Countdown to Winter 2018 -2019

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

11 minutes ago, Hoth said:

October '11 outdid Jan '11 and Feb '13 in your hood?

Well Oct 11 came after Jan 11 and I wasn’t physically here for Feb 13 sigh. So, Oct 11 is my last official 16”+.

[weathafella]

5 hours ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

Well Oct 11 came after Jan 11 and I wasn’t physically here for Feb 13 sigh. So, Oct 11 is my last official 16”+.

I got 2 inches October 2011.  Fuk October snows!

[JBinStoughton]

48 minutes ago, weathafella said:

I got 2 inches October 2011.  Fuk October snows!

I think October snow is like the kiss of death, or the work of the devil, or something. 

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

1 hour ago, weathafella said:

I got 2 inches October 2011.  Fuk October snows!

And I got 4” Jan 15 so fok January snows!? or maybe just Miller B’s where euro is all alone on its forecast.  

[weathafella]

Just now, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

And I got 4” Jan 15 so fok January snows!? or maybe just Miller B’s where euro is all alone on its forecast.  

October 11 sucked.  BOS got an inch and 8 more through April.  Show me your big October snows and correlate your winter. And how did you do the rest of that 2015 winter?

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

16 minutes ago, weathafella said:

October 11 sucked.  BOS got an inch and 8 more through April.  Show me your big October snows and correlate your winter. And how did you do the rest of that 2015 winter?

Never said yay to Oct snows. But when it’s your last big snowstorm in 7 years with major damage, it has a special place in my weenie blue book.

What I meant was though, that a string of rat winters would seem harder to come by in todays climate as bigger snowfalls are ‘easier’ to come by. So, even in bad winters, you can normalize it with a big storm or two and hit or be close to, your avg snowfall. That didn’t happen in the 80s and even the 90s. When it was bad, it was bad. 

Rest of 2015 was good, ended above avg. But when you bust THAT bad THAT close in on a big doggy, hard to shake it off then and now.

[ORH_wxman]

I'm not convinced that we can rely on 18" storms every winter to bail us out. Even as recently as 2008-2009, we hadn't really had a huge spike in them...they had become more frequent since the early 1990s, but nothing ridiculous like the last few years. The 1980s and early 1990s were a nadir, so we had nowhere to go but up, but we've seen pretty prolific periods in the past that reverse (see late 1950s through early 1970s). 

The link to big snowstorms and climate change is a weak one. The literature on it is very limited and so is the physical connection. You have a 7% increase in water vapor with every 1C in temp rise...that doesn't square with the recent massive uptick. We've seen some increases in high latitude blocking, but again, the link is still modest WRT big snowstorms for us and what has actually transpired. There's a lot of natural variability of storminess. We will likely pay the piper soon enough....my guess is when that happens, people will naturally blame something other than natural variability once again. 

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

37 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

I'm not convinced that we can rely on 18" storms every winter to bail us out. Even as recently as 2008-2009, we hadn't really had a huge spike in them...they had become more frequent since the early 1990s, but nothing ridiculous like the last few years. The 1980s and early 1990s were a nadir, so we had nowhere to go but up, but we've seen pretty prolific periods in the past that reverse (see late 1950s through early 1970s). 

The link to big snowstorms and climate change is a weak one. The literature on it is very limited and so is the physical connection. You have a 7% increase in water vapor with every 1C in temp rise...that doesn't square with the recent massive uptick. We've seen some increases in high latitude blocking, but again, the link is still modest WRT big snowstorms for us and what has actually transpired. There's a lot of natural variability of storminess. We will likely pay the piper soon enough....my guess is when that happens, people will naturally blame something other than natural variability once again. 

We’ll just blame you.

Again, It’s all recent bias here and comparing 4 decades to one another, in the grand scheme, is way too small of a sample size. We will go through a bad stretch, obviously....but I am curios when we do, will it be a full decade or one year here and there.

But it also doesnt have to be an 18” storm to bail us out in a bad winter. I was using 11/12 as an extreme. 15/16 was considered a bad winter, yet many out here hit their average snowfall, with above avg temps. I think those types of winters might happen more frequently then 50 years ago, that’s all. 

[ORH_wxman]

8 hours ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

We’ll just blame you.

Again, It’s all recent bias here and comparing 4 decades to one another, in the grand scheme, is way too small of a sample size. We will go through a bad stretch, obviously....but I am curios when we do, will it be a full decade or one year here and there.

But it also doesnt have to be an 18” storm to bail us out in a bad winter. I was using 11/12 as an extreme. 15/16 was considered a bad winter, yet many out here hit their average snowfall, with above avg temps. I think those types of winters might happen more frequently then 50 years ago, that’s all. 

