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January 20-? Cold snap


Ottawa Blizzard

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Well you're seeing the same intensity of cold but that mid-month mild week pushed 2014 out of the running for 1994-style means in Ontario. The Chicago list is very closely correlated to Toronto (city) in the pre-YYZ years so as we pass some of those at ORD you can estimate how Toronto is doing longer-term. I will speculate the final value at YYZ will be --9.6 C. It will then edge out 2004.

 

I certainly recall the depth of the cold in Jan 1977, the extremes were not that impressive but the lack of any really mild days was noteworthy, like Jan 1918 from the records (I am not that old). What's coming to the Midwest next week will probably be very similar to the Jan 1857 blast of sub-zero (F) daytime temperatures in a strong NW flow. You don't mention Jan 1970 or 1971 above, I'm guessing they were probably close behind 1982, also 1984 had a cold January I recall.

Roger, have you ever read David Ludlum's "Early American Winters"? Fascinating stuff. We're wimps today. back then people had to suffer through cold like this without central heating...and yet decided to stay and make a life. Then again, in an age before air travel, they had no choice.

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12z GFS...only -25 to -30. Again for Tuesday morning.

 

attachicon.gif12z gfs 2m temps 72 hours.gif

I wonder if Toronto can get its coldest reading of the year on Tuesday or Wednesday morning given we'll have some fresh snow cover. Wouldn't mind registering -15F on my thermometer just to say I did. That's my record coldest reading, dating from January 1999.

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Roger, have you ever read David Ludlum's "Early American Winters"? Fascinating stuff. We're wimps today. back then people had to suffer through cold like this without central heating...and yet decided to stay and make a life. Then again, in an age before air travel, they had no choice.

 

Yep, I have read that, in fact my home here is overflowing with ancient weather data from whatever sources I can find. This was once discussed in the former Eastern Wx forum days, but I have a journal from Providence RI covering about 1830 to 1840 that extends my Toronto data (I have the old books pre-internet in Fahr too), also I have some daily records from Marietta OH that include years from 1818 to 1822, and a journal from Fort Dearborn (Detroit) from 1782 to 1787. That one has three-times daily temperatures only. Jan 1784 was definitely colder than this winter but most of the others in that stretch were similar to the range we see nowadays. You always have to wonder about exposure in these very old records but you can estimate accuracy from air-mass clustering analysis and I consider the sources I have listed here to be pretty well exposed and screened.

 

A former colleague and friend had some data from St Louis for the 1820s and I think there were some readings similar to what's being predicted this week in Feb of 1825 IIRC but I don't have those in my possession.

 

My take on "climate change" is that the 19th century in general just had a more southerly mean position for the jet stream over North America, less anomalous for Europe, and this could be related to the northward drift of the North Magnetic Pole all through the period from 1830 to now. Not saying that's the only factor in play, but let's face it, if we always had the jet where it was in summer 2009 or this past month, we would have the climate of the 19th century, greenhouse gases may modify the temperature profiles slightly but air mass influence on climate is about 90% of the variability and local feedback the other 10%.

 

This point is perhaps more obvious if you look at the spring and autumn climates which have changed more than winters or summers. The older version of April and October normals is quite different from modern times. I would imagine that in pioneer days, it was quite expected that the growing season would be shorter than now, trees would not be blooming in April but in May, and leaves would be falling quite rapidly in late September not all through October into November. A warm Indian summer must have been a real anomaly and summery episodes in March or April were almost unknown, which sort of makes 1842 all the more unusual (Toronto's highest daily max of 90 F was in April 1842, not sure if it has been recently beaten but I seem to recall that it was not quite broken in 1990).

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lol, it does. Wow. But what was it...like 20 degrees too cold here for the early Jan outbreak?

 

 

Yeah, and it was because it was painting an ideal radiational cooling setup which didn't materialize.  With the cold airmass, old snowpack and what will be new fresh snow, I think extreme readings are in play if ideal radiational cooling occurs and winds can drop to 5 mph or less.

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I do recall in early December some guidance coming up short with projected lows at night....nearly hourly I would watch the P&C try to play catch up as temps kept dropping....not pointing fingers ... just supporting the notion that many are alluding to on how crucial timing and placement of things will be for optimal radiational cooling compared to medium/short range guidance

 

edit:  during the arctic outbreak in early december specifically

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From what I can tell, the 12z Euro looks a bit more favorable here on Tuesday morning.  The 12z run has a piece of the surface high in southern IL/IN at 12z Tue.

If that happens, then -20 is on the table for much of the LOT CWA outside downtown Chicago. If the MOS shows winds less than 9 kts, that will be key, because the MOS does better than raw model wind output in cases where radiational cooling is anticipated. If cloud cover continues to not be an issue, I'll use the 1/16/09 case as an analog for wind speeds, which were 5-8 kts across northern IL. Interesting that the Euro and GEM both trended more favorable with the ridge position for Tuesday AM.

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Looks like the 12z GGEM is a little quicker with the ridge axis...really drops the hammer here on Tuesday morning.

lol, it does. Wow. But what was it...like 20 degrees too cold here for the early Jan outbreak?

It was. The only day it handled it well was the cold on the Friday before the arctic outbreak. It was the only one that nailed it.

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If that happens, then -20 is on the table for much of the LOT CWA outside downtown Chicago. If the MOS shows winds less than 9 kts, that will be key, because the MOS does better than raw model wind output in cases where radiational cooling is anticipated. If cloud cover continues to not be an issue, I'll use the 1/16/09 case as an analog for wind speeds, which were 5-8 kts across northern IL. Interesting that the Euro and GEM both trended more favorable with the ridge position for Tuesday AM.

 

Honestly, I'll take the extreme cold instead of the relentless wind.

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12z GFS MOS for ORD...

 KORD   GFSX MOS GUIDANCE   1/25/2014  1200 UTC                       
 FHR  24  36| 48  60| 72  84| 96 108|120 132|144 156|168 180|192      
      SUN 26| MON 27| TUE 28| WED 29| THU 30| FRI 31| SAT 01|SUN CLIMO
 N/X   2  28|-10 -10|-20  -6|-11  16| 14  22| -1  10|  7  23|  8 15 31
 TMP   8  23| -5 -12|-17  -6| -6  15| 18  17|  1   9| 10  19| 11      
 DPT   3  10|-13 -19|-26 -17|-13   4| 10   7| -8  -1|  4  10|  4      
 CLD  OV  OV| OV  PC| CL  PC| CL  CL| OV  OV| PC  PC| OV  OV| OV      
 WND  14  16| 22  16| 13  13| 11  19| 23  13| 12  12| 10  10|  9      
 P12  67  49|  5   8|  6   3|  0   3| 27  36| 16  14| 43  24| 22 25 24
 P24      77|      8|      9|      3|     36|     17|     43|       36
 Q12   1   1|  0   0|  0   0|  0   0|  0   1|  0   0|       |         
 Q24       1|      0|      0|      0|      1|      0|       |         
 T12   0   1|  1   0|  0   0|  0   0|  4   2|  1   1|  1   3|  1      
 T24        |  5    |  1    |  1    |  6    |  4    |  1    |  3      
 PZP   2   1|  2   1|  2   2|  3   2|  3   2|  4   4|  7   4|  5      
 PSN  98  99| 98  98| 97  97| 95  96| 94  94| 85  87| 76  87| 80      
 PRS   0   0|  0   0|  1   1|  1   1|  1   2|  3   3|  6   3|  5      
 TYP   S   S|  S   S|  S   S|  S   S|  S   S|  S   S|  S   S|  S      
 SNW       4|      0|      0|      0|      1|      0|       |         
                                                                 
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