Typhoon Tip

yeah...I suppose .. It's hard to find very many write ups about that one without digging thru back-paged web searches .. more so than I care to do. But at the time, it was considered a pretty big deal. It was called "The SYZYGY STORM" storm storm It may just be relative to era; as we've lamented about the 1980s in yore ... thus having a 12-18" snow lopped over a CF fist leading an arm of 55 to 60 mph, cold conveyor gusting in from NE during that particular pathos? It would by acclimation be huge. In fact, it may have been the biggest interior-east event in SNE since 1978 considering those dearth years. I'm not sure though...I think there was a freak early April blizzard back in 1982 ... '84? god, me and dates: can't remember 'em; can't get 'em Anyway, it was also before the climate started changing and we began handing out 12+" snow events like Pez candies. You know I think we've even endured posts over the last 8 years where someone got 15" amidst a 20" pancake event and called the thing a bust? ... It's like wow - how quickly folks get entitled. Lol - This may sound hypocritical to that but ...I think this "up era" that we've been enjoying is different than it's predecessors though. We are definitively and incontrovertibly involved in a climate change that has been both predicted by modeling, and empirically shown, to be hosting increased PWAT - and having exaggerated snow results relative to storm frequency and intensity ( that italic is the whole thing! ) is being missed by many as a separate distinguishing ordeal. In other words, a dearth winter era in this climate may have more precipitation by virtue of the warming atmosphere and increased PWAT going forward ... interesting.

Heh... it depends on how much 'memory' the immensely diverse pieces of the total climate puzzle are operating with ... Any moderate anomaly, warm or cool ...could easily be smothered under the last 20 to arguable 40 years of hockey-stick climate change. We can't sustain the latter and expect comparatively minute changes in ENSO to mean as much ... maybe? But it doesn't seem to fit basic assumptions about momentum and so forth. If so, it's probably not so much the modulating influence of ENSO, but the total systemic change may be driving the ENSO change and concurrent - by virtue of the same driving/governance - would there also represent some form of atmospheric change. Personally I think the ENSO is meaningless ... as it is burried snugly inside a Hadely Cell that has expanded in the last 20 years ... beyond the reach where the ENSO band ( only 15 latitu N/S of the eq) can really physically interact with the westerlies ..thus impose a physical forcing - ...but we'll see. I bet if we get a bona fide NINA like circulation eddy it would be coincidence more so - but almost impossible to separate in the knee jerk assumption tsunamis -

We did have that big event early January in ‘86 ‘SYZYGY’ storm because it coincided with that particular celestial event. We had 18” in Acton .. seemed to favor Middlesex and eastern Worcester Co for those bigger numbers ... 9” to15” otherwise. It was an impressive storm but it left some on the table because it lasted almost 30 hours yet it didn’t put down tremendously huge snow totals for the duration. I was in Rockport mass having decided to go to the coast to watch the surf and it was very impressive in that regard ... foisting rocks onto shore roads with bomb like sea foam explosions rising over roof tops. Course only 1 to 3 inches fell out there but the drama of the sea was a calculated trade off

Yeah, like I 'implied' in that missive ... depends what region one hails their claims from ... I know from having lived and suffered the vicissitudes of SNE's ( interior-east) climate from 1982 to 1986 ... this regional experience consisted of repeating seasons characterized as cold refreeze over brick Earth --> warm up rain --> frigid cementing... over and over unrelenting, the vast majority ... with low specific snow precip type events. We've had warmer temperature seasons with larger snow aggregation. But like you say, it may have been better in NNE- I don't recall those winters specifically being notorious at either individual event or seasonal scope and scale up that way. But that could be wrong.

Not to belittle your anxiety for having suffered 2014, January through spring that year ... because if anything, apriori experience should lend to empathy for your plight. I know what it is like to pass through painfully less then entertaining eras as a winter weather enthusiast - That said, try doing that uncanny thing from 1982 to 1987 ... always - Forgive me if I don't know how old you are, but that is getting into the 30's of years ago so you may have been too young to remember ... Of course there is a regional variance/relativity but I don't think the 1980s were particularly good for NNE either. Whether it is you, or other folks suffering single seasons or even weeks contained within those that seem so horribly unjust .. as though metaphysically attacking that which ( neurotically ) we depend upon for endorphin highs ( haha ) .. I always push a tongue into cheek. The difference between suffering the breadth of 1980s compared to .. whatever injustice it is they are describing, is like a guy that just spent a night in County lecturing Auschwitz survivors about the conditions of their prison cell.

