tamarack

2 hours ago, dryslot said:

No it’s all good out fishing and it’s pretty nice out actually with the wood stove ripping in the shack lol

Looks like Pittston, with view across the Kennebec to Mt. Tom (great sledding hill) on the Gardiner estate.  The castle would be just to the left of the pic.

3 minutes ago, vortex95 said:

I don't know.  CoastalWx may not be content w/ what the 12z RRFS is showing.  "Only" 18" in Weymouth, but 40/70 Benchmark in Methuen gets 25".  "I WANT THE MOST!" I can hear him saying! 

His precious DGZ get contaminated by the 700 warm nose and hence SNPL.  -1 to -3 C at 700 not going to cut it near the peak of storm!
 

I'd love that 20+ but would prefer that the grandkids in SNJ got 10+ instead of that map's 4" of SN/IP/ZR mix.

Current forecast for us from GYX is in the 10-16 range.

2 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

I know lol, but I was clear across the lake. Way too far away. I don’t think my car exhaust was responsible either. Like you said before when talking about what to look for, it was like a very fine cloud over the lake and at home. You couldn’t see it on camera without zoom.

I’ll figure out how to appropriately document it someday but appreciate you being willing to take a look and ask questions. 

 

When we lived in Fort Kent, we saw the clear air sparkles several times.  Needed to be flat calm and -20 or colder.  There's a French term in the St. John Valley (perhaps other places, too) for the phenomenon that translates "the cold coming down".

34 minutes ago, moneypitmike said:

Based on that picture, .looks like a big suck for maine

Whiff?  Or merely 8 hours later than current thinking?

4 hours ago, ariof said:

I could watch this all day.

964 mb bomb in Boothbay Harbor might be a bit too close for all snow in the foothills.  

2 hours ago, Go Kart Mozart said:

It seems odd that all of these are in the "modern" era.

That's mainly because it's based on my personal obs and averages, and my records only go back to 1976.  Some older 40(+) cold runs:

Fort Kent (my obs):  Dec 11-31, 1981 thru Jan 18, 1981:  -11.5

NYC (Central Park) data, working backwards:
Dec 30, 1976 thru Feb 7, 1977:   -11.6
Feb 1 thru Mar 12, 1934:  -12.6    (Add Jan 29-31, and it's -12.9.  Mid-Jan was too warm to include Dec 29-31, 1933 in a '40'.)
Dec 29, 1917 thru Feb 6, 1918:  -15.0

Farmington, Maine co-op:
Dec 11, 1980 thru Jan 19, 1981:  -15.7
Nov 21 thru Dec 30, 1989:  -14.7

54 minutes ago, Spaizzo said:

Sorry for referring it to a name lol I can’t remember dates


.

2/8-9/2013.  Scattered 30"+ (including 31.9" at PWM, their biggest on record) and lots of 20s.  My area had 9-11" while AUG (25 mi SE) and LEW (40 mi s.) had ~25".

26 minutes ago, moneypitmike said:

Im thinking 5-8 for my hood at this point in time.  Lighter qpf and lower ratio snow.

High ratios would give us 10-12".  Cold sand, high-end advisory.

12 hours ago, Go Kart Mozart said:

That's nuts.  Have you ever seen a 40 day departure look like that?

Can't recall seeing that as a forecast, but we've had at least 3 stretches of 40-day BN temps in Maine.

Gardiner (9 miles south from AUG):
Nov 22-Dec 30, 1989: 13.2 BN
Dec 26, 1993-Feb 3, 1994: 11.5 BN

New Sharon (western Maine foothills):
Jan 26-Mar 6, 2015:  12.7 BN

ariof noted 2 of those 3.  

A shorter (25 day) run was Dec 14, 2017 thru Jan 8, 2018:  15.9 BN

39 minutes ago, Go Kart Mozart said:

This is for entertainment value only....fun to look at even if divorced from reality:

56.8" where I grew up in NNJ?  We had 50" there from Jan 19 thru Feb 4 in 1961, but the above shows 7" more and a week shorter.  Can always go up from there.

