OceanStWx

53 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Well see you next November for winter coverage because I’ve already canceled Atlantic Hurricane Season 2026  

Don’t think I moved back yet but I def don’t remember this day. 

@CT Rain wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about this day.

25 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

 Bring back may 06.

What a gorgeous stretch it was in ITH for a change.

2 minutes ago, tunafish said:

I know it feels like 90% of connective storms fizzle by the time they reach the coast, but I don't think that's a new thing, or that it's gotten worse in recent years.  Missing 0.20" on a single cell a dozen times a year isn't going to make that much of a difference, I don't think.

But your overall point is clearly accurate - the coastal has experienced more dry conditions than most places in the state.

We make our hay other times of the year, the problem lately has definitely been relying on summer to catch us up to normal precip. That just isn't likely to happen.

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

Got to imagine the rivers in the white mountains draining to the east and southeast are raging pretty good right now after last night.

Impressive to send the Saco at Fryeburg to flood considering how low streamflow was before this.

8 minutes ago, 1985 Polar Bear said:

Nearly 2.5 inches overnight. Gyx issued its most recent drought update for Maine and NH, discouraging as usual. What caught my eye was this historical five year map of drought, and the coastal strip of high drought. To my experience in recent years, this lines up with what seems to be increasing phenomenon of a really strong marine layer due to stout south/southeast winds in summer shredding frontal thunderstorms that approach the coastm from the mountains. Is that possible, that we're seeing fewer coastal t-storms in summer due?

I think the thunder thing is just climo. Storms are naturally going to fall apart as they near the colder water. One thing we have seemingly trended towards though is more rain in shorter periods of time. So while yearly precip could be normal or above normal, when we get rain it is too much too fast and it doesn't actually alleviate drought conditions.

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

looks like after Tuesday and Wednesday that’s it for the good warmth for a little while. 
 

Maybe  comes back after Memorial Day, but core of The heat over the Great Lakes means intrusions of cooler possible in New England. Although could still average above normal.

It's going to be nothing but bare napes and hairy arms out the window up here if we can just get a stretch of normal temps.

6 minutes ago, Chrisrotary12 said:

Is this rain ever going to get here?

It was brief, but it got sunny here at GYX. 

Just now, dendrite said:

I figured there was a good reason. I was kinda kidding anyway…it’s mostly just a synoptic rain.

I didn’t even realize they lowered that. Is it permanent or while GYX is down?

Permanent change. I haven't seen the updated best coverage of the lowest scan maps yet, but I think we're now looking at BOX being the better radar from near PSM to Sunapee. The biggest change is we gain like 2000 feet of viewing near EEN, and ENX is basically no longer necessary to look at. 

11 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Great day for GYX radar to be down. 

Had to make a tough call for a necessary 2 day outage. Bring her down for a widespread rain event where BOX could cover the most threatened area or bring her down in June when random thunderstorms could be too far away from other radars. 

By the way congrats on BOX being at least as good as GYX in the low levels for your area now that they dropped their lowest scan to 0.3 degrees.

45 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Looks like a gravy train for several hours near Kev and then another one near lunch time through even over far ern areas into SNH. Someone is getting 3-4” in the ern one…probably SNH.

HREF mean is like 2-2.25" for parts of our area. Typically we've found that the max HREF QPF may not occur in the right area, but it occurs somewhere in the CWA. That's like 4+, so I believe it.

3 hours ago, dendrite said:

Growing consensus for 1-3” S NH/ME into NE MA…euro, gfs, 3k. The soaker I’ve been waiting for?

This is just the pre-Christmas forecast.

2 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Cowboys. 

They've got as many playoff wins in the last 5 years as Vrabel has illegitimate children.

7 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

Is that full leaf out?  I was told that would be happening by today

It is 4/20

1 minute ago, dendrite said:

Only 2 months away. In the meantime we rationalize 50s and sun as being nice spring days.

We were just hanging out in the neighborhood commenting on how nice it was when I realized we were actually -5 on the high. 

On 3/10/2026 at 8:53 AM, weatherwiz said:

First go around with an intensity 2 for tornadoes (also have it for hail in Texas). Very curious to see how this changes or enhances public communication or if it just adds confusion. I wonder what @OceanStWx thoughts on this conditional intensity addition is. 

I'm generally a fan, but it's going to take some education.

The TLDR is that SPC now has a way to highlight low coverage but high potential intensity events.

I think about 6/1/11. Back then there was only a slight risk, but you could make an argument that coverage was reasonable for a slight only not enhanced. You can now add CIG zones to highlight significant tornado risk even in a 2% or 5%. That just wasn't possible before without a 10% hatched.

