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Coldtober model and pattern disco


Damage In Tolland
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I'm confused by the Euro.  Slows Mikey way down compared to 12Z.  Front comes through while the storm is way south.  I would have guessed it would have been a way SE solution but its not.  West of last run.  West enough it is slightly inside benchmark.  Strengthening too.  Pretty significant storm for SNE.  965mb.

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6 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

I'm confused by the Euro.  Slows Mikey way down compared to 12Z.  Front comes through while the storm is way south.  I would have guessed it would have been a way SE solution but its not.  West of last run.  West enough it is slightly inside benchmark.  Strengthening too.  Pretty significant storm for SNE.  965mb.

Euro hasn't exactly been on the ball for a while now. We take with a grain of salt.

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1 hour ago, Dan76 said:

NFL=watching paint dry (Oh no he touched the quarterback omg)

 Last week Richard Sherman said it best....just put flags on the QB. And he also added that the NFL has made near impossible to play defense. A couple of weeks ago I went to the North Andover - Central Catholic game and it was a good hard hitting football game. Far more enjoyable than watching the NFL

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12 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

I'm confused by the Euro.  Slows Mikey way down compared to 12Z.  Front comes through while the storm is way south.  I would have guessed it would have been a way SE solution but its not.  West of last run.  West enough it is slightly inside benchmark.  Strengthening too.  Pretty significant storm for SNE.  965mb.

Larry Cosgrove has some  interesting comments in his latest newsletter regarding a potential storm. 

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well.. it's a solution still in the making.  Sandy came from the deep S ...crossed Cuba... and we all know what happened.   It's not a huge stretch to see one come from the deep south and not hook left but keep trundling right on up.  Unusual...?  sure - not impossible.

What I find interesting is that how the pattern evolution from 48 hours through day 10 basically does summer --> autumn (expressed via TC) --> winter. 

That's a nippy pattern out there and one anchored by a +PNAP too - if there were snow pack in southern Canada heh -

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22 hours ago, tamarack said:

Agreed.  A further note on that event:  Maine's Public Utilities Commission investigated Central Maine Power's response - CMP had more customers in the dark than in the 1998 ice storm, though for a much shorter period.  The report came out week before last, and while basically giving CMP decent marks, also briefly noted that "winds were stronger than forecast."  Maybe more widespread, but my recollection (and digging through the thread here on that storm), is that NWS pegged the event pretty well.  Anyway, when public radio reported on the PUC opinion, guess what was highlighted - yup, the words in quotes, above.   Why am I not surprised?

My opinion on October snow as a predicter of winter goodness is mixed but mostly bad.  In Fort Kent, Oct snow generally presaged a fine snow season.  Everywhere else I've lived it generally was followed by dreck (67-68, 87-88, 05-06, 11-12), with 2000-01 the one clear exception.  That said, all snow is good snow (with the possible exception of late Feb 2010.)

Edit:  If the season tendency continues, whatever is left of Michael will almost completely remain south of here.

Blame the mets. While that is irritating, I think there was enough blame to go around in that event. It's easy for the PUC to give CMP a "pass" by saying it was stronger than forecast, because well everyone believes mets are only right 50% of the time. Right? Overall though, I think CMP did a great job responding to the event (shorter time without power as you said, with more lines down).  I just spent some time at CMP training for FEMA ICS and this event was brought up throughout the training. Great recovery, maybe bad preparation?

GYX started briefing the states on Friday 10/27, but our first briefing that morning was strong wind gusts up to 50 mph, mainly confined to the Midcoast of ME. By Saturday morning (I was the mid shift that morning) it was becoming apparent this wasn't a run of the mill SE gale. I increased winds to 60 mph along the whole coast, and increased interior winds to 40 mph, also bumped up downslope winds NW of the Whites to 50 mph, along with high wind watches. And here's the rub, day shift increased winds inland a slight bit, but dropped the winds on the downslope side and lopped 10 mph off the coast. Finally Sunday morning I issued warnings for the downslope and coast plus a row of counties inland, and advisories everywhere else, with 50 mph gusts all the way to ASH/MHT/LEW/AUG/WVL line. 

So it was a good ramp up forecast, probably too light early on, and some mixed messaging in the middle with a decrease in coastal winds. 