Yeah but it won’t stick because the ground .., right

Not to be a dink but I’m pretty sure all those months of winter that year were among the top 10 warmest months in global history ... Something disproportionate like that though Jesus it’s been this way ..this continental folding really is favoring us in North America particularly in that ORD to Boston band we are like this permanent colder offset node because of increased tucking going on at very large super synoptic scales - You have to think Kelvin-Hemholdts waves almost like an analog but blown up really really large

You know it seems like it’s been many years since we’ve had a bona fide across polar flow Talkin plane departs Chelyabinsk and doesn’t stop until Atlanta Georgia now I wasn’t paying attention and 2013 or 2015 for that matter back east here… But I don’t know if those were actually cross polar constructs and not just occasional dumps over the Alaskan sector out of a favorable EPO

Just based upon the veneer of this product, the present Atlantic SST anom distribution has lost it's tripole. For those less aware ... tripolar distribution of anomalies is correlated with -NAO ... The correlation is not 1::1 of course... there are seasons where the correlation pops more or less coherently - last year may be one of those where/when there yet tripolar look vs the NAO were distracting. But, this particular product up there appears really about as uniform NOT tripolar as I can recall the Basin ever getting its state into - which is interesting as an aside, because as of spring there still was tripole evidenced. One would not think summer season would be conducive to wind stressing though - the primary SST pooling mechanism. Be that as it may, it is important to understand that second "S" in the abbreviation stands for "surface"( in SST). I've always been a bit sideways looking when SST-reliance correlates with atmospheric modes. Because, I'm not even sure what that means in absolute sense: surface. 6 ft of buoy dipstick depth? I'm not sure what is measured as 'surface' in the field/industry. But my point is, beneath the "surface" there can be strata where there's like a 'thermal momentum' lagging or perhaps more indicative of the real state of the system ... masked by transient looks and so forth. Then, a change in the mechanical pattern of sea stressing by circulation/seasonal modulation exposes a different truth. We actually see this in the PDO quite frequently ...where instra seasonal ( or even time lengths of seasonal for that matter ) can cause interruptions in an otherwise smooth ~ 30 year periodicity of (+)(-) Pacific -Decadal -Oscillation. The Atlantic seems also to respond faster to short duration modulating wind patterns - which in a pure ballast sense of it probably makes sense considering it's a smaller mass. Does the class now fully realize the goal of a splitting migraine ? Tripolar was more prevalently as of this recent spring, but given Jerry's post, at least as far as the surface goes the season appears to have abolished. We'll have to see as autumn reigns in a new regime of sea stressing, if this new look doesn't prove superficial. Oh..and, tripolar means there's a more obvious cool band intervening two warm bands, all three extending between the continents - Having said all that... I have seen more snow and cold here in NE during neutral positive NAO, since the aggrandized marketing campaign over the NAO took place in the late 1980s through the mid 1990s when it's popularity became so extreme it actually changed the genetics that scaffolds human brain neuro-physiology so profoundly that we are in fact a new species incapable of seeing anything else in reality as having a separate physics. In fact, if the world fails to negotiate a mid-east peace treaty after 5,000 years of pathos heredity in that region of the world, goddamn that motherf'n NAO! So with that, I think it will take decades to prove that the NAO is not what everyone thinks it is - and I've actually been hammering this point for 15 years... yet, people still don't even understand how to use it. Which makes much of this missive kind of moot then, huh - What I also find interesting is that this historic super-position of solar minima curves ...that in theory superimposed makes this minimum extra super dooper minimum... should have a demonstrative PDO and AMO correlation - as the solar curve has a very convincing correlation coefficients with these oceanic teleconnectors - I think tripolar is actually the correlation with solar minimum .. this above may in fact be odd relative to that assumption.

