SNOW & ICE coverage in the Northern Hemisphere 2016/17

[damianslaw]

6 hours ago, cheeky_monkey said:

I think a cold mid-west North American continent promotes a colder Europe than a cold Eastern side...both 2014 and 15 were cold in the eastern part of North America but were mild across Europe..where as 2010-11 was Cold In the mid western areas of North America and warm in the east but cold prevailed in Europe..another example is Feb 1991..exceptiianlly warm in eastern US bitter cold in Europe.

It can work both ways, winter 78/79 brought bitter cold to NE USA and vice versa here. It all depends on the position of the jetstream, a strong ridge over NW USA/West Canada generally results in a cold northerly airstream over mid USA, with alternating cold/mild weather over NE USA, a powerful jet tends to create steeper temperature gradients over central/NE USA and this often means we end up with a dominant mild westerly pattern, with cyclogenesis development over Greenland/Iceland regions - this pattern was the theme of winter 13/14 and 14/15 which brought very cold digs of air to NE USA, but this in turn promoted strong low pressure development over the atlantic. What you want is a weaker jet with a more meridional flow over central USA as this promotes warm air advection over NE USA/ Eastern seaboard and enables the Greenland high to form - the end result will be a cold mid west, a mild east USA, and a cold Europe.

[Turnedoutniceagain]

An impressive dumping !! Also note the extent of the ice-cap

[blizzard81]

35 minutes ago, Turnedoutniceagain said:

An impressive dumping !! Also note the extent of the ice-cap

It really does look very healthy at the moment in Siberia. A good start.

[Ross Andrew Hemphill]

Does anyone know the largest 1st of October extent record? Would be interesting to compare it to this year and see where we're at with it.

 

edit: Maybe the more modern records would need to be looked at since the amount of ice back in the early 20th Century is vastly different to now. 

Edited September 30, 2016 by Ross Andrew Hemphill

[bobbydog]

16 hours ago, Ross Andrew Hemphill said:

Does anyone know the largest 1st of October extent record? Would be interesting to compare it to this year and see where we're at with it.

 

edit: Maybe the more modern records would need to be looked at since the amount of ice back in the early 20th Century is vastly different to now. 

not sure if the starting point is particularly relevant where the snow advance is concerned but for example, we can do a short comparison.

today-

last year, a very poor winter snow-wise-

then we have the best two winters in recent years

2009-

and 2010-

as you can see, we're well up on all of those years. whether that has any relevance remains to be seen but a good start can't hurt.

[blizzard81]

1 hour ago, bobbydog said:

not sure if the starting point is particularly relevant where the snow advance is concerned but for example, we can do a short comparison.

today-

last year, a very poor winter snow-wise-

then we have the best two winters in recent years

2009-

and 2010-

as you can see, we're well up on all of those years. whether that has any relevance remains to be seen but a good start can't hurt.

This year looks incredible compared to those other years.

[bobbydog]

50 minutes ago, blizzard81 said:

This year looks incredible compared to those other years.

hopefully we'll end up with something along these lines....

[blizzard81]

6 minutes ago, bobbydog said:

hopefully we'll end up with something along these lines....

Oh yes! Fingers crossed on that one. Have you found any similar years to 2016 so far?

[bobbydog]

2 minutes ago, blizzard81 said:

Oh yes! Fingers crossed on that one. Have you found any similar years to 2016 so far?

i havent looked yet but its difficult to compare based on one day. if you take any of the years i posted above i doubt the snow cover would correspond to the starting point a week later. what we do know is that generally, the faster the rate of increase in snowcover during october, the better chances of a cold winter in europe. getting that cold to our tiny island is another matter....

here's the link to the archive if you want to have a browse-

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/gif_archive.html

[blizzard81]

6 minutes ago, bobbydog said:

i havent looked yet but its difficult to compare based on one day. if you take any of the years i posted above i doubt the snow cover would correspond to the starting point a week later. what we do know is that generally, the faster the rate of increase in snowcover during october, the better chances of a cold winter in europe. getting that cold to our tiny island is another matter....

here's the link to the archive if you want to have a browse-

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/gif_archive.html

Many thanks for that Bobbydog, much appreciated. I have looked at the archives before but I could not remember where to find them, so thank you so much.

