You know your CT TV stations haha! Nope, but that was the station I grew up watching!

Nope, the only clue I'll give is I hail from Connecticut!

Does anything trump CloudMan?

One critical question I still have is how these particles may bond to both ice crystals, water droplets, and supercooled droplets deeper in the atmosphere. Are they small enough to act as cloud condensation nuclei? Did they bond to the aforementioned hydrometers and precipitate out wherever the plume density was highest and rain/snow occurred?

Good question: this is the first I've seen of ARL running particle cross section analysis right at the start of the controlled fire before the mean wind shifted. So at the initial burst, they're modeling (using I suspect a different model than the one I used to calculate the forward trajectory) the most likely dispersion integrating estimated particle release per hour. That's also starting a full 12 hours earlier than mine, right as the trough is moving through, more on that below.

What this shows is particles initially contained in the lowest 3,000 ft of the atmosphere that advect NE, then N as they're mixed higher into the atmosphere (shades of blue). This likely is along the first upper-level trough to pivot through here last week, though these particles being an issue here seems almost non-existent given what we know about the lifespan of vinyl chloride gas & how high up these particles were mixed. Then as the winds became more predominately WNW (second image), the plume orients ESE, with concentrations contained in a smaller area than I think some feared would be otherwise.

One of my hottest takes is that the slew of "fact checkers" we saw emerge around/after 2020 remain one of the largest, exploitative scams ever committed on the American public.

Based on the fact sheet I dug up about this gas from the EPA, my suspicion is we're fine here given how far away we are, the half life of the gas is fairly short both in water and soil: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/437069.pdf

I can confirm I am not Al Kaprielian

Fair haha, though I can assure everyone I hold a degree in atmospheric sciences and am employed as a meteorologist. I didn't suffer through multiple years of calculus for nothing. People can take two seconds to inspect weather balloon launches & other factoids about vinyl chloride gas to easily verify everything I've written as accurate, I don't know how much easier to make it.

I just compacted concepts of atmospheric dispersion, chemistry & thermodynamics through the application of forward parcel trajectories into a single reply. I sure hope that folks here recognize my assessment isn't idiotic 🤔. I'd literally show my degree if it didn't give away who I actually am, smh

Nope lol, though we both went to the same college

There are a few cloud nerds living in the Granite State

Hi, meteorologist here. The short answer is likely no

The vinyl chloride burn has occurred under a number of days with a very stout subsidence inversion in play nearby. This means the atmosphere is not well mixed at night, but features a mixed layer as high as 2 km (~6600 ft) during the day with a layer average wind direction from the WNW. The picture above shows the burn plume trapped underneath very stable mid-level air with little horizontal movement, a clear sign of a robust subsidence inversion. The reports of multiple livestock & fish perishing over a shorter radius also confirms the presence of a subsidence inversion preventing these toxins from fanning out deeper into the atmosphere.

I've run an ensemble forward trajectory analysis (https://imgur.com/gallery/0rFlz1Z) starting at the location & approximate time of the fire, which follows the movement of air parcels up 1 km above ground (~3300 ft), a mean of each day's mixed layer during this burn. For you math/science nerds, this is the Lagranagian view of the parcel/fluid through time.

Notice that the mean mixed-layer wind direction (WNW) does carry whatever gas & aerosols are being emitted from this fire into the Carolinas before loitering over the western Atlantic. Given vinyl chloride gas is heavier than the surrounding air, it's likely remained in the lowest 1 km close to the incident location, signaling this is probably not a far-reaching event.

No, though I know for a fact he lurks here often so he'll probably chime in on your assessment about being awful. We're all pretty tight in the weather community and if there's one thing Eric isn't, it's a wacky conspiracy theorist.

It's the number of people who have already died coming into the winter outdoors, particularly out of state folks hiking in the White Mountains

I'm curious: how many square feet are you heating with the pellet stove, do you have some sort of circulation system near it that more effectively distributes heat around the house, and is your house better insulated to begin with?

My parents ditched their pellet stove over a decade ago because it could not effectively heat portions of the house and relied on oil-fired

Providing accurate and understandable weather forecasts absolutely saves lives, it's irrefutable. I mean, look at how many people were killed in the Blizzard of 1978 to Hurricane Ian in 2022.

I agree with you that all SAR should be suspended in this.

Unless you have a difficult time driving in gusty winds, you should be fine. Make sure you've got plenty of gas and bring a winter kit with you should the car battery die in the cold. That should include water, food that's easy to digest but provides a decent calorie load, and plenty of warm clothing

Look, I'm perfectly content with letting everyone do what they please, that's what makes the state great. My concern is 1) this airmass is extremely unusual, 2) most people have never experienced chills like what we expect in the Whites, & 3) we've already had fatalities in the Whites from people (sadly all from MA) who come to enjoy the Whites, are massively underequipped, and don't bother to get good forecasts. If I can help save a few lives with this info, I've done my job.

I think it relates to the amount of heat they can produce:

Pellet stoves: Up to 90,000 BTU/hr

Natural gas-fired furnaces: Up to 140,000 BTU/hr

Oil-fired furnaces: Up to 160,000 BTU/hr

Hey I'm glad meteorologists can teach people new things! So not quite, a tropopause fold/depression occurs just behind a upper-level jet stream associated with a strong cyclone, in this case a piece of the tropospheric Polar Vortex that's been pinched off.

The reason why Bernoulli acceleration occurs at the fold is a difference in density: the bottom of the stratosphere directly above the tropopause gets increasingly warmer, drier, and therefore more stable than the airmass below it. So, that rapidly increasing stability creates the "flow squeeze" effect between the fold and the White Mountains, thus accelerating the winds.

Me too, but the multiple fatalities on the Whites heading into the season paired with the surge of homeless led us to this point.....

I suspect that happens! They (WMUR) waited until the NWS highlighted that, even though this scenario was clearly in play to any sensible meteorologist multiple days in advance. This mechanism is called a tropopause fold and part of the reason why the winds are expected to accelerate so much atop Washington (see the Bernoulli Principle).

"He then turns to me and asks, why so cirrus? Puts the ski in my mouth. Let's put some powder on that face. And so, why so cirrus?"

3,837 out of 752,252 customers (a whopping 0.0051% of the total customer portfolio of all of NH) and less total than the lowest point at the end of the previous two storms. If we're going to consider this chaotic and panic over it, then there are states to the south where folks should consider moving to. This was a non-issue of an event, plain and simple.

Edit: The headline above & the article is lazily written in a way to entice a level of panic (in this case) that's totally unnecessary. "Thousands without power" sounds like a major event until you count the total number of outage jobs left, tally all the mutual aid crews into the state, and consider how many of the remaining customers out have been out the entire time.

I don't blame folks for feeling this way: with trust in TV journalism down below 10%, news directors at local TV stations frantically pivoted to this sensationalist approach in weather to keep ratings up & ad revenue flowing. That's why you see team coverage with multiple meteorologists & reporters for the weakest systems.