wxmanmitch

The overrunning threat for mid to late next week should be much easier for the medium range models to handle compared to this weekend's fiasco since we're not trying to deal with the interaction between multiple shortwaves. Obviously details such as front placement and precip type are TBD, but my confidence for a long duration significant QPF event in the 6-9 day range is quite high and I think someone (most likely NNE right now) cashes in.

Shocked to see how warm it is outside of them thar hills. Been hovering 29-30° F here all day with off and on snow/graupel showers. Still about 10" of pack on the ground. The cold rain and sleet yesterday did nothing to it except to harden it. About as good of an upslope signal as I've seen all season on the meso models for tonight and tomorrow, even down here. Hoping for a few inches. Beggars can't be choosers this winter.

Any accumulation? Just a slight coating of sleet here at 2,230' so there was some frozen mixed in with the rain. Route 100 was a little greasy above 1700 or 1800'. Doesn't look like we lost much if any snow depth.

The models aren't going to have a clue for at least several days. Heck if they can't nail something down 3-4 days out, how can we expect them to correctly forecast something 7+ days out? I am actually beginning to think medium and long range models are doing more harm than good for the weather community. I'm tired of fantasy solutions and the resulting hype spreading like wildfire on social media. We should ditch running operational models altogether past 3 days in favor of an all ensemble approach and get back to the old school way of doing things more.

I'm done! Totally chucking this pathetic excuse of a winter out the window! Not as bad as 2015-16, but still bad to say the least! We've not had a single event exceed the 4-5" range all winter besides the one big bomb. If it was colder and we kept the pack around more, it would be much better, but the rainy cutters and thaws have sucked! Making matters worse is the poor performance of the models teasing us with snowstorms all season. Even the normally more trusty Euro has had some massive fails lately...this weekend's "storm" notwithstanding. I haven't seen such a severe correction with regards to the placement of a 500 mb low this close to verification time in a good long while. They are definitely struggling with this fast, zonal pattern with no blocking and a SE ridge. Last year had a lot of similarities to this year, but was a little colder overall and we did get some decent events in January even if they underachieved due to sleet or freezing rain contamination. I'm happy we got that one nice bowling ball that nailed locations around my latitude back at the start of December. Otherwise this winter has resembled the aforementioned ratter along with others like 2001-2, 2005-6, and to some extent 2011-12. At least 2011-12 featured Snowtober and some decent upslope events. We can't even get a decent upslope event this year with storms cruising along at such a fast pace. Maybe we get a transient cold pattern and another rogue storm sometime on February or March, for which I will be exceedingly grateful. However, psychologically, I'm out. I look for sustained cold and snowy patterns that build and retain a deep pack in a good winter, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. Besides the sun angle is creeping upward and the days getting longer now. Sure good years sometimes have relaxations and thaws, but when arcane monotony dominates over invigoration and excitement, it's time to toss and move on. Someone fire up the lawn thread...

850 mb temps still plenty cold for snow across most of NNE. GFS is often too warm in the low levels at this juncture.

It is. Would be a quick 6-8" thump verbatim before going to a light 33° F drizzle in the dry slot. Euro has us getting a bit more Sunday too on the backside. Will take this solution in a heartbeat.

This event has the looks of a Savoy, MA to Woodford, VT special all over it right now. 1K+ on the eastern slopes of the northern Berkshires or S VT look good. A potent LLJ out of the E and SE will work wonders when it slams up against the terrain here.

68.9" season total.

I had this Barred Owl stop by and perch in one of my balsams for over an hour earlier today. Such beautiful and graceful creatures. I love how they can rotate their heads >270° as if it's on a swivel. It's not often I get to see an owl let alone photograph one, but I only tend to see them only cloudy winter days.

55.5", 25.5" from December 1-2. Probably running around average thanks to that one storm. Everything else has been nickels and dimes.