I def agree with the bolded. This is mostly driven by a large rise in overnight min temperatures on clear nights...which have little correlation to snowfall. We don't radiate as well as 40-50 years ago. But since snowstorms have little dependence on radiaitonal cooling (there can be some very specific exceptions), the majority of temperature rise won't adversely affect the snowfall. 

The place we really want to watch is the rise in midlevel temps. 

[Bostonseminole]

Moved my son into the WPI dorms yesterday, told him for the money I'm paying I'd better get some good observations during winter!

[tamarack]

12 hours ago, weathafella said:

October 11 sucked.  BOS got an inch and 8 more through April.  Show me your big October snows and correlate your winter. And how did you do the rest of that 2015 winter?

Forecast here for the Octobomb was 12-16", verified with 4.5" of mush.  My chief memory of that event came 2 days later, as our forest inventory contractor and I were check-cruising near Rangelely in a day-long  icewater bath as snowmelt dripped off the trees.  We've had 1" or more in Oct only 3 times in 20 years.  1st was 6.3" in 2000, followed by a great winter, especially Feb-March.  Next was 1.4" in 2005, the winter w/o a single storm 6" or more - only one of those in my 45 years in Maine.  Oct 2011 was the 3rd, and that winter was well on the way toward ratter when summer visited during March and confirmed that status. 

[Ginx snewx]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

I def agree with the bolded. This is mostly driven by a large rise in overnight min temperatures on clear nights...which have little correlation to snowfall. We don't radiate as well as 40-50 years ago. But since snowstorms have little dependence on radiaitonal cooling (there can be some very specific exceptions), the majority of temperature rise won't adversely affect the snowfall. 

The place we really want to watch is the rise in midlevel temps. 

Thats UHI, many rural spots still radiate very well, only their temp records are limited.

[CoastalWx]

1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

Thats UHI, many rural spots still radiate very well, only their temp records are limited.

As a whole we don’t though due to GHG. It’s not very significant, but it does show up on mins.

[weathafella]

1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

Thats UHI, many rural spots still radiate very well, only their temp records are limited.

I wonder if this is true?  Certainly it is for Boston but what about BED/ORH?

[ORH_wxman]

3 hours ago, weathafella said:

I wonder if this is true?  Certainly it is for Boston but what about BED/ORH?

It's true everywhere. It is just way more amplified in spots affected by UHI. But rural coop temps have seen a rise in min temps faster than max temps. Some of the rural areas have barely seen max temps rise while min temps have climbed steadily. You see a lot of this especially at coops out in the plains. 

[weathafella]

6 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

It's true everywhere. It is just way more amplified in spots affected by UHI. But rural coop temps have seen a rise in min temps faster than max temps. Some of the rural areas have barely seen max temps rise while min temps have climbed steadily. You see a lot of this especially at coops out in the plains. 

I was arguing you can’t entirely blame it on UHI.  I think you confirmed?

[snowman21]

I think the observing network being much denser today thanks to the internet helps bump up the reported frequency of big storms because an 18 inch jack would never go unreported now. 20+ years ago you had no reliable way to know that Tolland got 19 inches while BDL and ORH reported just 5 or 6. Anecdotally I've noted that it feels like we can't radiate as well on clear nights anymore (other than that one guy in Bakersville), though I haven't done the proper research on it, but my back of the envelope math shows BDL tacking on about half a day per year to its growing season in the fall right now, and only experiences about half the number of cool fall mornings compared to 20-25 years ago. I know some will blame the fact that its an airport and we shouldn't measure in a place that's so wide open and exposed to the atmosphere (sarcasm), but it's always been an airport. Has the area around the airport really changed that much to impact nighttime temperatures this dramatically in such a short period of time? Have they added more 'macs near the thermometer? More commercial development around the airport itself? Even middle of nowhere co-ops with reliable and long periods of record exhibit similar behavior with generally higher mins and less duration of snow cover.

[CoastalWx]

September’s recently have been much warmer too. It seems to be more of a pattern issue because I don’t think other areas have experienced this,  but September over the last 10+ Years or so has been on the warmer side in the northeast. 

[ORH_wxman]

9 hours ago, weathafella said:

I was arguing you can’t entirely blame it on UHI.  I think you confirmed?

Correct. 

