weatherwiz

I will start off by saying how infuriating it is how irresponsible record keeping has been, especially with the debacle from the mid 1990's through the early 2000's. I totally forgot what happened (I know Will has explained it many times) but records were lost and there are also many questions about the accuracy of some of the data. I don't want to divulge into this any more because it drives me crazy. Anyways, one thing I've really thought about the past few years when discussing average snowfall (in relation to the season) is whether or not averages are being swayed by anomalous seasons which would be defined as outliers (when performing statistical methods). As far as I know, averages are just reported by taking the sum of seasonal totals and diving them by the number of years on record. Nice, easy, simple, however, when dealing with datasets which can have a wide array of variation, you run the risk of outliers. One great example of this is with the tornado database. If you were to calculate the average number of tornadoes from 1950 to say 2015, the mean is going to be skewed quite a bit by the 2011 season. Now there are other factors involved here but just making a reference. What is the point of this thread? Moreso a place to just collect my thoughts but also open to discussion and maybe through collaboration we can all create some sort of database which is legit and maybe even fill in the gaps on some of the missing years. For what I did below with BDL, I would like to do for other stations as well. I also hope I didn't make any errors below. I'm not usually up this late Anyways, I was curious with BDL. The data was obtained from https://xmacis.rcc-acis.org/ Year was defined as July 1 - June 30 Notes: The long-term average is 44.8''. With the outliers removed, the average drops to 43.4''. Not a huge drop. Again, this is just based on the data from acis. Who the hell knows what is right and what is not right.

Sweet, by the end of the month sunrise will be just before 6:30 AM and sunset will be close to 5:40 PM

will he come out wanting to duel?

the evolution of the 12z EPS is really a thing of beauty. Just looking at it from a pattern perspective, the sensible weather and how the pieces move is irrelevant at this time only because we don't have a basis for this yet.

There are multiple arguments for this point. When it comes to weather forecasting there are concepts here: 1. How the data is being processed and digested by the user (forecaster) 2. How the data is being communicated There has been a lot of talk/discussion the past few years about whether models have gotten "worse". I don't think think models have gotten worse, now alot of the uncertainties and some of the waffling back-and-forth at times as been annoying, but I think the biggest issue overall and "downfall" to forecasting is how the data is being interpreted and how it is being presented. Forecasting should be a very thorough process which requires a great deal of time. The issue here though is, people don't have this time anymore. We've become very rip and read based. Running a 384 hour snowfall map or QPF map and saying it's going to be snowy/wet or dry is probably not the best measure to take. Getting all excited and hyped up when a model shows a blizzard at D12 only for it to "lose it" at D7 then blaming the models is probably not a good idea. It is all about expectations too. Just because a pattern is good doesn't mean it will produce. If you get a good pattern, but it doesn't produce, that doesn't mean the models "suck". At the end of the day, forecasting and analyzing models is much more than just taking your mouse cursor and running it across the entirety of the run and then making summations.

kind of funny the similarities across Canada/U.S. with some similarities, yet vast differences across the hemisphere.

Yup...was putting together an additional post to explain but had to delete attachments. This shows it all Actually, anyone who wants to say January sucked b/c of a "classic strong EL Nino" is totally wrong. If this January was a "classic strong EL Nino" we probably would have cashed in solidly. Here is January 2024 vs. strong EL Nino January's (I only did events since 1950 b/c if I did pre 1950 I would have to split up and do some years using 20 CRV3 and NCEP/NCAR I threw Dec on for comparisons as well

Looking at the winter through now, this has largely gone close to expectations. Now the snowfall aspect certainly isn't there but the premise was we would see above-average precipitation (which we have) and more times than not in our region/latitude that is going to probably net at least close to average snowfall. The reasoning for that is not, "because we're in a strong EL Nino". There is always some element of "luck" involved and we certainly got unlucky at times. We got screwed with the cutter setups...but that wasn't a product of EL Nino. Anyone saying this has "sucked" because of strong EL Nino does not understand.

Yeah you're right...just went back and looked deeper. That would or should load the coldest anomalies our way and with the split flow look we should see an active STJ. I also like the positioning of the block advertised a bit better than last time. If we can get that look to stick around we easily should get 2-3 solid storm threats during the second half of the month.

The PAC is also currently slowly underdoing changes which is great to see. Typically we have to wait to start seeing changes taking place but the wheels are already slowly in motion. One thing that makes me a bit nervous though is regardless of the changes, we're going to lack quality cold. This is more of a concern right along the coast but as long as we can get storms to track far enough off the coast or inhibit storms from going through cyclogenesis too early or too close to the coast so we flood wild milder ATL air, we should be good (especially interior). All this basically means is we probably favor a tree crushing pasting vs. dry/powdery snow

I wonder if in the mid-West when they get setups where you'll have locations under Tornado Watches/Winter Storm watches if there happens to be a tornado is people bring their shovels into the basement with them.

Winter of 1995-1996 and summer of 1998...if only we could repeat those more often.

well too be fair on TV you're not really going to get crazy specific and too deep into science. It's probably easier to refer to it as a "clipper" when describing the scenario to viewers.

I don't really think this is a clipper, but you can argue the main s/w energy traversing northern Maine is more of a clipper. It's ultimately an amplifying shortwave trough driving a sfc cold front through the region. Moisture convergence along the front as it pushes towards the coast results in a narrow area of precipitation (probably rain or a rain/snow mix).

I also think that BDL average is way too skewed.

Yes, thanks for throwing that in there. Important to understand that in this case.

I'll still stand by this notion unless the data proves me wrong. Majority of our big winters (and big as in large departures from average on the positive side) occur because of 1-2+ large storms...not because we get 15 3-4'' events. I bet even in phenomenal winters, the number of events which produce widespread accumulations aren't significantly greater than usual.

Gotta be honest...this is some of the worst meteorology discussion I've seen since this one Ryan Hall video I watched once.

what in the hell?

Glad I'm not the only one!

What's so "textbook" about this winter with relation to EL Nino and strong EL Nino's? You can't just assume a winter is going to be above-average in terms of temperatures just because we're in a strong EL Nino. If above-average temperatures were "textbook" there would be little variation in these plots.

At least there are no clown maps for drizzle

agreed

This is definitely an important factor to consider when assessing these things. There is more to whether the NAO or PNA or EPO is positive or negative, how the pressure centers are structured and where they're placed is way more important than the reading itself. You can have a -NAO where the block is east of Greenland, you can have a -NAO where the block is west, hell even south...we've seen that a few times over the years and northern New England actually sees above-average temperatures because the ridging pokes into the region.

That is a look I was hoping we would have seen more of here in January but that look fits into the mold of what you would expect at some point during the second half of winter when accounting for ENSO, stratosphere, etc. That look would yield potential for some great coastal cylogenesis with PJ/STJ phasing.