PNW 2022/2023 Season - It's Triple Dip La Niña Time!

[riff]

Got some fine turns on big T. The wind had put it in all the right spots. Gorgeous moon too


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[Norseman]

Haha! The rare September's Pow!

[ptavv]

that is way more and better snow that I thought there'd be up there

[wickstad]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpSlsrP_hXY&t=15s Easy pass 2007. We’re fortunate to have these images. Lost a computer full of mountain images around this time. Much easier to obtain July, August and September turns back in the day.

[riff]

Likewise- they showed me some dire photos from a week ago at the Wilderness Information Center, and said i should definitely take axe and crampons because there’s cracks big enough to fall in. Seemed pretty good .


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[wickstad]

I just rally through in the Cherokee


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We took the Outback up there. Got passed by a government pickup. Todd made it to the top of Carne. Did I tell you that?

[Skier of the Hood]

Nice meeting you up there Riff. Hope you didnt get stuck in the hours long construction traffic in Stevens Canyon like we did.

[ey_allen]

FKNA. That looks nice.

Checked in up at Stevens. The new lift is looking good. Plenty of fall colors around but no snow yet.

[riff]

Nice meeting you up there Riff. Hope you didnt get stuck in the hours long construction traffic in Stevens Canyon like we did.

Likewise! Good work gettin up there. There was some delay but nothing too bad, sorry it stacked up on you. Super fun day up there all things considered


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[BaseFloopy]

Not sure I've ever seen a proper skin track on the snowfield... Someone must be working on their kick turns

Past-season stoke:

[riff]

Not sure I've ever seen a proper skin track on the snowfield... Someone must be working on their kick turns

Past-season stoke:

I got to lay it out in accordance with my preferences…


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[Eastern Sierra Skier]

A beautiful NorthWest day on Sunday.


Views were endless.


Great week to come up and hang out at Mom’s.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

I got to lay it out in accordance with my preferences…


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I think that is a beautiful skin track. I don’t like steep skinners and don’t mind kick turns


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[BaseFloopy]

Ha, I wasn't 'riffing' on riff, like I said it looks proper to me... aesthetically pleasing, and well placed. I.e. the exact opposite of what I usually see up there.

[Buster Highmen]

From: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ftp/hrd/annane/DIS/Q3.pdf


Definition:
Modoki El Nino is different from traditional El Nino because the SST warming is largely in the central
equatorial Pacific region instead of in the eastern equatorial Pacific region. Recent studies show that
the canonical El Nino has become less frequent and that a different kind of El Nino has become more
common during the late twentieth century, in which warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the
central Pacific are flanked on the east and west by cooler SSTs. This type of El Nino, termed the
central Pacific El Nino(CP­El Nino; also termed the dateline El Nino, El Nino Modoki or warm pool El
Nino), differs from the canonical eastern Pacific El Nino (EP­El Nino) in both the location of
maximum SST anomalies and tropical–midlatitude teleconnections. The first recorded El Niño that
originated in the central Pacific and moved toward the east was in 1986. El Niño "Modoki" events
occurred in 1991-­92, 1994–95, 2002–03, 2004–05, and 2009­-10. The El Nino Modoki was named to
represent the phenomenon in 2004 that had a maximum SST anomaly in the central tropical Pacific,
differing from the conventional El Nino. In addition, such modification in the structure of El Nino has
implications for its teleconnection pattern in many countries surrounding the Pacific Ocean.
The number of CP­El Nino events is relatively small, its frequency increased noticeably after 1990. For
the period of 1854– 2007, the occurrence ratio of the EP­El Nino before and after 1990 is 0.19 per year
and 0.29 per year, respectively, whereas that of the CP­El Nino before and after 1990 is 0.01 per year
and 0.29 per year, respectively. Simply put, this result indicates that anomalous warm SSTs in the
central equatorial Pacific (that is, CP­El Nino) has been observed more frequently during recent
decades (Yeh 2009 title: "El Nino in a changing climate Nature paper")
The large difference of anomalous mean SST between the two types of El Nino results in changes in
the total SST pattern in the tropical Pacific , which determines the atmospheric response. For the EP­El
Nino the centre of maximum anomalous rainfall is observed around the dateline; for the CP­El Nino it
is shifted westward to around 165 deg E. The anomalous rainfall is largely enhanced in the central and
eastern equatorial Pacific and reduced in the western equatorial Pacific during the EP­El Nino
compared to the CP­El Nino.
In addition to the differences in their spatial structure, the EP and CP types of ENSO also show
differences in their temporal evolution


Scope 1991-­92, 1994–95, 2002–03, 2004–05, and 2009­-10 in the following for Snoq Pass snowfall:
http://hyak.net/snowfallhist.html :

