Jump to content

January 1886...Just Another Great month From a Great Decade


snow_wizard

Recommended Posts

4 hours ago, BLI snowman said:

If you want to search the old original observation forms, a lot of them (not all) are available still on here

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html

Are there any other old observation forms not on there? Thank you again for showing that, found some interesting stuff from 1967/78 and 1968/69.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Doiinko said:

Are there any other old observation forms not on there? Thank you again for showing that, found some interesting stuff from 1967/78 and 1968/69.

Unfortunately a lot of the original observation forms for whatever reason haven't been scanned and just haven't made it in there. Some are likely missing or damaged. Fort Vancouver for example has data from 1849 to 1868 but only the 1856 observation forms are included. A lot of the 1950-1980 forms also aren't in there for the long term stations for whatever reason.  There are also some COOP stations that aren't necessarily represented there. La Center, WA for example isn't on there even though the COOP station has records available from 1896 to 1940.

I'd also recommend cross-checking with the NCDC station database to find the majority of the complete datasets. I find searching Daily Summaries by county helps when wading through it.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/search

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

Unfortunately a lot of the original observation forms for whatever reason haven't been scanned and just haven't made it in there. Some are likely missing or damaged. Fort Vancouver for example has data from 1849 to 1868 but only the 1856 observation forms are included. A lot of the 1950-1980 forms also aren't in there for the long term stations for whatever reason.  There are also some COOP stations that aren't necessarily represented there. La Center, WA for example isn't on there even though the COOP station has records available from 1896 to 1940.

I'd also recommend cross-checking with the NCDC station database to find the majority of the complete datasets. I find searching Daily Summaries by county helps when wading through it.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/search

Yeah, I noticed that a lot of the forms are missing during that time period. Luckily the station really close to me had data from 1967-1969, and a station a few miles SSE of me had data from 1972-1985. 

I'm slightly confused about how the stations report high/low temps, for example in Dec 1968:

On the 30th, they report a temp spread of 15/7, but from hourly observations, it starts out as 12 degrees at midnight and drops throughout the day, so how did they get the high of 15?

 

Screenshot_20220629-133743.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Doiinko said:

Yeah, I noticed that a lot of the forms are missing during that time period. Luckily the station really close to me had data from 1967-1969, and a station a few miles SSE of me had data from 1972-1985. 

I'm slightly confused about how the stations report high/low temps, for example in Dec 1968:

On the 30th, they report a temp spread of 15/7, but from hourly observations, it starts out as 12 degrees at midnight and drops throughout the day, so how did they get the high of 15?

 

Screenshot_20220629-133743.png

They may have used some weird calendar like 9pm to 9pm. Not sure. PDX had a midnight high of 14 that day so it also makes sense that far western Portland would have been a tiny bit warmer at that time as the cold air advected in.

Edited by BLI snowman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, BLI snowman said:

They may have used some weird calendar like 9pm to 9pm. Not sure. PDX had a midnight high of 14 that day so it also makes sense that far western Portland would have been a tiny bit warmer at that time as the cold air advected in.

It shows a temp of 12 at midnight and then it steadily drops so I guess I should count it as that. For hourly wind observations, are they recording gusts or sustained wind speeds? It looks like sustained because of the consistency of hourly observations, but a sustained wind speed of 30mph is crazy. They did remark that there were blizzard conditions and drifts 2' deep, probably east wind accelerating off of the west hills?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Doiinko said:

It shows a temp of 12 at midnight and then it steadily drops so I guess I should count it as that. For hourly wind observations, are they recording gusts or sustained wind speeds? It looks like sustained because of the consistency of hourly observations, but a sustained wind speed of 30mph is crazy. They did remark that there were blizzard conditions and drifts 2' deep, probably east wind accelerating off of the west hills?

The east winds were very strong with that with the insane thermal gradient. It was a very top tier event from a low level cold air standpoint. Mt. Scott had a station back then as well and recorded a 5/0 day on the 30th. There were severe blizzard conditions throughout the gorge.

The cold air to the north and east was unbelievable with the PV essentially parking into NE WA and north ID. Moscow, ID dropped to -42 (-30 is their next coldest reading) and Mazama/Winthrop both set the WA state record with -48.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

The east winds were very strong with that with the insane thermal gradient. It was a very top tier event from a low level cold air standpoint. Mt. Scott had a station back then as well and recorded a 5/0 day on the 30th. There were severe blizzard conditions throughout the gorge.

