Volcanic Winter

Your lips to Gaia’s ears.

I’ve often tried to research weather reports from the LIA (Little Ice Age) and the magnitude of the cold during the worst winters of that period I can’t even fathom, and I’ve no idea how modern people today would adjust. It was just such a different climate back then. Despite my name I don’t subscribe fully to the notion that the LIA was “caused” by large scale volcanism, rather it was enhanced in certain years. Even very large eruptions haven’t conclusively been proven to impact the climate for a period longer than a decade at the extreme end. The LIA was just a very cold oscillation that got punctuated by additional forcings. Regardless, I routinely daydream about what that period would’ve been like in our area. (If stuff like this is better served in the banter thread please ignore, I’m still a bit new here and this is quite a slow period).

This guy winters. I can’t stand the torchy patterns or, worse, torchy winters. It’s depressing and reminds me of the general trend of where we’re headed. Seasonal variation is a nice thing to have, and a little cold air is good for the soul. I completely respect a “to each their own” approach, but I 100% prefer cold and dry to hot and humid. Frankly I don’t enjoy the way NJ does heat, the humidity makes it unbearable for me. Writing is on the wall that it’s time for my wife and I to consider moving out of here.

18 this morning, western inland edge of Toms River. I’ve noticed this January on the colder nights we’ve been running a good bit colder than the “official” temp for TR, not necessarily last night but in general. Probably because I’m more inland and further away from the coast than the station. It is nice to be just far enough from the coast to reduce the amount of coastal mixing that sometimes happens, yet close enough to retain the benefits of strong coastal banding. Only thing I like living down here vs up north with most of you.

So long, little fella.

Lucky. 0... Maybe 1/10th of an inch on grass in Hillside near Newark and exactly 0 in Toms River.

Was a very sulphur-poor eruption, likely a lot of sulphur leached out into the ocean. It was an exceptional blast however, quite likely the single biggest explosion on earth since Krakatau. Novarupta and Santa Maria, while both larger than Tonga in terms of volume, were at a lower minute by minute intensity. I've seen calculations that its peak energy release was even ahead of Pinatubo's climactic peak on June 15th (though again, lesser in volume).Insane.

Heaviest precipitation now where it's still raining, and the back edge looks pretty rough.

Basically mood flakes for many if not most at this point.

My backyard cam in Toms River NJ (near Manchester, Western inland edge) has nothing on grass / deck. All rain with a very heavy precipitation band overhead now. App showing temps though as 38 still ... Very frustrating especially as anything that falls today will stick around.

34 in Hillside (just got to work), flipped to sleet and a bit of ugly snow with nothing really sticking. Hoping at least for a coating.

I actually love and prefer the cold. Not exactly a common sentiment I’m sure. Wife and I do most of our travel in the winter, lately to Iceland and hopefully Canada soon for cold weather hiking. Long term my wife and I may move north to places that are consistently colder and snowier. I’m very over living at the boring, warm coastal plain / continental shelf. While we started January rather well, this has just been a brutally disappointing ten day period, especially missing out on that massive inland storm. Here’s to hoping we score one more nice event on the pattern flip, at least.

39 here on my station with a light drizzle. Was mid 40’s overnight, not sure how the ground will be cold enough for the snow to instantly stick. I think ~1 inch here would be outstanding given this. We’ll see how quickly it falls below freezing here.

Thanks @bluewave, you answered the question I was going to ask about that time period. What has contributed to the past 20 years having so many KU storms, is it the warming SST providing ample energy and moisture? Anything else beyond just chance? Thanks.

And we down here in Ocean had two horrid, absolutely horrid winters back to back. 2019-2020 was a winter I’ve already deleted from my memory and 21-22, we didn’t score the same way you guys up north scored. I work in Union and my business had 16 inches from the Feb 1st storm whereas my house had like 3-4 from memory. Really longing for a killer snowfall, and it hurts doubly given we finally are in a decent pattern with cold air. I know the cold isn’t always necessary but we had two pretty warm Januarys back to back now.

@LibertyBell Right around 6 inches. However we were forecast to score decently in the first southern track storm and we got way less than what was forecasted even day of. The cutoff was sharper than anticipated, and the dry air to the north a bigger factor. The soundings were so horrid, I recall. The second storm we were forecasted to hopefully be in heavy banding, but watching the radar loop it just didn’t pan out for us, whereas you guys up north really cashed in. Not crying, I’m happy to have even something this season so far. December had me totally dispirited and apathetic.

