A potential change in the current weather pattern -- stormy in the Sierra, warm in the East -- is the subject of today's weather update from Scott Braaten here at FTO. Any other opinions out there?
Could a change in the weather be coming?
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Anonymous
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I'm still looking at a slow change over the next two weeks with the trough coming more east with each and every storm. Look for a few passing cold shots such as in early to the middle of next week...then it warms up again for a little bit but sooner or later the trough is gonna come east in full. We need to get a storm to head up into northeast Canada and form a polar vortex to keep pouring cold air into the eastern U.S.
-Scott
-Scott
salida
New member
I must say Scott's write up is excellent, and it features many good points. I?m really enjoying what he has to say!! Keep up the good work.
However, if I may, I would like to add my own intuition to the next month.
One of the many things that I saw over the summer, at the obs, was everyone's personal theory on what the weather was doing. Very interesting indeed.
However, one of the things that an observer stated as well as many scientists that visited the summit was the persistent track of storms that have come up the eastern coast. Ever since the December 6th & 7th dump of last year, where the snow came up into the mountains, where it was not forecasted in that extreme, storms have been tracking erratically up the east coast. For example Bonnie and Clyde (the hurricanes) were both modeled to run through the whites, yet they both veered off to the east. Many of the nor easters last winter did the same. The main hypothesis in gentrified terms is: that it would take a major major storm to reverse this current pattern in the storm tracks. Any opinions?
I don't know, 1 how accurate this is, and 2 if it means much, but I thought I would share it with the rest of you and see what you think of it.
Oh and a little food for thought - The storm on the 7th of December dropped about a foot of snow on the summit of Mount Washington and 52 inches at pinkham. An almost identical storm in 1969 dropped 52 inches at pinkham and 49 inches on the summit. In both storms the winds were very similar and from the same direction. The upper atmosphere appears to have been very similar as well. In addition, precip collection techniques could not create a variance of 40 inches either. ANY explanations?
- porter
However, if I may, I would like to add my own intuition to the next month.
One of the many things that I saw over the summer, at the obs, was everyone's personal theory on what the weather was doing. Very interesting indeed.
However, one of the things that an observer stated as well as many scientists that visited the summit was the persistent track of storms that have come up the eastern coast. Ever since the December 6th & 7th dump of last year, where the snow came up into the mountains, where it was not forecasted in that extreme, storms have been tracking erratically up the east coast. For example Bonnie and Clyde (the hurricanes) were both modeled to run through the whites, yet they both veered off to the east. Many of the nor easters last winter did the same. The main hypothesis in gentrified terms is: that it would take a major major storm to reverse this current pattern in the storm tracks. Any opinions?
I don't know, 1 how accurate this is, and 2 if it means much, but I thought I would share it with the rest of you and see what you think of it.
Oh and a little food for thought - The storm on the 7th of December dropped about a foot of snow on the summit of Mount Washington and 52 inches at pinkham. An almost identical storm in 1969 dropped 52 inches at pinkham and 49 inches on the summit. In both storms the winds were very similar and from the same direction. The upper atmosphere appears to have been very similar as well. In addition, precip collection techniques could not create a variance of 40 inches either. ANY explanations?
- porter
A
Anonymous
Guest
salida":1q3xxljt said:
Porter-
I have no idea really. I've seen this happen out west a bunch of times too, especially at mountains with large vertical relief. In the east, we dont report snowfall at midmountain and the summit because there really isn't much of a reason to. Out west, there are a lot of places (especially if they have over 3,000 feet of vert) that do report snowfall at midmtn and summit. Over time, as I've watched them report snowfall, I do notice that occasionally large differences do come up with midmountain reporting significantly more snow than the summit. One mountain I see this happen more so than others is Steamboat, Colorado. From my experience skiing out there, this is how I understand it to work. The top is often very foggy or even starting to poke out of the clouds while it can be absolutely dumping down at lower elevations. I've seen the top recieve ~8inches as well as 3 inches of rime while at midmtn (right below the cloud ceiling) there is ~16 inches.
I still cannot explain this meterogically, but my guess would be it has something to do with cloud height, where the moisture layer is, where the best crystal/snow growth level is (which could mean the difference between fat fluffy flakes and snow pellets that dont accumulate well at all). Often we see snow storms were the snow growth is not maximized that that will hold snow accumulations down significantly...those early Dec storms had excellent low elevation snow growth signitures allowing for flake size to be maximized in valleys as well as on the mountains...but my bet would be as we got above a certain elevation the whole package just wasn't there.
-Scott