LOCAL VIEW —Darkest Day—

Gosh!  The “warm-up” weathermen have been talking about for what seems like weeks finally made it to our hills.  We barely broke freezing, and, because the warmer air was moist, the warm-up was accompanied by lowering clouds and then a dark, dank drizzle.

I’d prefer yesterday’a cold, as at least it had sunshine.

The map shows the Pacific bowling ball storm has not headed up towards Hudson Bay, putting us in a mild southerly flow, but has instead stubbornly plowed straight east, and the warm front has remained to our south. (Click maps to clarify and enlarge.)

The radar shows a line of rain showers headed our way, but not the drizzle that is already here.

It looks like the rain-snow line will stay to our north, so there will be no brightening of our short day with snow. Today was one minute away from the shortest day of the year. (At this latitude the shortest day is nine hours long, which is pretty long compared to the days of a winter I spent in Scotland, but is short enough to fuel depression, if the Grinch is allowed into your life.

The clouds really made it a Grinch of a day. It was actually brighter at nine in the morning, under a light gray overcast, than at noon, by which time the purple had become oppressive. The gloom was made all the more oppressive by the fact that when our local church saw its minister resign, he took a loyalist with him, in the form of the choir director. And, when you think of what the Who’s used to defeat the Grinch with, it was music.

The Grinch has apparently learned a thing or two since the days when Dr. Seuss wrote his Great American Poem,  for back in the day the Grinch neglected to steal the choir director. He wasn’t so careless, this year.

Not that it will stop the Who’s. However, in case you’re wondering why the music is a bit out of tune, and the timing is erratic, this year, now you know the reason why.

The first fifteen days of December have had mercy on a nation clobbered by a November colder than many a January, however if you want to see the special attention the Grinch is giving me, look at this map of temperature anomalies for the USA, for the first 15 days of December. What is the one area below normal?

Yes, it is centered right over me.

I could go on, but you’d probably start to sob for me uncontrollably. I want a little pity, but not so much that I have to take care of you until the ambulance arrives.

LOCAL VIEW —Irrational reality—

We have enjoyed a couple of beautiful, crisp, clear, cold days, with plenty of sunshine but a certain tang in the air, making it like wine. The promised warm-up simply has failed to penetrate the northeast corner of the USA. In some ways it simply doesn’t make sense. In the world of the logic digitized into climate models, it is irrational.

The west hurled enormous amounts of mildness east. It was warmer in Alberta than Alabama. There was no chance a flimsily high pressure system could withstand the onslaught of kindly warmth. But look at the maps. It did.

Yesterday’s map:

Today’s:

The maps show a Pacific storm rolling across the USA like a bowling ball, with only the weakest if high pressure in its way, yet it was 27 degrees this morning, and barely nudged above freezing all day, here in New Hampshire. The northerly flow persisted, behind Storm #9, now well out to sea.

Not that I minded. A warm-up might involve clouds and rain, and our weather was cloudless and, by noon today, nearly windless. The low December sun shone clear and bright, and the leafless trunks of trees striped the landscape with long shadows. All seemed holding its breath in expectation of the warm-up that might never come.

The failure of the warm-up is quite clear when you compare Dr. Fyan Maue Weatherbell temperature maps from when ther warm-up seemed inevitable, and today when it seems quite evitable. First, the initial map from Decemer 13:

 (Click these maps to enlarge)

Then the initial map from today, December 16:

Notice the mild air has moved from Alberta to the Great Lakes, but the cold has not budged from New Hampshire. Also notice southern Alberta has gone from mild temperatures around 40 to the teens, indicating cold will follow any warmth working east. Lastly notice the grey area to the top, indicating sub-zero air, has shifted southeast, taking dead aim on New Hampshire.

In other words, it does not look like the warm-up will last very long, if it ever gets here. As rational as the warm-up appeared, and as irrational as the alternative seemed, reality sometimes prefers the irrational.

(I sure hope it does, because I’m feeling a bit that way, these days.)

Some disapprove of the irrational, calling it chaos, but weather is a chaotic system, and look at the pretty curl of clouds chaos has created across the USA:

That pretty curl is the Pacific bowling ball storm, rolling across the USA, full of Pacific mildness and Chinook kindness, but notice how its west side has turned blue with snow. By the time it gets here it may see part of its east side turn blue with snow as well, which would make it Winter Storm #10.

Current local forecasts state we will only get rain, but that is based on rational stuff, and rational stuff hasn’t worked as well in reality as it does in the virtual world of computed prognosis, recently.

I was planning to use the above paragraph as an adroit Segway to a discussion of my personal life, which currently involves examples of the irrational trumping the rational.

This is to be expected because humans, like the weather, are chaotic systems. Like the weather they create curls which look like order, though they are made of chaos. Because such curls look like order, one even goes so far as to expect humans to be rational.

No such luck. I could give several humorous examples, but dealing with such lovable humans can be a bit exhausting, and my response to irrational humanity is to be even more irrational than they are.

The rational response to the irrational is to figure out what their problem is, and solve the problem. That is a lot of work. It increases my sense of exhaustion.  Therefore, rather than a rational response, I am going to do the irrational thing, which is to go to bed.

In the irrational world of dreams I will deal with all this irrational stuff. Then I will awake tomorrow and sound rational about it all.