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3 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

Blame the mets. While that is irritating, I think there was enough blame to go around in that event. It's easy for the PUC to give CMP a "pass" by saying it was stronger than forecast, because well everyone believes mets are only right 50% of the time. Right? Overall though, I think CMP did a great job responding to the event (shorter time without power as you said, with more lines down).  I just spent some time at CMP training for FEMA ICS and this event was brought up throughout the training. Great recovery, maybe bad preparation?

GYX started briefing the states on Friday 10/27, but our first briefing that morning was strong wind gusts up to 50 mph, mainly confined to the Midcoast of ME. By Saturday morning (I was the mid shift that morning) it was becoming apparent this wasn't a run of the mill SE gale. I increased winds to 60 mph along the whole coast, and increased interior winds to 40 mph, also bumped up downslope winds NW of the Whites to 50 mph, along with high wind watches. And here's the rub, day shift increased winds inland a slight bit, but dropped the winds on the downslope side and lopped 10 mph off the coast. Finally Sunday morning I issued warnings for the downslope and coast plus a row of counties inland, and advisories everywhere else, with 50 mph gusts all the way to ASH/MHT/LEW/AUG/WVL line. 

So it was a good ramp up forecast, probably too light early on, and some mixed messaging in the middle with a decrease in coastal winds. 

Mm, there's an "art" to model interpretation.

One can look at the blend ... they can go that route and odds are they'll do okay - provided said blend isn't beyond the obvious five days out and so forth.  But, just about every "out of the blue" strike I've witnessed that has occurred to a non-suspecting civility and their concomitant Meteorologists, had something unusual about it in the modeling that was either outright ignored...or, was subtle and just unnoticed. 

That still is sort of reliant upon analytics, that whole description.  And, sure one will do even better yet, if they study/look for subtleties... 

There's a different sort of intuition ...maybe it's unconscious hearkening back to experience ...some sort of intrinsic "chess-game" like spatial reasoning with the moving parts... whatever, but, the greats tend to paint the picture using all those data sources, and models and what not as the colors on the pallet wheel. 

Harvey Leonard is a great, ...to me anyway.  He was the one that first explained to me when I was a youngin, how the models were not there to be taken verbatim - they merely offer a series of plausible realities that may result based upon input parameters.  It's an easy concept but ... we'd be surprised how often folks of all walks of sophistication seem to forget that.   I mean...just look at our local background/usership... we blame models and trash them like we're sports talk radio hosts bashing some wide-receiver for dropping a pass...  "I've had it with him - he sucks!"  ...until said receiver catches the pass that wins the Superbowl...  or in this case, scores a coup de etat on a 20" juggernaut.  It's comical riot really -

Anyway, I think of the December 23rd event, 1997 whenever this sort of subject matter is reminded... The day before, the (at the time...) "ETA" FOUS grid was putting out T1 of ...oh, +4C I think it was, for the next day, while there was .7" or so QPF..  The T2 was +1C... and the T3 was 98, which means -2C in the FOUS context.  So, in essence we had 39 or 40F within 20 mb of the surface at Logan, with the 900 mb level essentially a wash for 32 F (0C), while it was 28 F at 800mb.  A.k.a., "marginal" incarnate in the ETA FOUS grid, with .7andchange QPF... Most important of all, it had a UVV number close to 20 units!  Hmm... It didn't sit right... Particularly because the synoptic charts showed a small but prevalent nonetheless, polar high retreating N (not E!) from the vicinity of Maine as the mass-behavior of that immediately nascent atmospheric entity. 

Now, ...in today's day and age, we are savvy(er) ...and prooobably we'd collectively be a little bit more suspect of those parameters.  But of course, ...this is also an experience middle-aged Met talking, with the benefit of a lifetime of experiences... so who knows?  But on December 22nd, 1997, NWS Taunton's forecast was ...god I wanna say 2-4" of wet snow ending as drizzle in the interior Worcester Hills, while snow may mix in with little or no accumulation toward the coast. 

The under-the-radar sort of irony to the ensuing bust was that geographically (only) ...boy did they really nail it with the "Worcester Hills"... hoy man.  So, a clear night the evening of the 22nd allowed radiational cooling to really hemorrhage what ever gossamer heat there was left over from the tepid, shallow solar that existed close the Solstice.  That's A...  I think it was 17 F where I lived at the time in Acton Massachusetts ... around 4 or 5 am.  I estimate this, because as powdered snow grains started to fall under slate opaque skies at 7:30am ...it was 19 F.

