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Summer Doldrums Banter


Baroclinic Zone

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I'd like to see a classic CCB head.

 

Seems it's been a long time since a storm pivoted underneath us that had that solid pan-wide 30+DBz snowball.  There could be meso banding in there, but it just looks really uniform and everyone is S to S+.  

 

Seems for a decade or more it's been about who gets the band somewhere exceeding everyone else by 2 or 3 times the regional total.  

 

And that poster thinking it was the storm of the century of course... 

 

If it werent for that crazy convective band in CT, Feb 2013 would have been pretty close to what you describe. It was like 25-30 dbz outside the banding over like 80% of SNE, lol.

 

I feel like just about every major coastal storm has banding though...it's hard not to given the dynamics that surround a bombing coastal. I think we are also a lot more cognizant of the bands now since we follow it in so much more detail vs 20 years ago when you would have to wait for the weather channel local forecast to get a look at the radar. We also have a much denser network of snow reports and people posting pictures of snow depth on the internet.

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If it werent for that crazy convective band in CT, Feb 2013 would have been pretty close to what you describe. It was like 25-30 dbz outside the banding over like 80% of SNE, lol.

 

I feel like just about every major coastal storm has banding though...it's hard not to given the dynamics that surround a bombing coastal. I think we are also a lot more cognizant of the bands now since we follow it in so much more detail vs 20 years ago when you would have to wait for the weather channel local forecast to get a look at the radar. We also have a much denser network of snow reports and people posting pictures of snow depth on the internet.

Bingo.

 

I think it's a matter of perspective.

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Bingo.

 

I think it's a matter of perspective.

 

Speaking of being due...not just a dendrite death band we are due for, but also a classic 128 CF weenie band. We haven't had one of those in a while. Sometimes they come in bunches and other times it seems like we can't buy one. Recently, we can't buy one.

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Part of the issue is that when people say..."oh it's always west and north"...what defines that? When people say "well there goes GC to Dendrite with the death band..." half the time it's just west or north of those areas. So you need to be more geographically specific. Outside of ORH and BOS...I think people lump together large geographical areas as getting the same weather when in fact that isn't true. Then there is recent confirmation bias.

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Speaking of being due...not just a dendrite death band we are due for, but also a classic 128 CF weenie band. We haven't had one of those in a while. Sometimes they come in bunches and other times it seems like we can't buy one. Recently, we can't buy one.

 

That's what I said earlier. We are due for a 128 10-15" snow job...or at least a large part of it being wet, while it's uzi city here.

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Part of the issue is that when people say..."oh it's always west and north"...what defines that? When people say "well there goes GC to Dendrite with the death band..." half the time it's just west or north of those areas. So you need to be more geographically specific. Outside of ORH and BOS...I think people lump together large geographical areas as getting the same weather when in fact that isn't true. Then there is recent confirmation bias.

 

Yes, this is another good point. A death band might hit ALB like Christmas 2002...and the Berkshires only get the eastern edge of it...but that would get lumped in with the "death band always sets up out there" rhetoric, even though it didn't really set up over them. ORH got the eastern edge of the Feb 5, 2001 deathband, but it didn't set up right over us, so I wouldn't count that.

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I'm in their head like Belichick. Stealin' your plays and signs.

 

 

I think part of it too is that you got so many great SWFEs in that 2007-2009 period..."congrats dendrite"...lol. Esp that crazy 2007-2008 season.

 

So when you get smoked on a front end thump while they get 2" and flip to rain...to some people, that just lumps in with the rhetoric even though it isn't really relevant in the discussion of deathbands from coastal storms. Rather, SWFEs are merely a part of the climatology that has you averaging >70" per year...but it still causes the whiners to go postal. :lol:

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Speaking of being due...not just a dendrite death band we are due for, but also a classic 128 CF weenie band. We haven't had one of those in a while. Sometimes they come in bunches and other times it seems like we can't buy one. Recently, we can't buy one.

Wasn't there a New Years eve/day one a few years back?
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Speaking of being due...not just a dendrite death band we are due for, but also a classic 128 CF weenie band. We haven't had one of those in a while. Sometimes they come in bunches and other times it seems like we can't buy one. Recently, we can't buy one.

 

How about a foothills flattener.  Last one here was Feb. 22-23, 2009, which dumped 18" in 7.5 hr, easily the longest period of 2"+/hr accum I can recall.  Only the two big 1984 storms, Feb. 5-6 and March 14-15, events up north can compare, and my eletronics then did not include looking at the radar.  The most classic "yellow banana" I can remember seeing on radar came on Jan. 14, 2008.  It featured a classic arc running IZG-LEW-AUG and to the coast at Belfast.  Only lasted 5-6 hr but folks in the middle got 12-15" of 15:1 fluff, most during those 5-6.  My home was near the northern fringe and had 8" while 6 miles to my west Farmington got only 5.5", and near the Wilton line at FMH (where my wife was transported after getting rear-ended that day - she was OK) the total looked to be less than 4".

