ORH_wxman

I thought the cool shot was weakening on the models though?

Wow just stepped outside:

What was it last year, white faced hornets inside the house or just outside on the house structure? They are nasty if you disturb them near their nest. Very painful stings too. Might be the most painful I've had. They just aren't as nasty as yellow jackets away from the nest. A yellow jacket will sting you pretty easily away from the nest...it's like they are just happy to be azzholes and sting for the hell of it...most other species of bees, wasps, and hornets wont bother you too much away from the nest.

If you find feral honey bees, you can usually call a local guy to take them off your property for free. Don't pay to have honey bee nest removed if you can help it. If it's bumble bees, no such luck...though I try and not kill bumble bees since they are excellent pollinators but if the nest is too close then you gotta do what you gotta do. Yellow jacket nests I will go out of my way to kill. They are the worst. White faced hornets il fairly indifferent. If they aren't too close, then they won't typically bother you.

Kevin's MADIS graph for predictions vs reality will have violent step changes in March and October every year.

Is the nest closed (I.e. They have a paperish exterior covering the comb cells)? If it is, you need to get down and spray into the opening. Just spraying the outside won't get it done if it's enclosed.

The old ORH site at 600+ feet used to radiate very well. It's one reason that it is so hard for ORH to get record lows...even more than just the usual uphill climb against climate warming. So many record lows are from that site...I think they put up like a -24 or -25 back in the 1943 outbreak and another -20 or two in 1934. When I was a kid, we lived at about 600 feet in ORH somewhat downhill of a ridge and I remember distinctly in the 1994 cold outbreaks that we would hit -20 while he airport would struggle to reach -8 or -10. I think we touched -23 or so on 1/19/94.

If there's another entrance then you'll definitely want to find it. Usually they only have one though. You'll also want to make sure the base of the bowl is flat enough that they can't still go under it. Anyways, it sounds like you are probably already having success if the activity has been reduced significantly. You might be entering the zombie phase of the nest. If you have killed the queen and it's only a few workers left then it's only a matter of time.

Yellow jackets are actually wasps and not bees. The glass bowl trick works on them.

There's a funny little trick you can use for "hole in the ground" nests assuming they are on relatively flat terrain.....you put a clear glass bowl upside down over the top of the nest hole at night when they are all inside. Then the next day they will fly out and be trapped inside the glass dome but because they have been exposed to daylight, they will just fly around inside the confined space and then re-enter the nest and think they just had a failed foraging expedition. They all eventually starve to death over the next few days. It has to be clear though,....if you use a solid dome, they will just dig a new exit through the soil. How weird is that? The clear bowl tricks them into thinking they aren't trapped. I got rid of a big ground nest this way years ago. It's obviously nice because it requires zero toxins.

Have you seen the airport location? It's on a huge ridge that's exposed. Basically has zero radiation a cooling there.

I missed this before but saw a reference...did you have a massive yellow jacket nest? Usually powder is for the big ones. I've become a mini-expert on bees over the years since I hate them so much. Yellow jackets are the single worst wasp/bee/hornet in my opinion. Took me 3 cans of raid to get rid of a large nest I discovered in the apex of our roof line earlier in July. It was like a zombie nest. Every time I thought it was dead, I'd see some stragglers flying in and out 2 days later.

Typical rad night. ORH will be significantly warmer than FIT on those nights.

Remember when he used to call for 1816 repeats in 2017 and 2018?

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.

Still a chance, but pretty low odds IMHO. We'll need some very warm August weather. Atlantic and CAA are a problem further out in time. We'll need the ESS/Laptev sectors to melt toward the pole further than 2012 did to have a chance because the ATL and CAA are going to finish higher than 2012.

Yes, most likely....we've already seen some slowing the last few days. I'm not sure this year will be able to keep pace with 2012 going forward with that pattern. But we'll see.

Here's an animation comparing 2019 to 2012 on this date. I think the key to getting a new record is clearly going to be the Laptev/ESS side of the ice. The CAA are Atlantic side of the CAB are running way behind 2012 and those are going to be problems in sustaining the big losses. Click to animate....

I don't hope for catastrophic warming. But a record low extent makes it a more interesting season to track. I don't think there is some massive catastrophe that happens either if we break a record min. It didn't happen in 2012. We actually ended up rebounding in a big way the following season. Anyways, 2019 is off to a strong start in July so if we can build a couple hundred thousand lead on 2012, then we may have a chance. 2012's losses are so breathtaking later in the month and early August that we'll need to build up some more momentum. June didn't quite do the trick but if early July is hostile enough, maybe it can make up for it.

He's not wrong that there were probably some pretty low ice extents in the late 1930s or 1940s akin to perhaps the late 1990s or early 2000s but that definitely doesn't matter in the larger picture. The best data starts in 1979 so that is the natural starting point for most ice related graphs. It's not some conspiracy.

Final June NSIDC-adjusted area numbers are in, and we're currently 2nd lowest on record behind 2012 though 2007 and 2010 were very close to 2019 as well. What this means is that this year has an excellent chance to finish in the top 3 lowest extent/areas on record. Here are the top 5 lowest: 2012 (6.53 million sq km) 2019 (6.76 million) 2010 (6.77 million) 2007 (6.81 million) 2016 (6.94 million) Does this year have enough of a good start to set a new record? Most likely not. The numbers do not support it. That doesn't mean 0 chance though like more recent years. But we will have to set a new record for area loss between now and the minimum to get there...however, we don't have to set it by much....only about 40k. If we melt 40k more area than 2016 from here on out, we'll set a new minimum area record. The average 2007-2018 loss from July 1st onward was 4.13 million sq km. That would leave 2019 at 2.63 million sq km of ice at the minimum for area. The 2012 record sits at 2.22 million sq km of ice which means in order to set a new recrod, we need to lose 4.56 million sq km of ice area. 2016 is the current record of ice area loss from this point forward losing 4.52 million sq km. So as stated above, we will need to beat this by about 40k or more to pass 2012 at the minimum. That is going to be about 2 standard deviations or even a little more for losses. So I'd put the chances of setting a new record at about 5%. Again, this is for area only. Not extent. Extent is a little tougher since things like compaction can occur that affect extent a lot more than it affects area. Still, it will be hard to set the extent record as well. We might have a slightly greater than 5% chance at setting the extent record since 2012 wasn't extremely compacted. Getting back to area, below is a histogram of what would happen to 2019 if we followed all area losses from previous years....so for example, if we followed 2018 area losses from this point forward, we would finish with an area minimum of just over 2.50 million sqkm: So given the information above, I am going to predict a minimum area of 2.60 million sq km +/- 200k (2.4-2.8 for a range). I will set a minimum NSIDC extent of 3.8 million sq km +/- 200k (3.6-4.0 as a range). Neither of these ranges include the 2012 record...I don't believe we will quite make it. But this year at least has an outside shot unlike previous recent years, so at least there is a reason to track closely.