 

 

 

 

ARCTIC SEA-ICE RECOVERY —The usual but different—

Since I last focused on this subject back on November 29, the sea-ice has continued its usual amazing increase, a tripling and even quadrupling which happens every year, and in some ways is ho-hum news.  I only note it because next summer, when the decrease goes the other way, sensationalist headlines may read, “Ice decreases by huge amounts! Only a third of it remains!”  It sells papers. What puzzles me is why they don’t sell even more papers, in December,  with headlines reading, “Ice increases by huge amounts! Extent triples!”

Here are the maps for November 29, (left), and December 12 (right).

The increase in ice is pretty much as to be expected. What I am focused on is slight differences from the norm, that may hint at changes in cycles, whether they be short term weather patterns or longer term 60 year cycles involving the AMO or PDO.

The swift freeze of Hudson Bay is ahead of normal, and of concern to me because the open waters of Hudson Bay to New Hampshire’s north is a buffer against the full brunt of arctic discharges. As soon as Hudson Bay freezes we are more susceptible to pure arctic outbreaks from due north. If the Great Lakes freeze we are more susceptible to cold from the Canadian prairie as well.  To my east, even though the Atlantic does not freeze outside of the bays, its waters can be signifigantly cooled by the right conditions.

One such condition involves the discharge of ice from Baffin Bay, which is a great producer and exporter of ice.  Even in the dead of winter when temperatures are down near forty below, open water can appear in the north of Baffin Bay, because so much  ice is exported down the west coast of the bay that a polynya forms in the north. That ice then continues along the coast of Labrador, and icebergs continue down into the entrance of the St Lawrence or even further. The flow is far more complex than you’d think, as currents can dive down beneath milder waters, but in general there is a counter-current to the south hugging the American coast, as the Gulf Stream surges north.

A second discharge of ice comes down through Fram Strait, down the east coast of Greenland towards and past Iceland. The ice in this current cannot dive even when the current’s water does, and therefore ice floats onward and effects the temperature of the North Atlantic. In extreme cases (1815-1817) so much ice is exported that icebergs can ground on the coast of Ireland, and Europe’s summer temperatures can be cooled.

It should be noted that the ice moving down the east coast of Greenland comes from the Arctic Basin, and therefore subtracts from the amount of ice left behind up north for people to fret about next summer. Although their worry about less ice in the arctic focuses on Global Warming, the concern should be cooling. Here is a quote from the year 1817:

“We learn that a vessel is to be fitted out by Government for the purpose of attempting again the north-west passage, the season being considered as peculiarly favourable to such an expedition. Our readers need not be informed that larger masses of ice than ever were before known have this year been seen floating in the Atlantic, and that from their magnitude and solidity, they reached even the fortieth latitude before they were melted into a fluid state. From an examination of the Greenland captains, it has been found that owing to some convulsions of nature , the sea was more open and moré free from compact ice than in any former voyage they ever made: that several ships actually reached the eighty-fourth degree of latitude, in which no ice whatever was found; that for the first time for 400 years, vessels penetrated to the west coast of Greenland, and that they apprehended no obstacle to their even reaching the pole, if it had consisted with their duty to their employers to make the attempt…”

The fact this discharge of ice is concurrent with “The Year Without A Summer” is mentioned in this post,  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/1815-1816-and-1817-a-polar-puzzle/  and further information can be found in this treasure trove: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/

While nothing as dramatic as 1815-1817 has occurred recently, I do like to keep an eye on the discharge of ice, and utilize a layman’s assumption that less discharge may make Europe warmer, while more may make Europe colder, the following summer.

This past autumn the ice-export down the coast of Greenland, and also down the west side of Baffin Bay, were below normal, but recently the extent has increased to near normal.  This represents a surge or pulse of ice that bears watching, IMHO.

On the Pacific side of the Arctic there has been an impressive increase of sea-ice in the Chukchi Sea north of Bering Strait. It is still below normal, but is closer to normal. I like to watch this area for two reasons. First, once it freezes over Siberian air can remain cold when it takes the “short cut” route from Siberia to Alaska, and second, it gives hints about the current nature of the PDO. The PDO has been in a short-term “warm” spike midst a long term “cold” phase, so I would expect ice in the Bering Strait to be below normal, but ice will increase as the short-term “warm” spike ends.

There are past records of “warm” spikes during the “cold” PDO, however this is the first time we’ve been able to watch it with the detail satellites allow us,  so of course I’m watching with great interest.

On the Atlantic side the exact opposite has been occurring. We saw, last spring and summer, a “cold” spike during a “warm” phase of the AMO. Right on cue there was more ice along the north coast of Svalbard, even those it was the warm season and everywhere else the ice was decreasing. Then this “cold” spike ended, and now, even though everywhere else sea-ice is increasing, the northern reaches of Barents Sea have seen a decrease in sea-ice.  (Even more intriguing is the fact there are some signs the AMO may be about to go through a second “cold” spike.)

At this point the arctic is pretty much completely frozen over, and my attention turns to how the ice is being pushed around up there.  However there are a couple of areas outside the arctic that freeze over, which are interesting to watch.

