Lava Rock

what a boring stretch coming up. at what point do we write this winter off?

Doesn't seem like we've had much snow this season yet PWM (by 14") and CAR are above avg. BGR running avg.

1 hour ago, alex said:

It was interesting driving around today. First time I've ever seen Littleton have more snow than Bretton Woods! Looks like they stayed pretty cold down there, with a solid 3-4 cover everywhere and even snow on roofs! Goes away quickly as you rise in elevation in neighboring Bethlehem, where it's just patches (as all elevated areas). Microclimates are so fascinating. 

Hillside living sucks for snow retention, although I am surprised we didn't get wiped clean. Woods are still mostly intact with 3-4". Break out the box of tissues for the snow stake. 18"????

Wow....2.5” new from this streamer. 5.0” total and still snowing moderately

Pretty rare for the snow to be heavy enough that it reflects the IR light back to my cam like a ball of light. Usually that only happens with dense fog.

We downslope.

3 hours ago, tamarack said:

Maybe a bit more frequent for me.  For my area where winter is pretty consistent with regular snowfall, I'm defining "ratter" as Edit:  I think 75" would be close to long-term climo for your site, about 20% higher than PWM.

75" is approx climo. I should have been more clear when I said <75". I'll predict we get ~60". And while that is still just a bit under climo, it pales in comparison to the good years we've had. We've been spoiled overall.

I'm ramping up the bitch machine slowly as my patience is starting to wear thin. So we basically wipe most of the pack this wknd, then return to avg/above ave temps next week without any storm threats. So that's two straight wknds without getting on my sled. Skiing will be shot for this wknd. too. By the time we get the pack back and things are rideable again, it'll be almost Feb. Every year we lose at least 1 month between Dec-Mar with shit weather. Seems like this season we'll be pushing it beyond that. I'm sticking to mhy prediction this winter is a ratter. Check out my sig. Every 4 years we get a ratter.  I know there's hardly any data to make that conclusion, so I'll rely on my gut and say we finish this season with <75".

Well Iran has launched some missiles. We'll see where this goes...

29 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

I agree.  While the increased resolutions are great, I like looking back at the coarser models.  It does feel like there is far too much variability run to run these days.  This is where knowledge/experience as a forecaster trump models.

then why not fall back to the lower res modeling as it seems it has better accuracy for predicting where/how much an event will produce. Do we have too much data at our fingertips that it ends up hurting us?

52 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

There are a couple reasons why this isn't the case. One is that you have to find a way to manage convection. You either explicitly resolve it (convection-allowing) or parameterize it. Either way you are making assumptions that you are either parameterizing it correctly or correctly modeling its location and strength. Two is that as you improve your resolution you also sharpen gradients and increase the max/min values of features. This can dramatically affect the forecasts farther and farther out in time. You can imagine that an 80 km Euro on day 4 having broad QPF amounts would show a potential event for everyone, but a 13 km Euro 4 days out may show a sharp northern edge and convince NNE that they are going to get nothing. What if the model trends north then? It will look like a bust, whereas years ago it wouldn't have seemed that far off.

thanks. makes sense to the extent I can understand your explanation.

18 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Meh, it's one model cycle of many left to go. Ensembles still look like there's plenty of potential. 

I think it's increasingly clear that forecasters need to stop relying so much on deterministic run to run variability. With resolution down to 13 km in most instance you are just going to get far too much variability given the detail they show. 10-15 years ago deterministic runs were 80 km and features were much more broad and could be applied in the same way ensemble features are now. 

 

Can you explain this? Seems counter intuitive. If there is greater detail, shouldn't there be less variability?

the models are terrible. Yesterday SNE was poised for rn while NNE was 6+". Now SNE 4-8" while NNE gets grazed.

Repeat after me "Ratter"

45f. Sun feels good. Hard to believe its end of dec

32.7f. fog all day.

I love this description:

MALCONTENT

West Coast-style Double IPA for those with bitterness in their hearts.

After 10", I'm done with this season. Let's get back to lawn threads

Wife just crossed the country three times in 24hr. Ugh, don't know how she does it.

PF, what's the snowstake at?

UP is stealing all our snow. Nearly 10' have fallen so far

My neighborhood still has some snowcover, but undrained areas and fields are bare. Still had continuous snowcover for two weeks. Not bad for Enfield in early December.
Currently overcast with areas of fog and 44F.
 

Second one today............

Gawd, if only this were sn.

Dumping and not in a good way. 2.18".