deathstar9

Personally, through early Feb, this is the best winter since 2010-2011. Lower bound is a B winter even if it ended after 2/15 with just a few small events remaining. The upper bound is best winter ever - would take more sustained cold and few larger events including a true blockbuster.

Absolutely, mid-March 2017 was probably my favorite storm in the last 10-15 years, solid cold during and for several days after. March 2018 had a bunch of storms including one big one and 2019 was very solid as well. Prior to that March 2013 and 2015 were great. Lately it’s been much worse but 2022 and 2023 had some decent events.

Wow that would rival Feb 2015! Hopefully we can at least get some nice exploding clippers like that year.

Yes that one, but others as well. I guess if upper air pattern is only criteria it’s using it makes some sense but the only two on the list that had the southern displacement of the PV and Arctic high deep into the south central states were Feb 1989 and Jan 1996. If you use those as criteria along with upper air patterns opens up a bunch of other events that were overall more similar. Admittedly I’m a rank amateur with little meteorological knowledge.

Probably, I just don’t get how a top 5 analog can be a storm that was in such a marginal airmass that it led to a driving rainstorm deep into the Appalachians despite a near offshore track. PS I do get there are other similarities but that alone should prevent a storm from being a close analog.

Does that mean qpf was actually pretty high and ratios were poor?

This is bs, how can you have 2/3 top analogs storms with fairy marginal overall air masses vs the severe arctic outbreak we currently have. They must go by a small number of criteria excluding some important ones.

Hoping we can get that shifted 50 miles or so west. Being pretty far inland never had so many 40+ mph gusts in a 4-5 hr period with moderate snow falling. 7” plus some prior snow made 2-3 ft drifts.

Looks like a Jan 2018 redux shifted 25 miles east. I would take it - probably best 7” I ever had with the extreme winds.

Another moderate shift on the gfs and its talking something truly historic.

Probably won’t happen as depicted of course :(.

Wow, with that kind high/low pressure gradient would be an all time great wind storm. Maybe like Feb 1978.

Got it, guess that makes sense if measurment techniques were the same as today going back to the 50's/60's/70's.

Not downplaying any of your points about climate change but wondering if the difference had more to do with measurement technique than what was actually falling from the sky? NYC back in the late 1800's to 1930's would have been about as cold as the parts of the mid hudson valley today. These areas are averaging over 40" per year currently and they are further from the coast so maybe are a bit drier, while NYC back then was still around/below 30" per year if Im not mistaken? Were the people doing the measurments back then including every storm no matter how minor? Were they measuring every 6 hrs during large storms or just plopping in a yard stick at some point after the storm was over with compaction already having taken a serious bite out of the totals? Seems data integrity could at least be part of the story.