SSW correlation to snow - a local study

[muppet]

I have used daily sleet and snowfall data in Wokingham from Bernard Burton's website and also the dates of SSWs from Andrew Charlton's paper http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/charlton%2Bpolvani-JCLIM-2007.pdf

I have then looked at how many times out of the 16 SSWs we have experienced snow and or sleet in Wokingham after x amount of days.

X axis is the number of days after the SSW date (when winds at 60N and 10hPa first turn easterly from Nov to March.)

Y axis is the frequency of snow and or sleet from 1978-2005 in Wokingham.

I am after suggestions especially how to compare to non SSW years?

It seems there is a 50% chance of sleet or snow in my area within 11 days of the start of a SSW.

Any feedback welcome.

Edited December 23, 2014 by muppet

[feb1991blizzard]

I have used daily sleet and snowfall data in Wokingham from Bernard Burton's website and also the dates of SSWs from Andrew Charlton's paper http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/charlton%2Bpolvani-JCLIM-2007.pdf

I have then looked at how many times out of the 16 SSWs we have experienced snow and or sleet in Wokingham after x amount of days.

X axis is the number if days after the SSW date (when winds at 60N and 10hPa first turn easterly from Nov to March.)

Y axis is the frequency of snow and or sleet from 1978-2005 in Wokingham.

I am after suggestions especially how to compare to non SSW years?

It seems there is a 50% chance of sleet or snow in my area within 11 days of the start of a SSW.

Any feedback welcome.

 

A start would be to find out what the % chance of snow on average is within 11 days of any stated date in any average stratospheric conditions over the period of 1978-2005.

[muppet]

Thanks. I guess starting at the first ssw date at the end of the year through to the last at the start of the next, for each year, excluding the 11 day period of each ssw each time.

[muppet]

The only issue I may have is with overlaps.

Eg if there was a ssw on 20 feb and then another year on 25 feb this creates a period of overlap.

I think that doing it this way actually makes snow less likely after a ssw. ?

[muppet]

ok, I have compared non SSW days (and the following days after the start) to SSW periods, for varying amounts of time.

It seems where I am, the most noticeable (?) difference is 2 to 3 weeks after the SSW start, but it only seems to yield 2 or 3 % more snowy/sleety days.

 

 

[muppet]

.

[Mark Neal.]

Interesting. Fair play to looking into it.