Tell me about it, I know. The Berkshire hilltowns have it worse than I do in many cases, which is why I ruled them out for moving to. The MA hilltowns have Verizon and they're not upgrading/fixing the copper wire infrastructure and are not taking new DSL customers from what I'm told. If you don't have cell, you're screwed unless you get satellite. At least Consolidated will take new customers (if you can get them to show up, lol) and I have VDSL2 which is faster (~9-9.5 mbps down, 1-1.25 mbps up) than the traditional DSL which is usually 1-3 mbps down.

1.0" snow, 0.17" liquid equivalent snow and rain. Underachiever, but I wasn't expecting much to begin with. I may go down to near 0° F tonight, which is incredible for this early in the cold season.

Enjoy it up north folks. Maybe a get a couple of inches on the backside tomorrow morning, but this is not a S VT storm. Watching the potential for some freezing rain down here later today and tonight.

+SN, 23° F. 11" of upslope, 7" from the storm yesterday.

I do accept the higher totals from Wilmington over to Jacksonville, Halifax, etc. as they caught that band that I and Woodford narrowly missed yesterday. I don't always buy some of the WeatherNet6 reports, especially Woodford's. Sometimes Woodford's reports are more in line with totals around here, but other times they are not and this is one of those cases where it is most certainly not. My two week total is ~80", so there's no way Woodford has had that in the past week.

8" of new upslope on top of the 7" from yesterday. Very light snow right now, but models have it ramping up again from around 03z to 12z, yielding another 0.5-0.75" of LE. Then it tapers to flurries and light snow showers tomorrow during the day before another round tomorrow night? Snow growth has been kind of cruddy with lots of small rimed flakes and even pellets at times. Unlike a lot of these upslope events though, there's some good weight to the snow thanks to the deep moisture layer wrapping around our storm. I'm not buying the 35" storm total report from Woodford. I drove through there today en route to do an errand in Bennington (which was almost a costly mistake as I pulled over to a parking area on the side of route 9 that hadn't been plowed in several hours to let someone pass and got stuck, but luckily I was able to weasel my way out of it). Yes, they have a lot of snow like I do, but I find it hard to believe that there would be a 20" gradient in less than 5 miles at pretty much the exact same longitude and similar elevation. They were west of the meso band that nailed areas just west of I-91 like I was and radar returns haven't been that much different there. Maybe they have a little more, but not 20" more. Meanwhile Bennington had only about 2-3" that was melting in the March sun angle with temps near 32-33° F. I came back via Williamstown and N. Adams as 9 and 8/100 are tough.

Upslope machine is cranking. +SN. It doesn't look like much on radar, but trust me, it's nuking at least 1-2" per hour. Fine snow though. Will measure in a bit.

Snow has increased a little and skies have darkened as the remains of the I-91 band have pivoted back here. Looking forward to what kind of backside upslope I can get. I'm a tad east of the spine axis, so I may not get quite as much as Woodford to my NW, but am close enough that I can do well as long as the flow isn't super blocked. We may upslope right through Thursday.

6" here. Light, fine snow with a silhouette of the sun poking through the overcast from time to time. That band that was along I-91 has been trying to pivot west a bit, but is dying as it does so. Probably won't make it here.

White sandstorm here since the death band is about 20-25 miles east of where it was last time. Probably about 3-4" of new.

Here we go again...25° F and -SN with a new dusting OTG. Expecting 8-12" tomorrow with a lot of upslope on the backside. This is the most potent upslope signal I've seen in these parts since the 11/20/16 event (see avatar), and that was a much wetter snow than this is going to be.

