OceanStWx

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This why that guy has no credibility....he never sticks around and shows and accountability for his brutal calls

He could learn a thing or two from Kev.

Just double down on your next call. 

18 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

I feel mildly optimistic that 1/10 is going to be totally fine for NNE. Might be some ptype mixing but I think there’s going to be a LOT of frozen precip there. Things could change for the worse but there’s been some ensemble support for a colder profile (front end thump to triple point type evolution)…so we’ll see. 

Yeah, there are plenty of ways to salvage 1/10 up here. If we have snow on the ground after 1/7, I wouldn't be calling for a total pack reset on 1/10. 

7 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

When do you think models may show which is more likely , stronger SW or grinded

Don't really have the players on the field for another 36-48 hours. But I would start to feel more confident around that time.

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

EPS individual ensemble members still have a large cluster that is a closer track

 

The clusters with the sharpest shortwaves are definitely the whitest ones for the region. Driest cluster is more of a Southeast ridge looks with trof in Canada, so it just goes through the meat grinder. 

12 hours ago, dendrite said:

Good luck if there’s pack over the interior and CAD

You can already see the CAD on that weenie Euro gust forecast. Instead of 60+ mph through interior Maine it's already forecasting 40s in a CAD shape. Not hard to sell that right now.

10 hours ago, kazimirkai said:

Can somebody explain the extreme forecast index please? What is a shift of tails?

The EFI looks at the 5 week window centered on the forecast period and compares model climate to ensemble distribution. The more ensembles higher or lower than the m-climate the higher or lower EFI will be. Irrespective of sign, EFI closer to 1 is more unusual. 

Shift of tails looks at the top 10% of ensemble members. The more extreme those members, the higher the shift of tails will be. That can clue you in to just how big the potential is with certain events.

4 minutes ago, weathafella said:

Absolutely agree wrt mean/median.  In fact throw out the extreme outliers and the mean will have better credence I think.

The Euro EFI stuff can help with that too. The shift of tails shows you what the outliers at the top end are saying, but the shading tells you where the meat of the ensemble is. 

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

Yeah euro coming in hot.

Right on time to set everyone's expectations unreasonably high. 

9 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

We should get several inches.

But how much snow? 

10 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Lot of spread on GEFS. 
 

 

9 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

More or less two camps there.

DESI tossing out 4 clusters, but there are two dominant ones accounting for 64% of ensemble members. More or less varying degrees of amplification. But the snowier solutions are more amplified trof. The more you lower heights locally, he snowier the outcomes.

Which is a pretty wild difference when you think about it. Some clusters feature a ridge overhead 08.00z, vs other clusters featuring a trof. So nothing is locked.

2 minutes ago, weathafella said:

Cirrus 

Just some  ?

2 minutes ago, dryslot said:

High stakes. Can't wait for Dendrite to steal all the snow.

Compare BOS to MSP for the upcoming stretch. You can see at least three windows at BOS where QPF is clustered closer in timing (that signal at 300+ hours is actually pretty strong given the natural increasing uncertainty at that forecast range). If you squint at MSP you can see maybe one window of tighter clustering in time. 

You can also see the whiff potential in the BOS plot. Those gaps of no QPF in the first window show members that are fish storms. Of course this is just QPF, so a cutter can still have a great signal but a poor result for the weenies.

37 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

1/7 is a really strong sig for this far out but given it’s still a week out I wouldn’t get too committed yet regardless of how bad December was. 

I would actually say the signal may be even stronger for 1/10.

Ensembles for BOS are pretty tight clustering in timing for 1/7 and 1/10, lesser so for the next one after that. But it's definitely a strong QPF signal for an active stretch. 

Usually those 24 hr QPF meteograms look like a shotgun spray, but these all have well defined windows for QPF, which is a higher confidence signal.

3 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Models flipping rain to snow 

Regarding the Thu-Fri system, it now appears more likely (but still
not definite) that northern and southern streams will stay separated
until phasing occurs to the east of our region. This maintains a
more positive/neutral tilt which forces a more offshore track of
surface low, keeping most of its precipitation offshore as well.
That being said, there may be enough lift from northern stream
trough and sufficient moisture to generate some light rain or even
some light snow depending upon surface temperature. Right now models
are showing an initially mild airmass which favors rain, but
eventually colder air is drawn into region behind departing system,
which could result in a changeover to light snow later Thu night
into Fri (assuming enough moisture remains). In any case, this looks
to be a light precipitation event with very minor impacts. We`re
probably not looking for more than an inch or so of accumulation
(especially in the hills) according to ensemble probabilities.
Canadian ensemble is most aggressive and GEFS/EPS less so. But it
should be noted that these probabilities are based upon straight
10:1 snow to liquid ratios and do not take surface temps into
account. It may end up being a little too warm to allow much snow to
stick outside of the higher elevations.