Kalamazoo by chance geography seemed to always have brilliant white lake effect CB band NE of the city ... turn around and another band dark gray passing SW Training snow bands aligned such that kz was splitting the goal post. The best lake affect snow at that city’s location was when the air mass got super cold and everybody ended up in that kind of misting low vis crystal froth within an entire radar scope having tiny corpuscular nodes amid a level one green smear. 15F

Yeah I thought of that after posting that missive ... there's obviously a risky assumption there on my part; that the interior/N-Maine would necessarily have storm-to-storm, comparable storm results any given location say ...in CT. Lol ... I do recall that storm, the "Megalopolis Blizzard" I think it can be Wiki'ed ... but it does survive in the annuls as such. Anyway, in the week prior to that, there was less contention as to whether a big event would transpire, but exactly where? The Mid Atlantic was higher confidence... not us. At the time it had a slow moving version of PDI vibe about it - savvy readers may know that storm cut off at LI ( or maybe PDII..). Mind us... circa 1995 .. 1996 modeling was hugely improving over 1978's era, or 1980's, but it was nowhere near what it is today; such that having a system some 7 days out in the charts back then, most importantly across multiple guidance species ( MRF and ECMWF and CMC ), tended to draw eyes and giggly banter over shoulder of the synoptician as he clicked his/her mouse - yeah..there used to be these devices connected to PC's call mice. 1993 was discussed in early Synoptics up in the weather lab at UML ... Man, miss those wide-eyed days of pure wonder discussions - weather wasn't yet tainted by life. We extolled how there is that kind of storm that shows up across guidance types weirdly early - they behave like stones tumbling along, directing the chaos of the atmospheric fractals around them. Everything else proves faux, but the stone is still coming... It has the ability to 'withstand' permutations and still maintain a coherent signal - they seem to 'own' there physical presence in the hemispheric scaffolding of the circulation. Therefore seem to have a reliability in the guidance. 1993 March was one; 1996 Jan was also one of these. 1978 Feb is amazing for early primitive modeling. But there's something else there ...almost a feeling that it's time. ..interesting I met Harvey Leonard at the tail end of December of 1995. I friend/undergrad who had interned with him thought it would be a hoot to introduce me to him - I mean... after all, we are geeks! We covet our celebrity's a little differently than pop cultural's typical pap. I was like, sure LOL. I think it might have been like a day or two before NYE ...or perhaps it was January 1 or 2, but the slow moving cut-off that was getting fed N stream cold streak shrapnel occasionally slipping into the backside of the mid and U/A circulation, adding to its momentum ... while is slowly buzz-sawed across the 35th parallel toward the M/A ... it was in all the guidance from D 7 in. I remember debating with the man whether it would be real early in its gestation, and whether it would be able to get above NYC's latitude as an impactor. I argued in favor of both... That call scored me an internship with him ... I think. Because by the end of that discussion, in studio at WHDH Channel 7 at the time, he asked me what I was doing for internship during the immediate ensuing spring semester that year. I was like...uh, yes Sensei. It was the first year I learned about deformation axis ...and what an opportunity to apply! That deform band arced up and that was what clipped us from N CT to SE NH... Above that band, 12" totals fell to 2-4" fluff with orb sun mocking through pretty quickly. I do recall that amazingly historic storm ... not really doing much above CON NH?? As a separate note...I think there is some precedence there for big systems in SNE. I don't think Dec 1992, or Feb 1978...were as big above ...oh Fryeburg ME as they were snow clockers for elevations SE of HFD up thru the lower spine of the Monadnocks down this way. That's admittedly anecdotal... But, New England is a vast area once we start including all six states and arguable eastern NY and NJ in the mix... We have climate zones for a reason, and sometimes these big events just can't really be physically big enough for everyone.

