Volcanic Winter

27 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

I was just in the SNE and upstate NY subforum and alot of places are seeing sleet right now. The Euro was too cold for alot of places.

Nam did the best with this storm 

If only the Nam did the best with 1/29 and we all got 70 inches. 

Eventually the increasing base warmth will win out. Any good March from here on out should be appreciated for what it is. 
 

I wasn’t tracking winter weather as closely a few years back but March 2018 was following a monster SSW right? 

31 minutes ago, SnoSki14 said:

All it takes is small ridging to set new records

It's effortless

It’s awful. Eventually I’m getting out of here. North Jersey is great but I’d probably be happiest up in New Hampshire or Maine. 
 

Some day. 
 

Feels less and less likely I’ll see another winter like 14 and 15 around here, where we had both long duration cold and actual persisting snowpack. A rarity for my area but possible (though never to the extent as up north, of course). 
 

This January was great for me and we had one amazing storm and a couple decent ones, but even with a BN month the melt was tenacious. That’s why it doesn’t touch what we experienced here in the middle of last decade, but that was apparently a pretty good outlier for how things are these days. 

With respect to temperatures how are the next two weeks looking overall? 

Was nice to have a major snow event in Ocean County NJ this winter. We haven’t had a major snowfall since 2018. The Feb 1 2021 storm we had I think 5-6 inches while where I work got 18ish. Been a tough few winters for me. 
 

Could do with one more even few inch event but not looking especially likely at this point. Hoping for one more coastal where we do very well with the right track. 
 

Hopefully you city guys get some snow from this and those in northern NJ and HV do well. 

16 minutes ago, wthrmn654 said:

Yeah it's crazy looking back at history with how large scale volcano eruptions affected the world for a bit, along with crazy temp swings.

It’s a very fascinating subject I wish more people looked into with interest. It’s actually incredible how many regional and worldwide events were influenced by large scale volcanism, and completely unknowingly until recent times. 
 

The easy ones are Thera (the Minoan eruption) and Vesuvius 79AD, but there have been many away from population centers that completely borked the climate for several years and caused massive crop failures leading to famines, disease, and political unrest. 

The Tierra Blanco Joven eruption around 530’s (Wiki) AD lead to one of the worst climate disasters in history, the massive Samalas / Rinjani eruption in 1257ish AD, the speculative Kuwae eruption in the 1450s, Huaynaputina in 1600, and then of course Laki, Tambora, and Krakatau. There are many more as well, most with slightly lesser effects. Pinatubo was the most recent significant volcanic climate alteration for a couple years in the 90s.

It’s the most interesting earth sciences topic I’ve ever studied, personally (along with paleo-geology / tectonics and of course meteorology). 

2 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

raging positive nao/ao. yawn

Forky man, just get me one more snow event here at the NJ coast and I’m good, I promise. Trying to quit the cold white stuff but it’s very difficult. 

1 hour ago, wthrmn654 said:

Finally found something but here's Wednesday record highs for a bunch of areas. 

KLGA:  66-1985

KJFK: 62-1990

Islip:  61-2012

Central Park: 72-1874 (wow) 

Upton: 50-2017

Newark: 68-1985

Bridgeport: 60-2012

 

Bear in mind the LIA is postulated to have ended around 1850. The last “pulse” was aided by the massive eruption of Tambora in 1815 along with a preceding yet unknown very large sulphurous eruption in 1808/9. While the late 1800’s were definitely colder than now (especially around the time of the eruption of Krakatau in 1883), things were beginning to warm up on average and for certain they had anomalously warm temperatures at times, though of course less often than we do now. Depends on how you look at it. 
 

I always found some of the years of the 1930’s fascinating as you had extreme record warmth and then horrific cold months apart in the same calendar year. 

I like the runs that show more snow in central / coastal NJ. 
 

Brb, placing my order with the GFS. 

@JustinRP37

The physics of this are clear and undeniable, yet for some people science is an opinion and not the process of finding truth. 
 

More people should study paleo-geology and volcanology. It’s clear the impact CO2 has on the climate system as there have been massive flood basalt eruptions in ancient eras that have caused extreme temperature cascades from CO2 levels in excess of 2000PPM. The planet was nearly sterilized in the Permian Mass Extinction. 
 

