Volcanic Winter

I’m sure rains to Quebec precedes all our best winter periods! Nah, I’m staying optimistic that January will be more agreeable. But I don’t see anything realistically happening until after NYE and likely then some.

Yeah Icelandic fissure eruptions can be pretty insane in their opening phase when the pressure is at its peak. The Laki eruption had fissures extending over 80km with jets shooting up over a thousand feet at least. But that’s the top end of the scale and thus is very rare. This is big for a mantle fed eruption, the larger fissure events happen from rifts formed by the central volcanoes where magma can accumulate in a chamber for centuries to millennia. 2014’s Holuhraun eruption of Bararbunga is an example, as is the Laki eruption (which was over 10x larger). This was also reminiscent of a Mauna Loa eruption, which is impressive because Mauna Loa does very intense fissures. I was really sad last night because the initial news wasn’t great and there was grave concern the lava would swamp Grindavik, but fortunately the top 3/4ths of the fissure, the lava was flowing away. The southernmost section had lava flowing in the direction of the town apparently but the output there was low, and has died down. They’re very lucky! The bad news is that this is going to keep happening now for decades as the Reykjanes volcanic fields have awoken for the start of a new cycle of eruptions. The last Reykjanes cycle was in the Middle Ages, so this is pretty amazing to be alive during this.

The amount of data, facts, recollection, and analyses posted here daily has continually blown my mind since the day I signed up. Probably why half my phone browser is AmericanWX tabs and I spend more time on here than I care to admit .

Correct. You’d need something Laki sized from the 1780’s, which had its own explosive component in there as well. 5x the total SO2 release of Pinatubo and caused significant climate disruption (though not all of that would’ve breached the tropopause). This won’t be that by any stretch (Laki was only one of three such enormous Icelandic fissure eruptions known in the entire Holocene), though it’s more intense than the three Fagradalsfjall eruptions so far since 2020. To be clear (I tend to wax a bit on comparisons), this won’t have a climate impact whatsoever.

Forgive the janky way I’m sharing this: https://imgur.com/a/v2vL1fm Edit: Same video, de-jankified:

@Stormlover74 Very bad news, that’s a massive and exceptionally powerful fissure. Much moreso than Fagradalsfjall. Those central jets are enormous and that looks like a very high effusion rate. Not good for Grindavik, Blue Lagoon, etc. Gave very little warning. A couple hours of swarming and a 4.2 quake, then boom. The dike formed a month ago and then activity waned. The main rock breaking / fracturing had completed and the dike was in a pre-eruptive position. The problem is they couldn’t tell if the supply from below had turned off or not. If it did, there wouldn’t be an eruption now and that magma would’ve stayed in a “loaded gun” position for a while longer. Instead, it seems the dike sat there and slowly, relatively silently continued to pressurize until the final swarm broke through the remaining section of crust. The powerful fountains are the end result. Not a tourist eruption, this is pretty bad for them. I’ve been to Grindavik several times and it was already extensively damaged by the seismic activity (graben formation) last month. https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/reykjanes/news/229037/Reykjanes-volcano-update-Eruption-seems-very-powerful-scientist-calls-it-worse-case.html Edit: From RUV.is (official source) Ármann Höskuldsson, volcanologist, has told RÚV that the crack currently seems to stretch to the north, and this means that the lava does not go down into Grindavík. He says one fissure has already worn off and another fissure has opened a little further north. He considers this to be three to four times bigger than the previous eruption on the peninsula.

At that point, isn’t it just sort of ‘hedging against snow,’ and thus not actually a forecast?

We had a couple big gusts that woke us up early AM, but that’s not surprising given location. Overall didn’t seem too bad here. Looks like the brunt of the winds was E LI into NE.

Looks like about 2.4” here and sitting at 60. My tinsel snowman had a rough night

Interesting to me how close in temperature the four major cities are. That’s a pretty minor spread (at least it seems to me).

At the end of the day, at least we have memes and the friends we’ve weenied along the way.

It’s disconcerting, 100%.

TBF people light Snowman up with weenie’s constantly too, many cases for posting his genuine thoughts. But because it’s ‘negative’ it gets seen as trolling. I don’t think that’s fair, personally. Look how you say things matters still in written format, and sometimes people come off a certain way when they post that goes beyond giving objective opinions / forecasts. But I do think some have been largely doing better with that. I will always give props to well reasoned posts, especially those with effort behind them / data etc. And that holds even if it’s not what I, personally as a ride or die cold & snow weenie, want to hear. I try to separate emotion from this, because I’m here to learn first and foremost. All just my thoughts / weighing in. I’m not the arbiter of what’s right and wrong for the forum.

Beautiful shot! And a nice event, that one had a sharp cutoff just to my south where I only saw virga due to the very dry air on the north fringe, but it plastered ACY IIRC. I did better in the following event and then at the end of the month for my main snow that month. But 8 inches is a very nice event in an otherwise poor stretch. Really pulling for the megalopolis to have a good winter this year.

Can you help me understand the “standing wave” in the context of the MJO? Does that simply mean a slowdown with forcing lingering in a specific phase from some sort of feedback loop?

How are you feeling about your megalopolis snow forecast at this point? Zero implication in me asking, I’m merely curious. If you could tweak any of the ranges, what adjustments would you make? Or would you stay locked in with the original forecast? Thanks Ray.

I find it interesting, but I’m weird.

Final cooldown before the parakeets fly in.

I’m at 29 here currently, northern border of the NJ pine barrens down in Ocean Co.

I was 22.3 on 11/25 which is also marginally my coldest temp so far this season. 22.5 this AM, coldest of the month.

Mirage? (kidding)

Starting to look at the models more now, this is around the time my watch begins. Though as mentioned my emotional investment for the time being is staying low. I do like the continued activity though, I think that’s a good sign. Lots of juiced systems, I would think it’d be hard not to luck into something eventually even lacking a wholesale major pattern improvement. Obviously we need a better temp profile and at least some improvements, but I think that will happen in Jan even if only marginally enough to get us a trackable event. Certainly not disheartened, we’ll get there one way or another.

I always liked ‘infernal hellscape,’ but then I remembered that’s my nickname for Florida.