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February banter thread

Eskimo Joe

By Eskimo Joe,
in Mid Atlantic

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BTRWx

BTRWx

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Round Hill WX said:

 

Hilarious these dudes falling all over themselves to 'forum flirt' with another guy.

It's only a matter of time before their angry wives show up.  He/she started it all for the record. :twister:

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Sparky

Sparky

Posted
Posted

Baltimore was not completely blindsided by the Feb '79 storm.  There were Heavy Snow Warnings (that's what they called them back then when 4 or more were expected) hoisted by late afternoon for the city, where I lived at the time with a general 4-8" forecasted. Of course it overperformed by 250% when all was said and done.  According to my records snow began at 4:30 pm Sunday but it was light and remained light thru the evening.  I went to bed trying to get some sleep that night but glad I didn't.  I will never forget the sudden rise in wind speed around 2am with increasing snow rates.  We had the 8" down by 6am at the latest.  Then the really heavy snow (possibly the heaviest sustained rates of my lifetime) started after 7am and ran through 10am with even stronger wind gusts. Final total was around 20" but that was on top of old snow of about 8" so it was really deep after the blizzard ended.

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showmethesnow

showmethesnow

Posted
Posted
22 minutes ago, Sparky said:

Baltimore was not completely blindsided by the Feb '79 storm.  There were Heavy Snow Warnings (that's what they called them back then when 4 or more were expected) hoisted by late afternoon for the city, where I lived at the time with a general 4-8" forecasted. Of course it overperformed by 250% when all was said and done.  According to my records snow began at 4:30 pm Sunday but it was light and remained light thru the evening.  I went to bed trying to get some sleep that night but glad I didn't.  I will never forget the sudden rise in wind speed around 2am with increasing snow rates.  We had the 8" down by 6am at the latest.  Then the really heavy snow (possibly the heaviest sustained rates of my lifetime) started after 7am and ran through 10am with even stronger wind gusts. Final total was around 20" but that was on top of old snow of about 8" so it was really deep after the blizzard ended.

And this is why I wished I would have kept records throughout the years. Bad enough nowadays just remembering details of yesterday let alone from 40 years ago.

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87storms

87storms

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, showmethesnow said:

And this is why I wished I would have kept records throughout the years. Bad enough nowadays just remembering details of yesterday let alone from 40 years ago.

The kocin books are clutch tho they're due for an update to cover the more recent big ones.

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Roger Smith

Roger Smith

Posted
Posted

Bet I am the only person here who ever forecast a snowstorm in the same office as JB. Several times winter of 1979-80. I was there to offer some consulting about Canadian markets. Every time there was a big snowstorm the entire (Accu-weather) office would take blank maps of the northeast and draw prog snowfall amounts, then all would go up on a wall for a discussion. 

Biggest storm of that rather snow-free winter was Feb 28-29-March 1 in Virginia Beach area, something like 18" fell there. I only recall a couple of 6-8 inch type storms otherwise. Joe was pretty feisty then too. 

My map was so extreme for the leap year day storm that they moved it to a different wall. But it verified. 

Just to annoy you further, this is the view out my back door. 

A.jpg

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Bob Chill

Bob Chill

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

This interview with astronauts in space is pretty awesome. It'd be great to be weightless one day :P 

Not weightless but they have indoor skydiving off of 95 north of Baltimore. I've done a tandem jump with a big free fall back in 2000. I want to go again really bad but my wife wants me to wait until our youngest are out of the house. Which is a reasonable request even though it's safer than driving on the beltway. I got the green light for the indoor place. I'm gonna do within a year for sure. 

I'm allowed to buy another motorcycle once all kids graduate college. Another reasonable request. I'm going to wait until I move to the country first. Riding in this area really sucks. Everyone is texting and paying  as little attention to the road as humanly possible. Even fender benders usually end bad on a bike. 

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87storms

87storms

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

The bible of MECSs.

yea i bought them last year and just got around to reading some of it (the 2nd volume mostly).  it's pretty good stuff.  really should be on every snow junkie's shelf.

the only other thing i wish is that i could get my hands on old radar and satellite loops especially feb 87 and march 93 to help piece everything together.  a lot of the sites only go back to like 95'ish.

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87storms

87storms

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, leesburg 04 said:

I'm this close to giving up on January 

it sucks.  would be nice to live some place where you pretty much know it's gonna snow every year aside from the boom/bust winter's here, though that might also involve longer/colder winter's and i'm not sure i'd want that.

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RDM

RDM

Posted
Posted
47 minutes ago, nj2va said:

Damn, Lady Gaga killed it. One of the best halftime shows.

Yup - great performance.  The choreography is pretty amazing to set everything up and then tear it down in a matter of a few minutes.  Hundreds of people moving as teams all knowing exactly what they want to do and working to a common goal.  Why can't VDOT employ similar logistics when it comes to treating and/or pre-treating our roads?  Or, in the case of last Thursday, NOT doing something. 

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psuhoffman

psuhoffman

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, BristowWx said:

How's that working out for you climo king?  Just kidding.  I'd be happy just to reach my own climo.  You can have your 40i inches I would take my 20.  I can't get 2 and neither can you.  Something is broken.  What the hell is going on!

