ORH_wxman

I'll do it by type of event: Snowstorm: December 1992 with close to 3 feet of high water content snow....it would speak for itself back in the ORH hills regardless of when it occurred....but the fact it was the storm "that broke the snow drought" made it even more memorable. It was the first double digit snow event at ORH since January 1988. The longest stretch on record there. What a way to break the streak. Ice storm: December 2008. About an inch and a half of ice at 31F. Amazing event. Most people posting on here were on the forums for this one so they've seen all the pics and such even if they didn't directly experience it. Can't match January 1998 up in NNE but basically no ice storm can. Severe: The May 31, 1998 macroburst at ORH. Produced a 104mph wind gust at holy cross. Just shy of 100mph at ORH airport. I was legit scared it was a tornado when I heard the winds starting to whistle while under a tornado warning. Made it to basement as we heard a massive crack. 3 foot diameter tree broke next to us. Tropical: Chased Irene on the Cape with Phil and we got sustained around 60mph with gusts near hurricane force. Pretty good all things considered. Slim pickens in New England the past 2-3 decades. Bob in '91 had some pretty good flooding but not great winds back inland. Heat: Probably July 1995 only because of the dewpoints with it. It wasn't as intense as 2011 but it was more uncomfortable. Cold: January 2004 if we're going on combo of longevity and pure misery. Thin snow pack and brutal winds. If we're going on just shear peak magnitude it's Valentines Day 2016....absolutely brutal. Only lasted about 36 hours but it was epically intense. Froze our shower drain for over a day. January 1994 gets a mention of throw some wintry appeal deep snowpack into the equation....and the lowest daytime max of 1F. Recently tied this past January.

CAR going from +1C to -8C in one hour I impressive on the '76 cold front.

The daily area did start falling again....but it was only 18k. Down to 2.981 million sq km....the min so far was 2.877 on August 24th.

That's the 5-day mean, the daily area actually increased 20k to 2.999 million sq km. Not that the area matters much anymore for ranking purposes...this season will rank 3rd lowest for area behind 2012 and 2016.

There is no way the min would be that early.

I was looking at JAXA when I made the comments about extent. I agree NSIDC extent looks a bit less likely to finish 2nd but it wouldn't surprise me either. It only needs to have slightly above average losses...though the shape of the ice pack doesn't look as favorable for losses compared to years like 2016 when there was a lot more vulnerable ice left.

Area is very likely to finish in 3rd place given the path of 2016 from here on out. Extent is still looking like 2nd place is the most likely but the recent stall has made 3rd or 4th place more possible than it was a week ago.

Melt ponding is supposed to occur more readily on first year ice than multiyear according to the literature but let's say that is flawed analysis....if melt ponding was truly getting harder because first year ice is somehow getting so bad and other factors now contribute more to melting because of this, then we would expect the NSIDC area in late June to significantly over-predict the amount of ice left at the end of the season. We haven't really seen that in recent years....except 2016. But it didn't happen in 2017 or 2018. It doesn't look to happen in 2019 either unless something pretty crazy happens in the next couple weeks. The late June area data (which is a proxy for melt ponds) told us that we had a good chance for 2nd lowest but not a good chance for lower than 2012's record. There's nothing glaring that says that data missed some sort of smoking gun on additional melting.

The role of the cyclone in 2012 is overstated imho. The ice was in terrible shape before it hit. I'm not really convinced it added that much to the losses. Maybe a couple hundred thousand sqkm or something. 2012 already had the highest percentage of melt ponds by the end of June suggesting a new record was likely. It was significantly lower on SSMI/S area than other years including 2019...it's the main reason I didn't think we'd set a new record this year despite this being the most favorable melt year in a while. It just didn't quite stack up to 2012's early melt ponding.

