Winni Weather - Spring 2007

[WINDinmySOCKIES]

will be interesting to see what this storm does. Here in PA two different local news reports are giving two different stories. Right now, it is sleeting, which some expect it to do all day, while one report says when the second storm comes we can expect 5-8 inches. I don't think this is doing to happen. It was 70 yesterday, and 73 the day before. AHHH, MARCH!!
I do think though that with continued global warming, we will see more and more wild weather shifts.

[SteveA]

Leo has taken up the watch on the herb garden seedlings. You can tell by the look on his face he isn't happy with the weather forecasts from you guys, or the fact we don't have any catnip started yet.



Spring looks like it's going to go on hold for a bit!

[Resident 2B]

SteveA,

It looks to me like Leo is wondering why you put the dividers in the litter box.

He looks like a great cat. You folks are wonderful adopting animals in need.

Still a tough and interesting weather situation. Two schools of thought exist. Storm track that looked to be too far south yesterday morning has shifted west, meaning more juice and more mixing for us. I still think the storm will be east of the current track which would get us on the high end of the NWS range. That said, Rose has a valid point with her warmer solution. I will be watching the Mt. Washington weather as well, especially the reports along the auto road, which is like having on-line, real-time soundings.

Last night's GFS hits us hard, if that model is correct. It tends to be better this time of the year than in mid-winter or mid-summer. Time will tell!

Enjoy the weather and the cats!

R2B

Best regards,

R2B

[Just Sold]

As of right now very fine snow is falling here in S. NH. I have to leave the home office soon and I will see how it is then for driving. At least the brook behind my place has gone down quite a bit leaving an ice rim where it overflowed yesterday.

Spring and ice out is coming all be it is being delayed a bit!

[nj2nh]

Okay, so technically this isn't NH weather. We have about five inches of the white stuff here on the ground in northern NJ with lots more to come. This is, not unremarkably, the most snow we have had all season.

And with spring around the corner, this surprises us???

Jersey Girl

[gtxrider]

Remember the Easter Snow in 1970 here in NJ. It can snow anytime here in NJ.

I hope the lake gets a good coating!

[ghfromaltonbay]

[QUOTE=gtxrider]Remember the Easter Snow in 1970 here in NJ. It can snow anytime here in NJ.

Ah yes, the famous blizzard of Easter 1970. That year Easter was on March 29th. We had more than a foot of snow and the next day we had a snow day from school! I remember this storm for 2 reasons:

1) We went to a wedding in the blizzard - our normal 45 minute ride to the church took about 90 minutes with frequent stops to clean off the wipers. Several guests never made it.

2) I had an exam scheduled for 1st period Senior English class that Monday (yes our teacher was a sadist scheduling an exam the day after Easter) and HA! HA! on Emma Farrell (said sadist) - that Monday was the 1 and only snow day my whole senior year.

[CanisLupusArctos]

At 400 pm the snow is visible over Rattlesnake Island's summit and has completely hidden Gunstock from view. Dollar Island is now clearly discernable from Jolly Island. The snow is rapidly moving in, and we'll see first flakes here at Black Cat within a few minutes.

The temperature continues to fall slowly, and the dewpoint has also been dropping off all day. Evaporative cooling is likely going to chill the air a bit more as the precip gets underway.

I haven't had time to look at the models (ahhh, work... but one must pay bills) but I noticed the Weather Channel just upped their forecast amounts for us, from "8 to 12 inches" this morning to "A foot or more" now. New England Cable News has us in the 15-inch belt. Perhaps there's been a change in the models? The trend in forecasts seems to more snow, with each new forecast.

This storm could be a sign of things to come, as one of this morning's news stories on NBC-Today was NOAA's announcement that the El Nino responsible for our warm weather early in the winter broke down, allowing the cold February... and has now become a La Nina pattern which favors lots of storms in the Atlantic.

MDC

[SteveA]

Originally Posted by Resident 2B

SteveA,

It looks to me like Leo is wondering why you put the dividers in the litter box.

He looks like a great cat. You folks are wonderful adopting animals in need.

Thanks R2B,

I'll bet he was thinking exactly that... some of these "pet" actors can be hard to work with!

We really enjoy our cat "Hobby"... and I really enjoy these threads.

[jbess]

Hard to believe, two days ago, it was 70* here in CT. Now look!