 

1 hour ago, snowman21 said:

I think the observing network being much denser today thanks to the internet helps bump up the reported frequency of big storms because an 18 inch jack would never go unreported now. 20+ years ago you had no reliable way to know that Tolland got 19 inches while BDL and ORH reported just 5 or 6. Anecdotally I've noted that it feels like we can't radiate as well on clear nights anymore (other than that one guy in Bakersville), though I haven't done the proper research on it, but my back of the envelope math shows BDL tacking on about half a day per year to its growing season in the fall right now, and only experiences about half the number of cool fall mornings compared to 20-25 years ago. I know some will blame the fact that its an airport and we shouldn't measure in a place that's so wide open and exposed to the atmosphere (sarcasm), but it's always been an airport. Has the area around the airport really changed that much to impact nighttime temperatures this dramatically in such a short period of time? Have they added more 'macs near the thermometer? More commercial development around the airport itself? Even middle of nowhere co-ops with reliable and long periods of record exhibit similar behavior with generally higher mins and less duration of snow cover.

I'm sure some of it is the density but even if you choose longer term first order sites like ORH or BOS, the frequency of big snowstorms has increased substantially...and we can't blame it all on 6 hour measurements either. There's a bit of inflation there because of that but it explains only a minority of the increase...and besides, we already had 6 hourly measurements by the 1980s. The 1960s becomes a closer analog when we account for the measuring but still falls a bit short...but that said, it does show that some of it is likely just a cyclical run of good fortune that happens. I.E. this run of huge storms is not sustainable...it isn't some new paradigm of climate change. My thinking is that CC has enhanced it...the physics of a roughly 4-5% increase in water vapor since the 1970s would argue that...as well as increased high latitude blocking. However, both are nowhere near adequate to explain the huge numbers. 

 

As for temps, not radiating as well on clear nights is a symptom of increased GHGs. That said, we have to be careful of land use too when measuring it...there are some airports like Dulles (IAD) that have undergone massive land use changes around them which affect the ability to radiate far more than GHGs. I'm not sure what the land use changes around BDL have looked like...my recollection is that it isn't huge like a Dulles or Sea-Tac. But even a few extra subdivisions nearby can change it enough to be noticeable outside the regular background increase due to GHGs. 

[CoastalWx]

Speaking of snow, KBOS has a big issue with no snow observer right now. The only thing that seems doable is to train the observers and pay them for it, but that seems to be easier said than done from what I hear. Not good.

 

 

[snowman21]

5 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Speaking of snow, KBOS has a big issue with no snow observer right now. The only thing that seems doable is to train the observers and pay them for it, but that seems to be easier said than done from what I hear. Not good.

 

 

Don’t they have a weather observer in the tower? I really don’t see the big deal about having that guy go down and stick a ruler in the snow once an hour on the dozen or so days a year that BOS has measurable snow.

[CoastalWx]

6 minutes ago, snowman21 said:

Don’t they have a weather observer in the tower? I really don’t see the big deal about having that guy go down and stick a ruler in the snow once an hour on the dozen or so days a year that BOS has measurable snow.

You're asking someone to do a task that is not in their contract. Heaven forbid. 

 

 

[ORH_wxman]

I don't think BOS has a full FAA observer. The tower will augment wx obs in obvious cases I've seen, but they don't go the whole nine yards. 

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

I don't think BOS has a full FAA observer. The tower will augment wx obs in obvious cases I've seen, but they don't go the whole nine yards. 

I know they do have observers, but I don't know the full situation there. It's enough for the NWS to reach out to OCM's on chat...so not good there. 

[snowman21]

You would think measuring snow would be a high priority in order to determine a snow clearing and removal strategy and resource management.

[J Paul Gordon]

Would be a bit of a laugh if our minimum temps rose to 20F here in Worcester and our maximums dropped to 24. We'd have the same average temps but a very different sensory experience.

[weathafella]

23 hours ago, snowman21 said:

You would think measuring snow would be a high priority in order to determine a snow clearing and removal strategy and resource management.

I think with the plethora of snow reports and with the fairly significant variability across a relatively small area it isn’t prioritized.  Ray 20 miles NW gets 50% more snow vs Logan.   Conversely areas 30 miles SE may get 30% less.

[dendrite]

Sensors in passive shields have been found to be cooler than aspirated since they will radiate heat out to space and that will conduct to the sensor. It isn't a lot...maybe 1F or so?

I think dews are the problem. Higher dews, higher RH, higher floor for temps to radiate to, more clouds, more precip, etc.

[Ginx snewx]

On 8/21/2018 at 8:22 AM, CoastalWx said:

Speaking of snow, KBOS has a big issue with no snow observer right now. The only thing that seems doable is to train the observers and pay them for it, but that seems to be easier said than done from what I hear. Not good.

 

 

I was contacted to see if I knew of anyone in the weather community in East Boston would be willing to help out. I could only think of on but he is working 3 jobs.

[weathafella]

6 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

I was contacted to see if I knew of anyone in the weather community in East Boston would be willing to help out. I could only think of on but he is working 3 jobs.

How about they hire James?   We’d have 75 inch climo in no time....