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February 2022 Obs/Disco


Torch Tiger
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2 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

You guys absolutely nailed the last storm (SWFE) here though. The forecast for here on the SNE blizzard was pretty good too as I recall. This event was tricky as hell, I didn't expect much at all so it isn't like I was sitting here waiting for the bust. I was shocked to wake up to 4-5 and snowing hard. I think the biggest misses are on the lame looking upslope that instead piles up to 3-4" of fluff out of nowhere. BTV seems to laser-in on that stuff.

The microclimates around here are crazy; makes it hard to produce maps for the general populace I'm sure. 

BTV office is lucky they don't have to deal with the population centers and long commutes to BOS you have to deal with.

BTV does a great job with upslope. I think some of that is due to a relatively high population living in impacted areas and their radar is well positioned to capture it. Upslope north of the Whites is essentially invisible to our radar because we're either blocked or overshooting. I think a lot of times a less experienced forecaster could completely miss an upslope event if they just glanced at the radar. 

I always have a webcam up from somewhere north of the mountains, and my rule of thumb is if HIE or BML drops to less than 3 miles, it's snowing hard in the favored upslope zones.

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1 minute ago, OceanStWx said:

BTV does a great job with upslope. I think some of that is due to a relatively high population living in impacted areas and their radar is well positioned to capture it. Upslope north of the Whites is essentially invisible to our radar because we're either blocked or overshooting. I think a lot of times a less experienced forecaster could completely miss an upslope event if they just glanced at the radar. 

I always have a webcam up from somewhere north of the mountains, and my rule of thumb is if HIE or BML drops to less than 3 miles, it's snowing hard in the favored upslope zones.

FYI, my cam is back up now, should be up for good now, in case you didn't have it:

https://video.nest.com/live/KaUbLsdLHN

Every time I mess with it it ends up with a new web link which is annoying...

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4 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

We were trying to get hard data on it before John moved from Pittsburg, but our guess was that we probably only forecast like 60% of the snowfall up there. A lot of hand waving of upslope snow showers at 30 PoP when it's 1/4SM for half the day.

It's a shame the guy who took it over basically stopped reporting snow this year. I think he was reporting low last year too, if you don't report every day up there it's almost useless. John was great. 

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25 minutes ago, wx2fish said:

It's a shame the guy who took it over basically stopped reporting snow this year. I think he was reporting low last year too, if you don't report every day up there it's almost useless. John was great. 

The Randolph Hill CoCoRaHS observer also went offline this fall which really sucks. I relied on his obs to validate my own weenie obs and to fill in the gaps when I am not here. Very diligent observer who captured every tenth, it seems.

It's a data-sparse environment here outside of the big events when sometimes you get these random reports in the PNS from "trained spotters" in various spots in Randolph and Gorham that drop out of the sky with zero context. The 1.4 NE Randolph observer was good at capturing the 2.5" of fluff that fell that night when yet again it was just flurries in Gorham.

I mean, it's literally snowing right now and probably doing nothing in Gorham or even down in the lower main town of Randolph.

 

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5 minutes ago, DavisStraight said:

How deep is your pack Phin?

32" is the average across my property.

I tend to have a wide swing between north and south facing aspects, but given the cold temps so far it's fairly consistent it seems. Once it hits 2 feet of dense glacier it just feels "thick" out there and the additional snow just piles on without changing the feel too much.

I have to break up the pack with the shovel backwards used like a hammer and then I can shovel or snowblow the chunks.  

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11 hours ago, Lava Rock said:

Lol, etec is a bit of a pig. 1qt every 125mi

Sent from my SM-G981U1 using Tapatalk
 

there has to be something wrong, because that is a LOT of oil for an etec. i had a 600 etc that would go about 1,000 miles on one gallon. You need to get that adjusted.

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1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

It does kind of look meh second half of the month. Maybe we get lucky on the right side of the gradient, but not a big fan of the look on both GEFS and EPS.

NNE too?  We seem to keep seeing these torch rain events out 7-10 days away that start trending colder as they get closer.  Just get the feeling we get burnt by one eventually.

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1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

This suggests a strong area of forcing in the maritime continent and ridging near dateline and just east. Probably forces a -PNA. But, if it can move east a bit like those dotted lines are trying to show, maybe later Feb and Mar gets more interesting?

 

image.png.7b021f50c9d073843abb3612dc47924e.png

That's what I expect...one more push in early March after the warm up, but it probably won't be driven by the arctic, as I had originally thought.

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34 minutes ago, bwt3650 said:

NNE too?  We seem to keep seeing these torch rain events out 7-10 days away that start trending colder as they get closer.  Just get the feeling we get burnt by one eventually.

Your latitude obviously will help for sure. But a -PNA still is a cutter risk, should that occur.

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10 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

BTV does a great job with upslope. I think some of that is due to a relatively high population living in impacted areas and their radar is well positioned to capture it. Upslope north of the Whites is essentially invisible to our radar because we're either blocked or overshooting. I think a lot of times a less experienced forecaster could completely miss an upslope event if they just glanced at the radar. 

I always have a webcam up from somewhere north of the mountains, and my rule of thumb is if HIE or BML drops to less than 3 miles, it's snowing hard in the favored upslope zones.

BTV has one of the busiest stretches of road in the entire state going right through the upslope zone too… I-89 between BTV and MPV.  The ski areas provide great data too as they are just lined up north to south with cameras now and it’s just a generally busy area (relatively speaking) for Vermont.

If there’s a type of weather to study and dial in around here it’s orographic mesoscale stuff.  That and downslope or mountain wave wind events.

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1 hour ago, cleetussnow said:

Big ol' cutter for the long weekend on the GFS.  I know it's a billion years away in model time but:

1) Cutters seem to verify like every time

2)It's been on the charts for many cycles already.  

I suppose we are due for one, but it will be a pack killer.

That’s not true, sometimes cutters in the long range turn into Miller bs. The Dec 2020 storm was modeled to cut to Wisconsin in the long range, and ended up being a Miller b nor’easter with over a foot of snow in my area.

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today's 'nape affect' failure, tho - in my subjective opinion. heh.   I mean, just an ooze of chilly breeze ruins it when it's this close to the bottom of the nape threshold.   lol

If we want the affect, at 40-45 F on Feb 9, you gotta have it dead calm.  Then as you work your way toward 50, you an add a mile per hour... and on and so on.  It's 43 here with Feb 9 sun, and it feels warm-ish, but the annoying light breeze immediately ruins the appeal. 

Saturday... if it is windy at those temperatures - nope. 

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