The cold air to the north and east was unbelievable with the PV essentially parking into NE WA and north ID. Moscow, ID dropped to -42 (-30 is their next coldest reading) and Mazama/Winthrop both set the WA state record with -48.

The station in Bethany recorded NE winds 30 mph for nearly 5 hours in a row with that. And then in January 1969, it recorded an hourly wind speed of NE 35mph.

Also, wasn't the GEM model at one point showing something similar to that in Feb 2021? Some of the model runs before thag were wild, like the GFS showing 30+ inches in a lot of places and stuff like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Doiinko said:

The station in Bethany recorded NE winds 30 mph for nearly 5 hours in a row with that. And then in January 1969, it recorded an hourly wind speed of NE 35mph.

Also, wasn't the GEM model at one point showing something similar to that in Feb 2021? Some of the model runs before thag were wild, like the GFS showing 30+ inches in a lot of places and stuff like that.

I think it was a 00z GEM run that had single digits down near Santa Barbara about 5 days out.

Edited by BLI snowman
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
On 9/12/2016 at 6:14 PM, BLI snowman said:

Seems pretty ridiculous. They're essentially flagging a lot of extreme events because they were, in fact, extreme. You'd think that they would rather quickly be able to corroborate a lot of these readings, at least to a point where they consider the data usable.

Looks like Longview's reading in January 1930 of -20 was removed as well. Was that a valid reading? Hillsboro dropped to -14 and they kept that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Doiinko said:

Looks like Longview's reading in January 1930 of -20 was removed as well. Was that a valid reading? Hillsboro dropped to -14 and they kept that.

Pretty good chance that it was at least close to legit, although thermometer placement may have slightly exaggerated that particular reading. Castle Rock was -13 and newspaper accounts seem to corroborate the -15 to -20 stuff in Cowlitz County. Very, very deep snowcover following that big storm on the 18th-19th. Some places had 20"+ on the ground by that point with clear, calm conditions and a super cold airmass. Pretty much the ideal setup for big time radiational cooling.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/20/2022 at 12:20 PM, Doiinko said:

Looks like Longview's reading in January 1930 of -20 was removed as well. Was that a valid reading? Hillsboro dropped to -14 and they kept that.

Given what I know about that winter the -20 is very possibly legit.  Even places up this way with little snow cover were quite cold.  I don't think the people making these decisions understand the fact we used to get extremely anomalous cold here some winters.

  • Like 1

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, snow_wizard said:

Given what I know about that winter the -20 is very possibly legit.  Even places up this way with little snow cover were quite cold.  I don't think the people making these decisions understand the fact we used to get extremely anomalous cold here some winters.

That month looks amazing, over 24" of snow at Hillsboro and 15 days consecutively below freezing and a few 33s (19 in a row at Portland but less snow). I think Hillsboro averaged 25.4 for the month, colder than 1950, 1949 or 1937. Seems like it was better in NW OR and SW WA though than Western WA.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/23/2022 at 7:57 AM, Doiinko said:

That month looks amazing, over 24" of snow at Hillsboro and 15 days consecutively below freezing and a few 33s (19 in a row at Portland but less snow). I think Hillsboro averaged 25.4 for the month, colder than 1950, 1949 or 1937. Seems like it was better in NW OR and SW WA though than Western WA.

I would call January 2017 a poor mans January 1930.  Kind of similar distribution of the real goodies.

  • Like 1

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I would call January 2017 a poor mans January 1930.  Kind of similar distribution of the real goodies.

Was the January 1956 snowstorm somewhat similar to the January 2017 one? Looks like a big snowstorm for Portland followed by cold weather. And it seems like Seattle got a good bit of snow the next month as well to even it out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Doiinko said:

Was the January 1956 snowstorm somewhat similar to the January 2017 one? Looks like a big snowstorm for Portland followed by cold weather. And it seems like Seattle got a good bit of snow the next month as well to even it out.

Very possible.  That winter had so many good events pretty much everywhere got hit at least once...probably twice.  The Feb 1956 event was very impressive up here.

  • Like 1

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...

×
×
  • Create New...