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Wasn't there a New Years eve/day one a few years back?

 

There was a redeveloping clipper on 12/31/08...I remember that one gave Sam (while he was still in Keene, NH) something like 9" of snow on 0.25 L.E.....definitely a little weenie fluff band.

 

But we haven't had a large coastal on New Years Eve/New Years Day recently.

 

There was also a smaller system on New Years Day in 2008 (that went almost norlun-esque into a solid warning crieria storm in NH/ME)...right after a SWFE on 12/30-31/07.

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Speaking of being due...not just a dendrite death band we are due for, but also a classic 128 CF weenie band. We haven't had one of those in a while. Sometimes they come in bunches and other times it seems like we can't buy one. Recently, we can't buy one.

We are, but I gave up mentioning it.

 

I think the drought ends this season.

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There was a redeveloping clipper on 12/31/08...I remember that one gave Sam (while he was still in Keene, NH) something like 9" of snow on 0.25 L.E.....definitely a little weenie fluff band.

 

But we haven't had a large coastal on New Years Eve/New Years Day recently.

 

There was also a smaller system on New Years Day in 2008 (that went almost norlun-esque into a solid warning crieria storm in NH/ME)...right after a SWFE on 12/30-31/07.

Yeah... can't recall the date...prob wasn't New Years... maybe some other holiday/long weekend thing that I thought smoked parts of that belt... 10 years back or so????

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I don't think it is entirely a matter of perspective, but I do agree that banding phenomenon is both unavoidable, and also more in the focus in recent years/events. 

 

Hell, out of my personal top 3 besties, Dec 1992, that was banded.. But that one may have been more shadowing/oreographic in a marginal atmosphere, when west of ridge lines that minuscule loss in lift was the difference between 35 cats pawing and 31 blue bomb of all times.  Later in that storm, about 2/3rds of the way through, there was a real cold insert either dynamically or draining, because we were in the teens the next day during wind-down phases..  I saw radar scope mid way through it, and the 30 dbz was very uniform over eastern Mass/RI and SE NH.  

 

Contrasting, purer banding scenarios that had less comma head and were much more frontogenic/meso in nature, was Dec 1996. There were a couple of flat but potent waves that brought TS to interior eastern zones, and quick 6 to 9ers.   Who can forget the ultimate band event, Dec 23, 1997.  First time in my life I ever saw 7.5" fall in a single hour.  Straight down snow, no wind, 0 visibility, ...zippo hyperbole.  It was truly like that with no overstate, period. I remember seeing 50 to 55 DBZ blinking returns (...maybe the weather channel?) and having ironically learned about bright banding just two weeks earlier in Radar...  I figured, wow, case in point... look at all that sleet?!

 

zomb!

 

There is a term in meteorology called "Comma Head" for a reason... That said, ...yeah, I agree, contained within there is more attention now being paid to banding, but the general strength of the comma head region is usually governed by overall intersecting jet mechanics, and in reality... you most likely cannot have a comma head without some banding, but the two are not necessarily connected.  

 

quick search.. .here's a great example of a well developed comma head, where everyone in the range is getting choking snow, but a particularly intense embedded band is there that is utterly asphyxiating.

 

comma-head-with-heavy-snow.jpg

 

Contrasting...here is an example where the overall snowball of the comma head is a bit weaker, and there is likely to be bigger variations of snowfall totals in striated banding...

 

3775908_orig.png

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There was a redeveloping clipper on 12/31/08...I remember that one gave Sam (while he was still in Keene, NH) something like 9" of snow on 0.25 L.E.....definitely a little weenie fluff band.

 

But we haven't had a large coastal on New Years Eve/New Years Day recently.

 

There was also a smaller system on New Years Day in 2008 (that went almost norlun-esque into a solid warning crieria storm in NH/ME)...right after a SWFE on 12/30-31/07.

12/21/08 was my last great episode of naked twister.

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John, the beginning of the big Jan blizzard had S+ in a large area. It wasn't until morning when the storm occluded that we started getting some banded looks along with subby zones.It's tough to tell in the first image, if that is in the process of maturing or occluding.

 

It's kind of like a major snow storm forecast should be worded like:

 

"snow ...increasing in intensity for everyone and a general 10" should be expected, followed by 6 hours of shredding where a few people in unknown bands will get another 6" .  Total accumulations thus 10 to 16 inches."

 

something like that.  Pretty sure they do that anyway, just sayin'

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