There was complaining about the miss in MI on day 1. But there was literally no way in the old outlook system to put a significant tornado risk there without upgrading the entire outlook.

2 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

What are the odds that PVD holds the record for all first order New England stations regarding snowfall lol. Seriously.

Weather weenies trying to reassure me that 37.9" is actually too big, and PWM's 31.9" is perfect.

3 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Yeah from a 30,000’ view point 78 is king. But for PVD to EWB region, the snowfall and snow rates probably won’t ever be topped. I don’t think people realize how hard it snowed there. 

Seriously, this was a little more akin to some of our extreme rainfall events lately. PVD took their 24 hour snowfall record and nearly doubled it. Like 2"/hr for 18 hours.

3 minutes ago, dendrite said:

SW flow aloft yes. It was N-NE flow at the surface. 

But in the knickers days they wouldn’t have really known the difference between a coastal and a strong overrunning event like 1/25 unless someone had access to a barometer and pressure readings in the region. 

Scrawled across the desk journal of Ekster’s great great great great grandfather:

“The snow, mark my words, doth ever arrive sooner than one might reckon, and the sleet likewise.”

11 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I think we thought there would a band to the NW. I did. But I think that night I saw the 3K Nam show the western CT stuff and then that firehose into SE MA and RI. That had tremendous front despite lacking big convergence. You also rode the dryslot which steepens lapse rates and aids in that too. I felt pretty good about that area. Actually was hoping it would be more north but it was modeled well.

I admittedly did not participate in the office run up to the storm, but from conversation I can say our post mortem caution flags should’ve been the dry air eating the northern edge versus the pretty simulated reflectivity and QPF maps presented, and falling for the NBM snow ratio trap. That second one shifted the heavy snow at least a row of counties north.

18 minutes ago, dendrite said:

A on pack (mostly semi deep since 12/2)
B on cold (consistent but nothing high end)
C on snow (basically running near avg)
D on intangibles (too much nickle and diming…missing the biggies…little rain is a plus

B-/C+

I'm not usually a pack retention kind of guy, but it's been impressive this season. I've had 6 days since 12/3 with a T or less on the ground. And I've been over 10 inches on the ground since 1/26. 

Chuck in a normal March snowfall and I'll be at the best snow season since 2018-2019.

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Thanks so much. Where is that fronto option of TT? Having trouble finding it...does it require subscription? 

Nah, it's under the "Lower Dynamics" section of most models (including the Euro!) but the FGEN is the last variable listed. Temp advection comes first so it's easy to miss.

https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs&region=us&pkg=temp_adv_fgen_700&runtime=2025112912&fh=84

8 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Some of the video I saw from Plymouth is ridiculous. All out blizzard. 

Can't tell whether Cantore had pants on or not because snow was over thy knickers.

6 minutes ago, tunafish said:

That 6.5" for South Portland is a mile up the road.  Must've had about .20" more QPF than me .

4.8"/0.43"

Easy to spot the drift measurements in a storm like this up here.

1 hour ago, tamarack said:

Other than the town of Oxford (western Maine) which had only a trace, our 0.2" is the lowest amount reported to cocorahs, as of 11 this morning.     
(5-6 sites reported precip but left snowfall as NA.  Other sites in those areas all had at least 1" snow and up to 5".  Tops in Maine is 11.3" in Washington County.)

Thank you for your service though, that 0.2" helps to define the edges of our snowfall map. 

7 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

Very annoyed with myself because that was a glaring signal on all guidance...extremely glaring signal but for some reason I didn't want to buy it and buy into exactly how bad the potential for subsidence would be in the valley. The signals were all right there, laid out right there and just totally overlooked. 

Great stuff on the differences in alignment regarding 850mb fronto and 700mb fronto and what happens when the two become stacked. Moving forward I am going to give stronger attention to this. Anytime there are situations where models are big with the 700mb fronto, I've disregarded what's happening at 850 in terms of fronto. I wonder if this stuff would be covered in my course this week focusing on isentropic analysis. 

The other challenging part when dealing with the potential for subsidence zone(s) is how to portray that on a snowfall forecast map without making the map look stupid (Speaking for myself here). I guess maybe one way to do this is don't go crazy with the ranges and then add some text or an outline indicating where max totals may be. It's much easier to highlight max zone versus min zone I think anyways

Part of me kind of misses the days of broad ranges with highlighted zones for "locally higher amounts"

The problem these days is that you can try and forecast the band from PVD-GHG on this run. But then the next run it's ORH-BOS, so you increase the snow there. But you don't want to drop it from PVD-GHG just in case that was actually right. So the snow amounts are forever only going up until it's too late to recover from the messenger shuffle.