Tough to get excited about the Thursday event, I don’t feel like rain to snow frontal passage events really ever play out all that great, and the official forecasts for this aren’t inspiring much joy. Would love to be surprised. Regardless, let that push through and let’s see how the models do afterwards, especially the short range. If there’s any hope at all for even a minor event, we’ll probably know tomorrow. It’s a shame because the ACY storm grossly underperformed where I am at the western inland section of Toms River (dry air and virga, sharper cutoff than they were forecasting right up until it began), and our quick hitter coastal grazer also underperformed where we were expected to see potentially the highest totals, and you folks near NYC overperformed (glad about that!). We only got about 4.5 inches whereas some of you had around 8, which is fantastic. Such a shame to waste a solid pattern, but winter definitely isn’t over and with the wonky way things have played out thus far, maybe we get lucky in Feb even in a milder set up. I guess we’ll see.

I honestly think the answer here is, "wait and be patient." With the amount of variation + spread of the models right now for Saturday they're clearly having trouble resolving the outcome, and this just might be a situation where there won't be a clear solution for another couple days or so. Very possible that we get nothing, but since we literally have no ability to control what happens, the answer here is just to sit tight for a bit and see how this plays out as we get closer, and then hope the short range models maybe lock into something interesting. Yeah, starting to smell a bit like disappointment, but the complexity and variation to me suggests no clear solution yet, IE we wait. I got shafted on the ACY storm here in Toms River and we underperformed slightly on the fast moving coastal right after (where most of you guys near NYC overperformed), so I'm really hoping this gets its act together. Feels like the month is flying by.

Yup, I’ve since saw that but hadn’t heard at the time I made my comment. Much too low to have any impacts, though the blast itself was remarkable.

Also, what is a “KU” storm? Through context I gather it’s a historic or near historic snowstorm with feet of snowfall. But I can’t find a definition and I’ve seen the term used here frequently. I’m a long time lurker that finally made an account.

@bluewave What is the website used to pull temperature data in the form of those tables? I’d like to explore that with different parameters. Thanks!

Well, other large climate altering eruptions have caused cold temperature anomalies and heavy precipitation throughout North America and Europe. It’s highly dependent on many factors, but there’s no assurance here that such an event will be mild in the mid latitudes (and that’s just going off recorded history). I do think it’s more likely whatever occurs from this is restricted to the Southern Hemisphere, or at least is strongest felt in the Southern Hemisphere. But I’m not 100% on that. Edit: Not specific to winter, just for the year overall. I think the worst of “volcanic winters” is usually during summer. But I’ve read plenty about very cold winters following large eruptions, unless those winters were going to be cold regardless of the eruption? Tallis you know more than me so feel free to expand. Can’t believe we’re even talking about this honestly.

Regardless I still can’t believe I woke up yesterday to news of an eruption that may be around the size of Pinatubo, out of nowhere. Leads more credence IMHO to another transient tropical blast being behind the mystery eruption of 1808/9 and perhaps other unknown climate altering eruptions throughout history.

Tallis, I recognize you from Volcanocafe! Nice to see you here man. And yes, this eruption did appear to be large enough to enact measurable climate forcings but we need more data on the overall volume and amount of SO2 injection. Also, outside of very, very large eruptions (7+?), aren’t the climate forcings from large plinian eruptions usually restricted to the hemisphere they occurred in (aka Southern)?

This is potentially big enough to influence the climate for a year or two. We need more information (amount of SO2 released, tephra / DRE volume, and confirmation on how high the plume went to confirm stratospheric injection of those particulates), but it's looking like this has the potential to be a VEI-6 around the size of Pinatubo based on the discussions of several volcanologists/geologists that I follow, which caused a cold climate anomaly for 1992 (and also decreased SST's a bit). Edit: Looks like it was rated VEI-5, so right around just big enough to influence the climate but probably not to the extent of Pinatubo unless it was very high in SO2. I'm not an expert but I believe volcanic climate forcings are usually restricted to the hemisphere of the eruption outside of the really truly massive ones, so I'm not sure if we'll see a global anomaly or centered on the southern hemisphere. This is fascinating however and completely came out of nowhere. Very, very large and extremely powerful eruption with little to suggest a caldera forming event was in the pipeline before it happened. The smaller phreatomagmatic / phreatoplinian eruptions were impressive, but this was just another level with the pressure wave circling the globe, the loud explosive crack being heard at great distances a la Krakatau, and the tsunami generation. Edit: Here's an incredible summary https://www.severe-weather.eu/news/tonga-volcano-massive-eruption-explosion-stratosphere-usa-tsunami-shockwave-fa/