coastalplainsnowman

I only know what it means if the groundhog a) sees his shadow, and b) does not. Not sure what weather is in store if the groundhog dies. I'm just thinking of that term, 'groundhog'. What a lazy way to name it. Does that thing look like a hog to anyone? Same goes for 'prairie dog.'

In an environment in which virtually every severe weather event is presented by many media outlets, including ones devoted to weather 24/7, as just more evidence that the world will soon be over, this was inevitable.

It must be a law that long range forecast weather graphics whenever it is forecast to be very cold or very hot, must replace the graphic indicating cloud cover with a condescending red or blue thermometer. "The temperature will be 15 degrees on Saturday. This means it will be COLD. Here's a picture of a blue thermometer just to make sure you get that."

Out walking the dog tonight, just cannot believe this weather. It's a pre-Thanksgiving 'I just beat the darkness finishing up raking the leaves' atmosphere out there. No chimney smoke smell, just earth/soil. That's all I got as far as imagery / setting the scene goes. Unreal.

Thank you - was thinking exactly the same, that whatever it was I was looking at to the north and west, it didn't seem winterlike.

On the other hand there's this quote from the baseball player Bill "Spaceman" Lee from years ago: "I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won't matter if I get this guy out."

Through March 1st or March 20th? No doubt its been terrible and doesn't look good, but betting on 0.0 for the year would be a brave bet, just because something somehow always materializes, however weak or late in the game it may be.

Yes, but at the same time, when it's snowless for this long, something so strong could carry us away.

I'm figuring someone already made this analogy but here goes. Potentially breaking our snow drought just shy of the record, as the final poke in the eye, reminds me of a certain hometown football team which will remain nameless, winning a few meaningless games at the end of the year a few years back to lose out on the prize for worst team and the #1 draft pick that would have gone with it. And, of course, the year they did manage to score the #1 draft pick, Peyton Manning saw that and said 'I'm going to stay at Tennessee! They're better!' Ok I added that very last part.

I've wondered about the whole feast or famine thing here on LI. Anecdotally, at least, it seemed true. I started messing with some data I scrounged from a newsday web page showing annual snowfall totals since the 1950s. I tried standard deviation first from 1950-1985, then 1986-2020, that showed a larger SD for the latter, but it was tough to visualize. Then I tried taking the range of min to max annual snowfall for each decade. That had surprising results, with the only real outlier being the 1980s. Lastly, I threw out the min and max for each decade, figuring you'll have an anomaly on each end every decade, and then repeated the exercise. I think this captures best what LibertyBell describes: I realize everything about this approach is probably an abomination to any scientist on here, but I figured what the heck, it's so slow right now I'll post it.

Along those lines, the largely quiet 80s are nowhere to be found, which makes sense. As we know, those winters were largely cold, and the snow wasn't *that* terrible, it just lacked big storms (other than '83) and seemed to have a lot of N&W or changeover storms for us coastal folk.

Thanks Don. Initially amazed that 95-96 is in there but 93-94 isn't, but I suppose the most brutal part of 93/94 was just getting started around the 18th..

Just curious, if we were to look at NYC's best snow /cold seasons based on the same scoring, what does the top ten look like for that? Hoping its just the bottom ten scores of whatever data was used to create the above?

As a Jet fan, I remember how Gettelmann (sp) was raked over the coals for taking Daniel Jones when he did. I haven't heard him getting much credit this week, and he probably should get at least some.

Yes this was one of a handful of rare instances in which a storm stayed non-rain for longer than forecast (another being a 1994 ice event which was supposed to change over to rain in the AM but never did, even here on the Nassau south shore.) All day watched the snow out the windows at school. Like most of us here, was more tuned into the meteorology than the other kids, so while they were just blissfully ignorant, I was thinking 'it's still going to turn to rain and ruin it anyway' unable to really enjoy it, hmm much like now! Here it did ultimately turn to steady rain for a considerable time period before ending. I think we got about 9" here. To date the absolute most water-logged snow I ever had to shovel.

Been thinking about what would be the polar (no pun intended) opposite of the warm winter run we've had recently. Suppose we were having below normal weather in July which were to balance out what's been going on here this month. What would that look like? Does dry with high 60s with occasional mid 50s in July sound about right?

Thunder on January 12th. Grrrrrrrreat. Not part of some significant storm, not thundersnow, nothing dramatic - just a regular ol' passing evening thundershower, as if we're in July.

I had relatives 'N&W' and growing up in the 80s, especially post '83, we just took it as a fact of life that if the storm was anything of the coastal variety, I was destined for plain rain or an agonizing changeover on LI, while they would call to say they got a foot plus. I genuinely started to doubt whether it was possible to get real snow here. The only type of storm that seemed to drop any real snow was a moderate Alberta clipper, seemingly the storm of choice on LI in the 80s. By the way, whatever happened to them? I remember quite a few 4-6" storms (a big deal at the time.) Can't recall getting much from a clipper in forever. I'll say this much though - the LI amounts of all those fun storms of the 2000s/2010s were bigger than the vast majority of totals even to the N&W in those 80s storms. At the time, the 14", 18" they would call about seemed incredible, since my only points of reference were 78 and 83. That's why the 24, 28, 30" type numbers we saw here were mind-blowing. That never got old. Hope it happens again.

These just may be the saddest snowfall maps I have ever seen. As they say, someday we'll look back at these and laugh.

Even if one agrees with everything being said here, it seems like there are a lot of folks in favor of taking technological advancement out at the knees before we find the necessary solutions, by preemptively hamstringing economies, if not outright crippling them. Like we're on a rocket fuel powered ship traveling to a place where innovations await regarding not just energy solutions, but great health and technology advances as well, but there are folks on the ship, mid-flight, saying "Wait. Stop using rocket fuel. Let's use switchgrass instead, now. What, the ship doesn't run on switchgrass, and we'll have to drastically slow down, if not stop the ship outright? Too bad, figure that out first. Why do you hate the earth?" Much of the pushback that understandably perplexes many on this board is borne not necessarily out of disagreement about warming, but the approaches being taken, which to many seem ridiculous and counterproductive.

I think it was ice on the Nassau County south shore. I was a young grade schooler and I still remember the a) astonishment of my parents and all the other adults, and b) how wild everything looked. As I recall, school was in session, unless somehow I'm remembering the following day, though everything definitely was still ice encrusted. It took a lot to close school back then. I see JFK wasn't above 28 that day, and didn't get above freezing until the afternoon of the 17th, which would support the south shore being part of this event.

I realize that 'measurable' is apparently 0.1 or greater as the article states, and not trace, however it's still funny that smack within that 332 day unmeasurable snow streak ending on Dec. 15, 2020, a trace of snow fell on much of this forum on May 9th.

Gotta love that brutal looking map which must have been focus-grouped with people like me. "Seasonably Cold" in block letters on blue shading behind an ominous looking cold front. "SEASONABLY COLD" --- you mean, "NORMAL?"

Had heard that as well. Did some googling and got multiple hits to the effect of "at least eight European countries recorded their warmest January day ever: Liechtenstein, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania, Denmark and Latvia." Seems like in the past when it was unseasonably warm here, it would frequently be the case that Europe would be going through some freakish cold and snow. This is all anecdotal of course, but I don't recall record-breaking warm both here (i.e. most of the US) and Europe simultaneously.

Jan 2005 above has always been noteworthy for me. I wonder if there’s ever been a winter month since records began which can be so perfectly, evenly, divided between such a much above normal first half and much below normal second half.