"As December goes, so goes the winter"

Joe's data a bit off:

There have been 50 Decembers of the last 146 with less than 3 inches of snow, the average December in NYC has 5.5 inches.

The January through April period produces 22 inches of snow on average. If during those periods 18-26 inches falls call those as push as 20% above or below normal isn't a significant deviation one way or the other.

of those 50 Decembers the following January through Aprils saw the following.

10 between 18-26
13 above 26
27 below 18.

Statistically Decembers below 3 inches of snow in NYC the rest of the winter has been near normal 20% of the time, significantly below normal snowfall 54% of the time and significantly above normal snowfall 26% of the time.

It basically leaves our chances of the period January through April of having above normal snowfalll at 26%. I'm not liking those odds.

I call that pretty significant.

CPcantmeasuresnow wrote:Joe's data a bit off:

There have been 50 Decembers of the last 146 with less than 3 inches of snow, the average December in NYC has 5.5 inches.

The January through April period produces 22 inches of snow  on average. If during those periods 18-26 inches falls call those as push as 20% above or below normal isn't a significant deviation one way or the other.

of those 50 Decembers the following January through Aprils saw the following.

10 between 18-26
13 above 26
27 below 18.

Statistically Decembers below 3 inches of snow in NYC the rest of the winter has been near normal 20% of the time, significantly below normal snowfall 54% of the time and significantly above normal snowfall 26% of the time.

It basically leaves our chances of the period January through April of having above normal snowfalll at 26%.  I'm not liking those odds.

I call that pretty significant.

Im sorry CP IMHO you cannot simply call those a push (18-26" needs its own category).    Therefore with less than 3" in Dec there is a 54% chance at a below normal (<18" total) for the winter, a 20% chance at a normal winter(18-26", and a 26% chance of an above normal (>26" total).  Or 54% chance at below 18"-26" and 56% at greater than 18-26" .  
Put that way its more 50/50

Oh my! So much math early in the morning!

Love it though!

sroc4 wrote:

CPcantmeasuresnow wrote:Joe's data a bit off:

There have been 50 Decembers of the last 146 with less than 3 inches of snow, the average December in NYC has 5.5 inches.

The January through April period produces 22 inches of snow  on average. If during those periods 18-26 inches falls call those as push as 20% above or below normal isn't a significant deviation one way or the other.

of those 50 Decembers the following January through Aprils saw the following.

10 between 18-26
13 above 26
27 below 18.

Statistically Decembers below 3 inches of snow in NYC the rest of the winter has been near normal 20% of the time, significantly below normal snowfall 54% of the time and significantly above normal snowfall 26% of the time.

It basically leaves our chances of the period January through April of having above normal snowfalll at 26%.  I'm not liking those odds.

I call that pretty significant.

Im sorry CP IMHO you cannot simply call those a push (18-26" needs its own category).    Therefore with less than 3" in Dec there is a 54% chance at a below normal (<18" total) for the winter, a 20% chance at a normal winter(18-26", and a 26% chance of an above normal (>26" total).  Or 54% chance at below 18"-26" and 56% at greater than 18-26" .  
Put that way its more 50/50

First off Doc I have to make a couple of corrections, what I originally posted didn't include Decembers with a trace of snow so there have been 65 Decembers below 3 inches.

Were not using December to predict the whole season just for what happens after December, January through April.

18-26 isn't above normal, 22 inches is the normal January through April so I'm calling those years not statistically significant.  If you want to use 22 as the dividing line of above normal or below normal here it is.

65 Decembers of below 3 inches of snow.

23 January through Aprils above 22 inches.
42 January through Aprils below 22 inches.

35% above for the rest of  the winter
65% below for the rest of  the winter

Fairly significant.

I mentioned on the NJ Strong get together thread that I planned to bring my laptop to shows charts and graphs.  Well, this is kind of a graph that I have in mind.  I went onto Excel and imported the monthly snowfall totals for CPK from Upton's website and added up the January-April snow totals going back to the 1869-70 season.  In this graph, the y-axis contains the December snowfall totals and the x-axis contains the snowfall totals from the following January-April:



I mentioned a while back the prognosticator that if December has 3.0"+ the next four months have 20.0"+ and if December has less than 3.0" the next four months have less than 20.0."  As shown, there are plenty of winters where that is not the case.  I know this was mentioned on other weather forums, but I thought I would make my own graph of it.

December 2014 will end up with 1.0 inch of snow In Central Park in NYC

Since 1869 the average snowfall for January through April in CPK is 22.1 inches

Since 1994/95 there have been 8 Decembers with an inch or less of snow in December. All of those Winters have had below average snowfall for the following January through April.

The average for those 8 after December is 10.6 inches, less than half the average.

8 for 8 in the last 20 years the last time I checked is 100% accuracy.

Winter is over, the omnipotent and all powerful and all knowing "December prognosticator" has spoken and it in the last 20 years has never and I repeat never been wrong.