"2-4" of wet snow ending as drizzle .... 19F .... "2-4" of wet snow ending as drizzle ... 19F ... F  ... F ... F  ... I can't recall if that 19 F was the MOS ...at that time we still were reliant upon NGM and AVN MOS to go along withe ETA ...although, I seem to recall that NGM MOS numbers were popular for temperature but not QPF... and the ETA, the opposite.  Either way, I don't recall actually looking at those products myself, but ... somehow, some way... NWS had pretty much everything about that event completely coming at them out of left field. Pretty close to a 100 percentile impact bust ...truly rare feat - even for 1997 that was getting a bit modern for a debacle that was probably 97% wrong.

By 10am... the radar displayed the most extraordinary reflectivity that to this day, I have never again seen associated to snow.... The enter circumvallate that enclosed ORE-ORH-HFD as an approximate regional expanse was submerged in a garish 45 to 55+ DBZ fireworks display..  

That's okay, I thought... it's colder than they thought, so ... this is sleet. Bright banding is acceptable under the circumstances - piece-a cake...

WRONG!   

It went on to be the only time I have ever seen 8.5" of snow fall in a single hour from a synoptic output ... book ended by two hours of 4"/hr rates... During that hour that the event maxed, was the first time I'd ever seen or even heard of straight down, no wind falling snow so dense that objects < ten feet from one's eyes becoming heavily obscured.  In total I want to say we ended up with 17" there in Acton. I know up here in N. Middlesex CO, they jack-potted at 22" or so ... of that 2-4" of wet snow ending as drizzle...  The temperature?  heh...I think it maxed at 27 before clearing later that night had the snow squeaking under foot.  

The whole lead-up time... the setup was ominous. The modeled hard numbers ? - no so much.  The region could have used an interpretation artist on that one. 

 

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9 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Mm, there's an "art" to model interpretation.

One can look at the blend ... they can go that route and odds are they'll do okay - provided said blend isn't beyond the obvious five days out and so forth.  But, just about every "out of the blue" strike I've witnessed that has occurred to a non-suspecting civility and their concomitant Meteorologists, had something unusual about it in the modeling that was either outright ignored...or, was subtle and just unnoticed. 

It's one of the main arguments against the "blend." Sure consensus is hard to beat, most days. But the extreme events are extreme because they deviate from both climatology and model climate. 

It's really why the long term is better spent looking for anomalous variables and patterns rather than pumping out 7 days of weather forecasts.

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6 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

It's one of the main arguments against the "blend." Sure consensus is hard to beat, most days. But the extreme events are extreme because they deviate from both climatology and model climate. 

It's really why the long term is better spent looking for anomalous variables and patterns rather than pumping out 7 days of weather forecasts.

OH absolutely agreed re the extended...

And as I indulged and rambled on in that story telling considerably further (sorry...eh hm) ... there are instances in the shorter term where the bust (in terms of greater than anticipated sensible impact and more...) can take place in modern times. 

Although, 1997 wow..that's over 20 years now ...

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2 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

OH absolutely agreed re the extended...

And as I indulged and rambled on in that story telling considerably further (sorry...eh hm) ... there are instances in the shorter term where the bust (in terms of greater than anticipated sensible impact and more...) can take place in modern times. 

Although, 1997 wow..that's over 20 years now ...

Funny how that works. ;)

But yes, even in that wind event over time as we neared the short term mesoscale models were able to tease out subtleties of the inversion that allowed more wind to reach the surface than say a stock 5 day GFS forecast of a ripping SE wind off the deck.

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14 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Funny how that works. ;)

But yes, even in that wind event over time as we neared the short term mesoscale models were able to tease out subtleties of the inversion that allowed more wind to reach the surface than say a stock 5 day GFS forecast of a ripping SE wind off the deck.

I sucked in my thoughts leading up to last October's wind storm because I leaned too hard on past experience... we never get wind on SE flow, especially during rainfall, because of our location on the east side of the Spine.  That air has to go up over Mansfield and so the low level jet is usually well above us and on its way over the mountain...then the west slopes get destroyed with downslope flow like water pouring over a cliff and smashing into the ground on the other side.  

But there must've been enough convective elements to mix down the strong winds as Stowe was one of the hardest hit towns in northern VT in that event.  I just played climo...like in winter with SE flow we get a precip maximum and zero wind...instead power poles were snapping and large tracks of forests were leveled.

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