1990-91 372
1994-95 411
2002-03 235
2004-05 191
2009-10 189

Average snowfall
90s: 388
00s: 371
10-20: 301

[ptavv]

He's an asshole but Cliff Mass did write a meteorology textbook on PNW weather. Here's his post about El Ninos: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/...-nino-for.html

The January-March precipitation signal is weak east of the Cascade crest and is pretty localized to the western slopes of the Cascades, which gets less precipitation (down around 3 inches)--which is relatively small compared to the 60-100 inches often observed on the slopes.
[…]

Below is a NOAA analysis of the difference from average snowfall for the 10 strongest El Nino winter and all El Ninos. The Northwest tends to get less snow by as much as 10 inches over the mountains. Considering that much of our high terrain gets hundreds of inches a year, the El Nino impact is modest.

So the bottom line is that the El Nino influence should be modest, with most of the impacts after January. And keep in mind that not all El Nino years follow the above patterns. El Nino is only one factor influencing atmospheric evolution over the planet.

[Buster Highmen]

He's an asshole but Cliff Mass did write a meteorology textbook on PNW weather. Here's his post about El Ninos: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/...-nino-for.html

That's at odd with the
1990-91 372
1994-95 411 *
2002-03 235
2004-05 191
2009-10 189

Average snowfall
90s: 388
00s: 371
10-20: 301

where only 1 out of 5 of this type of Modoki El Nino exceeded the 10 year average for Snoqualmie. 3 out of 5 years were down by 36%, 48% and 37%.

Plus, I don't think he's an asshole, he's just trying to tamp down hysteria.

[wickstad]

‘04/‘05 stunk at Mission but ‘09/‘10 was one of the best that I can remember. I think ‘04/‘05 was also a blocking pattern and every storm missed us.

[wickstad]

‘91/‘92 might have been affected by Mt Pinatubo?

[MagnificentUnicorn]

‘04/‘05 stunk at Mission but ‘09/‘10 was one of the best that I can remember. I think ‘04/‘05 was also a blocking pattern and every storm missed us.

11/12 was better than 09/10, we had record snowfall iirc.


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[The AD]

Plus, I don't think he's an asshole, he's just trying to tamp down hysteria.

I think he's a bit of an asshole, but I do agree that for the most part he is trying to tamp down hysteria. Climate change is real, but that doesn't mean that every extreme weather event is due to climate change. On the other hand Cliff seems extremely dead set in his view that none of this extreme weather has anything to do with climate change, and I think that's a bridge too far. Then again he's the professor and I'm the layman.

[plugboots]

I think he's a bit of an asshole, but I do agree that for the most part he is trying to tamp down hysteria. Climate change is real, but that doesn't mean that every extreme weather event is due to climate change. On the other hand Cliff seems extremely dead set in his view that none of this extreme weather has anything to do with climate change, and I think that's a bridge too far. Then again he's the professor and I'm the layman.

Right? Climate change doesn’t cause all problems, but the ocean, (being a degree or two warmer than it’s ever been), has no effect on weather?

[Buster Highmen]

I always thought his issue is that it takes a bunch of events and a bunch of time to verify climate change, that good science requires enough data to verify theories.

The problem is that the media loves to get all wired up on individual events and pump up the hysteria because it makes for good copy and generates advertisement money. The battles with the writers at the Stranger got pretty heated because they were claiming to be the pundits on the matter. Premature and poorly cited theories are the fodder for deniers.

He was one of the people who pointed out how the blob effected PNW weather, but also held back on insisting that the blob was really a consequence of climate change.

[ptavv]

I think there's an interesting discussion to be had about Cliff's approach to tamping down hysteria and by-and-large I agree with that part of his platform. With one glaring exception: namely that as I understand it climate change doesn't "cause" individual climate events but does alter the probability of rare ones occurring, so it's almost always going to be true that rare events can be shown to be part of the historical record; however, that there are *more* rare events occurring is itself an effect of climate change.

His climate commentary and expertise is not why I think he's an asshole. Hijinks like this are why I think that. That said, I don't think the reasons that I wouldn't want to hang out with Cliff are reasons not to take his meteorological expertise seriously.

[The AD]

I think there's an interesting discussion to be had about Cliff's approach to tamping down hysteria and by-and-large I agree with that part of his platform. With one glaring exception: namely that as I understand it climate change doesn't "cause" individual climate events but does alter the probability of rare ones occurring, so it's almost always going to be true that rare events can be shown to be part of the historical record; however, that there are *more* rare events occurring is itself an effect of climate change.

Right, when you "shift the whole curve" all of a sudden those very rare tail events out a couple standard deviations in the bell curve become much more likely.