Jump to content

Bob Chill

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    36,393

  • Joined

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Bob Chill

  1. Bob Chill
    Yea, cpc uses 1000mb surface pressure patterns for its numerical index calc which throws me off at times too because we always look at 500mb height progs. Surface pressure does correlate to 500mb but things get muddy in that dept. Some of which is due to domain space size. I dont worry too much about the numerical index when 500mb looks tasty lol
  2. Bob Chill
    It's really hard to guess specifics but I look at it as an indication that the longwave pattern might not be typical. The large scale ridge/troughs may not park where they normally do on average. A key feature with ninos is a deep trough south of the Aleutians and a downstream ridge that blocks strong pac maritime flow into the conus. That's half of the split flow we look forward to with ninos. Screw that all up and things dont look as tasty. I'd sure feel better seeing a more typical +PDO ssta configuration given the strength of the nino. Not saying i expect disaster. Just not crazy bullish on the Pac as a whole.
  3. Bob Chill
    It's an "easy" enso setup to make some decent predictions if you just look at the Nino regions. Where I'm getting hung up is the Npac. There is so much warmth throughout the pac basin that it makes me far less confident predicting standard strong nino conditions. But given the strength of the nino, its hard to bet against a wet southern stream. Its still only August but if the Npac/pdo regions continue to be the opposite of what we really want to see, my gut says this winter will do some weird things that few expect/predict. The pessimistic side of me thinks the pac will overwhelm north America and it will be warm and wet with few chances at good snowfall even to our north and west. The optimistic side of me says we're in a long term HL blocking period and even the EPO will punch cold to very cold air into the conus with a suppressed/favorable southern stream. Meaning the winter could be unusually cold east of the Rockies for a strong nino. I would be pretty funny if its a dry winter though. Maybe the southern stream cuts well west of us or stays south of the gulf coast lol
  4. Bob Chill
    Mushrooms are going nutz down here too. Recent rain and consistent high humidity are the cause. Especially the high humidity. It's been stupid humid down here for weeks. Looking so forward to the first legit Canadian front. It's been a tuff summer working outside
  5. Bob Chill
    Lol. Down here, any equipment owner/operator is making well over 6 figures. Going rate is $800-1200/day depending on complexity. Forest mulchers are $1,500+ but that kind of work is dangerous and hard on equipment. Fun to watch though haha
  6. Bob Chill
    Basically both. This is pretty wild for August. PDO region is a literal dumpster fire. You could cook ramen by the square mile. I dont have many concrete thoughts about winter. Seasonal guidance is basically default enso climo but the Pacific overall is anything but normal or default. But it's only August and much will change. If seasonal guidance has the right idea with the AO/NAO, winter will probably produce but the anomalous nature of enso will prob produce anomalous patterns. When and what is above my pay grade
  7. Bob Chill
    Pretty nice MCS remnant/rebirth moving through down here. Warned sections missed my hood but high quality rainfall this AM with some deep bass rumbles. Blacksburg honking a little for round 2 if we get some sun in between. Smith mtn lake is still over 5' below full pool. Lots of wrecked propellers and shoal beachings this summer lol.
  8. Bob Chill
    Gnarly storm just moved through in my hood. Warned and verified. 50-60mph gusts and torrential rain. Best storm since I moved. Glad I wasn't on the lake. That would have been scary lol
  9. Bob Chill
    Just had a sporty storm roll thru. Over an inch in 20 mins with frequent CG. No warning but it was close to that level. Have had 4-5 pretty good storms so far this year. Always fun when nothing gets destroyed. Storm TV thru the window will never get old lol
  10. Bob Chill
    Sitting around 4" total in the yard but totals are very uneven down here. About 40 miles to my southeast got a stripe of 4-6" yesterday during a mini-train in just a few hours. Areas to my west prob have less than half of my yard. Lake levels haven't responded yet. A testament to how uneven the distribution has been and also how crazy dry the ground has been. Stream levels have only made it back to normal at best.
  11. Bob Chill
    Finally breaking the back on the drought. It's been straight crunchy dust down here for months. Had a sporty storm roll through a couple hours ago with some gully washing and gusts near 40mph. Picked up 1.3" in under an hour and now round 2 is rolling through. Could be close to 2" by morning. This is awesome
  12. Bob Chill