Trying not to digress too far from the topic. 
 

Getting pretty hyped for March at this point. Trying to stay realistic but feeling that tingle of excitement that we may have some good chances left this winter along with more of my preferred colder conditions. 

12 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

with more heatwaves and flooding events the last thing we need is a reduction of the tree canopy

We’re doing a great job of that ourselves without the help of Mother Nature.

We’ve really borked the carbon cycle. 

Isaias was monstrous by me. Took down two of our trees and crashed a huge, heavy branch into our deck. That was one of if not the worst wind events post Sandy.

The wind woke me up this morning around 4am. In the process of setting up a Tempest weather station my wife got me for my birthday, but it’s not up and running just yet. If I had to guess we were easily 55mph+ on some of those gusts. Heavy wind blown rain and was sitting around 61 degrees. This was inland Toms River. 
 

Driving to work the temperature fell a good amount, 52 now where I am in Union Co. Still blustery. 

8 minutes ago, bluewave said:

As we continue to warm, it’s easier for the warmth to beat model guidance. We started out with one of the warmest Decembers on record. While January was our coldest in years, the cold wasn’t anywhere close to the magnitude of the warmth in December. The average around 30° was well outside top 10 coldest range that we have experienced in the past. The back and forth February makes the cold days seem colder. But the warm days have been setting records. So the record warmth will result in a warmer than average February and winter as a whole. This will be our 7th warmer than average winter in a row.  3rd warmest December in NYC against 55th coldest January. 2004 was the last time that January almost made it to top 10 coldest.
 

Warmest Decembers

 

Time Series Summary for NY CITY CENTRAL PARK, NY - Month of Dec
Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending.

Rank	Year	Mean Avg Temperature	Missing Count
1	2015	50.8	0
2	2001	44.1	0
3	2021	43.8	0
4	1984	43.7	0
5	2006	43.6	0
6	2011	43.3	0
7	1998	43.1	0
8	1982	42.7	0
9	1990	42.6	0
10	1891	42.5	0
11	1994	42.2	0
12	1923	42.0	0
13	2012	41.5	0
14	1996	41.3	0
-	1953	41.3	0
16	1979	41.1	0
17	1956	40.9	0
-	1931	40.9	0
19	1971	40.8	0
20	2014	40.5	0
-	1965	40.5	0
22	1957	40.2	0
23	2018	40.1	0

Coldest Januaries

Time Series Summary for NY CITY CENTRAL PARK, NY - Month of Jan
Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending.

Rank	Year	Mean Avg Temperature	Missing Count
1	1918	21.7	0
2	1977	22.0	0
3	1888	23.2	0
4	1920	23.4	0
5	1875	23.6	1
6	1912	23.7	0
7	1893	23.8	0
8	1883	24.4	0
9	1884	24.5	0
10	1881	24.6	0
11	2004	24.7	0
12	1940	25.0	0
13	1970	25.1	0
14	1945	25.2	0
15	1904	25.3	0
16	1948	25.4	0
17	1994	25.5	0
18	1879	25.9	2
19	1886	26.0	0
20	1982	26.1	0
21	1981	26.2	0
22	1968	26.7	0
23	1971	26.9	0
24	1976	27.3	0
25	1873	27.4	0
26	2003	27.5	0
27	1961	27.7	0
-	1877	27.7	0
29	2009	27.9	0
30	1978	28.0	0
31	1871	28.1	2
32	1922	28.2	0
33	1887	28.3	0
-	1882	28.3	0
35	1925	28.4	0
36	1957	28.5	0
37	2014	28.6	0
38	1985	28.8	0
-	1935	28.8	0
40	1885	29.1	0
-	1872	29.1	0
42	1936	29.3	0
-	1905	29.3	0
44	1941	29.4	0
45	1988	29.5	0
46	1965	29.6	0
-	1895	29.6	0
48	2011	29.7	0
49	2015	29.9	0
-	1984	29.9	0
-	1923	29.9	0
-	1878	29.9	0
53	1896	30.0	0
54	1963	30.1	0
55	2022	30.3	0

Bluewave,

I say this with great respect for the other intelligent posters here that contribute insightful commentary and information, but if I could choose the “A WX Best User of Winter 21-22” award, it would be going to you.

