Front Ranger

Dreams always come true in Bangor, ME. Cold, icy, flower-decimating dreams.

Except when it makes you stress over frost?

This is how we know you haven't had enough rain lately.

Below normal!

Interesting. The high temps across the region were probably about the warmest on record for February. However, downtown Portland finished behind 1991, 1968, 1963, and 1958 for overall warmth. Also worth noting that Silverton was not as warm as 1991 and 1963 this February. It's a shame SLE, PDX, and SEA are all so different than they used to be, from a historical comparison standpoint. The 50+ thing may not be influenced by land changes quite as much, but there's no doubt SLE doesn't get as cold as they used to at night.

Obviously, with Jim there is sometimes wishcasting. There were a couple times he was talking about the ensembles looking great and I honestly couldn't see what he was talking about. They could be wrong, but there is a good signal in the 10-15 day range for western troughing. About as good as we've seen all winter. Let's see if it moves into the 7-10 day range. The mountains here are doing fine, but I know most ranges west of here could really use some wet troughing for a few weeks.

The cold definitely outweighed the warmth over the U.S. the past 30 days.

.78" so far for San Diego, with more to come. That's pretty good for them.

26/6 at DEN today. This makes 6 out of the last 8 days below freezing, when the average high is now about 50. And the cold isn't over yet...looks like a high in the 32-35 range tomorrow, then a high in the low 20s, followed by a high in the teens. Pretty remarkable stretch for this late in the season.

I can submit a complete grade by mid/late April most years. Oct-Jan was a C- An excellent Feb has raised that to a B.

Yup, the blocking patterns this cold season have been remarkable similar, with upper level ridging either on or right off the west coast of NA.

For the LA airport, 1963, 1980, and 1995 were warmer than 2015. For downtown LA, 1980, 1981 and 1995 were all warmer. Pasadena has 2015 easily warmest, but I don't know how reliable their records are, seem to be missing a fair amount of data. Lancaster was second warmest behind 1963.

By the way, I'll fully admit that my call that February would be better than January turned out to be a bust for the PNW. We did finally see the pattern change up the second half of the month, but the ridging remained too close to the coast for the PNW to really benefit. Some of us in the West further inland did see a much better/more active pattern during this period, and CA ended up faring better, but the PNW did not, unfortunately. The logic behind saying I thought February had a good chance to be better was the fact that historically, it is unusual for the kind of pattern January saw to continue all the way through February, and many very ridgy Januaries in the West were followed by more active/colder Februaries, especially when it wasn't a strong Nino.

Yes, and that's exactly how a roll of the dice works. Over time, we know that certain numbers/combinations come up more often than others, and the averages will play out. But those averages can be arrived at through some pretty "unlikely" streaks, and like you said, there is no way to predict the next roll based on the previous one.

I think we agree. The casino analogy is only valid because some people have actually used that sort of logic: "we just had a historically bad winter, therefore the odds are higher that one of the next couple will be great". There is nothing scientific, weather-related or otherwise, to that line of thinking. However, as Snowman's post above illustrates, there is historical precedent for much better winters following terrible ones - though that may just be blind luck. You'll notice my second sentence you quoted basically said the same thing you say here.

We've had lengthy conversations about this exact line of thinking on here before. You're absolutely right. Mother Nature has no memory, and what happens is not dictated by the law of averages, or by what has previously occurred. However, we can use past history as a guide to what is most likely to happen again in the future...to a certain degree.

Yup, like much of the West we torched the first half of the month, though still managed a couple snowfalls. The second half of the month has been insane, though. After what was probably the warmest first half of Feb on record, we are going to end up with one of the coldest second halves.

DEN finally broke their February snowfall record as well. It was pretty weak, though, just 22.1" (the previous record). Considering every other month from Oct-Apr has a higher record. Still, DIA sucks for snow, so it's impressive they managed it.

Yeah, except I never said anything about the last few days of the month mitigating PDX's run at a record month. You thinking of the post where I went through most of the major stations throughout the West and assessed their odds of a record warm month? Because I didn't mention PDX in that, except to say you're probably familiar with their situation.

There's no doubt 2014 was a very warm year for the PNW. But yeah, the discussion was about monthly records. PDX and especially SEA lately have been seeing them much more often than the non-developed stations.

Yeah, I remember all the SSW stuff. Just wasn't clear he meant that the PV breakdown due to SSW was a factor that actually influenced ENSO.

I've picked up over 4" today on top of the 16" that fell over the weekend. By tomorrow morning, even with compaction I wouldn't be surprised if I have about 2 feet on the ground. I'll try to post some pics.

Hey, when people are talking about "one record warm month after another", it's worth considering that the two big stations with basically unchanged surroundings paint a different picture. This is something you'll find across the country.

Fixed. So Oct 2014 was the first record record warm month in 19 years for EUG and 22 years for OLM.

SEA, on the other hand, is working on their 5th record warm month since 2009. And PDX their 5th since 2004. Quite different than the rural stations.