February Obs & Discussions

billg315 wrote:44* and Cloudy. Had several drops of rain this morning at 40* with no flakes in sight, thus keeping my seasonal snowfall total at a Trace.
Forecast highs 61 and 54 for Thursday and Friday respectively before our weekly Friday Night-Saturday "cold wave."

Not that is matters because it's splitting hairs, but our hoods are about 25 miles apart shown by red dots. I have a little bit of elevation which helps in marginal events.  You probably have some albeit < 1".  I'm at a whopping 3.6".  Got to start looking at all time low seasonal totals because aside from another car scraper to two that may be it.  For sure this is the lowest totals I've seen around here so deep into the season.  Way surpasses the futility of 2019/20 season. 

heehaw453 wrote:

billg315 wrote:44* and Cloudy. Had several drops of rain this morning at 40* with no flakes in sight, thus keeping my seasonal snowfall total at a Trace.
Forecast highs 61 and 54 for Thursday and Friday respectively before our weekly Friday Night-Saturday "cold wave."

Not that is matters because it's splitting hairs, but our hoods are about 25 miles apart shown by red dots. I have a little bit of elevation which helps in marginal events.  You probably have some albeit < 1".  I'm at a whopping 3.6".  Got to start looking at all time low seasonal totals because aside from another car scraper to two that may be it.  For sure this is the lowest totals I've seen around here so deep into the season.  Way surpasses the futility of 2019/20 season. 

My sister lives pretty close to where you are at and for there to be only about 3.6" in her neck of the woods is indeed rare. As for me, I'm a little surprised it even shows me having around .5" as I can't recall an event that did much more than dust the mulch and car tops, but I do think there was one system (might even have just been a snow squall) in January on a weekday that may have coated the ground back home while I was at work and mostly melted by the time I got home. It speaks volumes that I'm struggling to remember even that much.

sroc4 wrote:

billg315 wrote:44* and Cloudy. Had several drops of rain this morning at 40* with no flakes in sight, thus keeping my seasonal snowfall total at a Trace.
Forecast highs 61 and 54 for Thursday and Friday respectively before our weekly Friday Night-Saturday "cold wave."

Bill.  Dont you mean "Cool Wave"??

Lol. Indeed. Other than the Christmas Eve and Feb. 4 cold events (where it actually did get down to near zero around here) even the few cold days are really not that much below average. Normally I wouldn't bat an eye at my Saturday forecast high of 33* in February.

Heavy T-Storm went though on 2/21.  Very August like type of storm.

Marble + sized hail stones in February.  Never seen that in February. Ever.

Yep, the season of Wing continues. Heavy rain shower here with what appears to be a severe Thunderstorm cell just south of my area (probably the one that just blew through your area heehaw).

A perfectly spring-summer radar in February.

thunder here in edison

Thunderstorm went through in Hillsborough, NJ with some small hail and heavy rain. Think we may have gotten more hail than snow or sleet accumulation this winter lol.

45* and strong thunderstorm rolling through! Freaking Febuary... and now sitting and holding the dogs

Just had a 55+ mph gust.  Like a squall line in late summer.  Temp at 44 degrees.

You can see the clash of air mass.  

SOI hasn't been negative the entire month until today. Watch for consistency.

I hear there was a possible tornado yesterday?

heehaw453 wrote:SOI hasn't been negative the entire month until today. Watch for consistency.

This morning is the first time Ive seen the SOI truly negative all winter season.  https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/soi/
Maybe once or twice it dipped below -8.  (between +8 and -8 is technically considered neutral).  Is the atmosphere really ready to shift out of the La Nina forcing and warm MJO phase forcing?  Going to need more than 1-2days of negative SOI to convince me but its going to happen eventually.  

If you look at the latest MJO forecast you can see that there was abrief run through 8 and back into the center.  





That said the response in the atmosphere was still underwhelming in our neck of the woods.  If you look at the latest weekly OLR map notice I have two areas circled and compare to the MJO phase map





If you notice there are two circles.  The one east of the dateline(180*) lines up more with phase 1; whereas, the circle west of the dateline lines up more with phase 5-6.  What this means is you have convection, or rising air, going off in these circled areas, yet the MJO forecast indicates it moved through the phase 7-8 phase before collapsing back into the null phase.  This is because while the MJO may have looked like we had a phase 7-8 in reality it was the avg of the forcing east and west of those phases.  So basically you had forcing over MJO phases 8-1 combined with 5-6, combined with La Nina background forcing over the past week.  This is why it is very important not to just look at the MJO forecast and think the atmosphere  should behave a certain way because the MJO is "in" a certain phase.  