[bobbydog]

ok, further to my earlier post, using the three years in the earlier examples (two of the best winters in recent years and last winter... the worst...) 2009, 2010 and 2015. here are 10 days later (from the 1st oct, i.e. the 11th) and how the month ended

2009-

2010-

and 2015-

doesn't really prove much does it? 

however, it does show, when we look at 2010, that what may appear to be a disappointing level of snowcover by the end of october, can be decieving. only 4 weeks later we had this-

happy snow-watching! 

[summer blizzard]

SAI theory suggests it's the snow below 60N that is more important for creating feedback (makes sense since you'd need an amplified pattern to do that). 

2012 was great for snow below 60N during Oct, pretty much straight south to China. 

[bobbydog]

2 minutes ago, summer blizzard said:

SAI theory suggests it's the snow below 60N that is more important for creating feedback (makes sense since you'd need an amplified pattern to do that). 

2012 was great for snow below 60N during Oct, pretty much straight south to China. 

it was. and we did get some snow that winter. ( though not quite as good as '09 and '10) however in the years i've highlighted, snow below 60° north wasn't exceptional. in those limited cases, the snow extent across scandi seems more significant but without checking every year in the archives, (which only goes back to 1998 in detail) this cant be seen as having much relevance. anyway, as we've seen with the OPI the correlation doesn't always work. however its right more often than its wrong...

[jules216]

exceptional cool down in Tatra Mountains(Slovakia)next week, snow line below 1000m,some areas will get well over a foot of snow as it stays cold Throughout at least Sunday, these synoptics in October bring great accumulations, I guess over 1300m, see attached graph from Slovak Met office for location Zdiar which is near Polish border at 1000m alt. Courtesy of latest ECMWF, expect few robust white pixels appearing on the map

[bobbydog]

here's a useful link-

http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_daily.php?ui_year=2016&ui_day=275&ui_set=2

you can view the daily snow anomalies for the N. hemisphere. yesterdays chart-

doesnt show the key here but purple is positive and red negative. not too bad so far.

Edited October 2, 2016 by bobbydog

[Ross Andrew Hemphill]

Today's chart:

Some melt on the SW extent but still looking good.

[Ross Andrew Hemphill]

18 hours ago, bobbydog said:

ok, further to my earlier post, using the three years in the earlier examples (two of the best winters in recent years and last winter... the worst...) 2009, 2010 and 2015. here are 10 days later (from the 1st oct, i.e. the 11th) and how the month ended

2009-

2010-

and 2015-

doesn't really prove much does it? 

however, it does show, when we look at 2010, that what may appear to be a disappointing level of snowcover by the end of october, can be decieving. only 4 weeks later we had this-

happy snow-watching! 

This year looks pretty close to 2010 but if that actually means anything yet remains to be seen. Hopefully it does!!

[BornFromTheVoid]

Latest weekly sea ice extent update is here

[Turnedoutniceagain]

Latest chart

North America has certainly taken a pounding. Big increase in polar ice too

[Reefseeker]

Edelweisspitze has snow on it:) http://edelweissspitze.panomax.com/

[Jimmyh]

the link I posted on first page has snow at sea level lonyr

[Mark Neal.]

Love this thread! A good start to 2016! 

[Jimmyh]

big accumulation now of snow at longyrbrn http://longyearbyen.kystnor.no/

 

best snow of season by far all mountains covered even better than this morning

[Midlands Ice Age]

50 minutes ago, Jimmyh said:

big accumulation now of snow at longyrbrn http://longyearbyen.kystnor.no/

 

best snow of season by far all mountains covered even better than this morning

Heavy snow now falling at sea level. Mountains obliterated all houses and roads are covered.

MIA

[Seasonality]

On ‎02‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 11:08, jules216 said:

exceptional cool down in Tatra Mountains(Slovakia)next week, snow line below 1000m,some areas will get well over a foot of snow as it stays cold Throughout at least Sunday, these synoptics in October bring great accumulations, I guess over 1300m, see attached graph from Slovak Met office for location Zdiar which is near Polish border at 1000m alt. Courtesy of latest ECMWF, expect few robust white pixels appearing on the map

Similar story in the Polish Tatras. I posted in another thread that even urban lowland Poland is seeing an impressive cool down this week. Warsaw is going from a min of 10C and max of 23C yesterday to min 1C and max 8C this coming Sunday. Kasprowy Wierch on the Polish side of the High Tatras at 1987m ASL will receive a good dumping this week and will have minus double digits temperatures by next Monday. At this time in the season the chances are that those pixels along the Polish Slovak border will stick.