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It was a Flop... February 2024 Disco. Thread


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2 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

ICON wants to play ball but more for 2/14 rather than 2/12-13. It lags the southern stream behind and let’s northern stream outrun it and then amplifies the southern stream into the main event. That’s a pretty good look because it creates a better antecedent airmass out ahead of the storm. 
 

We’ll see what the real models say in a bit. 

Well that’s a pleasant development…I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say I hope it has a clue? 

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11 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

The Internet's usefulness has been reducing.

Oh man tell me about it.

In the early days of the Internet, there was a lot of virtuosity about information sharing. Wikipedia is built on this: what if, instead of a book of encyclopedias or a CD-ROM we had a bunch of people go out and crowd-source knowledge about everything. People get their fiefdoms, there is pretty decent moderation (which somehow hasn't broken like most of the rest of the Internet, at least so far) and a wealth of information has been put at people's fingertips.

Another more personal example is cross country ski trail reports (which are weather-dependent, bringing it back towards this forum). Unlike downhill, there are a lot of community trails which don't have much of a web presence, but with a good forum you can pretty easily crowd-source conditions reports, if a relatively small pool of people participate. There's such a site in the Midwest and not only does it work pretty well, but it has been working well with basically the exact same format for about 25 years. It doesn't have bloat, it doesn't have many features, it's basically a guy running a pretty simple SQL database (and frankly, he should add some features, but if it ain't broke, etc). It hasn't been blown up and updated fifteen times with new features that make it much less useful.

Is there one of these for the Northeast? No. There is an app someone started to try to mobilize and real-time this data (and which has gotten a bit of traction in the Midwest, and has East Coast trails, but not a lot of action), but I'm a member of a Facebook group (well, Facebook just started showing me posts at some point) which is a poor replica. There's no map feature, no search feature, it's just people posting photos of them and sometimes with relevant information (where was it, was it good, etc). It's not very useful, but it's very performative. That's what people seem to want now, not to share useful information, but to show what they did to everyone else whether it's useful or not. Why? Because that's where the money is, and we've been trained by Facebook and IG and Twitter to do this, rather than to share information. As an older millennial digital native 1990s Internet person, it's hard to fathom how much we have, but also how much we could have if the whole thing was not based on how rich some tech bros can get. 

This forum, thank goodness, hasn't fallen completely by the wayside. Imagine if this forum were just people posting photos of snow during storms and that was basically all it was, but without where or how much. And model discussions? People who are actually experts explaining things? That's the power of the Internet. It just doesn't much exist anymore.

An aside, the Midwest winter is really awful this year. Minneapolis has pulled 7" of snow so far, with the highest month, 2.7", in October. Their long-term snowfall climo is similar to Boston but less variable, mean of 47 range from 14 to 98. December was a +12 climo, warmest on record (basically BOS normals), January was only +6 thanks to a weeklong cold snap but had 16 days +10 or more and February is off to a +19 start. It's kind of wild, and not in a good way.

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4 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

The discrete S stream entity actually looked a little healthier than 06z, but the N stream was too shy.

Yep I would like to see that second northern stream s/w dive in and phase after the initial northern streamer s/w outruns the southern s/w. 
 

Certainly a good background pattern to trend a sharper northern stream with the building western ridge. We’ll see how it plays out. 
 

Canadian is trying to force the first northern stream shortwave to be the main show with the southern stream lagging behind a bit but not enough to ruin the storm. Verbatim a nice hit on GGEM but an unstable solution. 

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1 hour ago, weathafella said:

What would BOS average if it were hundreds of miles north?  I’m not surprised at 110”.  PWM gets >50% more than BOS and they’re only 140 miles up the coast.

Due north? YQB is 300 miles north and gets about 125" per year, with more in the mountains (elevation matters, even up there). YSJ is about 300 miles northeast along the coast and gets about 95" (much of NB gets 90-120). CAR comes in around 120. YUL gets about 90" but double that up in the Laurentians at elevation. So if you swung a 300 mile arc north of BOS, you're in the 110" range or thereabouts. Sort of makes sense: further inland it's colder but less moisture, nearer the coast, warmer but more moisture. Add in elevation and you get more (the top of Mont Sainte Anne at 800m reports >200" and of course KMWN gets more than that).

So, yeah, I buy 110" 300 miles anywhere between NE and NW. Less if stuck out on a peninsula like YHZ, of course.

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23 minutes ago, ariof said:

December was a +12 climo, warmest on record (basically BOS normals), January was only +6 thanks to a weeklong cold snap but had 16 days +10 or more and February is off to a +19 start. It's kind of wild, and not in a good way.

Sounds like up here.  We are on a stretch of above days going back to 1/22.

We just had two +5 days which were the coldest departures in two weeks.  Did 12 straight days of +10 or more and 3 of +20 or more.

All with solid snowpack too.  It’s all overnight mins just getting torched and the departures are wild this winter.  If there’s a way to constantly run ridiculous warm departures, this is it… snowpack, looks like winter and don’t have to pay heating bills because every day is 34/24 instead of 20/3 or whatever.

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1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

ICON wants to play ball but more for 2/14 rather than 2/12-13. It lags the southern stream behind and let’s northern stream outrun it and then amplifies the southern stream into the main event. That’s a pretty good look because it creates a better antecedent airmass out ahead of the storm. 
 

We’ll see what the real models say in a bit. 

Agreed… Models are just having trouble identifying a specific feature yet 13th still in play but yeah it’s all mutable

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1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

It would have been a monster storm without CC. I think that is where people get tied up in knots. I mean, there was 50”+ in the 1888 blizzard down at our latitudes (just not in eastern areas) too. So yeah…CC enhanced it, but it’s not like that would’ve been a run-of-the-mill 25” blizzard without it. 
 

Atmospheric Water vapor increases about 7% with every degree Celsius rise…so you can do some quick math to see how much extra water we’re working with compared to several decades ago. 

More atmospheric water helped, but like Feb 1969 the real key is how long it snowed - 5 days in NS?

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ICON wants to play ball but more for 2/14 rather than 2/12-13. It lags the southern stream behind and let’s northern stream outrun it and then amplifies the southern stream into the main event. That’s a pretty good look because it creates a better antecedent airmass out ahead of the storm. 
 
We’ll see what the real models say in a bit. 
If the ICON scored a coup with that look, it would be a board-wide warning event

Sent from my SM-S146VL using Tapatalk

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45 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Sounds like up here.  We are on a stretch of above days going back to 1/22.

We just had two +5 days which were the coldest departures in two weeks.  Did 12 straight days of +10 or more and 3 of +20 or more.

All with solid snowpack too.  It’s all overnight mins just getting torched and the departures are wild this winter.  If there’s a way to constantly run ridiculous warm departures, this is it… snowpack, looks like winter and don’t have to pay heating bills because every day is 34/24 instead of 20/3 or whatever.

We snuck in 2 slightly BN days on 1/30-31, but the average for 1/23 onward is +9.5.  Pack is holding at 18" with 4-5" LE, but it will probably retreat a bit over the weekend - more settling than melting.

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12 minutes ago, tamarack said:

More atmospheric water helped, but like Feb 1969 the real key is how long it snowed - 5 days in NS?

Duration is so overrated. How long does it really snow 1"/hr+ at a given locale in any given storm? Its much more about atmospheric water/dynamics/rates....stalled storms may add a few inches, but occlusion normally ensures its that "days and days of snow" crap that adds like 2-3" per day.

Ideally, you get a storm go to go nuts with insane rate, stall and then get captured by another piece of energy diving in, but that is pretty exotic due to wave spacing issues.

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