fall-ish banter

[Roger Smith]

I was reading that the wind was about to reverse over the North Pole -- but if you think about it, the wind at the North Pole has to be either calm or southerly. 

[Dark Star]

What can Vocanic Winter share about possible Hawaiian volcanos and Mount Rainier tremblings?

[IrishRob17]

11 hours ago, Dark Star said:

What can Vocanic Winter share about possible Hawaiian volcanos and Mount Rainier tremblings?

@Volcanic Winter

[WeatherGeek2025]

Hi guys, hope all is well...

 

hoping for some snow next week. 

[bluewave]

On 11/10/2025 at 1:48 PM, rclab said:

The first photo was taken Oct 29th the second today, 12 days later. The second, third and fourth photos show how a small piece of inner city Brooklyn accelerated to peak. Looking at the street side or from the backyard roof the transformation gives me a sense of peace …… because, I, like the season, am in the Autumn of my years. Stay well everyone. As always ……

 

Thanks for posting such beautiful photos. Probably one of the most in demand urban places in the U.S. that people want to move to. You are really lucky to be living in such a charming historic area. 
 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQZcBGhAEp7/

[rclab]

6 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Thanks for posting such beautiful photos. Probably one of the most in demand urban places in the U.S. that people want to move to. You are really lucky to be living in such a charming historic area. 
 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQZcBGhAEp7/

Thank you BW. 55 years ago I started working in the area, than married into the area. The row house across the street was boarded up, as was another around the corner, on Kane Street. Gentrification took hold and now both those buildings, which went for taxes, can command 4 to 7 million dollar price tags. The fall is (anthony forgive me) my favorite season. The end of life is also the promise of life. When winter finally arrives for me …. I hope to be ready. Stay well, as always …..

[Volcanic Winter]

22 hours ago, Dark Star said:

What can Vocanic Winter share about possible Hawaiian volcanos and Mount Rainier tremblings?

Kilauea is doing sustained summit eruptions and recurrent lava fountaining - not to sell it short, spectacular lava fountaining. Apparently Kilauea is under increased magma supply right now from the hotspot and it’s putting it to good use filling in the 2018 caldera. 
 

Mount Rainier is just normal rumblings of its hydrothermal system, if it were to progress to something more the activity would present quite differently IMO. Very likely absolutely nothing other than standard activity. 
 

Laki Laki has had the biggest eruptions in its know history this year, it too potentially being under a period of increased magmatic supply. Several substantial sub-plinian blasts, I think combined definitely VEI4 territory. 
 

Big story right now is in Africa, a volcanic vent that’s been dormant through the Holocene - Hayli Gubbi just had a substantial eruption, possibly a small 4 or large 3 but a very gassy for the size due to the type of magma. The SO2 plume was actually similar to the early estimates of the MUCH larger Hunga Tonga eruption, which goes to show how eruption size doesn’t ALWAYS dictate the amount of gas reaching the stratosphere. 
 

Erta Ale, a very active system with a famous lava lake, had a bunch of its magma drain out and apparently form a lateral dike that extended under Hayli Gubbi, hit a pocket of stale, gassy magma, heat it up, and cause it to erupt. Super fascinating. Still ongoing too. We’ll see what happens. This theoretically could progress as I don’t think we really know what’s sitting under that system. The Afar region is poorly studied and monitored outside Erta Ale which is a big tourist attraction, well relatively speaking. The danakil depression / Afar region is super hazardous topography, very hot and very alien looking. Lot of crazy volcanism. 
 

Fernandina in the Galapagos is having a major swarm right now, that’s a very cool volcano that had a substantial and unusual basaltic plinian caldera eruption in the 1950’s. I think a large VEI 4, but still somewhat unique and was quite an intense (fast) event. We’ll see what happens. 
 

Lots of stuff going on right now, we’ll see how everything progresses.

[Volcanic Winter]

The Hayli Gubbi eruption:

Reddit link

I’ve been fairly preoccupied and trying to stay on top of all these volcanic developments and catch up in various threads here. Rest assured if anything really major happens on the volcanic front I’ll do a write up about it - though Hayli Gubbi erupting fits that bill as this doesn’t happen often (long dormant system suddenly waking up due to magma from a neighbor system), and this may not be fully over depending on what’s going on down below. 
 

