Volcanic Winter

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. 

1 minute ago, LibertyBell said:

Who named this Hunga Tonga?  I always laugh when I see that name

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. 

3 minutes ago, Winter Wizard said:

IMO the cold period, if it does happen, wouldn't be until the 28th or so. I suspect the back end of January follows a similar progression to December where the West cools down first once the Asian-Pac jet relaxes, likely around 1/20, then slowly progresses eastward. After that, Nina climo generally favors a return to a -PNA pattern and strong SE ridge for February. It isn't pretty. 

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.”

5 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

I guess we're getting used to this weather now.

 

I'm certainly not

12 minutes ago, wdrag said:

Something I worry about: socially false record's or deep snow alarming based on models beyond 240 hours could shutter availability. Probably can't now but really need to reign it in on all boards...show more care.  Eventually the models will be good enough but I think for now it's a little soon...at least until we get some cyclic consistency and other model support. 

So that +PNA (relaxing e Pac Jet) and trend to colder that has been discussed in broad terms for days now.... evidenced in the 12z/8 384 hr... a 1050MB high for 12z/23 attempting entry into the northern Plains.  That would be a surface idea of +PNA response.  It won't be perfect but 'suggests' some legit subnormal or normal cold air may eventually arrive in the northern USA. Leave it as possible response and lets see if D16-23 can in reality flush out the Pac air for a while?

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. 

4 minutes ago, Will - Rutgers said:

everyone here is a 56 year old man who's the weirdest person in their neighborhood, except forky, who is a cactus

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

We’re all the same age…

41 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Lol

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.

4 minutes ago, HailMan06 said:

I like how we’re discussing the weather like we’re still in October.

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

11 minutes ago, lee59 said:

Actually hit freezing last night for a short time, first time this month.

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… 

Me all day.

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

It’s not that it hasn’t happened before. It’s that human influence is enhancing this and accelerating it. 

The inability of people to comprehend this is still astounding to me.

All I'll say on the subject.

Blizzard of 96 is my first vivid “snow memory,” with the exception of my parents taking me to Vermont when I was four years old for a ski trip (mostly for them, lol). Definitely remember going outside in central Monmouth where I grew up to snow up to basically my chest. 

To be honest, I have nothing but wonderful snow memories throughout my childhood and teenage years. I don’t necessarily remember which storm was which, but I never felt or thought snow was “rare.” It was something we expected to have yearly, and I have memories of piles of snow in our driveway persisting into spring. That seems foreign lately. 

I actually feel like the climate change stuff is rather simple as per the physics involved. We’re adding thermal energy into the atmosphere at a tremendous rate. Boom, done. What else is there to discuss? It’s not political nor is it arguable. 

It’s not about blame. The Industrial Revolution did its job, and we just didn’t know a hundred years ago. 

But we know now, right? Now it’s time to figure it out and come together to make sure Volcanic Winter on AmericanWX forums still has cold and snow in winter to fetishize. I’m feeling a little overly thawed right now…

It’s of course safer to have minimal to zero expectations pretty much uniformly around the forum right now, but there’s next to zero chance IMHO the models have this system fixed correctly yet. Reading all forums and all points of view, this is definitely a “keep the caution flags up but wait” type deal for a few more days at least. 

1 minute ago, FPizz said:

It has.  Also, if you like living, the average human life expectancy before the industrial revolution was around 30.  Now it is close to 80.  This is a hockey stick graph that is nice to see.

Skewed by higher infant/childhood mortality. 

2 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

I love the Northern Lights too, what's the best place to see those there?

 

Honestly for us in the northeast? Iceland. 5 hour flight from EWR, October to end of March. Best time IMO is late October through November. Long nights and generally not “full” winter there if you’re not especially interested in dealing with harsh snow and windstorms (the latter being what will actually shut the roads down), though Iceland can get severe squalls and whatnot as early as September even. Weather there is generally luck of the draw. 

But they’re always in the game to see an aurora almost nightly, barring cloud cover. On my two week trip end of Oct into November we saw the lights 8 nights total, but we also were rather lucky this trip. Over four trips there, the worst we did was three nights over a ten day trip. Some people go and never see them, though that seems especially unlucky or you’re not trying “correctly.” Sometimes have to stay outside for a few hours to maximize chances without cutting away and “checking back” because that’s often how you miss them. Sometimes they’ll flare up for 10-15 minutes and then disappear for the rest of the night. 
 

Plainly visible right in Reykjavik this evening. 

10 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Op runs

You know better

Gefs is way different 

Gotta agree for now not to get too hung up on OP swings. NE thread meteorologists staying more optimistic about this for now, verbatim the OP shows a disaster for them as well. 

Nothing else to add but the obvious, let’s just see what happens. 

The Capital Region in the southwest recorded -20C readings recently, and the interior southwest was colder than the North. Very unusual for Iceland, at least AFAI understand their climate after four trips there. The North is insanely gorgeous though. 

6 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Might need to take another trip to Iceland to see some snow lol

One thing that is clear-- there is never a guarantee of snow around here, no matter the pattern or signal lol.

I think the closest we can ever come to a guarantee anywhere in the East is that there will always be lake effect snow lol.

 

I wanted to go back so bad to experience their coldest Dec in a hundred years, you have no idea. Was almost begging my wife. We missed the onset by a couple weeks. Snow in Reykjavik is actually less common than here and the capital roads were even crazy and covered. We toured the north and while there was plenty of snow and cold, it wasn’t nearly as cold as it can get there even in November. And I think by now you know my almost fetishistic feelings on cold weather lol.