My eclipse chase to Casper, WY was a resounding success. There were some wispy cirrus clouds during totality, but not enough to be of any detriment to the overall experience. The corona and Bailey's beads were clearly visible. It was like dawn/dusk with a 360° sunset/rise. What an incredible, goose bump inducing experience! Certainly one that I will never forget. It was well worth the money and hassle of getting there and back (mostly back). I drove up to Casper from my motel a bit north of Denver in 3 hours and 15 minutes, a distance of about 260 miles. I-25 was busy, but was moving along close to the 80 MPH speed limit during the wee hours. I left at 1:45 am and got to Casper at 5. Good thing I left when I did because Glendo (which I avoided since I had no idea how a village of 200 was going to handle 100K+ visitors) was starting to back up onto the ramp, but not the interstate yet. About an hour or two later, traffic looked bad on I-25 near there as it was backed up onto the interstate, creating a massive bottleneck. I left Casper at 2 PM and took back roads, but traffic was bad anyway. State highway 487 had a 40 mile backup to Medicine Bow and it took me nearly 4 hours to get from Casper to Medicine Bow. US Highway 30 east was good for about 35-40 miles before another jam in Bosler. Fortunately a friendly state trooper was directing some of the traffic onto an 18 mile dirt road cutoff that got me around most of this jam. I then took I-80 east to Cheyenne from Laramie and then US 85 south back toward my motel. I-80 was clear sailing, but 85 was slow at times, however not like I-25. It took 9 hours to get back to my motel, which I don't think is too bad all things considered. The 23 hour day was well worth it! KCPR had a 7° F temperature drop that I can definitely attest to as my viewing venue was right near the airport. The car surface became cool as well. I shot a brief cell phone video during the totality. The crowd's reaction is definitely noticeable. For the next eclipse in 2024 I will definitely book something in totality as far in advance as possible as the drive into and out of totality can be a pain. I'm not sure how far in advance most major US hotel chains will let you book a room. A year? I'm tentatively thinking somewhere south of Dallas near Waxahachie or Ennis. Totality is about 4 minutes and 24 seconds there, and I don't want to take a chance with NNE weather in early April, which is cutoff and backdoor season. South of Dallas also has good SW-NE accessibility along the totality path in case I need to relocate because of weather. Moving within totality is easier than getting in or out of it.

You might want to make this plan A if it's not too costly to do so. Flight to DEN is may be more than flight to BNA, but odds of clear weather is worth it for me. I chose my location based on climatology, road network, and trip cost. Eastern Oregon doesn't have as good a road network and would be much more costly to fly and drive to. April 8, 2024 is a long time to wait. Lots can happen between now and then. Besides early April weather is iffy at best around these parts. Next totality in this country after 2024 is August 23, 2044 and then August 12, 2045. The 2044 eclipse will only be visible from MT and ND near sunset. The 2045 eclipse will be an absolute beast with over 6 minutes of totality and a ~170 mile wide totality path, meaning near total darkness near path center.

I too have an eclipse chase booked. Flying to Denver and then renting a car to drive up into Wyoming where totality is as I like their 85-90% odds of clear skies. The fact that totality is just before noon local time helps as well. My hotel is a bit north of Denver as I waited until last week to book and pretty much in Wyoming is sold out and probably has been for a long time. Inventory is pretty low in such a rural state, so I was pretty much limited to metro Denver. One thing to consider if chasing the eclipse by car is traffic, both heading to it and then returning. I will likely be leaving my hotel in the middle of night to make the 200+ mile trek up to totality in Wyoming. Ordinarily it's about 3.5 hour drive from where my hotel is to Casper, but I will likely allow double time (maybe more) and make adjustments as necessary based on traffic conditions which can be monitored on Google maps. Plus, Casper will likely be crowded so I need to get there with plenty of time to find parking and a viewing location. If for some reason there looks to be clouds or wildfire smoke, I may head east toward Nebraska as an alternative. Denver gives me options in the off chance that the weather looks iffy. This website uses population statistics and GIS to try and predict where traffic might be bad. Hint: avoid Santee, SC. https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/statistics/ Wyoming has a low population density so hopefully traffic won't be a big problem. I actually might be more concerned about return traffic as everyone is more likely to leave their eclipse location en masse as opposed to beforehand when people will likely be going there over the course of a couple of days. Have extra food, water, and patience on hand. Keeping the gas tanked topped off just in case might be a good idea too. I saw the 1994 eclipse from SW CT and it got slightly darker, even though it was just partial there. From that day forward, I've been looking forward to this eclipse. The Christmas Day 2000 partial eclipse didn't cause any darkness but I remember glancing up at the sun instantaneously a few times an noting that part of it was obscured. I have glasses for this chase. I'm both anxious and excited for this.