Volcanic Winter

At 32. My low of the season so far is 25, should probably clear that I would think.

https://watchers.news/2023/11/20/major-eruption-at-ulawun-volcano-triggers-highest-alert-level-ash-reaches-15-km-50-000-feet-a-s-l-p-n-g/ Ulawun having a rather impressive sub-plinian burp apparently. It just did a VEI 4 a few years ago, so seems to be in a more active phase. With that said I don’t know tons about this specific volcano aside from it being a major SO2 emitter and on the Decade volcano list (supposedly the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, but I’ve always thought that list is very incomplete and with some questionable choices, likely based more on availability of funds / access for study than true risk - but Ulawun is a dangerous one). I’ll update if anything significant comes out of this. Substantial ash column. There’s only a bit of info at present but my very quick guesstimation would have this as a VEI 3, but depends on the duration and whatnot. Update: The ash column was revised up to 18km from 15, that’s pretty substantial. Still sub-plinian by technical classification (plinian is supposed to be 20km+), but a pretty powerful outburst. Info is still a bit sparse (I’m mainly curious about duration because that has the most impact on how big this eruption was, a small VEI 4 at the high side is perhaps plausible like Shiveluch earlier in the year). Update 2: Wow, this is pretty impressive. This really does look like a 4 now.

It’s okay Don, going forward we’ll simply say, “the next two weeks will either be warm or cold depending upon the type and quantity of booze each imbibed prior to its run.”

I’ll take and feel guilty about it later.

I have to say I do agree with Bluewave that ill-timed southeast ridge pops have been a recurring issue in why the east has struggled with storm tracks. Many waves that are promising on a ten day seemed to inevitably be shifted west as the southeast ridge appears moving forward in time, killing any chances before we ever had one. This is not a prognostication on this winter, just acknowledging a past issue and hoping it doesn’t repeat. Honestly I’m pretty optimistic on this winter overall (thanks for all your work too, Terpeast). This thread has been a treasure trove of info and analysis this year and all the various perspectives have helped me learn a tremendous amount.

Really wanted to emphasize how incredible your work was on your winter outlook. The depth and detail really blew me away and I found it a super engaging read. Thank you.

26 this AM. Quite a few 20’s since getting back from Iceland on the 8th. Happy we’re not staring down an inevitable blowtorch for Dec, though I’m not expecting much more than cool to mild. Hoping we get some real chances around Xmas. I know 3.4 is warming a bit again but the MEI is way lower than raw ONI suggests. Is that why we’re still seeing the mixed Niña/Niño influence?

Yeah I’m not thinking about snow yet, just setting up my candles and offerings so the models find and hold good looks going into December / Jan. I’ll take and enjoy whatever seasonal and cool weather we get in the meantime, but my watch begins somewhere in the vicinity of Dec 15th.

Manchester on Accuweather is showing 24 for a low and 43 for a high on Thanksgiving for me (I use that station despite being in TR bc it’s closer to the temps I actually experience being on the inland border). Definitely a chilly holiday this year. I’m curious if I can break the teens overnight as I did last Nov during the cooldown around the 20th. Looking ahead I finished reading @40/70 Benchmark’s outlook for winter and thought it was an excellent read. Highly recommend checking out his blog, he put a crazy amount of work into it and I can’t emphasize that enough. He thinks 25-35 inches this year for NYC. http://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2023/11/winter-23-24-will-be-lesson-in.html

Down to 26 here. Chilly mornings. Love it. Nothing wakes me up and gets me ready to start the day like a shot of cold, fresh air in the morning. I remember we had a very strong cold shot around Nov 19-20 last year and I hit teens overnight. But before that I don’t remember hitting 20’s consistently.

Just want to note that, and I think you guys are pretty much aware of it, the eruption (should it occur) in Iceland will not be anything that carries potential climate impacts. It could be intense and very damaging to the local population, but it will be a predominantly effusive fissure eruption as is typical over there. Now if Katla or Öræfajökull especially were waking up… different story. I’ve seen a few comments asking about the potential eruption in other threads here. But yeah, big danger to the population of Grindavík, zero intrigue as far as climate. You really need the absolutely massive and thus extremely rare fissure eruptions that have explosive components and the ability to get SO2 into the stratosphere (Laki, Eldgjá etc) to see climate impacts off these mainly effusive events. But this won’t be that, and they are extremely rare (only 3 known in the Holocene).

23.5, impressively chilly this morning. Was colder than Iceland’s lows! This trip ranged between 25-38 or so most days. Started in the northern part of West Iceland, more inland and ended up in the far southeast coast near Vatnajökull glacier.

Some pics of our amazing trip:

We were supposed to stay a night at the end of our trip at the Northern Lights Inn, which is within a mile from Blue Lagoon! Crazy story, just been getting back and adjusted and I was going to post about the trip and this whole experience. it’s a very serious situation, a sill formed in the area of Grindavik / Blue Lagoon in a system that hasn’t erupted in 800 years. It’s a much spicier system than the gentle, tourist friendly Fagradalsfjall. It could erupt very fast and very powerfully with high effusion rates, and both Blue Lagoon and Grindavik are very much in real danger.