I would also say there’s been some decent pulses of SO2 this year and last (Raung!) now into the stratosphere from all this activity. Not as much in total as say, El Chichon (and certainly nowhere close to Pinatubo), but enough to possibly have some effect. Was just reading about how cluster of VEI4’s may have had some impact in the 2009-2011 winters, which isn’t typical. Underscores that there’s a lot of interplay we don’t fully 100% understand, but I’ll always maintain volcanoes have a much bigger impact on climate than most realize. And we’re learning a lot of past historical climate disturbances were the result of multiple eruptions clustered together instead of just one, even Tambora had a massive precursor in 1808/9ish. 
 

But to be very clear anything from this year / last would be on the lowest end of impact, if at all. But still possibly something in total. Let’s see what happens going forward. Lot of systems showing unrest!

 

edit: more links

https://watchers.news/2025/11/25/hayli-gubbis-first-eruption-in-at-least-12-000-years-grounds-flights-across-india-and-the-middle-east/

https://watchers.news/2025/11/25/intense-earthquake-swarm-at-galapagos-fernandina-volcano/

 

[bluewave]

15 hours ago, rclab said:

Thank you BW. 55 years ago I started working in the area, than married into the area. The row house across the street was boarded up, as was another around the corner, on Kane Street. Gentrification took hold and now both those buildings, which went for taxes, can command 4 to 7 million dollar price tags. The fall is (anthony forgive me) my favorite season. The end of life is also the promise of life. When winter finally arrives for me …. I hope to be ready. Stay well, as always …..

The same thing happened back in my old neighborhood of Long Beach. Growing up in the 1970s it was more like Coney Island with numerous boardwalk arcades and an amusement park.

Then gentrification began in the 1980s and now multimillion dollar condos took the place of these former attractions. I always found very interesting people living  there and it reminded me more of a NYC cosmopolitan neighborhood than a Long Island suburb.

Out of all the places that I lived on Long Island, Long Beach had the most character. The condos and apartments below are right where the bowling alley used to be before it closed around 1980.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/100-Boardwalk-Unit-1001_Long-Beach_NY_11561_M99207-31637

https://www.realtor.com/rentals/details/180-Boardwalk_Long-Beach_NY_11561_M94073-56016

[forkyfork]

the rich need to be romanov'd

[forkyfork]

i hope we get endless failed snow threats and they turn everyone's spirits into ashes

[rclab]

2 hours ago, forkyfork said:

the rich need to be romanov'd

 

48 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

i hope we get endless failed snow threats and they turn everyone's spirits into ashes

To many of us, no matter what you say, this still applies. As always …..

 

[bluewave]

On 11/11/2025 at 7:21 AM, FPizz said:

Lots of record first flakes yesterday. 

Early first snow for Paris also.

 

[forkyfork]

someone tell me why i'm supposed to care about ski resorts

[MJO812]

58 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

someone tell me why i'm supposed to care about ski resorts

Exactly 

[WeatherGeek2025]

dry or rain always lock it in, if it shows snow i never believe in unless it's 24 hours away!

[Roger Smith]

A reminder to regular contest entrants (in main general interest forum) that Dec and winter snowfall forecasts can be posted now.

Also an invite to all -- Dec is a good month to begin entering the contest because of the snowfall contest portion and also we look at seasonal scoring leaders too, but the main contest runs January to December so the invite is really for 2026 participation.

[WE GOT HIM]

On 12/1/2025 at 8:18 AM, Santa Claus said:

my kid failed geometry call that a bad son angle

hi its your season

[Tar Heel Snow]

At this rate I should’ve stayed in NC

[forkyfork]

 

[donsutherland1]

Retired After Last Use

December had begun on a strangely toasty note. The temperature had climbed to a balmy 57° (the third time in the last five years the mercury reached at least 57° on the first day of December), and the New York Public Library, perhaps out of nostalgia, perhaps out of quiet defiance, filled the marble halls of its iconic Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue building with sepia-toned photographs of children tunneling through drifts taller than themselves. The exhibit captured an era that residents increasingly believed had slipped out of reach. A public weather notice board calling itself "American Weather" had given the display a name that struck Marisol, a student at Columbia University, as both melodramatic and heartbreaking: “The Final Snowfall.”

Walking home after a full day of classes, Marisol passed one of Midtown’s newest absurdities: a synthetic snow dome where wealthy Manhattan parents paid $95 an hour to show their children what “winter” once felt like. She never stepped inside. Those plastic flakes felt like an insult. Her father had always said that snow gave New Yorkers a common language of spontaneous generosity. Cheap plastic could never measure up.

Almost four years had passed since the last daily snowfall of four inches or more. Even two consecutive snow-starved years had never occurred before. Four such years were unimaginable. As Marisol passed one of American Weather’s public boards, a small sculpture beside it stopped her cold. There stood a dented aluminum snow shovel mounted upright like a relic. At its base, an engraved bronze plaque read, “Retired after last use: February 21, 1929.”