The first is the Sea of Okhotsk east of Russia and north of Japan. Extremely cold air has been pouring into the Pacific off Asia, and these waters are starting to freeze over swiftly. (Their refreeze were below-normal, earlier.) I have a hunch the variations in how these waters cool may have something to do with the end of the “warm” spike in the PDO.

The second is the northern reaches of the Baltic Sea, especially the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland. Those waters are just plain fascinating to me, because so many fresh water rivers pour into the Baltic Sea that the further north you go the fresher the water becomes, until in the very north of the Gulf of Bothnia fresh water fish can swim in the Sea. Because the water is so much fresher it freezes more easily, and the northern Baltic becomes a hypersensitive measure of Scandinavian cold. When southwest winds and the Atlantic rules, there is little freezing, but when winds shift to the brutal east, the entire Baltic can freeze.

Having discussed the extent maps, I’ll swiftly go over the daily maps. I apologize for not being able to name the individual storms like I did last year. Other areas of my life got too bossy.

One obvious difference from last year has been that storms don’t ride along the arctic coast of Eurasia from Barents Sea, through the Kara and Laptev Seas, all the way to the East Siberian Seas, and meet up with Pacific storms in the Chukchi Sea. Instead they run into a wall, and are bent north to the Pole and even Canada, or south into Russia.

Back on November 29 an Atlantic storm had crashed into the wall and devided, with half heading towards Canada and half down into Russia. In the process it brought a huge surge of Atlantic air north over the Pole. Last year this Atlantic air surged over Europe and kept them relatively warm all winter, but this time that mildness was wasted on sea ice.

At this point something ominous happened, if you live in Scandinavia. My ears perked forward in interest, for it may be a forerunner of what could become a pattern, later in the winter. This time it was quickly rebuffed, but later in the winter ic could “lock in”.

What happened is that as the low pressure was defected south into Russia high pressure extended west to its north, creating a flow of east winds along the arctic coast. Brutally cold Siberian air rolled west (last winter I called it “the snout of Igor”), and Europe chilled, though not to the degree it could have chilled if the east winds had continued.

On December 1 there is a cross-polar-flow from the Atlantic to the Pacific, drawing mild Atlantic air right across the Pole. The flow is about as non-zonal as it can be. If you are into looking for proof of Global Warming, now is the time you point out a spike in temperatures at the Pole, but the exact same spoke can be used as a disproof.

What you need to do is think of how a summer thunderstorm uplifts hot and muggy air and breeds a cooling shower, and use that as an analogy for what is occurring on a far grander scale up at the cap of the planet. Warm air is uplifted, heat is lost, and the air comes down cooler.

Of course, this is a grotesque simplification, but when debating Global Warming, who really cares? (What is actually occurring as the mild air is uplifted up at the Pole is fascinating, and I don’t claim to understand it, but have learned enough to make it a subject for an amusing post I’m working on, and may even submit to WUWT. Rather than supplying any answers, it asked questions that need to be asked.)

Europe was spared the icebox of an arctic outbreak from the east by a series of lows that pushed the high pressure (and its east winds,) north to the Pole.

However rather than this low pressure bumping the high pressure over to Canada and continuing on to the east, the low itself got deflected north as high pressure again built ahead of it. A new cross-polar-flow, this time from Asia to Canada, began to appear, and temperatures at the Pole crashed.

By December 6 the most recent pattern began to manifest, and the final seven maps showing storm after storm failing to get across the Atlantic, and instead curling around north of Norway back towards Greenland. This has created a second invasion of milder Atlantic air to pour north through Scandinavia, on the east side of storms, as frigid winds howl down the east coast of Greenland and make Iceland cold on the west side of storms.

This pattern is (I assume) self-destructive, as eventually the North Atlantic (seemingly) will get too mild to its northeast and too cold to its southwest to perpetuate the pattern. Therefore I am watching in great interest to see signs of its demise, and to see what will set up next.

 

As a final interesting tidbit to this post I’ll add the graph of polar temperatures, which shows the big warming spike caused by the initial invasion of Atlantic air, the crash as the Siberian cross-polar-flow developed, and the start of a second spike as the second invasion of Atlantic air begins.

All in all I would say this winter is promising to be another winter when any semblance of a zonal flow is rare, and the sea-ice will be wracked and tortured by storms. It will be interesting to watch.

LOCAL VIEW —The unheeded insistant—

Storm #9 continues to slowly fill in and weaken, as it ever so slowly drifts away to the northeast.  As it has done so it has zipped up its warm sector into an occlusion, and then swung that occlusion down as a backlash on the northwest winds behind the storm. (Orange dashed line.) The guys who get stuck with drawing out such maps have a variety of ways of drawing such backlashes, depending on how the occlusion  behaves. Sometimes they draw it as a occluded front, sometimes as a secondary cold front, and sometimes as an orange dashed line indicative of an upper air trough. It pretty much boils down to the same thing (to me.) The storm is over, and all we have is junk left. We look west for what is next, but the junk is in no mood to depart.

The top map below is from two days ago, and the bottom is from before sunrise today.

What fools me about the first map is that nice warm front extending north from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay. I say to myself, “Nice warm Chinook air is headed my way, behind this storm!”  However if you look at the second map you notice they conveniently erased that nice warm front.  It is still there, and is in fact more obvious as clouds extending north from the Great Lakes to  Hudson Bay, but it hasn’t progressed east, because the storm over us was in no mood to become old news.