Einstök makes some really solid, fun beers. I love their take on a dopplebock! Garún stout from Borg is one of Iceland’s finest, too. One of the best stouts I’ve ever had, and it’ll knock you on your ass! Perhaps not so great for hiking, but a solid choice for later!

Not to be pedantic but +1-2 AN is actually substantial considering how much the average has increased since 1980. So the frequency we still get months going AN is concerning, to me at least. Very difficult for us to go BN for any length of time, and even then it’s hardly BN factoring earlier averages. Aside from that just anecdotally the warm ups always seem more acute and severe than the cooldowns, with a couple exceptions here and there of course. Just my 2c.

Thanks! Yeah, we’ve yet to do a summer trip. Allure of the northern lights are too intoxicating, plus for me the climate is pretty much perfect this time of year. Can do a strenuous hike and maintain temperature equilibrium well enough you’re not sweating bullets . Iceland with snowcover is also spectacular, especially in the north where we went after our volcano hike last year. Gives the appropriate sense of being near the polar latitudes. Summer has its charms too with the unexpected lush/greenness, midnight sun, and extremely mild temps which is more the speed of most. But the country is a geologic/volcanic wonderland and presents one of the most unique environments on the planet (mid ocean ridge on top of a powerful hotspot).

Will be in Iceland starting Sunday. Last year we hiked Fagradalsfjall volcano and saw the fresh lava flow fields. This specific volcanic system was dormant for 8,000 years before it woke up in 2020; pretty crazy. Volcanic activity on the Reykjanes peninsula goes in cycles with the last having been during the Middle Ages, though Fagradalsfjall itself was dormant for far longer. Well it appears to be waking up for yet another eruption (it’s popped off three times now since waking up), as this looks to be the start of yet another intrusion that began with a 4.6 quake in the area last night and now a notable swarm today which could be magma beginning to break for the surface: https://watchers.news/2023/10/25/intense-earthquake-swarm-near-fagradalsfjall-volcano-iceland/ At the volcanic cone from 2021 and viewing the freshly cooled flow fields during our trip last year.

Honestly my favorite types of storms are those that crush my area in coastal NJ and then continue on to crush you guys. Just that classic coastal bomb with something for everyone. 1/29/22 was outstanding for me at 16 inches given current trends, a bit less so for NYC area to my NNW, but then was a major, major storm for many folks in NE. Also thinking of storms like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2018_North_American_blizzard My biggest hope rather than absolute values is just the presence of a fun coastal storm with a wide swath of enjoyment for many in the northeast. Feels like that’s been a missing element the past few winters. And I know many in SNE have been really hurting in recent years, too, so hoping you lot get the goods this winter.

Funny how different people can be. I don’t hike until it’s in the 50’s on sunny days, I absolutely despise the feeling of heat / broiling in the sun while active. My favorite time of year to hike is mid-late fall into winter, but I’m definitely more of an oddball than not As of Sunday my wife and I will be back in Iceland for another hiking trip, so at least I’ll be in my glory haha. Beautiful out there.

It’s amusing how significantly I can fake cold my way into impressive lows with how well I radiate down here at the northern edge of the pine lands. Not factoring last night I’ve already been down to 36 a couple times and have had frost.

Regional impacts vary, that’s pretty standard with this stuff. Pinatubo had a very notable decrease to surface temperatures overall, even if region to region impacts had lots of variation. There’s a study disputing the impact of the largest known eruption of the past 100k years (Toba supereruption 75kya), because climate proxy data from a lakebed in Africa didn’t show much of a change from the norm.

I just want to remind that HTHH is the only eruption in recorded history to be both of VEI 6 (Pinatubo) size and have its primary atmospheric pollutant be water vapor. Every eruption of similar size that has been studied has had a very different gas composition. It’s not hyperbole to say this is uncharted territory, and we’ll likely be learning in real time what the impact of that much water vapor will be. Maybe it will ultimately be of small or inconsequential impact, perhaps it will be larger. In my personal opinion a retrospective analysis will be more useful than any one study trying to predict the next several years. The most important point is that I would caution against comparing 2022+ to any other known volcanic years in recent history as they’ll ultimately have very little in common. Even at the highest SO2 calculations I’ve seen estimated, it’s still far below El Chichon in the early 80’s - and even if there were any impact from typical volcanic aerosols, it’d be fading rapidly this year.

Yeah hit 37 this AM. By comparison I had two hard freezes, coldest down to 30 by tomorrow last year in Oct 2022. Was a third year Niña and not directly comparable but just mentioning.

Yeah as a kid growing up in CNJ during the 90’s and 2000’s, it felt like we lived somewhere that gets plenty of snow. A lot, even. My dad had a plow, we looked forward to the snowy season every year, and I don’t ever really remember thinking, “damn, it hasn’t snowed in so long.” Of course that’s growing up in one of the areas biggest periods, but yeah. This is mainly why my impression of 2016 to present feels a bit out of sync with my memories growing up, not that we haven’t had a few great storms in that period. Just that it feels like our winters lost something I remember as a kid. All anecdotal, just recollections.