PNW January 2022, Contact Info for Phil

[MossMan]

Just now, RentonHillTC said:

Wow!!! Lookin good! 

[snow_wizard]

2 hours ago, ShawniganLake said:

I can’t imagine what 1916 was like in my area.  135” of snow in 40 days with very little thawing between snowstorms 

1916 is the only year I know that exceeds what Central WA just had.  We are in pretty lofty territory with recent events. If the whole pattern had been shifted south 100 miles everyone on this forum would have gotten crushed.  The nice thing about 1916 is it had a lot of cold and quiet weather to go with all of the snow in January.  The real snow madness came in February, but there was a whole lot before that too.

[snow_wizard]

4 minutes ago, MossMan said:

Wow!!! Lookin good! 

Yup.  No doubt that is going somewhere good.

[bainbridgekid]

8 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Yup.  Just found the notation.  The snow in Seattle weighted an insane 52 pounds per square foot in January 1880.  That's what I used to verify the amount of water equivalent the snow had.  As I motioned before they calculated the weight based on how low a ship anchored in Eliott Bay sank in the water from the weight of the snow.  Pretty D**n clever.

Once again it was the most water to ever fall from the sky in Seattle in 3 days and it was all in the form of snow!

I’ve always assumed that had to have been after a bunch of rain fell and was absorbed into the snow.

[Phishy Wx]

anybody got some lava or flamethrower I can borrow.  I have a rock solid ice berm the city plow created that I can't move.  snow blower won't touch it, too hard and solid to shovel or move.  oof

[snow_wizard]

8 minutes ago, bainbridgekid said:

I’ve always assumed that had to have been after a bunch of rain fell and was absorbed into the snow.

Nope.  That's what makes it so fun! 

The gradient was northerly in Seattle the entire time.  The power it must have taken to keep that kind of pattern so suppressed must have been off the charts.  The key to really untangling the questions from this event are found in the Seattle PI accounts.  It makes it clear they did the calculations on the snow weight before it warmed up.  In fact after the last storm we actually had a couple of solidly cold days before the warmup came.

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

anybody got some lava or flamethrower I can borrow.  I have a rock solid ice berm the city plow created that I can't move.  snow blower won't touch it, too hard and solid to shovel or move.  oof

I have a wood splitting maul.

[Phishy Wx]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

I have a wood splitting maul.

I may have to take a sledgehammer to it, but I don't want to damage the driveway concrete

[gusky]

My phone died the minute I took this photo so it's sh*t quality, but one year ago today there was a crazy brief snow squall that covered all surfaces with almost an inch of snow, and then melted by the end of the day. I wasn't the weather geek I am today, so I have no idea what the weather was (I'll attempt to find radar records of it).

[RentonHill]

4 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

I may have to take a sledgehammer to it, but I don't want to damage the driveway concrete

Got any big drill bits??

[snow_wizard]

1 hour ago, BLI snowman said:

 

I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock into upper level reanalysis that far back. Those images don't even remotely match up with the documented surface observations we have from that winter.

We know that there was a very healthy La Nina that winter with an unusually suppressed jet and a pretty prototypical -PNA Western trough/SE ridge pattern. Aligns well with other such winters like 1889-90 and 1949-50.

I'm thinking of bringing to the attention of the people at NOAA or NCEP.  The Signal Service maps should have given them a good idea of what the 500mb pattern looked like that winter.

[snow_wizard]

2 minutes ago, RentonHillTC said:

Got any big drill bits??

Great idea.  I have a rock drill / hammer that would break that up easy.

[Omegaraptor]

Clear blue sky here in Corvallis. Wonderful.

[snow_wizard]

6 minutes ago, gusky said:

My phone died the minute I took this photo so it's sh*t quality, but one year ago today there was a crazy brief snow squall that covered all surfaces with almost an inch of snow, and then melted by the end of the day. I wasn't the weather geek I am today, so I have no idea what the weather was (I'll attempt to find radar records of it).

Obviously very marginal.  I had a 50/34 day here with gusty east winds.  There was precip here so I assume there was a lot of evaporative cooling after the high of 50.

[gusky]

8 minutes ago, gusky said:

My phone died the minute I took this photo so it's sh*t quality, but one year ago today there was a crazy brief snow squall that covered all surfaces with almost an inch of snow, and then melted by the end of the day. I wasn't the weather geek I am today, so I have no idea what the weather was (I'll attempt to find radar records of it).

Scratch that, it was January 15th, 2020. Phone saved the photo in the wrong place

[gusky]

[gusky]

4 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Obviously very marginal.  I had a 50/34 day here with gusty east winds.  There was precip here so I assume there was a lot of evaporative cooling after the high of 50.