and no one asked... but I only care about snowpack if that depth record is in reach. If it's not slated in the pattern/conducive to having a chance, I don't care if snows 20" and melts in two days ... could not care any less. Alas! ... retention has an elemental pattern luck to it - it seems... We can have above normal winters ( temperature alone ) and have them be dry, wet, or white given to our latitude - we all know this. We can have colder than normal winters that are dry ... but at this end of the temperature extremes it's harder to get moisture involved without there being substantive snow - again by virtue of our latitude. Yes ...rarely, we get stinging toothache cold for merely taking is deep breaths in between a steady diet of rain storms. But in the general scope, a colder than normal DCA winter (for ex.) can still almost not snow because colder than normal for them is of course still well above freezing ..etc. Anyway, if there's a big snow event, then a cold snap at the end... then out there in the extended, there's some sort of baroclinic bulge formulating over the Missouri Valley with lingering -10 C at 850 mb over the OV and NE ... and yet further out in time, another cold mass gathering in a lingering +PNAP essense on the charts, it gets interesting quickly. Particularly in this sort of neo-climate tendency to precipitation more proficiently relative to mechanics ...by its own virtue that warmer air is concomitantly holding more theta-e ( water ) in gaseous form, so that contributes there. As an aside, I can almost imagine study revealing that 10 events of any kind, in aggregate, precipitate more in bucket totals than 10 events in the 1950s - We do have the benefit of two factors here: Latitude is just one; but there is a specific planetary atmospheric physics assisting cold air holding in for events to work in, during winters... Actually ...it retards warm fronts in summer too. But the topographic effect of higher elevations west creates barrier jets ... but, it's like the physical tendency to do so is a vector in itself, always there, as a 'correction vector' If the models are physically proficient, then the processing of the models that employ those rules will emerge the barrier jets and the general retarding of warm fronts in warm seasons... And they do vastly better at these aspects than the old/early days of modeling, bring about lesser need to correct. But, anyway... I'm extolling .. I just mean to say that our geographical feed-back for imposing colder air and helping to retain it, is different than the virtue of latitude alone. And it matters... Because I have seen it pinging and ZR mixed many, many times at Bennington in VT down to the Capital District of eastern NYS while it is S+ in the Orh Hills... these feedbacks have a way of pulling the entire troposphere down ...and that means the growth region of the precipitating columns are still evacuating down into a critical thickness supporting snow so ... this matters... Particularly in these dubbed 'SW flow events'... In a winter that is dominated by cutters ... FIT snows more than ALB - or... it may show disproportionately so relative to climatology in comparing those two locations.

Mm... disagree a little .. and this may be subjective - granted. But, we sustained deep snow here in interior SNE for 45 some days prior to the big thaw at the end of that January. In the absolute value sense of it, that's a reasonably dated pack. Bit more conceptualizing: I recall venturing deep into the lawn pack and seeing stratification of layers at 36" inch totals when cutting into that veritable glaciar. Also in muse how that resembled avalanche theory having differential snow types and shearing plains ... That compaction between storms, like tree-rings, obviously has to have retention working with gravity. Now ...this doesn't discount the talking point, nor its significance in brow-raising factor, over 10 days of positive departures at the end of January '96 all but destroying it - total if it were not for snow piles in parking lots. There were in fact three cutters in that time frame, the last of which drove 60 F DP clear to the mid els of the White Mountains; particularly how it firehosed the pack down to just piles down here, too. It was aggravating for my own hang-up on challenging years to snow pack depth thing I get a kick out of ... I was thinking the sky was the limit that year ... but it all crumbled... well, 'melted' is apropos. Anyway, I think of bad retention - in the extreme sense - as bear ground between storms. 45 days of stilted pack with stratification records like sedimentary rock ...doesn't really earn a bad grade in all fairness. And obnoxious thaw, sure - but 'subjectively' for me that's something else. I have seen years where we got near average snow and had a pretty coherent impression in memory of not seeing a lot of persistently white ground.

