Volcanic Winter

How do meteorologists do it? Best guess is looking at QPF and temps at different levels combined with educated guesses at likely ratios? Seems like it gets complicated quickly by stuff like fronto / deformation bands, etc.

Yeah there’s a huge variability across the northeast and mid Atlantic that this forum targets. I haven’t had a great stretch lately where I am at home close to the coast (but inland from it) in central NJ, but last January in particular was fantastic given the past few years. I don’t think guys here did quite as well (but didn’t the Delmarva score too?) IDK how many of you read the New England forum as well but the SNE guys there are equally as miserable. Many, even pretty far north have only a couple inches on the season. This isn’t just a M/A skunkjob. Everyone’s hurting, but of course the places that should do best have been doing best this year. The coastal plain is simply striking out down into the western part of this sub forum. It really just seems like bad patterns mixed with terrible luck mixed with Niña base state exerting itself at the worst times. Not saying that’s all of it, but seems to be a big part of it this year.

Literally you in my mind.

I’m fully willing to sacrifice you to the SPV so it gets disrupted and we have an actual winter.

I do actually, PM me your email I can send you a few things.

I had to go way back through thousands of camera roll pics and screenshot them to get them to the top to easily find in my Imgur app, so forgive the goofy way I had to post them. When I have time I’ll try to go back through them and email to myself and them upload and post the images properly, I also should have a few more I didn’t post for you. So you can have the actual proper images. Just need some time and I can do that for you. I’ll tag you with a reply when I do it.

Almost no cars were out on the Parkway at this time, held my phone up to the side to take a few images after slowing to a crawl with no cars ahead or behind me. It was just freaky. I don’t remember if there was a state of emergency or an order to stay off the roads, but I’ll never forget how deserted both commutes were. Very few times I can recall the parkway looked like this (with respect to a complete lack of car density).

Yup!! Was a fun one. You can see in the pic my old 6 speed BMW 128i; didn’t have my WRX yet and there was no way in hell that car was making it 60 miles up the parkway in that kind of storm. At that time I would borrow my dad’s F150 and damn, what a harrowing commute that was. Worst parkway conditions I’ve personally driven on in quite a few years. It was an engaging ride to say the least lol.

Thinking of better times. With the exception of 1/29/22 which gave me 16 inches here at the Toms River / Manchester border, 1/4/18 was the last storm that really bulls-eyed me relative to the rest of the subforum, though Long Island also got clobbered. This was a fantastic storm that I constantly think back to. And up at my office west of EWR. That was an extremely challenging (but fun, I’m a psycho) commute up the parkway.

Officially on the board with a “trace!” Protecting my 7 & 1/2 flakes like they’re white gold…

You may be absolutely correct and you’re undoubtedly extremely knowledgeable. I actually really enjoy your posts despite your reputation for being a downer. With that said, I do find it kind of odd that on a science forum we have posters telling the professionals here that they’re wrong (or in SnoSki’s case actually calling one “naive?”). It is also, undoubtedly, much easier to keep calling for essentially a continuation of “warm and shitty” during a warm and shitty winter. I think what becomes irksome (at least IMHO) is how you guys have a tendency to imply what you’re saying is verbatim fact and not just an interpretation or opinion. Even if you end up right, I’m still going to lend more weight to what the professional meteorologists that post here have to offer on the subject. Of course it doesn’t mean they’re infallible or that you (and others) are wrong, certainly. But the point is we don’t know for certain how things are going to play out. It’s been a very complicated winter to forecast for the multitude of reasons we all know 50x over by now.

Pulling for you SEMA guys, really hoping that ends up verifying. Be happy to see someone coastal finally scoring. Keeping positive we end up seeing those improvements late month into Feb. Better than staring down a shutout with certainty at least.

If that’s any semblance of accurate the strip of frozen precip is wildly narrow. The cape went from jackpot to rain in a couple runs. A 20 mile stripe of frozen is definitely par for this winter’s course .

I’m right in the direction you were looking, I’ll post if I hear / see anything.

1-59 = every combination but snow 60 = snow Seems about right.

It’s coming. Actual footage of Snowman19 in Allsnow’s backyard:

Checks out because down by me may as well be Orlando.

Of course I’m hoping we get a northeast-wide coastal at some point, as is always the hope (though not often the reality). But I’m really pulling for you guys in SNE to eventually get something worthwhile. It’s especially miserable when the entire northeast + MA is getting hardcore skunked. I definitely don’t see you guys getting shut out though, almost positive things will improve at the end of Jan through Feb, even if marginally at first. Stay positive.

Danbury area is what we’ve been targeting. We’re going up to New England for my bday next month and will be staying a night or two in Danbury proper. Excited! Seems like a beautiful area and I have some extended family in the area as well. The surrounding area is my current first choice. Would probably be within the next two years if we make the move, before we have kids honestly. Interestingly were I to stay at my current job for a while, Danbury is 60 miles from where I am right now. From my job to my place at TR / Manchester border is like 65 miles. I already have 2-3 hour commutes in the summer so I can’t imagine it’d be worse than that, though I’m sure it gets congested. All things that have to be considered.

Yeah, it’s not exclusively for attaining max snowfall and continental climate conditions, there are other reasons including work that we’re targeting that area. It’s the best compromise of all factors. If it were just about snowfall and temp I’d head to upstate NY. And honestly if my wife were more like me I really would move to Vermont, NH, or Maine. I love it up there so much.

I’ve been seriously working on getting my wife to come around to the idea of moving into New England (been targeting western Connecticut) in part because we need a change of scenery living in NJ all our lives and in part because I need more consistent winters. Honestly at this rate I’m going to need to target Caribou, Maine to achieve that…

Wait Montreal hasn’t been below 10F? I’ve been as low as 7 so far this winter, that seems wildly unusual. I guess initially to do with the orientation (west to east) of the Dec arctic surge? Wild.

I love reading your analyses, Tip. I definitely feel I've learned a lot from you since I began reading the NE subforum recently (especially your thoughts / musings on the MJO). Appreciate coming here offering some re-assurance, tough season for everyone.

Yeah, I’ve been looking more closely at average snow / location throughout the northeast and while some places do average quite a lot (60+, not talking about north NE), some places really don’t get that much more than we do around NYC and north Jersey. I think they’ve had an incredible run of winters the past twenty years and we’re all getting spoiled. It is fun though how we can all share some of the same nor’easters, like 1/29 last year. Definitely bulls-eyed NE, but the Jersey shore received very nice totals as well. And at least NYC saw nearly a foot IIRC. I can’t wait to be present here on the forum for the next large northeast-wide coastal. I am positive SNE will get theirs this year, likely before we do if we go back to a canonical Niña pattern. Guys just have to hang in there.

It’s very plausibly the largest eruption in our lifetimes. Small to moderate VEI 6 events happen something like 2-4 times per century, but statistics doesn’t dictate whether a volcano is ready to erupt. The next similarly sized event may not be for fifty years on longer. The 20th century had Santa Maria at the turn of the century then the considerably larger Novarupta a decade later in Alaska, and it wasn’t until 1991’s Pinatubo that the next 6 occurred. Granted there were a couple very high end VEI 5’s that could almost be estimated at a borderline 6 inbetween, but it’s also possible the 20th century featured an above average number of large eruptions. 5’s are once per decade or so, but most are borderline 4/5’s. There’s an order of magnitude between each step of eruptive volume on the VEI scale. .1-1km^3 = 4, 1-10km^3 = 5, and then 10-100km^3 = 6. High end VEI 6 are almost unfathomably large and would instigate a notable to severe volcanic cooling episode, though it always depends on several variables.