In this manner storm #9 reminds me of myself. I too am in no hurry to become old news.

If you look at the latest GFS initial-temperature map you can see that despite storms crashing into California and mild, Chinook air pouring over the Canadian Rockies, the mildness simply isn’t sweeping across the USA to warm the east.  In fact it is colder in northern Alabama than in Alberta.

The temperature map shows that, despite the mild air reaching the west coast of Hudson Bay, a spike of colder air continues to bleed down the east coast of Hudson Bay, all the way to Alabama. Despite the warm-up, which never happened the winter of 1976-1977, there is the ghost of the flow from the north, which is too much like 1976-1977 to cause me much optimism about a nice warm January full of January thaws.

This is especially true when you look at the top of that map, and see the extreme cold reloading up at the top of Canada.  This is due to a North Atlantic low moving towards Pole, and a high pressure on the Pacific side, creating a cross-polar-flow which has pushed all the polar cold from Siberia to the Canadian arctic.  So far that cold has mostly discharged down the east coast of Greenland, but so much cold remains behind that I can’t help but feel that, when our so-called “warm-up” ends, it could end with a vengeance.

Here’s the DMI arctic maps showing the cross-polar flow and cold built up in arctic Canada:

With far-seeing eyes I gaze into the future, but storm #9 nudges me and says, “Hey buddy, I’m still here.”  This not only  reminds me of myself, but also reminds me of the small children at my Farm-Childcare. They too demand I relate to the here and now, and in some cases won’t even allow me to look five minute into the future.

This is especially true because, even though our Childcare is based around the outdoors, and even though we did go out a little in rain gear during storm #9, the outside experiences were much shorter than usual. (Not that I will complain about our three inches of rain, as a friend’s cousin reported Storm #9 gave them ten inches up in New Brunswick.) Then, because the small children spent more time indoors, their energy built up and they began bouncing off the walls.

Small boys are worst, and I can see why some adults are tempted to employ Ritalin, which I will never do. Instead I attempt to do the politically correct thing, which is no longer a “time out” for rowdy boys, but now is a “redirection.” I tend to take out the Lincoln Logs or Legos,  and to get them building things, but when their energy gets pent up they tend to build guns or knives, and the next thing you know they are bouncing off the walls, playing war. After two days of rain I had to, with my almighty authority, invent a new commandment: “Thou shalt not build swords of Legos.” This didn’t seem to be working, as shortly after I pronounced my commandment I spotted two boys quarreling about whether the first had killed the second, and how much the second had bled. I reared myself up and loomed over them, and growled in my lowest voice, “I thought I told you it is forbidden to make knives and swords from your legos!” A six-year-old looked at me with blue eyes filled with trust and innocence, and stated, “Oh, this isn’t a knife. It is a surgical implement.”

Despite how annoying Childcare can be, it does have its compensating moments. In any case, I knew I had to get the boys outside, despite the swirling mist, however on Thursday Storm #9’s mist turned to snow. It was a bit odd, in that the north wind had given us rain, but when the wind swung to the southwest we got snow, however snow is much more enjoyable to walk through than rain, and nearly everyone was thirsting to go out.

All day it looked like someone had shaken the snow-globe. The snow didn’t stick at first, and then it was the sort of light fluff that you can sweep from a walkway with a broom. I didn’t much want to even broom, but didn’t forget to count my blessings, as not far to our north and west they had a lot more to deal with.  Also the snow formed and fell in a way that made perfect snowflakes, and I showed the small children how they could hold out a mitten and catch a flake and see the perfection and beauty of the six-pointed stars.

One little girl had never seen a flake before. Or she had never seen flakes beyond seeing white stuff falling out a window. Only three, she happens to be a bossy and loud little girl, with a voice strangely like a cigar-smoker’s, with absolute trust her opinions are worthy, and she was opining how it was stupid to go outside when she could be inside by the heater with dolls, when she noticed the shape of the snowflakes on her mittens. She became abruptly silent, brought the mitten close to her eyes, and then looked up at me with her face beaming and her eyes shining.

As rough as it may be to have to endure being bossed around by a cigar-smoking three-year-old, it is a great compensation to be there when she sees, really sees, her first snowflake. Among other things, it reawakens my own sense of wonder. Too often I take such wonders for granted, and only curse the snow.

The snow settled as swiftly as it fell, and we only got an inch even though flakes were still drifting down at dawn on Friday, from a sky that was partly cloudy and clearing. We got to remember what blue sky looked like during the morning, before the clouds came back and the snow-globe got shaken again in the afternoon. As dark decended on the scene I built a fire out in the pasture for the kids to warm by, as they passed the time sledding, awaiting parents.

We’ve used up a lot of wood for so early in the winter, and the afternoon’s compensating moments involved having three three-year-old girls help drag dead pine branches from the woods to the pasture campfire, and then a long and interesting discussion with boys aged six to ten about why the fire gave out less heat than usual.

It was something I might not have noticed, were it not for the observations of the very small, yet when I asked my college-graduate son when I got home, he had noticed the same thing: Our wood-stove was giving out less heat.