"may be" "could" "assuming enough"

La la lock it in...

10 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

Can’t argue with what you posted. I know that further down the coast and into PVD surge over performed.  I figured that meso low or whatever that feature was that was South of Falmouth then brushed Pym county coast did some hard to predict havoc into Maine . 

Yeah, the tide was a couple hours earlier down there and overlapped the winds better. 4-5 ft surge is impressive.

31 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

I would say the winds and coastal flooding over performed 

We actually ended up not even flooding at PWM. A few vulnerable coastal spots did, but otherwise it was NBD on the coastal flooding up here. So if anything we hyped that too much. I think the timing of the tide and worst winds didn't overlap like forecasts showed 24 hours earlier.

21 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I mean they had 60-65 for winds. So is 68 a bust?  Maybe the best winds extended inland a bit more, but from what I saw, it was communicated well.

This was my Sunday evening update that expanded the high wind warning. I'm not upset with it at all. 50 mph all the way to Sugarloaf? That's going to do some damage.

14 hours ago, Damage In Tolland said:

You're proving my point. This isn't widespread. Criehaven is a rock in the middle of the Gulf of Maine. 

It was a good wind event and high impact, but I don't believe the impacts came from the magnitude of the wind gusts. I think it was the duration of the wind gusts and antecedent conditions that made this one of the record books. 

On 12/20/2023 at 9:04 AM, LSC97wxnut said:

I wonder if part of the power restoration issue is, as many people mentioned here, this looked to be a normal wind event vs the high impact one it became?

As such, utilities didn't call in outside crews before hand to have them ready to go and are now playing catch-up?

I think it was a pretty normal wind event from a magnitude perspective, which is how the utilities prepare. Everything is based on wind speeds and time of year (relative to leaves). The high impacts I think came from a longer duration 50+ mph from a classically damaging direction and over a large area. 

On 12/20/2023 at 7:13 PM, Damage In Tolland said:

Where’s the widespread 60-80 from E MA to Maine?

In your dreams? 

I just don't see evidence that 60+ was that widespread. But the inland penetration of 50+ mph winds was pretty expansive. 

10 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

It's 227,805. Still out here

Sent from my SM-G981U1 using Tapatalk
 

I think that's just CMP.

7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

A storm like this? Hell yeah. Now 2’ of snow? That’s a different story. 

This has been a great December so far. Spotters calling in with 3, 4, 5 inches and I don't know if they mean rain or snow.

15 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

BGR did 60kts!

 

Chris, have you seen any other mesos report?

It's funny, our list of CWOP sites that report good wind don't have many big gusts. Only 13 with gusts above 58 mph, and one of those was MWN.

8 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

But did they ? Mesos nailed it 

4 minutes ago, CT Rain said:

They spit out 50-60 knots for every event like this. Very few actually do it.

My point was that this one it was clear that it was possible given how the soundings looked. 

I mean mesos were spitting out quite a large area of 60 kt gusts, which definitely didn't happen. But like Ryan said, it was a pretty solid signal for an extended period of 50 kt possible. 

3 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

The sustained winds were more impressive than the gusts here.....we had some good gusts, but it was the constant 30-40mph sustained bursts that would last a long time.

3 hours ago, CT Rain said:

The raw wind gust maps from the models are such a cancer. They're almost completely worthless.

Looking at the soundings on BUFKIT you could see as early as Friday that this one had potential to be a big problem in spots in a way that the typical events don't. 

I think another factor has been the duration of winds. We're usually a 3 hour window of the LLJ, but this event started at like 9 am for PWM and they were still gusting over 35 kt last hour. That's a long time to beat on infrastructure. 

Even if models like the HRRR and RAP tend to mix too deeply, there was a good signal for a long duration wind event greater than advisory thresholds.

Sounds like an absolute disaster around Sunday River. Bunch of water rescues going on. 

If I had to guess, people are trying to bail on their vacations but are running into high water and washouts everywhere.