Bring your tarps - Memorial Day Weather rant

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peakbagger

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Sure looks like the traditional bait and switch by the weather industry for this upcoming weekend. Early in the seven day weather cycle on Sunday and Monday night all the forecasters have 3 sunny days with all the bad weather cleared out by Friday. On Tuesday evening, the forecast shifts due to "conflicting weather models" (I.E. everyone has made plans and locked in reservations for the weekend) the forecast is now chance of most holiday weekend days being partly sunny. Wednesday AM, cold Friday with probability of showers until Saturday morning. Cold and windy Saturday. Sunday the best of the weekend and Monday a significant chance of afternoon showers (I.E. get folks to leave early so the roads dont get to jammed up). If this follows form by Friday the forecast will have even degraded worse.

The local tourist economy loves it, not nasty enough to keep people from driving up, but enough to keep them stopping by the stores to stock up on firewood, beer, cold weather gear and tarp and hitting tourists attractions that are not as affected by poor weather.

I hope for all I am totally off base but I guess it comes down the standard weekend advice, plan for the worst and hope for the best.
 
It's a wild eyed conspiracy theory, but I think there's some truth to it.

For years, we used to laugh about the every Thursday afternoon weather report on a local station over here in the Adirondacks:

DJ (chuckling): "So Roy, how does that weekend weather look?"
Weatherman (cringing): "Well, earlier in the week we said..."

My favorite recently was two years ago on Memorial Day. Forecast still looked good about Wednesday. But on Memorial Day May 31, we had three FEET of SNOW.
 
National weather service shows a nice weekend, albeit not super warm, for Gorham, NH.
 
Hmmm, forecast looks pretty good for Twin Mountain. But make no mistake, Big Weather is obviously taking kickbacks from the NH Tourism Lobby. Obviously. ;)
 
Hmmm, forecast looks pretty good for Twin Mountain. But make no mistake, Big Weather is obviously taking kickbacks from the NH Tourism Lobby. Obviously. ;)

Gotta think that Big Rescue is involved too - waiting for people to be lured into the mountain, only to need saving from the un-forecasted monsoon. I'm pretty sure this conspiracy is nested fractally.
 
I always get a kick out of the "Scientific Forecaster Discussion" on wunderground.com. It is all about dueling weather models, not about actual dueling weather systems (a sort of "meta-level"). I don't usually look at the forecast for Gorham (still living "down South"), but the last time I looked there was actually a European model in there in the fight with local models.
 
I actually keep an eye on media forecasts out of WGAN Portland, (WMTW) Lewiston, WMUR (Manchester) and WCAX (Burlington - but look at Northeast Kingdom). WCAX tends to be the conservative forecast, if its calling for a front coming in and I plan to be on summits that day, I keep an eye at bail out points. I think a member of VFTT who used to work for the ski industry has commented that he will probably burn in h**l for the years he published the snow depths.

Its tough as the whites are a battle ground for weather systems I can look down through Pinkham notch from my office (before the trees leaf out) and there are days where the sun is out to the south and its snowing at my place. I usually check the obs in the AM but its useless for long range.
 
Well, I gather the problem in the Whites is that it is a battleground between continental weather systems coming in from the west and Atlantic Ocean systems not very far away to the east. I don't know so much about the other parts of the world, but it seems that North America has some very stable patterns in certain areas but even those are unpredictable. I remember that you might as well have bet in Vegas that it would never rain in the California Sierras over the summer--a very consistent weather pattern. (Which I took full advantage of on long backkpacking trips.) The patterns in the midwest would be very predictable except for a totally different phenomenon, not a front coming through but extremely localized conditions resulting in tornadoes. Then of course in the Rockies you have thunderstorms starting midday every day. I'm not trying to describe all the weather in N. American, my point is more that the weather is subject to different causes and effects in different areas. It all makes it very interesting.
 
Latest forecast for Saturday is cold and windy but sunny. When the clouds lifted Wednesday afternoon the summits were covered with frost.
 
the last time I looked there was actually a European model in there in the fight with local models.
That came up with the snow this winter. Apparently (IIRC) one of the European models has generally been quite good with storms in the Northeast so they had started to rely on it a bit more for the forecast, and this winter it bombed horribly.
 
Mid to high twenties forecast for the Berlin area in the AM, I expect the 160 folks booked at Barnes Field from NYC will appreciate it. One report indicated a slight chance of snow on the summits in the AM. That new all night diner in Gorham may get some business for folks trying to warm up.
 
a Meet up group for Barnes? Looks like the weather may be better than expected, late day type scattered showers popping up possibly Sunday and on Monday, the rain doesn't start to become more probable until Monday afternoon. (just when the flatlanders are heading home.... should make for great traffic, since we are hiking Moosilauke early Monday, think I'll head home via 91 which is usually less crowded.....)
 
Mid to high twenties forecast for the Berlin area in the AM, I expect the 160 folks booked at Barnes Field from NYC will appreciate it. One report indicated a slight chance of snow on the summits in the AM. That new all night diner in Gorham may get some business for folks trying to warm up.

The start of the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail had a fresh dusting of snow on it early yesterday morning. Definitely dropped below freezing overnight north of the notches. Gorgeous morning Sunday!
 
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