Always contributing useful and relevant analysis and information. In my short time here it’s much appreciated.  

Warmth appears to be overperforming a bit at my two locations. 65 at work in Hillside and 65 at my house in TR. 

25 minutes ago, HVSnowLover said:

I am definitely a believer that global warming is real and concerning but this winter is probably not a great example since we've been in the icebox for the mostpart basically since the start of January.  

Absolutely, not every specific event is tied to it and and extreme, variable weather always occurred. Was just making a general point not specific to this winter per se. 
 

As someone who enjoys the cold, I simply try to cherish each cold day that we get.

Or perhaps, I should’ve just been born during the LIA. People were a bit stinkier back then but I’d be in my winter glory nonetheless. 

48 minutes ago, HeadInTheClouds said:

We never go through a winter without warmer periods. Things look to change late Feb into early March. 

Well, of course we always have warm days in winter here. The point was (and was verified by a chart posted a couple pages back) that the number of 60 degree days in winter here is steadily increasing as the overall climate system warms. 

Doesn’t feel like winter, don’t like it.

Though I suppose I should get used to it as these kinds of days will only become more and more common in winter here. 
 

IMO don’t take the cold for granted. Eventually we’ll be lucky to drop below freezing. 

If the early March cold verifies this will have been quite a seesaw winter of  sustained warmth -> cold -> warmth -> cold. 
 

Especially with the high departures both warm and then cold in Dec and Jan, are we in historically significant territory for the intensity of the flip flopping? Looks like it’s happening yet one more time with the warmth flipping back to more intense cold (if things play out as modeled). 
 

I know we often have a seesaw effect here in winter, but I don’t quite remember one this pronounced. Especially with a -3.5ish degree departure in January. 

Nemo, Juno, and Jonas sounds like the names of a new boy band. 
 

Their number one single, “13 Inches of Love” off the hit album, ‘The Snowman and the Torch’. 

Here’s my professional forecast:

We’re gonna get some cold, then some warmth, then some colder warmth and warmer cold. We’ll get a bit of rain, a windy day or two, and possibly a couple flakes. Eventually it’ll get warmer and then sunnier and more rain and wind, less flakes as the months move on. 
 

Beat that forecast, hotshots!

5 minutes ago, Cfa said:

Maybe it’s the longer days and slightly stronger sunshine but Feb torches feel much more appropriate than Dec torches to me (though I welcome both with open arms). Being on the coast we are sort of an outlier with Dec being the warmest winter month as opposed to Feb, it’s normally the opposite. 

Fair, everyone feels differently as has their own personal preferences. 
 

I should be living somewhere colder. I hate heat and humidity and prefer hiking in snow to hiking in green, flowers, and pollen. 

But I absolutely loathe torching in Jan or Feb (Dec I suppose I’m already used to) so this month is painful for me. All it does is remind me of where things are heading with current AGW, and it reminds me how our area is one of the fastest warming places in winter in the country. Tough to appreciate nice days when I think about what it represents. 

I can’t complain down where I live (inland TR). Had a very cold January with more single digits lows than I can recall the past several years, and we did very well with snow down here. I have more snow at my house than I received at work in Union Co. 

Living where I do I trade the more consistent snowfall for a chance to be pretty prime time for a nor’easter with the right track and with cold air in place. Paid off this winter. 
 

Despite the cold, the snow didn’t hang around as much as it did in 13 and 14. Those winters had the most snowpack I can recall at my house. Lived in North Brunswick for the mighty Boxing Day Storm and subsequent amazing winter. 

Nothing but mood flakes down here in Ocean Co. Snowing all day with about an hour of sleet mixed in, only accumulated on grass early this morning to about half an inch then promptly melted. Temps went up to 36* then back to 33 here now. 
 

Pumped you all made out like bandits up north; I certainly can’t complain down here after 1/29 getting 16-18”. 
 

Here’s to hoping we see a few flakes in March.