ORH_wxman

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.

The record 2 year futility is actually 34.8" in 1979-80 and 1980-81....amd since last year had 12.4", this year would need 22.3" to set a new record. So BOS needs to have less than or equal to 13.2" the rest of the way to set a new record.

Its around the time the MJO is going into phase 8....I think there's a pretty good chance for a decent pattern in 2nd half of February, but obviously nobody will care if ti doesn't produce a big dog, lol

Yeah its really unstable aloft with the ULL/trough almost over us and at the sfc, we have a bit of an inverted trough producing some slight convergence helping form a few bands....and the colder advection at 925/850 is producing the OES on the south shore/Cape.

Temp has actually fallen about 1.5 degrees here in the past 60-90 min down to 31F. Snow is sticking to pavement now.

N ORH county elevations into monads were the one lock in this system to do well....too bad we didn't get a solid positive bust elsewhere in SNE. Still, it looks and feels like winter today around here with a very dense 2.5-3" OTG and steady snow faling. So, we take the little things this winter. Yeah see above in my reply....at least it's a wintry day today. I have a mini snow globe out there right now with this band....you even have a little band in your area too

Nice steady snow here for a while with that little band. Not sticking to any dark surfaces at peak insolation of the day here. But it’s refreshing the piles and existing snow and on bushes.

Getting my own little coke line here.

Yep, I said that when they were posted....they'd be too light in elevated interior which they were. But they weren't bad elsewhere.

I actually find it funny that their second place streak on 4"+ got broken because of an April snowstorm....

I don't have strong thoughts on Feb....it is typically our best month in El Nino, but the first week looks pretty quiet unless that D4-5 threat somehow comes back in more amped. Then who knows...pattern looks like it wants to reshuffle to favorable by mid-month, but we'll see. We do look like we're going from phase 7 to phase 8 on MJO which should help constructively interfere with the pattern....amp up that aleutian low to spike heights out west....but again, I wouldn't be confident until we're closer.

Yeah but the sample size on that is exceedingly small, isn't it? I don't see how that would be predictive unless someone can illustrate a physical attribtution.

Picked up another inch and a half overnight. Total starting from yesterday morning a bit shy of 3” but that first round compacted before last night. Looks like we got at least double that amount on the piles though because of how dense it is

Yeah threat is a really vague term.

Been getting sleet bombed here off and on.

I’m watching that area just north of the ML center in NE PA…I think if we’ve got a positive bust up our sleeve tonight, it’s going to happen just north of that…Berks to N ORH county and near MA/NH border looks best but some of the goods may be as far south as pike region or S MA border near dryslot. We’ll see. Expectations fairly low, but we watch.

It’s not a classic clipper because those come out of NW or at least central Canada…this is dropping from almost up near Baffin Island. It’s an exotic pattern…I am not counting on anything right now, but it is within the envelope of possibilities to see at least a few inches.

Short term guidance has been looking better for later. Euro was kind of bullish to the pike/495/rt 2 tonight. Had additional advisory snows. There’s some midlevel goodies further north too for S NH into dendrite land, but near the ML dryslot, there’s almost come convective bands that we should watch.