    Yea, the pump back operation is pretty interesting. Our property at Leesville lake is near the head of the lake so it's pretty cool when they let it loose. I've kayaked the "surge" from the visitor center to our ramp area. Its not rough or whitewater or anything like that but you move down stream pretty quick lol. The double lake pump back operation is 1 of only 2 in the world. They release during peak demand and pump back during low demand when rates are lower. Free money glitch for the power company lol. Leesville lake can go up and down as much as 10' a day. I've been fishing from shore during big releases and you get chased uphill haha. Leesville is 3.5k acres and smith is over 20k. A full 10' pump back can only raise Smith 1' though so they can't balance the levels in that direction. Smith has an annual draw down in the fall/winter after peak boating season but it's usually short lived. Like a few weeks. We haven't had full pool since last summer and having it so low during peak season is tickin' a lot of people off. No quick fix this time. It's going to take a lot of rain to get back to full pool. Record low is 788.30 looking at the levels data but it happened in 1977 and not 1968 like the news said. I should call and correct them haha
  13. Bob Chill
    Smith mtn lake is over 5' below full pool. Many ramps including the one in my hood are unusable. Many boats on lifts cannot touch the water. It's apparently the lowest the lake has been since 1968 which was just a few years after it filled up for the first time. Lake levels are generally quite stable and typically don't fluctuate more than a foot or 2 throughout the year. The recent rain helped knocked the dust down but I'm starting to think it's going to take a tropical event to reset this drought with any efficiency. Thankfully the well on our property on the other side of the mountain has no competition from neighboring landowners.
  14. Bob Chill
    After some MUCH welcomed rain lol, wife and I caught a pretty sick sunset last night.
  15. Bob Chill
    Fun day. Had our 3rd tstorm of the day roll thru a few mins ago and another on its heels. Nothing close to severe but they've all been noisy. Popcorn boomers
  16. Bob Chill
    Imo, cansips is prob a best case scenario. -EPO door to door and no deep GOA trough. I don't think the classic nino height pattern will be friendly like it has in the past. Oceans are warm and the pac jet is more problematic. We've needed amplified flow and the majority of our snows over the last 10+ years happened with a -EPO. "Regular" cold has been delivering near misses way too often and ninos aren't known for anomalous cold in the east. Waaaay too early to worry about details of course but personally I'm not that excited about a nino. The only thing that will make me optimistic over the summer (assuming a nino actually happens lol) is a legit +PDO forming. If a nino locks in and the npac sstas are all jacked up, I'll be pretty pessimistic
  17. Bob Chill
    Second tstorm of the day for my yard. Nothing severe but some good gusts with the first one. One right now is pretty noisy but looks like the severe stuff will stay to my NW. Enjoying the booms and rumbles either way
  18. Bob Chill
    Easy A- grade here Climo is lower in my hood but over 14" is climo+ and having a 2 week period of complete snowcrete cover is quite rare. Accum snow in each month DJFM + plenty of cold temps made it a door to door winter appeal. Again, pretty rare. Had snow on snow during the snowcrete stretch and that's always a nice bonus in any winter. Only reason I can't go A is I couldn't manage a 4"+ single storm. There's plenty of history down this way with bigger storms in the 6-18" range. Just missed that on the Carolina big storm as areas just 30 miles to my south picked up 6" or more. Had that event produced (I got 2.5"), it would have been an easy A grade. A+ (imho) requires a double digit snow even along with all the other important factors
  19. Bob Chill
    When I lived in CO ski country I used to go through that same weird transition. The month of May is the single worst time to visit or live in ski country. We called it mud season. Everything soggy, rivers too high to fish, lakes still frozen, and too much leftover snowpack for back country hiking/biking. It really sucked. After my first season I learned and would take the whole month off and travel to see friends in the east. Then my summer job would start memorial day weekend. Deep creek is totally similar. I recommend traveling and partying heavily until the lake season kicks in hahaha
  20. Bob Chill
    Even for March standards this is pretty wild lol. Down to 43 now. 20+ degrees in an hour feels like a time warp haha. Im starting to think I have a chance at some snow before the precip exits. Shield is pretty big in the cold sector. Last week it started snowing at 37 degrees. Accums seem much less likely (near 0% lol) this time but seeing snow fall again within 24 hours of sweat and t-shirts is comical
  21. Bob Chill
    Went from 65 to 48 in a blink. Wx has been a little bipolar last week or so lol.
  22. Bob Chill
    Under a warning for the squall line moving through but it's not severe. Just heavy rain and some typical gusts. No lightning either. 3 warnings in one day lol but none verified in my yard. Which is completely fine with me. I have enough work to do without adding to it
  23. Bob Chill
    Line is still to my west but front running rain has broken out and it's bringing wind down with it. Has to be gusting low 40s. You can hear the roar in the distance before the gusts roll through. Still out of the south but Roanoke has switched to westerly and gusting high 30s. This is better than both of the 2 lines that moved through earlier.
  24. Bob Chill
    Wow. This hits. RIP wx brother.
  25. Bob Chill
    Winds kicking up down here pretty good now with gusts in the low 30s. Wind advisory may verify with fropa in a few hours even if storms aren't organized.
×
×
  • Create New...