Winter 2016/2017 because its never too early

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

There isn't a poster here that doesn't like/want a massive ice storm. Man are we overdue for one

 

I had one of the worst ones ever less than 8 years ago. Definitely not due for one.

[Damage In Tolland]

7 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

I had one of the worst ones ever less than 8 years ago. Definitely not due for one.

Only your small area in ORH county into SNH..As a region we are way overdue..Just like a cane hit

[CoastalWx]

NE MA and central MA had quite the icestorm. The damaging ones do not happen all that often. My guess is the return rate for >0.5" accretion in those areas may be greater than the return rate for a CAT I hurricane. We do get a fair share of storms with up to .25" accretion or so it seems.

[ORH_wxman]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

NE MA and central MA had quite the icestorm. The damaging ones do not happen all that often. My guess is the return rate for >0.5" accretion in those areas may be greater than the return rate for a CAT I hurricane. We do get a fair share of storms with up to .25" accretion or so it seems.

 

0.5" is hard to get. We might have breached it in Feb 1995. Probably came close in November 2002 and March 2007. But I'm not sure they actually exceeded or even reached 0.5"...probably not.

 

[CoastalWx]

Just now, ORH_wxman said:

 

0.5" is hard to get. We might have breached it in Feb 1995. Probably came close in November 2002 and March 2007. But I'm not sure they actually exceeded or even reached 0.5"...probably not.

 

  Feb 1995 is definitely the worst I saw. No real damage other than some weak limbs, but it was impressive to this guy. I was in Brockton at the time. It stayed rather icy on the trees for a couple of days after as well. 

 

  

[Typhoon Tip]

32 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

There isn't a poster here that doesn't like/want a massive ice storm. Man are we overdue for one

...heehhh... okay... 

my post was a blatent troll attack on snow lovers though (on purpose, cause i felt like bein' a dyck); most specifically, how there is a kind of 'assumption' ...if not 'entitlement' to snow around this sub-forum.

one of my personal druthers anywhere in the dealings of human kind, is watching a entitled people choke on the cake they think they automatically deserve.  so... in this paradigm, choke on a cold, high precipitation winter with almost no snow - muah hahahahaha.  'course, we can get that from rain-freeze-rain freezers too.

but in terms of legit conversation, i don't have any idea what the return rate/redux timing is on major icing events.  seems to me we just had a big one back in 2007, though restricted to a relatively small area despite being fairly severe.  then, back in 1998 there was a real whopper spread out over a region the size of nearly texas across southern ontario/quebec, extending down into N, and some parts of C NE. 

that storm was tough to watch too.. we were in the midst of gosh-foresaken hades hate of a winter that year, and that thing comes down and taunts and teases but doesn't get S of CON NH seemingly on purpose.   ...fuggin' beyotch

my own hypocrisy knows no bounds, too - hahaha.  because though i have opined in the past, my loathing ice storms, and that is primary true... in a winter such as that, with an utter dearth of anything remotely interesting meteorologically, ..the soul so yearned as to actually covet losing power in a general grid panic to serve as one's hopeful salvation.

i suppose from a purely scientific perspective, ice storms should be fascinating ... and they are - really.  but, standing their in the dark realizing just how much of everything in modern identifiable power driven reality is co- dependent, utterly functionally-prerequisite on the electricity being in that moment no longer available .. the novelty runs out faster than the time it would take to make toast.  '...oh, wait... can't do that either'

 

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

  Feb 1995 is definitely the worst I saw. No real damage other than some weak limbs, but it was impressive to this guy. I was in Brockton at the time. It stayed rather icy on the trees for a couple of days after as well. 

 

  

Big ice that close to the coast is really tough.

 

You probably have to go back to the November 1921 ice storm to find legit crippling ice in Boston. There was a huge ice storm in ORH in December 1964 (probably a little less than the 2008 ice storm) but it was definitely rain on the coast.

 

There was pretty good ice close to the coast in January 1978 (about a week before the big snowstorm that month) but I'm not sure if Boston itself got a lot. LI got hammered and probably at least the BOS suburbs for a time.