I like the title of this thread. It kind of reminds me of how some old timers think (no offense if you are older lol). But theres also numbers involved which make it more believable. I only say the old timer thing because back in the day you would hear people say "Summer was a scorcher, so winter is going to be cold". The funny thing is, usually when summer is very hot, we do usually end up with a decent winter as well. This past summer wasn't bad at all. Plenty of days where I opened the windows. June was cool, July was milder as always then August was cool again. So far winter hasn't lived up to potential.

HectorO wrote:I like the title of this thread. It kind of reminds me of how some old timers think (no offense if you are older lol). But theres also numbers involved which make it more believable. I only say the old timer thing because back in the day you would hear people say "Summer was a scorcher, so winter is going to be cold". The funny thing is, usually when summer is very hot, we do usually end up with a decent winter as well. This past summer wasn't bad at all. Plenty of days where I opened the windows. June was cool, July was milder as always then August was cool again. So far winter hasn't lived up to potential.

Do you remember the summers of 2000, 2003, 2004, and 2009? The were all relatively cool summers (in fact June-July 2009 was the 4th coolest June-July on record for CPK). They were all followed by winters with above normal snowfall winters with 35.0", 42.6", 41.0", and 51.4", respectively.

Of course summer 2010, the hottest summer on record, was followed by 61.9" of snow the following winter. The hot summers of 1995 and 2002 were also followed by snowy winters. The cool summer of 1996 was followed by 10.0" of snow for CPK the winter of 1996-97. The hot summer of 1999 was followed by 16.0" of snow the winter of 1999-2000.

Math23x7 wrote:

HectorO wrote:I like the title of this thread. It kind of reminds me of how some old timers think (no offense if you are older lol). But theres also numbers involved which make it more believable. I only say the old timer thing because back in the day you would hear people say "Summer was a scorcher, so winter is going to be cold". The funny thing is, usually when summer is very hot, we do usually end up with a decent winter as well. This past summer wasn't bad at all. Plenty of days where I opened the windows. June was cool, July was milder as always then August was cool again. So far winter hasn't lived up to potential.

Do you remember the summers of 2000, 2003, 2004, and 2009?  The were all relatively cool summers (in fact June-July 2009 was the 4th coolest June-July on record for CPK).  They were all followed by winters with above normal snowfall winters with 35.0", 42.6", 41.0", and 51.4", respectively.

Of course summer 2010, the hottest summer on record, was followed by 61.9" of snow the following winter.  The hot summers of 1995 and 2002 were also followed by snowy winters. The cool summer of 1996 was followed by 10.0" of snow for CPK the winter of 1996-97.  The hot summer of 1999 was followed by 16.0" of snow the winter of 1999-2000.

Summer of 2009 aka the summer that never was. And winter 2010 was so bad in m area that the town had no where else to put snow. I barely got into my car in the mornings and I had to dig a maze for my dogs to use the bathroom.

Well, the December prognosticator turned out to bust this year. Since the beginning of January (as of 7 AM today). CPK has had 22.9" of snow despite the 1.0" from December. Add those to the 0.2" from November and you have 24.1" on the season. On the color code I used on my Excel chart, it currently holds as "near normal." We'll see how the rest of the winter plays out.

Of course, if there ever was a December prognosticator for Boston, it can go by the wayside. 2.6" in November, 0.3" in December, 92.8" since the beginning of January, and since January 24th, they have had 90.2" of snow. And it's snowing there as we speak!

Not a fan of this prognosticator. Never was.

Math23x7 wrote:Well, the December prognosticator turned out to bust this year.  Since the beginning of January (as of 7 AM today).  CPK has had 22.9" of snow despite the 1.0" from December.  Add those to the 0.2" from November and you have 24.1" on the season.  On the color code I used on my Excel chart, it currently holds as "near normal." We'll see how the rest of the winter plays out.

Of course, if there ever was a December prognosticator for Boston, it can go by the wayside.  2.6" in November, 0.3" in December, 92.8" since the beginning of January, and since January 24th, they have had 90.2" of snow.  And it's snowing there as we speak!

Not a bust yet, the normal snowfall from January through April is 22.0 inches, I wouldn't cal 22.9 since Jan 1 a bust, it's a draw.

Let's see what the rest of the season brings.

Of course we're both ignoring the fact that actually NYC has had at least 5.0 inches more than has been reported in CPK since Jan 1 but that's for another thread.

Frank_Wx wrote:Not a fan of this prognosticator. Never was.

I don't think it has much basis in anything, it's just weird it worked so well in CPK the last 20 or so years.

CPcantmeasuresnow wrote:

Frank_Wx wrote:Not a fan of this prognosticator. Never was.

I don't think it has much basis in anything, it's just weird it worked so well in CPK the last 20 or so years.

Yea, I understand why you brought it up. Definitely is an eye-opener. As I have grown to understand long range forecasting a little more its become apparent to me how much research and analysis needs to be done to accurately forecast a season in advance. And everyone has their own metric of accuracy.