Just commented that it was actually January 15th, 2020. I must have edited the photo or something a year ago today.

[gusky]

5 minutes ago, gusky said:

Scratch that, it was January 15th, 2020. Phone saved the photo in the wrong place

Seattle City area received trace snow on that date, on top of a depth of 2 inches from some snow the past couple days.

[TacomaWaWx]

7 minutes ago, gusky said:

Scratch that, it was January 15th, 2020. Phone saved the photo in the wrong place

Yeah I was thinking there’s no way that’s January 2021. We also had a trace of snow on 1/15/20. 

[TacomaWaWx]

January 2020 is really the only event we’ve had in January since 2012. 
1/9 38/30 0.5”

1/13 37/32 TR.

1/14 36/28 1”

1/15 43/32 TR. 

[Timmy Supercell]

43 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Yup.  Just found the notation.  The snow in Seattle weighted an insane 52 pounds per square foot in January 1880.  That's what I used to verify the amount of water equivalent the snow had.  As I motioned before they calculated the weight based on how low a ship anchored in Eliott Bay sank in the water from the weight of the snow.  Pretty D**n clever.

Once again it was the most water to ever fall from the sky in Seattle in 3 days and it was all in the form of snow!

Must have been a once in two lifetimes setup, places in the Dakotas don't get that kind of snow.

[snow_wizard]

12 minutes ago, Timmy_Supercell said:

Must have been a once in two lifetimes setup, places in the Dakotas don't get that kind of snow.

For sure.  It was certainly more of an anomaly than the cold in Jan 1950.  I say that because there is only one example of anything close to Jan 1880, but two examples of Januarys that have averaged below 25 in the Seattle area.

[snow_wizard]

21 minutes ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Yeah I was thinking there’s no way that’s January 2021. We also had a trace of snow on 1/15/20. 

I ended up with 2.5" in Jan 2020.  Jan has been horrible lately.

[gusky]

23 minutes ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Yeah I was thinking there’s no way that’s January 2021. We also had a trace of snow on 1/15/20. 

Looked at climate records, SEA didnt record any snow in January 2021

[TacomaWaWx]

4 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I ended up with 2.5" in Jan 2020.  Jan has been horrible lately.

19-20 had a few small marginal events. Probably the worst winter since 16-17 but much better than nothing some years we get 0 snow. We also had 1/2” of snow in early February. 

[Phil]

2 hours ago, BLI snowman said:

 

I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock into upper level reanalysis that far back. Those images don't even remotely match up with the documented surface observations we have from that winter.

We know that there was a very healthy La Nina that winter with an unusually suppressed jet and a pretty prototypical -PNA Western trough/SE ridge pattern. Aligns well with other such winters like 1889-90 and 1949-50.

Sorry, those are at 50mb, well up in the stratosphere. Should have mentioned that.

At 500mb it was much closer to the canonical La Niña pattern. Not very blocky over the Pacific, but strong ridging across the E-US (and over Scandinavia).

NPAC ridge was almost nonexistent, so some major cold must’ve been present over the NPAC. Likely having spilled out of Siberia/AK.

 

[Timmy Supercell]

24 minutes ago, TacomaWaWx said:

January 2020 is really the only event we’ve had in January since 2012. 
1/9 38/30 0.5”

1/13 37/32 TR.

1/14 36/28 1”

1/15 43/32 TR. 

I remember Seattle scoring the 2012 event decently. Lowlands in NW Oregon got rain but pretty much the whole stretch of the cascades and east was having snow in that one. 

[TacomaWaWx]

1 minute ago, Timmy_Supercell said:

I remember Seattle scoring the 2012 event decently. Lowlands in NW Oregon got rain but pretty much the whole stretch of the cascades and east was having snow in that one. 

January 2012 was pretty darn good. Total of 10.5” of snow and then close to 1” of freezing rain. One of the most memorable winter events I can recall the freezing rain was pretty heavy. Just remember limbs constantly going down and no power for a couple days. 

[Phil]

3 minutes ago, Phil said:

Sorry, those are at 50mb, well up in the stratosphere. Should have mentioned that.

At 500mb it was much closer to the canonical La Niña pattern. Not very blocky over the Pacific, but strong ridging across the E-US (and over Scandinavia).

NPAC ridge was almost nonexistent, so some major cold must’ve been present over the NPAC. Likely having spilled out of Siberia/AK.

 

A pattern like that would have a very difficult time producing lowland snowfall today unless the TPV was anomalously displaced. Which is why I suspect there was something going on in the upper levels to produce that outcome absent any sort of blocking.

[BLI snowman]

47 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I'm thinking of bringing to the attention of the people at NOAA or NCEP.  The Signal Service maps should have given them a good idea of what the 500mb pattern looked like that winter.