 

Then of course, the massive December 1973 ice storm that really hit a lot of SNE hard...the huge ice got pretty close to BOS uin that but the city itself was largely spared. But I remember reading how places like Arlington got crushed.

[ORH_wxman]

4 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

...heehhh... okay... 

my post was a blatent troll attack on snow lovers though (on purpose, cause i felt like bein' a dyck); most specifically, how there is a kind of 'assumption' ...if not 'entitlement' to snow around this sub-forum.

one of my personal druthers anywhere in the dealings of human kind, is watching a entitled people choke on the cake they think they automatically deserve.  so... in this paradigm, choke on a cold, high precipitation winter with almost no snow - muah hahahahaha.  'course, we can get that from rain-freeze-rain freezers too.

but in terms of legit conversation, i don't have any idea what the return rate/redux timing is on major icing events.  seems to me we just had a big one back in 2007, though restricted to a relatively small area despite being fairly severe.  then, back in 1998 there was a real whopper spread out over a region the size of nearly texas across southern ontario/quebec, extending down into N, and some parts of C NE. 

that storm was tough to watch too.. we were in the midst of gosh-foresaken hades hate of a winter that year, and that thing comes down and taunts and teases but doesn't get S of CON NH seemingly on purpose.   ...fuggin' beyotch

my own hypocrisy knows no bounds, too - hahaha.  because though i have opined in the past, my loathing ice storms, and that is primary true... in a winter such as that, with an utter dearth of anything remotely interesting meteorologically, ..the soul so yearned as to actually covet losing power in a general grid panic to serve as one's hopeful salvation.

i suppose from a purely scientific perspective, ice storms should be fascinating ... and they are - really.  but, standing their in the dark realizing just how much of everything in modern identifiable power driven reality is co- dependent, utterly functionally-prerequisite on the electricity being in that moment no longer available .. the novelty runs out faster than the time it would take to make toast.  '...oh, wait... can't do that either'

 

 

After about day 2 without power in the 2008 ice storm, it got pretty old. Luckily I was only without power for 3 days...the perks of being inside the city limit of ORH. They will make the city a priority over the rural towns. Not sure it would have been worth it had I been one of those unlucky shmoes out in a town like Princeton that was without power for 10-12 days.

 

The event itself was something I'll never forget though...you could hear the sheer power of it (meaning the shear power of ice itself) that night with the non-stop shotgun blasts. It literally sounded like a firing range at 3 in the morning...kind of eerie too with the transformer flashes going off too which I mistook for lightning a few times. It was a bit of a reminder how helpless we would be should the weather conspire a little further to produce that type of storm over a larger region of populous interior E MA/RI/CT and perhaps last twice as long.

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

Big ice that close to the coast is really tough.

 

You probably have to go back to the November 1921 ice storm to find legit crippling ice in Boston. There was a huge ice storm in ORH in December 1964 (probably a little less than the 2008 ice storm) but it was definitely rain on the coast.

 

There was pretty good ice close to the coast in January 1978 (about a week before the big snowstorm that month) but I'm not sure if Boston itself got a lot. LI got hammered and probably at least the BOS suburbs for a time.

 

Then of course, the massive December 1973 ice storm that really hit a lot of SNE hard...the huge ice got pretty close to BOS uin that but the city itself was largely spared. But I remember reading how places like Arlington got crushed.

The Hingham COOP mentioned this. Apparently it got Weymouth and Braintree with some damage, but just east was spared. Sounded like there was a CF stalled for a time nearby. 

 

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/orders/IPS/IPS-0520297E-2042-40EF-A8FC-5702403C5115.pdf

[Baroclinic Zone]

I have no idea how any of you recall how much snow was OTG on any specific day.

[tamarack]

29 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

There isn't a poster here that doesn't like/want a massive ice storm. Man are we overdue for one

Probably not since Dec 1973, though the Octobomb was a good surrogate.  

