Volcanic Winter

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.

It’s actually Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai lol. It refers to two separate islands that make up the volcano, or did before getting near completely obliterated.

Figured someone might find this interesting / cool. This is an actual ground level pic of the Hunga Tonga eruption column. The majority of images you can find for the Jan 15th climactic eruption are satellite images, owing to the volcano’s geographic isolation. There are a few close images of sub-plinian / surtseyan eruptions, but those are from the 14th and even earlier. Much smaller events. The Jan 15th blast created an absolutely titanic eruption column, and not visible are the underwater ignimbrite / pyroclastic flows that reached upward of 80KM’s away. Insane. Note that this image was taken something like 60Km away on a nearby island and this was early on in the climactic blast.

From Typhoon Tip on the NE subforum, thought this was a great post worth sharing here:

I’m really cherishing last January, it was a gift for me in this overarching crappy state of winter the past few years. Was cold and wintry almost the entire month, and that area wide Jan 7th event was the kind of thing it feels like we’ve been missing lately (moderate snows). And then Jan 29th was extremely fun to track with lots of swings and surprises, despite it being not quite a blockbuster for most of the subforum it still brought me a 22f 16 inch snowstorm which is top end for this current enduring pattern of meh.

Hoping we can get some -NAO back to battle the ridge and maybe we’ll at least do better than whatever this hybrid-Niño crap is. It’s certainly demoralizing and the prospect of an actual shutout seems plausible, but the platitude of “there’s a lot of winter left” still seems applicable. Lots of weather left between here and April.

Nice cool and damp commute up the parkway this morning. Much flake, many snow. Yeah, this sucks. Looks like SEMA got our “snewstorm.”

I'm certainly not

Thank you, your posts and analyses are very much appreciated. Remain optimistic we’ll see something (the area), eventually. No doubt this awful pattern will eventually yield into hopefully something a little less awful. If we go back to RNA/SE Ridge so be it, maybe we’ll get a brief period inbetween where we can hopefully snag a moderate event at least.

Yeah but a young to mid young 30 year old cactus or a 56 year old cactus?

We’re all the same age…

That's sort of baffling, what model is indicating snow potential within that stripe right now outside of a very small number of ensemble members? Why would they stoke the hype machine at this point with such an abysmally low percentage storm? ... nevermind.

I was saying “kill me” internally while typing that.

I got down to 31F overnight, was surprised. Pinelands microclimate ftw.

I’m taking my wife into New England (location undetermined at this point) for a little hiking and wining / dining trip for my birthday in February (love having an early Feb bday). Was hoping to possibly catch a glimpse at that fabled white substance. At this rate we’ll have to go to the Canadian border (in Maine) or the summit of Mt Washington…