lights. Could see a pillar very clearly. Lasted about 5 min with naked eye before fading.

Yeah that was a quick spike. Maybe we can shoot it to a new high if it has some momentum. Bz is down near -45 right now too.

I remember in Mar ‘97 when I would go to my cousins’ place in Princeton you could see the tail going almost halfway across the sky. It was awesome. Back down in Worcester the light pollution made it only a very short tail.

Link I posted earlier updates fairly quickly. https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity.html someone may have an even better one. If they do they should post it.

Kp index falling quickly again. Hopefully next wave hits once it’s really dark.

I feel like it’s gonna be hit or miss for a while. The skies are def looking decent facing northeast right now here but there’s still a lot of crap around in all other directions.

Should be able to see it as long as you aren’t in downtown I think and the clouds cooperate. Kp is 9 now with a Bz of -43. I’ve never seen those numbers before since I started following loosely in the early 2000s.

These numbers are crazy. Numbers aside, I don’t think I’ve seen the auroral oval this far south on their maps.

Not sure I’ve seen these numbers happen at night since October 2003. Did we achieve this in Nov 2006? My memory is hazy from that event but I feel like it was a bit short. I remember not seeing anything in ‘06 but I could see it pretty easily in 2003.

This site seems to be pretty updated. If someone has a better tracking site then post in here. https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity.html From my amateur knowledge on this you want big Kp (usually over Kp of 6 gives us a chance) and big negative Bz values. I’m not sure how much the other stuff matters but maybe it does.

Bz at -25 too.....you know this is going to line up perfect and then we're gonna get stuck in clouds.

I don’t have fancy camera pics like some here but it was incredible. Went up to my cousin’s in south Burlington to see it. Got this cell phone pic on Megan’s phone (my phone camera is worse than hers) Problem with the cell phone pics is that even a sliver of light around the edges gets dispersed out on the picture to make it look a lot brighter and thicker than it is.

Might be some stuff that rotates down overnight depending on which model to believe.

5.5” on winter hill in ORH.

Sleet is in Holliston. I’ll report form winter hill at some pint probably.

Starting to get scalped here. Pinging picked up big time in the past 10 min

Yes. I think the western ULL ended up overpowering some of the height bulges out to the east that we were seeing yesterday on some runs. It’s a bit less prominent today so it’s taking longer for the storm to turn the mid-level winds easterly…and as you said, pretty hard to get monster totals when you are relying too much on WAA precip. Someone a little further north may benefit more though. I wouldn’t mind being near my summer vacation spot on Moose Pond in Denmark for this one. Pleasant Mountain FTW

The H7 warm front lifts north relatively quickly once it gets established over SNE. Some of the better runs yesterday we’re trying to stall it for a few hours which is how you get 20-burgers there but that seems unlikely now as it doesn’t slow down until near S ME/NH border. But yeah, if you can flash to parachutes by 03-04z, then you’ll have a path to warning criteria snow.

Trying to flip the pike region to snow around 06-07z. Warm layer really tries to wash out. I’m skeptical but big lift can do the trick sometimes. Esp if it’s in the DGZ where it will enhance latent cooling.

NAM had a much higher area of 2”+ QPF over maine and SE NH and far NE MA. Euro had a small bullseye. They weren’t too dissimilar further west though.

It’s been that way for several runs now for the most part since yesterday. Might be a red flag. But it basically has no agreement from other guidance.