While I would put the ice storms of 1953 (NNJ) and 1998 in my top-10 most memorable wx events, the latter top-3, I do not wish for a repeat.  This is one place where my vocation outweighs my weenie-ism.

that storm was tough to watch too.. we were in the midst of gosh-foresaken hades hate of a winter that year, and that thing comes down and taunts and teases but doesn't get S of CON NH seemingly on purpose.   ...fuggin' beyotch

That event had one of the most interesting "layering", latitudinal and in some places elevational, of any I've experienced.  The NYC area had 60s with modest RA, SNE got a 30s-40s downpour, the S end of NNE had mix'n'mess with little damage, a bit farther north was forest destruction on a monstrous scale (with the colder sections like the Maine foothills escaping with mostly IP), and N.Maine had 20-27" of dense snowfall over a 5-day period of near-constant accumulation with temps mainly teens.  The elevational effect was most pronounced in the Whites, where BML had rain, MWN had rain and set a new Jan high temp record, and places in the 1700'-2500' range got obliterated.

 

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

The Hingham COOP mentioned this. Apparently it got Weymouth and Braintree with some damage, but just east was spared. Sounded like there was a CF stalled for a time nearby. 

 

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/orders/IPS/IPS-0520297E-2042-40EF-A8FC-5702403C5115.pdf

 

I love those old coop notes. That's great. I bet a town like Randolph got hit really hard in that Jan '78 ice event.

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

I have no idea how any of you recall how much snow was OTG on any specific day.

It was my first real white Christmas that I could recall and a deep one at that. Was a crisp 10F too as I opened gifts. A weenie remembers.

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Probably not since Dec 1973, though the Octobomb was a good surrogate.  

While I would put the ice storms of 1953 (NNJ) and 1998 in my top-10 most memorable wx events, the latter top-3, I do not wish for a repeat.  This is one place where my vocation outweighs my weenie-ism.

that storm was tough to watch too.. we were in the midst of gosh-foresaken hades hate of a winter that year, and that thing comes down and taunts and teases but doesn't get S of CON NH seemingly on purpose.   ...fuggin' beyotch

That event had one of the most interesting "layering", latitudinal and in some places elevational, of any I've experienced.  The NYC area had 60s with modest RA, SNE got a 30s-40s downpour, the S end of NNE had mix'n'mess with little damage, a bit farther north was forest destruction on a monstrous scale (with the colder sections like the Maine foothills escaping with mostly IP), and N.Maine had 20-27" of dense snowfall over a 5-day period of near-constant accumulation with temps mainly teens.  The elevational effect was most pronounced in the Whites, where BML had rain, MWN had rain and set a new Jan high temp record, and places in the 1700'-2500' range got obliterated.

 

 

The January 1998 ice storm did get into ORH hills for a time. I remember for about 36 hours we had marginal icing as the sfc front was able to sag further south for that time. It did cause a noticeable glaze on the trees with drooping of the limbs, but probably never reached a quarter inch of icing...obviously just a nuisance compared to what happened up north.

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

I love those old coop notes. That's great. I bet a town like Randolph got hit really hard in that Jan '78 ice event.

He's got some incedible details. I know it's not local to you..but you should check out some of the big events there. Since he was the lead observer at Blue Hill...I'm not surprised at the details..lol. 

[CoastalWx]

Wachusettt had big ice in Jan 1998. That was the last place open for skiing....and where I almost died.      All other places that I tried were closed.

[Baroclinic Zone]

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

It was my first real white Christmas that I could recall and a deep one at that. Was a crisp 10F too as I opened gifts. A weenie remembers.

I don't recall/remember a damn thing that specific weather related.  That would occupy way too much of my brain.  

[ORH_wxman]

Just now, Baroclinic Zone said:

I don't recall/remember a damn thing that specific weather related.  That would occupy way too much of my brain.  

 

Code for Bob was too busy doing keg stands that winter...

[tamarack]

8 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

The January 1998 ice storm did get into ORH hills for a time. I remember for about 36 hours we had marginal icing as the sfc front was able to sag further south for that time. It did cause a noticeable glaze on the trees with drooping of the limbs, but probably never reached a quarter inch of icing...obviously just a nuisance compared to what happened up north.