[nj2nh]

I was living in Massachusetts in 1970 (and was only 10 - hehe) so I don't remember that one.

I was in Jersey for the blizzard in March of 1993 and remember THAT one distinctly. When I went to work in Newark a couple of days later, the normally four lane road into the downtown area was only two lanes. The 40 minute drive took 2 hours. That was way before I had a cell phone so I just had to sit there and wait. Talk about late for work.

I also remember vividly the blizzard of '78. Missed an entire week of my senior year. After graduation, the rest of the classes still had a week of school. It was great - we didn't even have to take final exams.

Our beautiful snow has turned into sleet. Nothing left on the trees. Ah, well, it was nice while it lasted.

Jersey Girl (formerly of SE Massachusetts)

[CanisLupusArctos]

7:30 pm finds it snowing heavily over the lake, and the temp continues to fall. It's currently 18. Snow began at 4:30 pm on Black Cat and within 90 minutes visibility was 1/4 mile with the first inch already on the ground.

Lots of roads are becoming impassable due to multiple accidents (as announced on radio) and there are a few reports of inclines and on-ramps that have become so icy that cars can't make it up them. What's happened is that the roads were warm from the last few days, and the first hour of snow melted on them. It has now frozen, with snow accumulating on top of the ice.

Great news is that this should make for some fantastic spring skiing!

Photos from 6 p.m....

[michael c]

I am looking out my window and yesterday the ice looked VERY unsafe and now ,with the considerably lower temps, I think people will unfortunately feel safe to travel on the ice again ..I fear that it is not a question of "if " but " when " is someone gonna go through the ice on a sled ...the damage done to the ice 2 days ago was considerable ,as it got up to 66 degrees here and the ice looked rotten . No doubt it was safer than it looked ,but I worry .
Today ,1/4 mile from the channel the first snow flake appeared at 4:01 pm and as of now ,We have about 2 + inches

Please be careful !!!

[fatlazyless]

Earlier today, there were a couple of sleds and atv's out by the southern end of Bear Island. Also this morning, the snow condition on the western end of the Sandwich Notch Rd looked good enough for a sled. It's a sno-mo and dog sled trail of maybe 12 miles running from N Sandwich to Thornton through a newly designated wilderness area. Step two feet off the road and you are in a US Forest Sevice protected wilderness area of the southern White Mt National Forest, thanks in part to Senator Gregg's good efforts. Way to go, Senator! And on a good day, just an easy two hour, 125 mile ride from the Massachusetts State House.

[CanisLupusArctos]

Originally Posted by michael clayton

I am looking out my window and yesterday the ice looked VERY unsafe and now ,with the considerably lower temps, I think people will unfortunately feel safe to travel on the ice again ..I fear that it is not a question of "if " but " when " is someone gonna go through the ice on a sled ...the damage done to the ice 2 days ago was considerable ,as it got up to 66 degrees here and the ice looked rotten . No doubt it was safer than it looked ,but I worry .
Today ,1/4 mile from the channel the first snow flake appeared at 4:01 pm and as of now ,We have about 2 + inches

Please be careful !!!

The ice looked rotten from here too... but it was just the snowpack on top of the ice that melted. Underneath that slush is still a good thick layer of solid ice that's going to take more than a couple warm days to melt... and that will be a slower process now that all the slush has frozen solid a couple inches thick. Just a couple days ago the WeatherCam captured a shot of a pickup truck towing a Bobhouse north of Bear Island... and that was on one of the 50-degree days.

You are right, though... sooner or later it will be deceptive. Right now the only weak spots I'm noticing are around rocks, which absorb the sun's heat, and the open areas created by dock bubblers are growing.

[SteveA]

I measured about 10 inches... lot's of drifting... what is amazing is how much we have lost since 6am today... melting fast. Maybe it's just the slight rain/sleet we have had from about 10am.

About 1 1/2 Yuki..

SteveA

[Resident 2B]

I really like March snow. It is great to have a storm, it really looks great and it goes away fast. Great snow!

I once heard that March Snow is one of the few things in nature that actually has a shorter life duration than a Hollywood marriage.

On another link on this great web site, I saw some comments about the snow being very heavy for a snow that looked powdery last night. The reason for this is the mixing of sleet and freezing rain overnight. That really compacted the snow and as a result, last night's light snow is today's heavy snow.