I know every trick there is about lighting a fire in a wet woods, (a subject for some other post), but once the fire was started there was no getting around the fact the flames were reluctant to blaze. It mostly smoldered. It seems that the drizzle and swirling mist of Storm #9 permeated even sheltered branches and protected parts of woodpiles, so that when everything began refreezing on Thursday night, all that moisture was with the wood.  Even year-old logs, and dead branches broken from hemlocks, hissed in the fire, and hissing makes the fire colder, until the moisture is boiled away.

Conclusion: The woods are wetter, as we head towards winter’s depths. That incidental news becomes one of those tidbits of data old-timers park in the back of their brains, which official weather-records fail to note down.

LOCAL VIEW —Gloom Vs. Cookies—

Our barometer has fallen slightly to 29.41, but the temperature remains steady at 34. It seems it has been stuck there for over a day. The rain has ceased, but the little brook behind the house is roaring down over the ruins of the old tannery, loud in the windless night. I snoozed after dinner, despite the noise of two grandchildren, and now am up with my usual insomnia. 

It is odd to think of how my wife and I wondered how we’d handle empty-nest-syndrome, considering how full our house has become. My middle son is out of college and applying for work while working the sort of grunt-jobs college is suppose to help you avoid, and both daughters are back, at least part of the time, due to boyfriend complexities it doesn’t pay to question too deeply about (though I confess curiosity.) .

It is amusing how they ease themselves in. It sort of starts as a visit, but gets longer. My wife is part of the conspiracy. I am like Beorn, and she is like Gandelf telling Beorn he is going to have 12 dwarfs and a hobbit for dinner, not by saying the total number of guests at first, but by slowly increasing the number during the course of conversation.

(My wife has the hat and stick, but not the beard.)

I am a bit like Beorn, frowning fiercely at my computer at maps of the weather, the economy, the political situation, and the spiritual situation. I am even a bit of a form-changer, for when I frown too much my wife plops my baby granddaughter in my lap, and all frowning must cease. However the racket does get loud in this small house, which may partly explain my recent insomnia. Insomnia is the only way I can get some peace, and concentrate. Tonight it was a bit strange, as I closed my eyes and dozed midst a racket, and awoke to total silence.

The midnight map shows storm #9 is stuck over us. The rain has ceased, but the gloom is likely to remain.  The radar shows backlash snows to the west, and some of that likely will wheel our way before we see any sunshine.

(Click maps to clarify and enlarge.)

As I look west to try to see what sort of weather is coming our way, I see warmth flooding over the Canadian Rockies, and warm, above-freezing air right up into Alberta.  It seems impossible we will get anything but a sunny thaw, but over and over I’ve been fooled, as innoculous looking high pressure comes sneaking down from Hudson Bay, and pumps itself up with just enough arctic cold to shock us for a day or so, before a resurgence of milder air comes up the coast.  I am also suspicious because cross-polar-flow has built up a pool of murderously cold air up in the Canadian Arctic, and even though it seems in no mood to charge south as an arctic outbreak, it constantly leaks enough cold south to worry me.  Lastly, the days are so short we don’t really need Siberian imports to come across the Pole, as the deep snow up over Canada, and the fact Hudson Bay is frozen over, can take cool air and make it cold. You can see some of that cold leaking south in the intial GFS temperature map (from Dr. Ryan Maue’s amazing collection of maps at Weatherbell.)

 (click to enlarge.)

If I was an optimist I’d focus on the above-freezing air invading the Canadian prairies, but I’m prone to worry. The storms crashing into the California coast, and giving them needed rains, look likely to roll across the country one by one, and even if temperatures are above normal it will be cold enough to generate snow along the northern edge of each storm, and the way things have been going one of the storms will turn up the coast next week and we’ll have a repeat performance of either the Thanksgiving storm or the current storm.

It is hard to worry correctly about storms with so many children back in the nest.  I keep being distracted by issues that remind me a little of living in a Hippy commune back in the 1970’s: Who shall cook; who shall do dishes; who gets what shelf in the refrigerator; who shall play  what sort of music when. Of course, it is possible to brew up a whole new bunch of worries, especially when low pressure makes my bones ache.  I have the sort of poetic temperament that can make a maudlin melody out of a sunny day, and when the weather gets dark and dismal I really ought be at my best, however my wife has a unique counter-attack which little can withstand: She steams up the kitchen baking cookies.

In defiance of the dreary, my wife
Bakes cookies. The purple mist presses close
To yellow windows; longing for the life
And laughter within, its blue nose is loath
To leave the view of the love it lacks.
It swirls and drips, dribbling down the panes
As outside early night dabs dark, and blacks
The cold stove of sunless skies. It remains
Glued to the glass, sniffing the strange power
Of cookies. Cookies, mere cookies, defeat
The dark. Fragrant piles of cookies tower
And then, to be made more warm and complete,
Are wrapped with red ribbons in green cellophane
For neighbors; warm candles in cold Christmas rain.

LOCAL VIEW —BACKLASH—

This morning’s maps show our latest nor’easter (Storm #9 on my list) has done what  such “bombs” often do, which is to come to a screeching halt and “stall.”