That's about what much of York County had in '98, and the midcoast near tidewater about the same - the "mix'n'mess" area.  Not surprising that the ORH hills' elevation gave them similar effect as farther north.

[tamarack]

4 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

I don't recall/remember a damn thing that specific weather related.  That would occupy way too much of my brain.  

Plenty of sources to find that stuff, if one cares.   I've always used wx events as a memory key - recall the wx, recall what else was going on.  But then my "UIQ" (useless information quotient) is greater than most.

[CapturedNature]

11 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

After about day 2 without power in the 2008 ice storm, it got pretty old. Luckily I was only without power for 3 days...the perks of being inside the city limit of ORH. They will make the city a priority over the rural towns. Not sure it would have been worth it had I been one of those unlucky shmoes out in a town like Princeton that was without power for 10-12 days.

 

The event itself was something I'll never forget though...you could hear the sheer power of it (meaning the shear power of ice itself) that night with the non-stop shotgun blasts. It literally sounded like a firing range at 3 in the morning...kind of eerie too with the transformer flashes going off too which I mistook for lightning a few times. It was a bit of a reminder how helpless we would be should the weather conspire a little further to produce that type of storm over a larger region of populous interior E MA/RI/CT and perhaps last twice as long.

Sounds like October '11 here.  I'll never forget that night and how it sounded.

Speaking of ice storms, the description of the transformer flashes reminded me of my stay in Montreal during the 1998 ice storm.  I remember looking out from my hotel at the dark city and just watching these flashes of light going off in different places.  It looked like a war zone and continued the next day.  We were trapped on the island for three days as they closed all the bridges and the tunnel because of falling ice.  I think the border was closed too because of the emergency because we had to wait for some reason.  In any event, we walked around and every once and a while you'd hear this whooshing sound and everyone would run for covered places as these large sheets of ice came tumbling off the skyscrapers. 

The ice was unreal thick.  People were using axes to chip away at the ice on their cars but by that point it just seemed "normal" as my friend just commented "well, there's something you don't see every day" and it didn't hit me as to how strange it was to see a guy standing on his car swinging an axe.

[CapturedNature]

1 minute ago, tamarack said:

Plenty of sources to find that stuff, if one cares.   I've always used wx events as a memory key - recall the wx, recall what else was going on.  But then my "UIQ" (useless information quotient) is greater than most.

I remember reading a study once that showed that people who lived in the north had better memory of events than people in places like Florida because we have seasons and storms to place events relatively by.  Down there it always looks the same so there is nothing to place an event relative to.

[powderfreak]

55 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Tallest snowpack for 12/25 here is 14" in 2008 - was 17" the day before but a (lower case) Grinch - upper 30s with -RA - knocked it down a bit.  Had about the same in NNJ on 12/25/66, the day after about 15" with thunder.  Tops at Farmington co-op is 44" in 1970.  That's probably 18" more than for any Christmas at Fort Kent; tops there is probably mid-20s in 1983 (data is elsewhere atm.)  It's also 18" higher than the co-op's #2, 26" in both 1972 and 1995.  In about 75 years of record (snow depth data is hit-or-miss 1941-65, absent before '41), they've had 20"+ on 12/25 only 6 times.

By far my best Christmas was 2002 when 21.6" fell at KALB.

We had pretty much no snow on the ground and grass showing at like 11am on December 25, 2002 and had like 18" on the ground by 11pm.  That evening had a 3-5"/hr deform band which was any snow weenie's Christmas Dream.

December 26, 2002 at my childhood home.

 

Then like 9 days later we got another 20" and between Dec 25 - Jan 4 2003 we had received near 50" of snow in those 10 days.  Unfortunately there was a mild or mixed event in there somewhere I think so the snowpack was settled a bit.  But still that was an impressive set of back-to-back storms for the Hudson Valley.

[Baroclinic Zone]

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

Code for Bob was too busy doing keg stands that winter...

Good point.  I would have been home for Christmas break.

