Boston Bulldog

Kinda meh in Boston

Had the privilege to hop around New England this past weekend to sample the Mid-January snowpack in various locations of NNE and CNE. We began with a Saturday morning in Pinkham Notch. Dreams of a high alpine romp along the eastern ravines of Mt. Washington were quashed early Friday morning as MWAC issued a Considerable avalanche risk for the zone, citing highly reactive slabs present across all easterly aspects. This elevated rating persisted into Saturday, and with new snow loading on the slabs it was clear the snowpack would be touchy. Nevertheless we decided to poke around the zone, test the snowpack in safe locations, and make a judgement call from there. Honestly I knew it was unlikely we would successfully push into the alpine, but saw value in dusting off avalanche safety protocols in preparation for future missions. Arriving at the base of Hillman's Highway we were greeted by hollow "whoomphing" beneath our skins, likely emitting from buried crust collapsing onto further buried layers. This was a sign that not only could a slide occur up high, but it could step down and release older weak layers deeper in the snowpack, generating a much larger avalanche. My party dug a pit, found reactivity, and turned around - opting for a scratchy but safe run down the Sherb. Good thing we turned around when we did. Just to the north Tuckerman Ravine came alive at around the same time, ripping a large natural slide under Chute which stepped across multiple weak layers... exactly what we were worried about. Our backup plan was to investigate the Gulf of Slides, hoping that the SE aspect was shielded from slab formation. Unfortunately Main Gully looked spooky and unskied despite several groups in the area. We backed off once again, this time enjoying a much softer ski on the dynamic GoS trail as a consolation prize. Later in the day the Gulf of Slides underwent a small natural Avy cycle, once again reaffirming our decision making. With the high alpine of the Presidentials a no-go, next up was an even more dangerous endeavor: Killington on MLK weekend Sunday. Ropes dropped for the season on the top pitch of Devil's Fiddle, offering boot top powder and pillowy drops through saplings - a welcome reprieve from the human slalom taking place elsewhere at The Beast. Solitude could be found on Monday. A favorite stash of mine, bathed in views of one of NH's most underrated monadnocks, brought some low angle powder turns (and steeper loud powder) just off the Interstate. A moment of bliss before I too had to join the holiday traffic conga line south back into the flatlands.

ALY radar is quite surprising. That burst of moderate to heavy over the capital district into SVT was poorly modeled

It didn’t initialize correct at all with the first batch or upstream radar

Dumping at Killington. This initial batch got a bit farther north than modeled

The aggregate trend over the past 24 hours is still really solid. Needs more work, but fast forward from 6z yesterday I’m sure most would take where we are currently

Man there is going to be an absolutely zonked NAM run within the next 48-72 hours or so

Longitudinal trends on this will be driven by trough dynamics rather than downstream features

Brief burst of snow in Central NH. Flipped back to plain rain in New London. 32.9

If it happens, it will not happen like that

LBSW

The cold trend continues at 0Z tonight for Saturday night. Net gainer for NNE at this point thanks to the emerging front ender. Don’t look at the cracked out NAM coastal run however, that seems like too much to ask for

Snow globe shaken in Boston. Big fluffy flakes floating upwards by the office window

Great to have your obs from the middle of the Upper Valley radar hole! Probably the worst area of radar coverage in a New England region of considerable population

Very dramatic difference

Paul operates on a different level than most. Was lucky enough to lead write a couple papers in collaboration with him... let's be honest the concept and research was fully driven by his vision. Come in with a question, and he'd counter back with ideas bouncing off the walls and 5 PhD disseration level questions

My advisor from graduate school has a fantastic visualizer of the seasonal cycle of the MJO its associated rossby wave patterns. Very easy to see the troughing over the eastern CONUS in Phase 7 out to day 30: https://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/roundy/waves/rmmcyc/index200reg.html

Yeah that failed handoff is really weird and kinda implausible. The atmosphere likes to stray towards efficient energy conservation, the ping ponging of strengthening between the primary and coastal reflection doesn’t really reflect that principle. I would err towards the primary remaining the more cohesive entity given the modeled dynamics, at least for what the 0Z GFS spits out

Can’t let this cyclone get wound up even a tad or it will cut. However if it gets shredded up into a SWFE, the weekend system is going to set up an intense boundary somewhere. North of that boundary will snow. A warm outcome is still the most likely path forward IMO given pattern fundamentals, but can’t deny the trends today as we emerge into a new time-scale paradigm for the period. It’s no longer looking like a huge ask to turn the tide here, at least for NNE

0Z GFS continues the trend big time with a SFWE look that halts the warm front’s advance northward. Good to see deterministic guidance showing a cold look is possible.

Interesting trend with the warm system late next week. Some OP runs had clean warm sectoring up to the St Lawrence Valley, now the mix line has collapsed substantially south. Honestly I was initially hoping for this thaw to be potent enough to open up a window of soft snow in the Presidentials alpine next weekend. If it's going to get warm, why not prime up some big mountain terrain? Suddenly dreams of spring skiing under gusty SW winds have shifted back to winter mode with hopes of salvaging surfaces on VT honey holes. If we continue to trend to a more forceful push of colder air undercutting the ridge, a decent front ender could be possible OR the longitudinal gradient sags south during the storm (if we have a weaker cyclone and more overrunning look). I'm not declaring an early Feb 2022 like event which neutralized a warm longwave pattern in the Greens, but the plausibility of colder solutions is better than it was yesterday. Either way, I hope the pattern goes all in on either a quick and clean warm spell next weekend, or somehow keeps hammering the cold trend. Getting stuck in the middle seems like a very undesireable scenario

Data error for the Mansfield stake? Reading is down to 29”

Both Feb 2013 and Jan 2015 were modeled to have some sort of stall and loop. While the stalls never materialized, even if they took place the 50” spots would be extremely localized. You’d need to maximize both the initial extreme banding (i.e what was over CT in Feb ‘13) and a CCB type element of the storm, and THEN cash in on the stall via some sort of deformation or decaying mid level banding training over a thin slice of longitude amid what would likely be a shredded occluded mess of a precip shield. Like Will said, for a storm with more widespread biblical totals you’d need a predecessor phase of the event like the overrunnning he mentioned.

Just drove from Greenwich CT to Port Washington on LI over the past 90 mins or so, and the results are excellent for SNE weenies on the NE edge. It was absolutely dumping in CT and Westchester. Approaching the Bronx, the distinct sound of rimed flakes appeared, it was clear warm nose is ferocious and ripping north. By the time I reached the Throgs Neck Bridge, it was all sleet. While planning the drive I only expected a hint of sleet by the time I reached my destination. The forecast is going to bust big time down here. This dead duck is going to come in well north

Gotta wonder how much of the NE edge is virga. Extremely skeptical of those accums in NH. North-south valleys such as the Pioneer Valley may even have some issues too. Extremely cold dry air is going to be advected directly down valley and into the low levels. There are likely to be some maddening discrepancies between radar and reality