cbmclean

Picked up a token 0.14" from a cell that blew up right as it passed by house.  Only 0.38" so far this month.  Things not too dry yet...

We're having a comically cold, wet Memorial Day weekend down here in NC.  Apparently the Eastern trough that was missing all winter woke up and is trying to make up for lost time.

Ended up yesterday with 1.28" from two separate rounds of storms; one in the afternoon and one in the evening.

Didn't get as much as the Raleigh folks but managed a healthy 0.86".  Enough to keep the annual spring drought at bay another week.

This is the song that will play when the incoming El Nino turns out to be super.

On 3/23/2023 at 3:51 PM, psuhoffman said:

I wish this would be more discussion...instead of simply chalking the SER up to the pac pattern...discuss why is the SER so much stronger than history says it should be at times...including the pac pattern into that equation. 

I'm not sure that there is really much to discuss at the moment.  The clear leading hypothesis is that the gradually warming base state has hit a "tipping point" with a dynamic response that just happens to be associated with increased SER/WAR.  The exact mechanism(s) of the coupling are unclear but could include overly warm waters in the Gulf/West Atlantic, the Pacific warm pool, the expanding Hadley cell, some combination of all three, or maybe something completely different.  Deciphering it all could take years or maybe a decade or more as we observe the new responses through various ENSO/PDO states.  Until then, all we can do is hope some mitigating natural trends weigh in our favor.  

Or else we could all chip in to purchase a ship that just sails around the midlatitudes spewing sulfur particulates into the air.

33 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I heard a rumor they had come up with this nifty invention called a jacket. 

Those are for Members Only.

Mangled flakes in Wilson.

1 minute ago, brooklynwx99 said:

I wouldn’t be so sure with the suppressive pattern. this is probably as good of a pattern as possible for you guys to get late season snow

There are still tales told of March 1960, in hushed tones around the fireside.

All I need to know is: is @psuhoffman still in?

And by the way as a SE weenie, I am living vicariously through you guys.  Bring this SSW March Miracle to fruition.  I will be enjoying my cold rain, as a sacrificial lamb.

2 hours ago, jayyy said:

The Sun angle is the same in New York and they’re getting 2 feet between now and Friday. It’s nonsense. Same with the “it’s too warm leading in” notion.

I’ve seen it snow in April (higher “sun angle” than now) and 1 day after it was 60 degrees. Both of those late season excuses are untrue.

It isn’t harder to snow in late march because of the sun angle. It’s harder to snow in late march because it’s generally less cold and we’re out of peak climo.

Longer days could have an effect (more hours of sunlight) but not sun angle. If it’s 30-33 and snowing hard enough, it’ll accumulate, no matter when it happens.

Sun angle is lower (more oblique) the further north you go.  Not a huge difference between you guys and central NY, but not zero difference either.

Man I dislike that reversal of the catch call.  The call on the field is supposed to stand unless there is indisputable evidence to overturn.  That was not indisputable.

3 hours ago, CAPE said:

It worked a couple years before that in Jan 2016. We have had a run with multiple Ninas and shitty neutrals since then. We need a mod Nino.

2019 was a moderate Nino wasn't it?  I remember there being debate about whether it was a modoki or not.  Either way, results were the same: SER and WAR ruled the roost.

2 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

But yet all of January was warm, wasn't it? Whereas last year and the previous ninas it was also cold...Can ya call two cold weeks in December front loaded? Lol

December is the front, right?  And it's the only month that was not a wall-to-wall torch.  Ergo the winter was front loaded.  Nobody ever said the load would be good.

2 hours ago, Ji said:

as the thread says--LATE FEB will be Rockin. I know more than people think on this board:)

When I started hanging around here years ago, I'm not sure I would have ever believed that the day would come when and Ji would be the optimist on this board.  Well here we are.

5 hours ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Ya know, I actually understand for this month. But I don't remember a nina with wall-to-wall SER on steroids. I mean that typical cold on the front end of winter never really came!

Yes it did.  December was slightly below normal.  That is equivalent to frigid when you adjust for inflation.  And it actually had a legit cold week-ish.  Sure it was marred by the cutter.  This winter was legitimately front loaded.  Just the front load was only good in comparison to the rest of winter.

9 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I don't know that the track matters much... the surface low takes an inside track but the storm is vertically stacked by then so we are still in the CCB there just isnt any cold, there is no snow really outside of elevation.  It would help if the h5 didnt close off so soon so far south...the easterly wind ahead of it just wrecks the thermals even worse then they already are.  But we're really being silly here...if this was anything close to a typical winter airmass, even a "warm" one by normal standards, that would have been a huge snowstorm on the ICON/GFS/GGEM.  We need so much to go absolutely perfectly here to overcome the thermal situation...its just not realistic to expect it.  Sure if we get super lucky and the thing bombs out perfectly and death bands us enough to snow great but man thats such a super rare anomalous thing to have to root for as our only hope. 

Hey, would you please stop wrecking the thermals with your pessimism?  Cold air can sense negativity.

44 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

-PNA is going to continue getting cut and sliced up on the LR (long range). 

What leads you to believe this?

Looking at that CWG post I'm struck that if this year was in isolation, it would be frustrating but not overly alarming.  In good company with 1932 and 1950 and 1890, and so forth.  Any year can be a stinker.  But the pattern is obvious.  All we can do is hope that there is some natural suckage that is adding on top of the other suckage that we shall not discuss.  And maybe we can have at least somewhat better times in the near future.  

4 hours ago, Cobalt said:

I spy a 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 on this list as well. All years from this recent stretch of futility, and all but one (2021) went on to have an AN February. If there was any wonder as to why we've been reliably snowless during this past 7 year stretch, reliable warmth is an easy culprit. 

Man, 1932 must have been a dog.  Also interesting to note that 2016 is on that list.  Sometimes even in the midst of warmth...

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

We’ve had small periods as bad as anything before. We’ve never had a prolonged period as bad as 2017-now. No one season or event fail alone is alarming. But the cumulative evidence is becoming worrying. 

"becoming"?  You're book just hit the third edition.  Stormtracker's clip just got nominated for an Oscar for best short feature

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

 

Look at the CMC. The high is perfect and it’s still all rain. It wouldn’t matter. 

Visiting this site I've learned a good bit about teleconnections but I have almost no knowledge of storm dynamics. I gather from your posts that with the track depicted, with the high position/strength as depicted it "should" snow.  It is also my understanding that the precipitation starts as snow but melts on the way down.

So putting those together I conclude that somewhere in the column the snow is encountering layers where the air is warmer than it "should" be given the track and high location/strength.  Where does that anomalous layer start and what is the source of the anomaly?  And yeah I know what the ultimate source of the anomaly is.  I'm just talking the proximate cause.  

An example would be something like (I'm just making this up as an example)

1. "The air at 700 mb and below is being sourced from the NNE and the water there is +2 C warmer than the mean."

Getting chippy in here.

Have we attempted to communicate with the SER?  Maybe it is a sentient being liek the crystalline entity on Star Trek TNG.

5 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Must have looked at the runs that didn’t show this. I didn’t see. 

So I guess we just look up to D7 and disregard anything past that. 

Would you guys consider D7 as the border between mid and long range?