On Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:30:16 -0400, S H <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Harvey put up Margusity's winter weather hype
>
>http://www.nyskiblog.com/

Although Margusity makes most in the weather community cringe (he's a
well-known hypster for ratings) there is some validity to his map based on
climatological weak-to-near-moderate La Nina's.  

Think winter 2007-2008...which would have similar ENSO values...with the
heaviest snowfall anomalies displaced across the interior and particularly
from far northern New England back through Quebec, Ontario, and upstate NY
state.  BTV ended up with a top 3 all-time snowfall of 120" that year and in
VT there was a significant south-north snowfall gradient with Jay Peak
taking home the prize.  There were a decent amount of mixed precipitation
events as the general flow was out of the southwest blowing warm air over
the cold surface air.  I think we could be seeing a lot of snow to ice
events as is typical for Ninas.

No two winter's are going to repeat themselves obviously, but the take home
message is that the snowfall anomalies the past couple of winter's have been
more in the coastal regions (two years ago it was the Mid-Atlantic's epic
winter, last winter it was Southern New England, particularly
CT-Boston)...whereas this winter indications would shift those anomalies
more into the interior and northwest of the past two seasons.  It may be a
nice seasonal transition north from the mid-atlantic two years ago, southern
New England last year, and now focusing on central/northern New England back
into upstate NY.

The other thing to consider is that we seem to be in a nice decade-long
trend that suggests the NAO will be more negative than positive.  This is
the biggest issue and as long as the NAO is negative, its hard for us to get
skunked regardless of whatever else is happening around the globe.  With a
more average -NAO over the past 10 years, we have returned to much snowier
winters than we experienced in the 80s and 90s... the cycle has come back
more to what winters in the 60s and 70s were like.  One only has to take a
look at BTV snowfall records to see a lot of 2000-2011 showing up in the
seasonal snowfall and individual storm records.  We are definitely back in a
"snowier time" overall so that bodes well.  J.Spin at one point this summer
had a nice graph illustrating this point (average snowfall at BTV by decade)
and 2000-2010 was I think the second snowiest decade since records began in
the late 1800s.

-Scott 

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