The NSIDC data I'm using is from their satellite dataset. Specifcally the SSMI/S satellite. Jaxa and U Bremen use the AMSR2 satellite, which is highest resolution of the two. SSMI/S is useful though because it has a pretty homogeneous dataset going back to 1979. IMS uses both satellite and human augmentation of the data based on visual shots of the ice. Here's the FAQ from MASIE/IMS site: https://nsidc.org/data/masie/masie_faq

It will be interesting to see if this product stays below 2012....I suspect it will not, but we'll find out in about 2-3 weeks. NSIDC area is now favored to finish 3rd lowest...we're only 90k lower than 2016 now and 2016 loses about 400k in the next week. So this year needs to kick-start again on area loss to stay pace. Extent is still favored to finish 2nd lowest behind 2012 on NSIDC, Ubremen, and Jaxa.

Yep...there was plenty cold over the CONUS, just not for most of the posters in here....pretty classic gradient with SE ridge in the east actually.

Well, it sounds like a subjective analysis then by you on other people's posting behavior. Not sure I can really help other than the below explanation: If you go back through the beginning of this thread and previous Arctic sea ice threads, you'll note that IMS hasn't been used. It's been consistently NSIDC and JAXA...sometimes U bremen and previously Cryosphere Today (now defunct..but they used NSIDC data). I don't know a ton about IMS but my little experience with it from sheer recollection back to the 2009-2013 days is that it seems to lag the other datasets significantly. It will "catch up" to them eventually if it looks like it is deviating on a trend line. That is my guess on what happens this year as well. We won't have to wait long to find out.

Here's some sources....the record we discuss isn't supposed to be about what it means longer term. Most of us know the longer term trend is down. But records are interesting to all of us in the weather community. Why do we sit around and track the thermometer at 101F on a hot summer day when the record is 102F? Does it really feel much different from 99F? Of course not, we're just tracking whether the record gets broken or not. FWIW, we've discussed when we think the first total melt out (definition below 1 million sq km of extent) will be in here: https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/40881-when-we-will-see-an-ice-free-arctic/ https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/46677-when-will-the-2012-arctic-ice-extent-minimum-record-be-broken/?page=3 It does not appear we will set a new record this year based on JAXA, ubremen, and NSIDC. We'll see about the IMS plot you reference but is suspect that will flatten out at some point. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxhcmN0aXNjaGVwaW5ndWlufGd4OjU1OGIwZWI0NGI2ZDI5YTM https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/sea-ice-concentration/ https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop.ver1/vishop-extent.html

Area and extent loss have slowed to a crawl the last couple days. We're now behind 2012 by about 300k on extent and 200k on area.

That tool on NSIDC uses the 5 day running mean instead of daily values.

IMS is a deferent source than JAXA or NSIDC and it looks like that graph doesn't have any data beyond late July.

2016 looks like it had a lot more easy pickings after 8/10 for losses than this year. If parry stait melts out then that could add some to 2019 but 2016 looked easier:

Why do we think 2019 will act more like 2016 than 2012 after August 10th?

We've fallen 350k behind 2012 on area despite extent still being very close. We're probably going to need a big compaction pattern to keep extent in the running through the end of this month.

2012 has expanded it's area lead to 210k....the best chance for 2019 is if the Laptev can retreat further than 2012. That's the weak spot when comparing year over year.

Extent definitely has a better chance to beating 2012 than area. We're 170K behind in area now and 2012 doesn't slow down any time soon. We'll need some breathtaking losses to keep pace. If we have enough compression of the pack though, extent could still challenge even if area does not.

On extent or area? I think 2007 both extent and area are very good chances to be surpassed by 2019...2016 has a good chance on extent but not as good for area. Prob like a 50/50 chance or less to pass 2016 area.

I agree with the low chance of beating 2012 at this point. I wanted to see a pretty good sized lead heading into late July/early August. I might go higher than 3% on extent but not by a lot. Maybe 10-20%. For area I probably wouldn't go higher though as we slightly trail 2012 in area.

I mentioned before that Atlantic and CAA may prevent us from getting a new record. Much more ice there this year than 2012. But we still have a chance if ESS/Laptev can melt back far enough. We're tied for area right now. 2012 has some epic losses in early August though which is why I'm still a bit skeptical in addition to just looking at the individual regional concentration maps.