2 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

LMAO

We have a current problem on my street here in Ayer where despite the fact that there are no homes/driveways geographically located on the south side of the road,  this town's nimrod dumb ass f***tard keeps plowing from S --> N... 

We come out in the morning and we all have this plowed berm sealing us in with cardiac risks because of this dumb fucker.   I dunno... it's so elegantly obtuse that maybe it's on-purpose?

Our 4 winters in the back settlement in Fort Kent averaged 141".  We lived on the north side of the road and the end of plowing.  Plow drivers had to plow our side first, but they didn't have to clear 3/4 of the final width on that first pass.  Banks would climb to 7-8 feet on our side, 3-4 feet on the other side.  Worst time was in Dec 1983, 10" SN followed by 1"+ RA, followed by another 1.5" and plunging temp.  I faced a wet mess 3 feet high and 5 feet wide - lots of work for the snow scoop.  While I was in the woods west of Allagash, my neighbor plowed the driveway, very helpful but had to leave 30" vertical banks on both sides and back, which were frozen solid by the time I got home.  Short of using dynamite, all scoop dumping had to be into the road rest of winter, including the 18.5" storm in early Feb and 26.5" mid-March.

13 hours ago, Damage In Tolland said:

18z Euro 1-4” of ZR down south. Someone is getting 98 ice down there 

Yikes!  The trees that withstood Helene in the NC/TN mountains would be torn apart if that were to verify.

14 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Nice! 

Yeah...so Tam' and I were just musing how 'don't assume just because a low pressure looks weak -'     But yeah, we can probably see a similarity where most of these bigger busts of lore were associated with presumably weak systems.  Really all that is needed is one of the metrics to be huge and the storm in question can goes crazy production off that one factor.  Superb DGZ like you were saying for example, in a marginal situation = over-performance.

Then there was Dec 9-11 1992.   zomb

My favorite bust, April 1982, is one that didn't fit the weak pressure - don't know the mb but something produced the gusts to near 60 in northern Maine.  We heard about the blizzard conditions in NYC at game time at Yankee Stadium on 4/6, but the storm was progged for OTS.  Afternoon forecast from CAR was cloudy, windy 20s.  The evening revision added "flurries".  At 9 PM when I went out to reset the max/min I noted the prominent ring around the moon and thought "I wonder . . ." 
Woke up about 2 AM and the view outside had that 'thick' gray texture of middle-of-night S+.  CAR recorded 26.3" from that storm.  My guess at our place was 17" but with the gales, who knows.  High temp on 4/7 was 17 but the stake level actually dropped from 27" to 26" - it was in a wind-scoured valley between drifts about 4 feet taller.  Our little black Chevette was almost totally buried; only a palm-sized patch was visible.

43 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

75:1 ratios?

Or cornmeal.  Jan 27-28, 2015 dumped 20" at our place, all at single-digit temps, and with 2.17" LE - a nice 9:1 ratio.  Stuff was nasty to walk thru, like deep soft sand.

43 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

whatever's the culprit aside, that's a major event in and off itself

It's maximizing potential given structure.   Perfect E inflow 850mb, over a 920 mb ENE frigid air mass, with 700-500 mb flow running up SW-->NE over a steep isentropic surface

You could produce a foot of snow out of a 1010 mb low and one closed isobar with that.  geez.  

Biggest snowfall I've experienced, March 14-15, 1984 (26.5") began at about 1030 mb and over its near-24h hour dumping, drifted down to about 1017.  To the north there was a very strong cold HP, don't have its mb but the afternoon high on 3/12 was 1°.  CAR 29.0", BGR 22.2".

From up here we'll be watching at a distance while feeding the woodstove.  -20s Sunday morning?

22 minutes ago, Angus said:

Was out walking the dog this morning thinking about this - I have referenced it before on the board ... This week in 1982 at SLoaf, first time there, half dozen runs or so and bad frost bite each time (turned around and sent into lodge to warm up by the liftie) so unpleasant that I did not ski for another two years 83/84 season. I believe this stretch still remains record cold for the area.

