ORH_wxman

Yeah the amplitude on these runs is pretty extreme for a D12-15 ensemble prog and it’s across all guidance too…not just one set of ensembles. I think the pattern shift is basically inevitable at this point but the bigger question is how long it lasts and if it trends more amplified or less. If you only get a 7-10 day period of favorability, then you can more easily whiff on storm chances versus if you get 3-4 weeks…just obvious probability/statistics.

There is no doubt there is a very strong consensus for a more favorable pattern by mid-February. Details TBD and of course nobody in here cares unless it produces a deformation band over their noggin….but the current evidence is that the pattern will become quite favorable for colder/stormy….it could deteriorate as we get closer but there’s nothing yet that would make me actually predict that outside of “vibes”.

There’s def a big difference over just 100-200 feet of elevation. The lowest parts of town have less than half of what we have here.

Not as much as N ORH county and monadnocks but quite wintry here today still as well.

Scooter is full throttle back to shore to set the market with 60,000 pounds of swordfish on board….he doesn’t care if the Perfect Storm is in his tracks. He’s gotten his second wind with the Hail Mary coastal storm on the GFS next week and then the ensemble going full weenie pattern by mid-month….he’s gonna fight and not lay down in the woodshed.

Yeah this is a weird temp pattern for a strong Nino January

Yep. But if the first 10-12 days of the month is bone dry, that wouldn’t be too bad for the second half of the month. If we finished the month an inch below normal on QPF but almost all of the precip falls after the 12th, we’d take that in a heartbeat.

Seems like next weekend (about 9-11 days out) is the period to watch if we’re gonna sneak in some true torch days in the 50s or higher. At the moment, most guidance seems more muted but could change as we get closer. If that pattern beyond that keeps showing up without degrading, then I’ll become more enthusiastic for a potential larger snow threat. Pretty crazy ridge showing up out west.

Scooter getting sucked back in. Might be some south shore goodies with that colder airmass and onshore flow next week and then after that the ensembles showing a loaded pattern by mid-month.

Yeah Edgemere area is right on the Shrewsbury/ORH line on rt 20 on the southern tip of Lake Quinsigamond. It’s basically the lowest point in Worcester proper.

Oh that was the big fluffer bust. Like Walpole to Taunton had 8”+ when the forecast was like 2-4”. A thin band late that evening started from me to Ginxy and nobody else was snowing. Then things finally expanded overnight and it went to town over SE areas with pristine snow growth and it ended maybe middle of next morning. Almost a mini 2/7/03.

Holden is a great spot. Retention there is night and day compared to even lower areas of Worcester. It’s why I often say ORH can be sliced in half in the city. The NW side from Indian Hill to Winter Hill on the Holden line over to Salisbury area over to Tatnuck square and ORH airport are way different than downtown to Webster square. You can go even weeks at times where there will be deep pack in that area while Webster square has patches of bare ground.

Crunchy under foot on the deck tonight grilling. Winter feel. Trees still have some snow on them while down at bottom of hill it’s all off the trees.

Yeah there’s def gonna be some model fantasies out of that pattern shown. Might be several. A few whiffs in a powderkeg setup near the end of the season should do well on here.

One final shot I think we’ll have to get a big dog…and I think Ray’s window makes sense when you look at the MJO progression and general seasonality of ENSO. Hopefully we can get one. Maybe we will repeat the 1957-58 timing again like we did in January. (For refresher, in 1957-58, the first big snow of the season here was 1/7….then there were additional smaller events but also a huge rainstorm with a bit of interior wet snow on a benchmark track around 1/23-1/25….sound familiar yet?) The pattern turned significantly colder during the 2nd week of February in 1958 and then we got the first big dog on 2/16/58. There was a reload during the 2nd week of March and we got the monster storm around the equinox too. This year is obviously not going to run as cold as Feb ‘58 since that was an exceptional arctic outbreak, but I could see some good storm chances.

Yeah I remember. Once the CCB got cranking, a lot of guidance had this airmass get entrained and we saw output dropping it into the 20s on the coast and even some upper teens inland. But that high trended north and arrived later as we got closer.

Doesn’t matter in this context since 2 inch soil temps are around freezing across most of MA (a bit below in higher terrain). You’re not gonna melt really anything bottom-up with that. If it was still in the high 30s to low 40s then you would. Pretty much all melting once past very early winter is going to come from top-down…once ground is exposed nearby then you’ll get lateral assist…esp as sun angle increases and heats the exposed sfc nearby.

Yeah one thing that has been nice is I’ve had ground covered for most of the month since 1/7. We lost it after the second cutter but only for a few days prior to the 1/15 event. Then we lost it again last week but only had to wait about 3 days.

Sure wet ground from 33-35F rain that preceded it. But if that didn’t fall first, the ground wasn’t prohibitively warm. That’s the point everyone else is making.

Drove into Quincy and saw the fresh coating. The existing snowpack actually decreased quite a bit between my house and the east side of Sherborn near the Dover line. They had like maybe an inch with grass blades sticking up in that area while back home was like 2.5-3” of dense snow/sleet. Then the new snow last night became more noticeable near Blue Hill

It was melting not because of ground temps but because it was like 33F outside when that crap was falling.

December means more where higher snowfall averages are. For a place like ORH, if you essentially punt December, it’s hard to recover though not impossible. El Niño years are the best way to do it…Ala 1957-58, 1965-66, and even 1982-83 (finished near average that year). Fo even snowier to a place like Maine where Tamarack is, essentially punting November/December (let’s call it less than 5” of snow) is going to be even harder to come back from. It can still happen but not as easily as a place that might only average 7-10” in Nov/Dec combined.

It actually looks like the late 50s to early 1970a are the outlier. Very consistent AN snowfall. I’ve mentioned it before but that was 17 consecutive seasons of normal or AN snowfall at ORH. Completely abnormal for the climate record going back to late 19th century. But since so many datasets like to start in the 1950 time range and the older generations grew up in that era, many falsely think that was “normal” baseline climate. It wasn’t. edit: scott beat me to it, lol

2012-13 as well. I think there’s plenty of examples since the correlation is prob something like a few tenths.