I had one 3" event early Jan that was like the typical nickel and dime storms we get regularly up here even in a bad winter. I did keep snowcover for 5 days from that though so at least it's something. But the lack of anything else at all has made this season especially abnormal up here. In 122 years of records from coops in my area there were only 3 years like this. 1951, 1973, and 2002.  All the other more typical crap years like 2008 or 2012 we clawed our way close to 20" up here with nickel and dime stuff.

As for why that's happened I don't know. We had long stretches where the pattern was so awful there was no hope even here. But I think the bigger problem imo was that we had several low level chances during mediocre patterns where a 1-2 degree break we could have had 2-3" easily. But every one broke warm. There were about 5 storms where we had a rain snow mix and 2 degrees colder and it was a 2-4" snow. Those are the storms that usually break our way to get us the higher climo eve in crap years but this year didn't. 

That said march can be a big month up here so it's still possible we back door our way to a 15-20" season.  Or it could be 1925. We had less snow here through feb 10 that year then got 54" from feb 10 on including 33" in march and a 10" storm in April. 

3 hours ago, 87storms said:

it sucks.  would be nice to live some place where you pretty much know it's gonna snow every year aside from the boom/bust winter's here, though that might also involve longer/colder winter's and i'm not sure i'd want that.

Your pretty much describing here. Maybe that's why I am more relaxed about waiting for the snow in general. I know it probably will come eventually. And if it's a 1/30 year that it doesn't I'm 99.9% assured the next year will deliver.  DC is just too far but Baltimore isn't that bad. 35 miles about. An hour drive with traffic. Assuming you leave before the worst of rush hour hits. I'm surprised more Baltimore snow weenies don't come up here.  There is 30 acres for sale next door to me. Could build a whole snow weenie community.  Finance a snow gun and make a tubing run down the hill!  Lol. Think about it. 

Just to convince you some stats. It's not a magic snow magnet. We don't have snow cover all the time. But a bad year up here is typically around 20". To put it in comparison we average slightly more then Chicago, about 6" more then New Haven CT and about a foot more then New York City.  

We get over 30" 61% of the time.  Over 25" 71%, over 20" 83% and over 15" 93%. only 3 times in 122 years did we have less then 10"  We have had 85 10"+ storms in 122 years  8 20"+ and 4 30"+  And in 122 years only 7 times did we not have at least a 5"+ snowstorm.  

So....if you already live in Maryland for only another hour of driving you too could have the climate of southern New England. Seriously it takes the edge off the chase knowing the payoff is probably coming sooner rather then later most years. 

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WinterWxLuvr

WinterWxLuvr

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I had one 3" event early Jan that was like the typical nickel and dime storms we get regularly up here even in a bad winter. I did keep snowcover for 5 days from that though so at least it's something. But the lack of anything else at all has made this season especially abnormal up here. In 122 years of records from coops in my area there were only 3 years like this. 1951, 1973, and 2002.  All the other more typical crap years like 2008 or 2012 we clawed our way close to 20" up here with nickel and dime stuff.

As for why that's happened I don't know. We had long stretches where the pattern was so awful there was no hope even here. But I think the bigger problem imo was that we had several low level chances during mediocre patterns where a 1-2 degree break we could have had 2-3" easily. But every one broke warm. There were about 5 storms where we had a rain snow mix and 2 degrees colder and it was a 2-4" snow. Those are the storms that usually break our way to get us the higher climo eve in crap years but this year didn't. 

That said march can be a big month up here so it's still possible we back door our way to a 15-20" season.  Or it could be 1925. We had less snow here through feb 10 that year then got 54" from feb 10 on including 33" in march and a 10" storm in April. 

Your pretty much describing here. Maybe that's why I am more relaxed about waiting for the snow in general. I know it probably will come eventually. And if it's a 1/30 year that it doesn't I'm 99.9% assured the next year will deliver.  DC is just too far but Baltimore isn't that bad. 35 miles about. An hour drive with traffic. Assuming you leave before the worst of rush hour hits. I'm surprised more Baltimore snow weenies don't come up here.  There is 30 acres for sale next door to me. Could build a whole snow weenie community.  Finance a snow gun and make a tubing run down the hill!  Lol. Think about it. 

Just to convince you some stats. It's not a magic snow magnet. We don't have snow cover all the time. But a bad year up here is typically around 20". To put it in comparison we average slightly more then Chicago, about 6" more then New Haven CT and about a foot more then New York City.  

We get over 30" 61% of the time.  Over 25" 71%, over 20" 83% and over 15" 93%. only 3 times in 122 years did we have less then 10"  We have had 85 10"+ storms in 122 years  8 20"+ and 4 30"+  And in 122 years only 7 times did we not have at least a 5"+ snowstorm.  

So....if you already live in Maryland for only another hour of driving you too could have the climate of southern New England. Seriously it takes the edge off the chase knowing the payoff is probably coming sooner rather then later most years. 

Perhaps extreme lowland southern New England, but I'd wager someplace like southern Mass is a good bit colder on avg than your location.  5 degrees avg is a bid deal when it comes to snowcover.

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