Eurasia Snow Cover - OCT '08 - Part II

October/s numbers for Eurasia areal snow cover are in and it ain/t pretty if you/re on the east coast and in the market for cold this winter.

Eurasia snow cover...Siberia specifically...is correlated negatively to east CONUS winter temperature in AER/s sCAST model...so as Eurasia snow cover goes...so goes sCAST.

Observed snow cover (L) Departures (R)

The Global Snow Lab @ Rutgers U. reports Eurasia areal snow cover for OCT @ 8.88 km² (25th percentile)...which is 13% below the period-of-record average (1967-2008) of 10.2 km². This compares to an -8% departure in NHEMI snow cover.


Eurasia/s OCT snow cover has been above average six (6) times during the past 10 years...most recently in 2006. Last year/s departure was -16%...which is not substantially different than this year. The '07 / '08 winter produced bonus snows across northern NE and disappointing totals elsewhere.



Snowfall departure analysis courtesy NCDC.

Other NEWxSFC posts about sCAST here.