Once these storms stall they are usually finished “bombing,” and the pressure seems to have hit a bottom of 29.48 here, which isn’t all that low for a “bomb.”  The real monster storms get down below 29.00 inches. (982 mb.) (That might not be low pressure for high latitudes, but for this far south its a big storm.)  Then they sit and spin and occlude and only gradually fade east. The one I remember most fondly from my time as a teenager, (because it freed me from a week of school), was called “The Hundred Hour Snow.” (1969?) It completely closed route 128 (now called I-95) around Boston.

This storm was only around two or three degrees too warm.  The teenagers glumly went to school today, as I was relieved. These storms make my old bones ache even without the heavy work involved, and the prospect of removing two feet of snow doesn’t thrill me like it once did.  Not that I have completely lowered my guard. The radar shows heavy snow reappearing in Vermont and eastern New York, where it looked like the snow had ended.

The rain-snow line is roughly thirty miles west of here, but liable to shift east, and we could experience a backlash. As it is the main backlash we are experiencing is a backlash to Christmas spirit. It is hard to get in a festive mood in a cold rain.

Winter’s darkness has just barely started
And already I am gasping for spring.
A week of rain, and I’m downhearted.
My smile’s a false veneer; a grimacing.
 
I try to be good, but fool no one.
I pace, and replace a book on the shelf
Unread; the words are clouds without a sun.
I can’t fool my wife, my dog, or myself.
 
Life reeks. It now seems the only zest
Is in how the rain’s drumming on the roof,
So I listen. (Sometimes life’s at its best
Without leaks supplying reason and proof.)
 
In the dark drums of rain I hear brightening.
I must look up to see enlightening.

There. It may not be the most jolly sonnet ever written, but does pull out of a nose dive. This is real nose dive weather, and one has to experience several “G’s” when pulling out of such dives.

If the backlash gets back this far east everything will get dusted with white, and despite the work moods will improve. That I can predict more reliably than the weather.

LOCAL VIEW —Here it comes—(Updated)

Yesterday was a dismal day,  as it swiftly clouded over and remained much colder than was predicted, never getting above 19. (-7 Celsius.)  The wind shifted to the northeast, bringing in a rawness from the Atlantic, and occasionally tiny snowflakes fell. I did a lot of outside work, cleaning a chimney and loading the porch six feet high with wood, just in case we get two feet of snow rather than the three inches of slush and flooding predicted.

The day didn’t seem to hold much good news. As the news about the preacher at our tiny, dwindling church resigning gets around, everyone seems in the mood to fling up their hands in disgust and walk off in a huff. We Christians may sing, “We are one in the spirit,” but we often walk a walk that seems to demonstrate “we are divided as can be.”  Of course, when I say that, I don’t immediately receive thank-yous.

Then I received the news a person who showed me a small kindness 43 years ago had passed away, and, even though we all have to go someday, it made the gray day grayer. She was the wife of my English teacher at a boarding school I was sent to, and even though being torn away from the hippy drug-culture likely saved my life, the sheer shock of being torn away and landing in northern Scotland among a society of complete strangers was pretty horrible at first. (Among other things I was going through drug-withdrawal, but because drugs were illegal I didn’t tell anyone.)

       REMEMBERING MARY

Once, as a boy pretending to be brave

At a new school castled in a far land,

Facing faces unknown, a young mother gave

A tea for new boys. It was a demand

I couldn’t avoid. Reluctant, I walked

From dismal free time on a dank Sunday,

From homeless hallways to a home, and talked

Of topics forgotten, yet the kind way

Silent eyes met mine as I took the tea

Isn’t forgotten. I wasn’t alone.

Now I hear she has left us, and yet see

Death cannot rob me of kindness I own

That she gave with a glance. As we die

It’s our smallest deeds we’re remembered by.

As the dismal day passed the map looked much as forecast to look, in that the storm wasn’t obvious.

This morning it is obvious.

The radar shows how swiftly the storm is developing.

It looks like it will start as a thump of snow here, and then turn to rain. I’ll update later.

UPDATE #1  9:00 AM

Light winds from the north; 27 degrees, 30.26,  sleet and freezing rain.

The storm began as an insidious drizzle if freezing drizzle that glazed everything swiftly. School was cancelled, which sent my Childcare-farm into panic mode briefly, as we’re never are sure who is coming or not, and there is a theoretical possibility of an overload, although usually more cancel than come. I headed off to the “town barn” for sand to shovel on the drives, and gas in case we need to use the generator later. The sleet didn’t start to mix in until the precipitation grew heavier.

It looks like an eye is forming, at the very bottom of the precipitation seen by radar.

UPDATE #2 1:00 PM

Temperature 36, Barometer 30.03, Steady rain.  Thirty miles away they are having heavy snow.

UPDATE #3  5:00

Temperature 36; Barometer 29.75; Winds NNE 10 mph gusts to 25 mph.

Rain with occasional sleet mixed in. Driving mist. Fog.

UPDATE #4  11:00 PM

36 degrees, barometer 29.59.  Wind north, 10 mph, gust to 20 mph.

A driving mist. Dismal drizzle. I guess you’d call it drizmal.

A so-called “dry slot” can be seen coming up from the south on the radar picture, but believe me it is not dry. The air is full of some substance wetter than fog but thinner than drizzle, driven by the wind. It is a night once described as “filthy weather” by a stuffy old Englishman, and I think that is the best description I’ve ever heard.