She felt her throat tighten. "Snow is something you can only remember now," she thought. Then came the second thought. It was a much darker one, perhaps from having spent too much time reading "American Weather" on her way home from classes. "Soon there will be no one left who remembers at all," she worried.

Her grief was premature. Just over two weeks later, a storm swept across the City, dropping 6.7" of snow on December 17 and another half-inch the following day. Less than two months after that, an even larger snowstorm buried Central Park beneath 10.0" of luminous white.

Today marks the 1,405th consecutive day without a daily snowfall of four inches or more. Pessimism mixes with fatalism. Yet New York City has lived through snow droughts before, even as this one is the longest on record. As happened in December 1932, the streak will break. Eventually. Even with supercomputers, AI-driven forecasts, and models capable of simulating the atmosphere down to microphysical detail, the exact date of the next significant snowfall remains unknowable at this time.

Patience is required. But so is confidence. December is now on course to register its coldest start in more than fifteen years. That's a hopeful start. The arrival of the cold reveals that Winter has not yet forgotten New York City.

[NorthShoreWx]

Well said.  Didn't realize this board was around 100 years ago.  And we still have some original members 

[NorthShoreWx]

The last snowplow blade:

 

[CPcantmeasuresnow]

On 12/3/2025 at 1:16 PM, Tar Heel Snow said:

At this rate I should’ve stayed in NC

Moving to by far the warmest part of NY state didn't help. I realize it would mean commuting but living 40 miles north of midtown makes a world of difference. 

[rclab]

5 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Retired After Last Use

December had begun on a strangely toasty note. The temperature had climbed to a balmy 57° (the third time in the last five years the mercury reached at least 57° on the first day of December), and the New York Public Library, perhaps out of nostalgia, perhaps out of quiet defiance, filled the marble halls of its iconic Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue building with sepia-toned photographs of children tunneling through drifts taller than themselves. The exhibit captured an era that residents increasingly believed had slipped out of reach. A public weather notice board calling itself "American Weather" had given the display a name that struck Marisol, a student at Columbia University, as both melodramatic and heartbreaking: “The Final Snowfall.”

Walking home after a full day of classes, Marisol passed one of Midtown’s newest absurdities: a synthetic snow dome where wealthy Manhattan parents paid $95 an hour to show their children what “winter” once felt like. She never stepped inside. Those plastic flakes felt like an insult. Her father had always said that snow gave New Yorkers a common language of spontaneous generosity. Cheap plastic could never measure up.

Almost four years had passed since the last daily snowfall of four inches or more. Even two consecutive snow-starved years had never occurred before. Four such years were unimaginable. As Marisol passed one of American Weather’s public boards, a small sculpture beside it stopped her cold. There stood a dented aluminum snow shovel mounted upright like a relic. At its base, an engraved bronze plaque read, “Retired after last use: February 21, 1929.”

She felt her throat tighten. "Snow is something you can only remember now," she thought. Then came the second thought. It was a much darker one, perhaps from having spent too much time reading "American Weather" on her way home from classes. "Soon there will be no one left who remembers at all," she worried.

Her grief was premature. Just over two weeks later, a storm swept across the City, dropping 6.7" of snow on December 17 and another half-inch the following day. Less than two months after that, an even larger snowstorm buried Central Park beneath 10.0" of luminous white.

Today marks the 1,405th consecutive day without a daily snowfall of four inches or more. Pessimism mixes with fatalism. Yet New York City has lived through snow droughts before, even as this one is the longest on record. As happened in December 1932, the streak will break. Eventually. Even with supercomputers, AI-driven forecasts, and models capable of simulating the atmosphere down to microphysical detail, the exact date of the next significant snowfall remains unknowable at this time.

Patience is required. But so is confidence. December is now on course to register its coldest start in more than fifteen years. That's a hopeful start. The arrival of the cold reveals that Winter has not yet forgotten New York City.

Well said, well done Don. As always ….

 

[coastalplainsnowman]

18 hours ago, NorthShoreWx said:

The last snowplow blade:

 

For a minute there that thing looked like it was going to get pinched out in the direction of the camera guy at 200MPH.

[forkyfork]

why do people post obs when the mesonet exists

[NorthShoreWx]

2 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

why do people post obs when the mesonet exists

It's who we are.

[forkyfork]

i haven't measured snow since boxing day

[TheClimateChanger]

What happened to @LibertyBell? Has he posted recently?