On Jan 18, 1982 it was -34 at our back settlement home in Fort Kent, accompanied by gusts 35+ and 2-mile vis. in teeny-grain SN.  Old WCI chart showed -101 that morning, new chart about -70.  Got up to -14 that Monday afternoon.
The day before we took half of a Bible college men's quartet to our church as temps plummeted thru the minus teens in howling gales.  As they lifted their jackets from our car, the dry-cleaner's thin plastic covers were shattered by wind and cold.

I'm getting a 2002-03 vibe this winter.  That snow season was our 2nd coldest DJF of 27 (behind 2014-15), but also the driest.   Total snow was 21" BN as we watched the big dogs from afar.

3.0 Saturday and 0.5 last night.  Dry snow but with almost no wind the trees are still loaded.  Some occasional mood flakes this afternoon.

1 hour ago, Lava Rock said:

is that near hampshire hill?

I don't know how familiar you are with southern Franklin County.  We're several miles NW from Hampshire Hill in the Muddy Brook watershed, between Weeks Mills and Industry Roads.  (Muddy Brook flows under Rt 2 about 1/2 mile west of the Sandy River bridge.)  Hampshire Hill is on the Rome-New Sharon border.  

19 minutes ago, George001 said:

I’m not sure about the wagons south thing, it’s a massive storm. There is a lot of energy flying around.

Be nice to get something even close to "massive" here.  The Christmas Eve 8.5" brought the total to nearly 4" above my average thru 12/24.  In the 26 days since we've had 9 events with accumulating snow.  Despite all that activity, we're now an inch below YTD average.  Those 9 events totaled 12.2" with none greater than 3.0", another march of the midgets like last winter post-Christmas.
Trees do look lovely, however, and the 13" pack is right on the average.

1 hour ago, Lava Rock said:

Nice. Was riding this past wknd with Dryslot up in Eustis. Trails were good there, especially by the NH border. Heading to Jackman for fri/sat riding, but not liking the cold predicted for sat. Definitely will need the gauntlets, but the Doo ones don't fit well on my Polaris. 

This past weekend brought the first audible sled noise I've heard this winter, but no use yet on the club trail thru our woodlot.  Our new neighbors (probably will build this coming warm season) plowed the road past our place last week, including about 1/2 mile of that club trail.  Once the new crew is living on the lot, the club might need to either relocate that half mile or abandon a large segment of their trails.

6 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

Speaking of ice…just went to walk the dog. Walking across my yard.  5” snow on top of glare ice+ gravity.   Whoops.  Flat on my back.  I don’t think I conked my noggin.  Tomorrow will be painful. 

Fresh dry snow atop glare ice is the nearest thing to a frictionless surface outside of a HS/college physics lab.

Falls are exciting.  Landings are painful.

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

With any luck at all, March 2018 incoming....I'm telling you, this is glaring.

Would be great - 4 huge storms that month.  Would've been nice to have gotten all 4 but the 2 that reached here totaled 36.4".

Continuous light/very light snow since 6 this morning, maybe 1.5" so far.  Hoping that by tomorrow this stuff will have bonded a bit with the underlying ice.

Without that midnight high (actually, my 9 PM obs), temp on the 25th was -16/-23 at our in-town place at Fort Kent, along with gusts approaching 40.  1st CT Lake's 12/26/80 (7 AM obs) temp was -24/-32.  Only colder maximums I've found in New England were on MWN.  Mt. Mansfield has tied it.

A query about AFD language, at least from GYX. 
Up until this month, it began with a quick summary, followed by Near Term (~12 hr), Short Term (out to 36) and Long Term (out to 168).
This month the AFD begins with What Has Changed, a short paragraph, followed by Key Messages, usually 2 or 3.  Then each key message is discussed.  Rarely has the AFD offered more than a quick sentence, if that, past Day 3 or 4.
Personally, I found more useful info from the old language.