The snow should compact even more this afternoon, but that will lead to a frozen and hard snowmass tomorrow morning. If you want to move this snow, do it this afternoon. It will be much harder to move it tomorrow morning.

R2B

[SteveA]

Originally Posted by Resident 2B

If you want to move this snow, do it this afternoon. It will be much harder to move it tomorrow morning.

Mother nature and the March sun are in charge of the rest of my snow removal!

I'm on the couch watching Bay Hill and the NCAA Tournament!

[CanisLupusArctos]

A 1.5 on the Yuki Scale! Impressive! You know, I just thought of a possible "spring weather mascot" job for Leo. He's got long hair, right? And spring brings electrical storms - early warning of static in the air helps to save the lives of golfers and boaters. On second thought, this could ruin your marriage. Never mind!

8.0 inches was the best total I could come up with for the island. As R2B mentioned, it compacted a LOT since last night, and being unwilling to stay awake and measure at 2 a.m. when it changed over, I had to guess how much it had been. For the most part I was measureing around 6 inches new snow this morning, 9 to 10 on the ground total, 3 of which was old. At midnight I had measured 5.5 inches of the fluffy stuff and it came down at 1-2 inches per hour until the changeover, so I'm guessing we had 8 inches.

This storm brought the most significant ice we've had in a while... 1/4 inch of freezing rain this morning. The wind cups are frozen, hence my 0 mph readings at the moment. A NW wind of 10-20 mph is making the trees creak in their icy coatings.

Last night we had a wind gust to 50 mph just after 3 a.m. After that, the storm calmed down a lot.... which ironically is when we had our power outage (as it was all calming down) between 5 and 7 a.m.

R2B is right, this is great snow - very well behaved - the driveway I half-heartedly shoveled this morning is now almost bare thanks to the limited sunshine we had today. It wasn't much, but we've got the equivalent of a September sun now, so it doesn't take much.

Now if the same sun-power would shine a little harder on my wind sensors....

MDC

[Resident 2B]

Folks,

The barometric pressure peaked this morning around or slightly above 30.80

This is the highest pressure I have recorded in several years! I realize that most people do not care that much about the barometric pressure, but if you like weather extremes, this is unusually high.

Enjoy the early spring weather and lets get that ice melted in the next four to five weeks.

R2B

[CanisLupusArctos]

We also have a freezing rain advisory for tonight and tomorrow morning. It may be clear now, but the warm air is trying to push in here for the rest of the week. It will overrun the cold air and drop some rain down into the cold air that's over us now.

As R2B mentioned, the air pressure is incredibly high - this is heavy, dense air - and so it's unlikely that the arriving warm air will be able to push it out of the way very quickly. This will result in a few hours of icing tonight and tomorrow morning. It won't be heavy, but it only takes a small amount of freezing rain to make everything a skating rink out there.

Here's the barograph (air pressure record) chart for this week on Black Cat Island. Some wild extremes!

[CanisLupusArctos]

UPDATE at 4:30 PM...

A Winter Storm Watch is now in effect for all of New Hampshire except the southwestern portion (Keene to Manchester) for Wednesday night and Thursday morning. The NWS is calling for mixed precip to change to snow and become heavy tomorrow night, accumulating 6 inches or more.

My own call on this is based on the way these spring storms usually go: The most will fall at elevation. I'm going to guess that the lakes region will average around 6 inches of the heavy wet stuff while the summits of Gunstock and Red Hill could see 10 inches, and the higher ski areas (Wildcat, Cannon, etc.) stand a good chance at 12"+.

This one looks like it'll average Y1 on the Yuki scale. Here, kitty, kitty....

[CanisLupusArctos]

Midnight Wednesday night, 5 inches of snow on the ground and snowing heavily. Lots of heavy wet cement-like snow.

Amounts, anyone else?

[DBA]

Airboat Guy and I have about 10-12" of new snow at this time. Power is now back on. It will be interesting to see what the weight of this snow does to the ice. Noticed yesterday that more areas were "showing wet" as the day and the snow progressed.

Airboat trip on 4/3 was about 50% able to support airboat weight (observation shows that ice was 14-18" just beyond open water at our dock), about 40% not able to support (wet and honey-combed ice pencils of varying thickness), and 10% water (along the southern shorelines and in the marina and areas where there are springs, etc.).

DBA