Changes to the SOI on the oirder of a week or more, can be a great indicator that the forcing along the tropical Pac is going to change.  So going forward, if it remains negative or neutral, and the OLR conts to percolate in areas east of the dateline with amplitude expect some legit cooler/colder, and whiter chances for the first week or two of March.

Tornado in central Jersey yesterday has been confirmed by NWS Mount Holly. No rating or details yet, but talk about a wild winter season!

sroc4 wrote:

heehaw453 wrote:SOI hasn't been negative the entire month until today. Watch for consistency.

This morning is the first time Ive seen the SOI truly negative all winter season.  https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/soi/
Maybe once or twice it dipped below -8.  (between +8 and -8 is technically considered neutral).  Is the atmosphere really ready to shift out of the La Nina forcing and warm MJO phase forcing?  Going to need more than 1-2days of negative SOI to convince me but its going to happen eventually.  

If you look at the latest MJO forecast you can see that there was abrief run through 8 and back into the center.  





That said the response in the atmosphere was still underwhelming in our neck of the woods.  If you look at the latest weekly OLR map notice I have two areas circled and compare to the MJO phase map





If you notice there are two circles.  The one east of the dateline(180*) lines up more with phase 1; whereas, the circle west of the dateline lines up more with phase 5-6.  What this means is you have convection, or rising air, going off in these circled areas, yet the MJO forecast indicates it moved through the phase 7-8 phase before collapsing back into the null phase.  This is because while the MJO may have looked like we had a phase 7-8 in reality it was the avg of the forcing east and west of those phases.  So basically you had forcing over MJO phases 8-1 combined with 5-6, combined with La Nina background forcing over the past week.  This is why it is very important not to just look at the MJO forecast and think the atmosphere  should behave a certain way because the MJO is "in" a certain phase.  

Changes to the SOI on the oirder of a week or more, can be a great indicator that the forcing along the tropical Pac is going to change.  So going forward, if it remains negative or neutral, and the OLR conts to percolate in areas east of the dateline with amplitude expect some legit cooler/colder, and whiter chances for the first week or two of March.

This latest value raises my eyebrow.

heehaw453 wrote:

sroc4 wrote:

heehaw453 wrote:SOI hasn't been negative the entire month until today. Watch for consistency.

This morning is the first time Ive seen the SOI truly negative all winter season.  https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/soi/
Maybe once or twice it dipped below -8.  (between +8 and -8 is technically considered neutral).  Is the atmosphere really ready to shift out of the La Nina forcing and warm MJO phase forcing?  Going to need more than 1-2days of negative SOI to convince me but its going to happen eventually.  

If you look at the latest MJO forecast you can see that there was abrief run through 8 and back into the center.  





That said the response in the atmosphere was still underwhelming in our neck of the woods.  If you look at the latest weekly OLR map notice I have two areas circled and compare to the MJO phase map





If you notice there are two circles.  The one east of the dateline(180*) lines up more with phase 1; whereas, the circle west of the dateline lines up more with phase 5-6.  What this means is you have convection, or rising air, going off in these circled areas, yet the MJO forecast indicates it moved through the phase 7-8 phase before collapsing back into the null phase.  This is because while the MJO may have looked like we had a phase 7-8 in reality it was the avg of the forcing east and west of those phases.  So basically you had forcing over MJO phases 8-1 combined with 5-6, combined with La Nina background forcing over the past week.  This is why it is very important not to just look at the MJO forecast and think the atmosphere  should behave a certain way because the MJO is "in" a certain phase.  

Changes to the SOI on the oirder of a week or more, can be a great indicator that the forcing along the tropical Pac is going to change.  So going forward, if it remains negative or neutral, and the OLR conts to percolate in areas east of the dateline with amplitude expect some legit cooler/colder, and whiter chances for the first week or two of March.

This latest value raises my eyebrow.

Need a couple more in a row before we call it real. Or enough to shake up the effects downstream in our neck of the woods. IMHO of course

Snowing hard 35 degrees

Sleet falling here for the last 20-30 minutes

Light sleet here right now. Got report from New Rochelle, NY there are some flakes flying.

I had some snow today.  35, but surface just too warm.  don't think anyone gets much out of this until you get into NH and ME. If there were cold air being drained down from Canada this would have been 3-6" NW NJ/LHV.  Didn't have the 1035 H parked in Quebec.  Partially due to AO state.

36* at 2 pm started with sleet, still 36* but had some snow mix in at times, now back to almost all sleet.

The sleet has gotten chunky so I guess that's graupel. 37 degrees.

41* had icy pinging (graupel)...and Minneapolis going to get historic snow ..I can't hide my jealousy.

38*with light sleet and rain

33 with moderate snow.

Sticking everywhere except the roads. Always nice to see but also Mother Nature just teasing and playing with me again.