However at least  is is still above freezing. This is the second storm in a row that has been only a degree or two away from burying us in snow. I hope this isn’t the “pattern” for the winter, for if this situation repeats a month from now we will be completely  buried.

Not that it was all that  nice as it was. Even when it edged above freezing the glop that fell from the sky was truly ice-water, as the rain had bits of sleet mixed in, and it lacked the power to thaw the earth,  which still remembered a full day below 20 degrees. The bits of sleet in the rain didn’t melt in the puddles, and in many  places the ground was so cold the rain froze and created a surface of glare ice even though the thermometer claimed it was above freezing.  I had to go out in the filthy rain and sling sand from the back of the pickup  truck  about the parking lot, even though the rain was so heavy half the sand washed away. So I’m calling this a winter storm, even though it was mostly rain.

It looks like it may hang around, and perhaps we’ll get some backlash snows. I’m hitting the hay, in case this old body needs to shovel more in the morning.

LOCAL VIEW —Resolving Differences—

Once again an arctic high has nudged south and clipped us with frigid air that it didn’t seem possible could get here, even two days ago. This time I’m ready for it, and have three stoves burning wood tonight, as the full moon beams in a wintry sky.

It is interesting to compare these two maps, the first from two days ago, and the second from tonight. (Click to enlarge or, preferably, open to new tabs so you can click to and fro and compare the maps.)

In the first (left hand) map you can see the last cold high fading away to the east, but when you look west there seems to be no oncoming arctic high to replace it. To the west you see nothing but benign Chinook air. However two days later, in the second (right hand) map, you can see a rather solid looking arctic high pouring cold air down on me and making me light three fires. How is it possible to see such a high pressure coming?

It has happened before, so I should know better. In fact it has happened something like four times in a row, but I remain mystified. These arctic high pressure keep appearing out of the blue. I would assume I am just ignorant, but the billion dollar American GFS computer also fails to see them coming. Over and over it looks at that first map and predicts the obvious warm up I assume would be the inevitable result of such a map, and despite a billion dollars is as wrong as I am for free. Meanwhile, for the price of a cup of coffee, my subscription to Weatherbell gets me Joseph and Joe, who somehow see these things coming. Mr. Bastardi, in an aside, mentioned the four high pressure systems something like eight days ago. I said to myself, “What the bleep is he talking about?”  After all, if I can’t even see the next high pressure system, I sure as hell can’t see four.

In the same way, I didn’t see that Thanksgiving storm coming. It came. Nor can I see the storm about to hit us, looking at tonight’s map. Let me print the map again, and ask you to see what could give us gales in 48 hours.

When I look at the map I look west for the next storm, at that low atop North Dakota.  A piddly 1013 mb low? Way up there? Where can that go? It doesn’t even have an arctic high behind it.

Even if you look down the coast, you only see a weak 1010 low out past Bermuda, too far out to come back west, right?  However actually that low is not an ordinary low rippling along a front, but is the first dimple of a complete collapse of isobars along the USA east coast, which meteorologists jokingly call “bombogenesis.” In essence a storm appears out of nowhere.  The Canadian model shows it well, with nothing apparent after  24 hours, and a gale appearing after 54.

The fact I can’t see the storm coming, while Mr. Bastardi could see it last week, involves a difference in depth, which becomes a difference of opinion, and perhaps even a difference in prayer. Although we both go to church and pary to the same God, Mr. Bastardi likely prays his forecasts are correct, while I disloyally pray his forecasts are wrong. (I have enough troubles without a storm.)

The wonderful thing about meteorology is that differences are resolved, unlike the differences that manifest in politics and some marriages. They are resolved by a simple thing I will look out my window and see 48 hours from now, called Reality.

 

 

 

LOCAL VIEW —The Worst—(updated)

I looked out the window this morning, and there it was: The worst.

The blue on the radar map is snow to the north of us, and the greens, yellow and reds are rain to the south of us. We are at the southern edge of the purple, which represents glop.

There is enough glop to call this weak low Winter Snow Event #8. We had roughly an inch of snow, compressed to a half inch by sleet, which has been further compressed to a quarter inch by freezing rain.  The warm air was forecast to surge north and change the freezing rain to rain, and get temperatures up to around 43 today, but temperatures have been reluctant to budge above freezing. I keep looking out the window, waiting for the sight of the glaze of freezing rain falling off branches and power lines, but so far it hasn’t happened. I think the air might have just nudged above freezing now, at noon, but the melting is so slight the power lines still wear their rows of tiny icicles, as if decorated for Christmas.

It is a good thing I got the wood on the porch yesterday. This is the worst sort of weather in which to attempt doong anything outside. All the firewood is glazed, so not only is it so wet that it drenches you, but also it is so slippery you inevitably drop a log, usually one of the largest, onto your big toe. Therefore I’m staying in. Later I may go do some work repairing the interior of the stables, which the goats have once again trashed. However right now a nap sounds like a good thing. I need to recover from my cold, and have had a large dose of post-Thanksgiving stew, and the tryptophan is inducing a siesta.

I need to rest up, as a major storm next week is looking more and more likely. The question now seems to be whether we will get snow or rain.