It's precisely correct - imho that is... I've been op-ed writing theoretical missives on this site that exactly illustrated that propensity to behave that way for a couple few years. Really, there are hallmarks of this tendency going back 6 or even 8 years too - It's been a gradual onset... It's seasonally lagging winters into springs; it's triggering prolapse of winter patterns earlier than normal with cold pops and heavy frost, and packing pellet virga CAA events ...snow storms in November are almost 50% return rates. Anecdotal incoming: but that was rarely so inspiring in my youth, and I'm middle aged fwiw ... living in a new realm. Since 2000 some 2/3rds of the years have featured either, snow in the air, or snow supportive air mass transports to Chicago and Boston latitudes throughout Octobers and or Aprils and even Mays. And you are right ... the mid winters ...not always so successfully appealing.. I believe the reason has to do with gradient saturation .. I keep saying this, people need to start studying this shit ... I am not making this up!! ( not directing that urgency at you per se..). The Hadley Cell has expanded some 2 to 10 deg or latitude laterally outward, north and south of the Equator, ..strongly collocated in time with the observed global warming trends, since the late 1970s ( https://science2017.globalchange.gov/ ) ...it's all contained in there. Folks should really start reading and plumbing into that stuff because the traditional perspective of climate and seasonal modalities ... are becoming increasingly outmoded - But sorry I don't mean to preach to the quire...just sayn' As the HC expands...and here is the confusing aspect: The polar regions are warming ( particularly the north polar region(s) ) much faster than the equatorial regions in terms of scalar, measured temperature increases. But, the tropics absorb and express warming thermodynamically more readily because of diabatic physical modulation, ...which means...hypsometric expansion... for one. But, that also means that gradient increases as the balloon expands and encroaches on the mid latitudes. What happens when gradient increases in the geopotential depths? WIND Well... there has been a marked increase in ground-based velocity anomalies noted by airline traffic during this same time of expansion. It's all related... But, that is important because the x-coordinate velocities are beginning to exceed the stable Norwegian Model low scaffolding ( in the means...) so we are seeing a morphology in the distribution and typology of governing precipitation causes/ events... Having said all that ... I don't personally see how this stuff necessarily has to mean lower snow... either. Or even lacking cold for that matter. Maybe faster turn over between extremes - I could see that. I mean, yes the polar region is warming, but we're still talking -30C at 850s available to tap into in winters... I think what it is doing though is disrupting the storm orderliness - R-wave patterns are less able to remain stable...etc.. I see a lot more sheared out busted ravioli systems in the winter... Storms tend to move quicker too. But, that lack of orderliness ... that means by virtue one's winter is more open to buckshot odds... You almost want to land into a stable pattern like 1978, 1987, 1993, 1995 or 2004, ..2015 (fluke)... which almost made storms prebaked.. man those were great years .. I also agree with your ending comment - clearly as is the case with the GFS in particular, that model seems to just ignore the season altogether beyond D10 and rushes to Thanks Giving already. Pretty sure we are days away from a 300 hour Lake effect snow synoptic illustration on that thing

You know ...it's funny..the morning WPC current surface ob shows that front still has not moved more than ~ 50 miles from the same sun-up position and axis of orientation, since yesterday at dawn. We were right to assess the boundary as having difficulty intruding into SNE during yesterday. I thought the warm front might get to HFD and I don't think that actually verified - though close? In any case, what were the bulk shear values - I didn't look...bummer. But it is truly astounding just how gradiented rich the region was between BOS-LGA ( rough coordinates..) during the day yesterday ( thermodynamically...). ... then, to run a mid level jet perturbation over that gradient meant hell to pay... Weatherwiz I think should get some foresight credit for the clearing offering some diabatic assist to instability on the polarward side of the NW-SE orient frontal boundary. I think he mentioned that, but... I'm not sure which side of the boundary those supercells were riding... interesting. The thing is, the boundary was initially SW of the axis of SC tracks, and it was repositioned somewhere in CT during the late morning early afternoon... when the clearing took place - not sure which happened first. Was the warm sector clearing? Or was the ceiling saturation drying from the sun and then the sun warmed and mixed out the shallow air mass allowing the warm front to reposition - ... geeks paradise -

Yeah I was going to suggest a seiche wave effect too.

reminds me of what happened farther east last week -

There's no question the warm boundary is currently collocated with the 500 mb streamlines ... It makes sense that it may have unfolded to about HFD over to SW RI... It might have had a chance to get to the Pike but we also have cool air banked in; viscosity/local topographical effects that are impeding. Mentioned earlier... we deal with limiting factors endemic to this region... in that the higher els of the Berks tends to pool dense air and protect it once said pool has filled in ... I wouldn't even be surprised if there's some SW push as this air up here is getting cooler with this rain too -

Nah...that doesn't mean the warm front is through there... Side's WPC doesn't agree -

yeah...and in the defense of the world that exists outside my skull I do tend to come off heavy handed with principles of Met and that probably rubs folks the wrong way ... heh, gee ..ya think ? anyway if the sun comes out and can diabatically heat; that can aid in warm frontal leaps ... right on! However, part of that successful leaping means the DPs actually have to come with it. Without them, it's really just a lucky sunny interval in an otherwise cold butt plugged typical New England stew - which frankly, I'm inclined to think that's how this results... Also in that as we type, that line is plugging SE and will prooobaby ( I'm guessing ) denature the atmosphere to a swath of low clouds afterward. I can't wait until tomorrow... The NAM has 30 to 40% ceiling level RH over the region at 8am ...with offshore flow at 850s supporting about 83 F ... totally different day