Yeah, I'm not sure of the plotting method used for that far back but it stands to reason that it would have some holes given the increasingly spotty data pre-1890s.

[Phil]

1 hour ago, snow_wizard said:

Yikes.  Those composites aren't correct.  At least for the NW.  We have hard temperature data for a number of locations and the month was a bit colder than normal.

That was up at 50mb. 

[BLI snowman]

6 minutes ago, Phil said:

Sorry, those are at 50mb, well up in the stratosphere. Should have mentioned that.

At 500mb it was much closer to the canonical La Niña pattern. Not very blocky over the Pacific, but strong ridging across the E-US (and over Scandinavia).

NPAC ridge was almost nonexistent, so some major cold must’ve been present over the NPAC. Likely having spilled out of Siberia/AK.

 

 

Yeah, that jives much more with what we observed. Kind of a similar look to January 2020 or January 2012, with a -PNA and a suppressed jet but not quite enough offshore blocking to really drive the arctic air south.

[Phil]

1 hour ago, snow_wizard said:

Yup.  Just found the notation.  The snow in Seattle weighted an insane 52 pounds per square foot in January 1880.  That's what I used to verify the amount of water equivalent the snow had.  As I motioned before they calculated the weight based on how low a ship anchored in Eliott Bay sank in the water from the weight of the snow.  Pretty D**n clever.

Once again it was the most water to ever fall from the sky in Seattle in 3 days and it was all in the form of snow!

There are a laundry list of possible confounding variables to consider in such a calculation, if that’s what they did. I don’t think it’s straightforward at all.

[Timmy Supercell]

4 minutes ago, TacomaWaWx said:

January 2012 was pretty darn good. Total of 10.5” of snow and then close to 1” of freezing rain. One of the most memorable winter events I can recall the freezing rain was pretty heavy. Just remember limbs constantly going down and no power for a couple days. 

Sounds like my new place gets more ice. It was very rare for ice in K-Falls. The only times I'd ever lose power was if lightning was striking close to the house. 2' feet of snow and -19 degrees in 2017, power was still on and no connection interruptions even. 

A real estate agent near here last winter had an ice storm that shut down outlined areas for a week. 

[TacomaWaWx]

1 minute ago, Timmy_Supercell said:

Sounds like my new place gets more ice. It was very rare for ice in K-Falls. The only times I'd ever lose power was if lightning was striking close to the house. 2' feet of snow and -19 degrees in 2017, power was still on and no connection interruptions even. 

A real estate agent near here last winter had an ice storm that shut down outlined areas for a week. 

Freezing rain isn’t too common in most of western WA thankfully. More likely in Portland and sometimes Bellingham. Think besides 2012 we had some minor ice events in 2004 and 2008. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

23 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I ended up with 2.5" in Jan 2020.  Jan has been horrible lately.

We actually had 10” in January 2020. Total slop though.

[Phil]

11 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

 

Yeah, that jives much more with what we observed. Kind of a similar look to January 2020 or January 2012, with a -PNA and a suppressed jet but not quite enough offshore blocking to really drive the arctic air south.

Interestingly enough both 2012 and 2020 had more NPAC ridging than 1880 (verbatim).

If that is the case, IMO something very anomalous must have happened over Siberia/NPAC. My guess is there was a monster Siberian High descent and jet extension in tandem with a displacement SSW inverted from the canonical wave-1 response, such that the PV ended up displaced over the NPAC.

Basically the exact opposite of how PNW usually gets cold/snow, and the opposite of how 1950 got there, but extreme enough that it produced said outcome.

Could be wrong, but that would probably be (at the very least) a 1-in-1000 year event, for things to line up that way.

[TacomaWaWx]

45/35 today. So far we’re -3 on the month. We’ve managed to not torch too bad so far this month…but we will see where we are a week from now. 

[Timmy Supercell]

5 minutes ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Freezing rain isn’t too common in most of western WA thankfully. More likely in Portland and sometimes Bellingham. Think besides 2012 we had some minor ice events in 2004 and 2008. 

I was in Washington County from 1999-2010 and only had one major ice event, January 2004.

Sure there were icicles in Dec 2008, but overall 2004 was icier. I was a bit young to remember Dec 1996 or even the 1995 windstorm. 

[ShawniganLake]

1 hour ago, snow_wizard said:

1916 is the only year I know that exceeds what Central WA just had.  We are in pretty lofty territory with recent events. If the whole pattern had been shifted south 100 miles everyone on this forum would have gotten crushed.  The nice thing about 1916 is it had a lot of cold and quiet weather to go with all of the snow in January.  The real snow madness came in February, but there was a whole lot before that too.

For Shawnigan lake, January 1916 is nearly on par with January 1950. Not quite as cold but a little more snow.