The map shows storm #8 as a disorginized collection of centers, the closest slipping south of us, and moving to the east. It doesn’t look like it will explode into a gale and bring the arctic air down on strong winds, but the cold air is seeping south nonetheless. Yesterday the arctic front was up on the southern coast of James Bay at the very bottom Hudson Bay, but now it has snuck down to Lake Superior. It doesn’t look like our promised “warm up” will be all that warm.

Next Wednesday’s super-storm is in that tangle of low pressure currently navigating its way through the Rocky Mountains. It may not look like much, but that is because the energy that is going to generate the storm is up in the upper atmosphere, which is another way of saying it is above my head (and pay grade.) You can see the thicker, higher clouds are to the north. As that energy comes over the top of a ridge and swings south it will “dig” further south than the jet stream is currently curving, and become so pronounced it may even become a cut-off-low in the upper atmosphere, which generates super-storms. However that is still five days away, and much could change (and I hope it does.)

Joe Bastardi has an interesting 15 minute video about the coming storm, and why the American GFS model fails to see the storm until only a few days before it arrives, at the Weatherbell Site. It is in his “Saturday Summery,” which is for the general public and is free.  [Over on the right hand side of the screen.] http://www.weatherbell.com/

UPDATE  —11:00 PM  STORM ENDS WITH SNOW

Just as the precipitation ended, we received a quick blast of snow.

This storm was a close call, as the temperature never got above 36.  Later in the winter, with the surrounding landscape colder, it likely would have been all snow. The pressure never fell that much, and is currently at 30.25 (1024 mb) . We received roughly an inch of rain, judging from what I poured from the goats food dishes, where they were exposed. The goats looked disconsolate, as they don’t like rain but it is getting muddy under the barn. They may even decide moving indoors isn’t such an imposition. I worked at fixing up their stables, my hands clusy in the raw cold.  (I intend to have the stables strong enough to hold an elephant before attempting to coral the goats again.  What a total mess they made of things, last time.)

The map shows the resurgence of warmth was largely deflected east, and the arctic is coming south. If you compare this map to yesterday’s you can see the cold air has pressed back towards the Canadian Rockies across Alberta to the west, and has come down from Hudson Bay to the St Lawrence Valley to the east. The high pressure area following our current storm and warm resurgence has pumped up to 30.40 (1029 mb) and now holds less Chinook air, with arctic air sweeping south in its eastern side.

If this was an ordinary year, this would be a wintry map, for this early in December. The very fact people are calling this a “warm-up” and speaking of winter “backing off” shows how very cold November was. Ordinarily this is when winter is just starting to come south, with maps that look like this one.  However we know this is no ordinary year. This is the start of the worst winter ever.

(As always, click these maps, or open them to new tabs, to clarify and enlarge.)

LOCAL VIEW —Preparing for the worst—

We had a brief burst of snow just as I was finishing my closure of our Farm-Childcare for another week.  It sent me scurrying home to look at the maps and radar.

I’m glad I got the wood onto the porch, even though it seems the resurgence of mild air is aiming right our way. We could get snow and freezing rain tonight even as Vermont gets rain and the coast clear up to Maine gets rain,  because there is a pocket of valleys in southern New Hampshire that hides from the southerly flow, and clings to its cold, which settles into the low places like dandruff on a duck. (You likely have never checked a duck for dandruff, which allows me to get away with that alliteration.) I doubt the worst will occur, but I prepared for it, which will allow me to relax in the morning.

The map shows a mild scenario, with even the next high pressure way west in North Dakota looking Chinook-fed and meek. It reminds me a little of the mildness before the Thanksgiving Storm. It seems impossible it can snow heavily next Wednesday, but the weather-geeks are all abuzz about rumors of a storm.

The scenario is that energy will dig down along that cold front currently way up in Canada, west of Hudson Bay, and phase with energy dawdling behind the storm currently bringing us mildness, and together they will create an upper-air-low perfectly placed to give us snow. (Southeast of New York City.) It won’t matter that there isn’t much cold air around, for such deepening upper-air-lows “create their own cold.”

I’d say, “I’ll have to see it to believe it,” but, because I said that before the Thanksgiving Storm, and saw the Thanksgiving Storm, I’ve already seen it, and therefore can believe it. After all, weather happens in “patterns”, (although as soon as you start to recognize a “pattern” it seems to become obsolete).

In any case, I’ll see if I can budge from my comfortable chair tomorrow and behave like a person who is preparing for the worst winter ever.

However sometimes when you behave this way you wind up looking like the cartoon characters who are always lowering their shoulders to charge through a door, but just when they expect their shoulder to hit the locked door someone else opens the door, and they go flying right through the house, out the back door, and usually wind up in a puddle of mud.

This happened to me this past week when I faced one of those unpleasant jobs no one wants to do, so I do it. It involved telling a well-liked  preacher at our tiny, dwindling church he was past his prime, and should retire. I gathered all my evidence, gathered my nerve, prepared for the worst, and was just raising my index finger to speak when he announced he was resigning.

Sometimes you can feel like your foot is in your mouth even though you haven’t said anything. It just goes to show you that preparing for the worst may get you into some odd situations, because sometimes the worst you need to prepare for is yourself.