[powderfreak]

22 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

After about day 2 without power in the 2008 ice storm, it got pretty old. Luckily I was only without power for 3 days...the perks of being inside the city limit of ORH. They will make the city a priority over the rural towns. Not sure it would have been worth it had I been one of those unlucky shmoes out in a town like Princeton that was without power for 10-12 days.

The event itself was something I'll never forget though...you could hear the sheer power of it (meaning the shear power of ice itself) that night with the non-stop shotgun blasts. It literally sounded like a firing range at 3 in the morning...kind of eerie too with the transformer flashes going off too which I mistook for lightning a few times. It was a bit of a reminder how helpless we would be should the weather conspire a little further to produce that type of storm over a larger region of populous interior E MA/RI/CT and perhaps last twice as long.

I don't know who took this photo but I've got it labeled as up at the ORH Airport following that 2008 ice storm.

This photo still blows my mind.

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Good point.  I would have been home for Christmas break.

 

I'm just messing anyway, lol...I do get a lot of strange looks from people when I recite exact dates of storms. Even other mets sometimes.

[Baroclinic Zone]

And to Kevin's point, no way in hell would I even want a severe ice storm, not that I would ever see one given my location.  They are just too destructive/disruptive to society.

[ORH_wxman]

3 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I don't know who took this photo but I've got it labeled as up at the ORH Airport following that 2008 ice storm.

This photo still blows my mind.

 

That was taken by meteotrade (Dan Leonard) back when he still lived in ORH.

[ORH_wxman]

8 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

By far my best Christmas was 2002 when 21.6" fell at KALB.

We had pretty much no snow on the ground and grass showing at like 11am on December 25, 2002 and had like 18" on the ground by 11pm.  That evening had a 3-5"/hr deform band which was any snow weenie's Christmas Dream.

December 26, 2002 at my childhood home.

 

 

Then like 9 days later we got another 20" and between Dec 25 - Jan 4 2003 we had received near 50" of snow in those 10 days.  Unfortunately there was a mild or mixed event in there somewhere I think so the snowpack was settled a bit.  But still that was an impressive set of back-to-back storms for the Hudson Valley.

 

 

That was one of the best snow packs I saw in Ithaca, NY too when I was at college...I actually experienced the January 3-4, 2003 storm there as I was taking a winter session class. I had driven through the mix event you referenced on New Years day...nasty ice out in the elevations of Chenango and Broome counties before descending into Ithaca to a cold rain...but it quickly changed to a scalp-fest and then eventually a burst of heavy snow before ending. We had about 3" of sleet/snow to finish that one there and then we got 15" of synoptic snow from the 1/3-4 storm. They didn't do nearly as well as ALB in Christmas 2002, but it looked like they had about 6-7" OTG when I arrived on New Years day.

[powderfreak]

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

That was one of the best snow packs I saw in Ithaca, NY too when I was at college...I actually experienced the January 3-4, 2003 storm there as I was taking a winter session class. I had driven through the mix event you referenced on New Years day...nasty ice out in the elevations of Chenango and Broome counties before descending into Ithaca to a cold rain...but it quickly changed to a scalp-fest and then eventually a burst of heavy snow before ending. We had about 3" of sleet/snow to finish that one there and then we got 15" of synoptic snow from the 1/3-4 storm. They didn't do nearly as well as ALB in Christmas 2002, but it looked like they had about 6-7" OTG when I arrived on New Years day.

That was probably the best 1 year period of my life for big snowstorms.  Sort of like the "golden year" for the interior snowstorms... between leaving high school at ALB in 2003 and starting up at UVM in BTV in December 2003,  I witnessed 4 18"+ events. 

We had the 50" in 10 days at ALB period, and then December 2003 was massive in northern VT with the mountains seeing 100+" (Jay Peak Coop had like 80-90" in a week but take that for what its worth at Jay) and BTV had 55-60" including 2 18"+ events and a rain to 10" of wet cake +TSSN event.

Ahhh those days when it seemed like every bomb was deforming over Eastern NY and western New England, haha.