Not sure that matters... Lot of posting about the sun. Okay, but it's not likely to be enough. This cool air mass is a thick anomaly... it needs two, June 21 sun disks in the sky to overcome lol

The present linear complex pressing quickly SE through upstate NY should put the k-bosh on this for good... It's got some pricey DBZ returns along the axis but nothing triggering warnings ... It clearly also is terminating into an overrunning synoptic plug with crumbled elevated convection kernels to offer pulses of heavier rain in side a light to moderate for a couple of hours. But I'm not even sure the western end of the line outside that shield is really in a warm sector... Anyway, it should cool the BL further and that's the ball-game

lol, you may be okay ...I added a sentence to that -

I would put the 850 mb warm boundary inside the gradient - because the boundary is not straight up and down ...it is sloped, such that that it terminates/escapes skyward above the respective sigma levels in the x-coordinate ...so, it is deeper over CT and entry into the boundary interface above that level over S Nh ...so the front is really bifurcating this image an angle - although ...wait...is that doing the depth of the column or is that an just the 850 slice... I may not be right - depends on the product orientation

Off -topic but this whole cold banking into Maine and SE Ontario around the SW arc of that seasonal anomaly whirling around up there, also indirectly conducting SPC's failure like a great maestro of a symphony called poor allocation of technological wherewithal ( heh ), it is all happening because of a faster than normal ambient wind energy in the hemispheric scope and scales. There's all kinds of mirror feedbacks popping up all over the planet like that. In this case the unusual ongoing subtle but real HC expansion is triggering lingered higher than normal jet velocities that have empirically been observed all over the NH during winters, carried over in smaller proportions but non-negligible during summer. Wave mechanics at super-synoptic scales then means that R-waves didn't get quite as lost in entropy as they normally would. One should simply not see this on a weather chart in the first week of September, when looking at 1800 through about 1982 reanalysis as one's template mean: I mean, they don't disappear altogether; we're talking about "approaching"? But that up there represents vast, deep constructive R-wave fed-back anomalies that are both x-y and z coordinate not supposed to happen when compared to the previous data mean suggestion - clearly something has changed. And, that is an assertion based upon persistence, too. This is a snapshot that is increasingly more common really since the super Nino of 1998 ended, albeit more noticeable with increasing frequency spanning the last 10 years. It's important to note because we are transition from the old guard to the new behavior norm with the GW stuff and many middle aged weather folks and enthusiast are defaulted to being the unfortunate inheritors of different spectrum of experiences, from 1960 through 1998, as as their guide. Anyway, this vortex up there, I watched it closely evolve since 10 days ago in the EPS and the operational version... as well as the GFS cluster. It really didn't set up like a typical synoptic progression. It's really like the atmosphere spontaneiously "gapped open" and then that space was defaulted into a low pressure node - it really appeared more so to be harmonic planetary vortex/R-wave ... ( pseudo " rogue" in the atmosphere ) that created this thing up there, more so than a cyclone maturing in the flow in the standard sense of the "Norwegian Model Low" NML. This is a result of a global warming as a wild op ed assertion that is guaranteed to role other Met eyes. But, you cannot drive 70 to 90 kt sustatain jet mechanics over the arc of the N. Pac into western Canada, without wave mechanics becoming more than neutralized at any time of year. Season is irrelevant ...it's about kinematics at that point... This is why we have been entertained by so many unusual CAA events in Octobers ... deep enough to send 'packing pellet' snow in the air, if not unusually early wet snow from synoptic events since this tendency of HC expansion began in the late 1990s and has advanced since ... intruding upon the lower Ferrel Cells latitude ... and the problem therein is that the boudnary between the HC and FC is amorphous...It's not like you put a ruler down on the 570 DM contour and assume away. The velocity is skewing the season end points. It's inducing 'fold over' trough nodes like this in autumns and in springs ( they are somewhat analog to hemispheric scaled Kelvin-Hemholtz waves). This needs a definitive empirical data fetch...but, I personally observed perhaps 5 autumn and/or springs with snow or snow-supporting atmospheres between 1970 and 1998 ... I have witness this 15 times since 2000, while all this HC and gradient saturation speed anomaly stuff become ever more evidence.