*       Natalie Gilbert - Treasurer
                                                                                       hudson river ice yacht club
                                                                                       76 Tivoli Gardens
                                                                                       Tivoli NY 12583-5427

                                               Kingston Home  Port     Riverfront Park Water Street     Athens Cultural Center
                                              44 Rondout Landing                                                        Athens Victorian Stroll

WHIFF at Hudson Winter Walk 2023

Once again, the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club was invited to display one of our historic ice yachts at the annual Hudson Winter Walk street festival. This year we chose Commodore Irving Grinnell's 1875 yacht WHIFF which has been in the club's possession for many years. Grinnell had this yacht built specifically for display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 representing the state of the art in ice yacht development and construction. Master builder Jacob Buckhout was given free reign and a generous budget to create a most elegant and modern yacht. Nickel plated hardware, gold leaf trim accents, two carved griffins, and a suit of Egyptian Cotton sails graced the hall at the grand opening.

Not all of that luxury has survived to this day, but the basics are still in place and the yacht looks as smart and handsome as ever. Several hundred visitors looked on in awe when they learned the elegant yacht first sailed in 1876 is still an active member of our fleet today.

Sacandaga Reservoir 2023 Roundup

Determined to get in a bit of sailing this winter, there will be an expedition to Sacandaga Reservoir this weekend. People will begin arriving at the Broadalbin Public Boat Launch noon Friday to inspect the ice and assess the conditions. There is no guarantee there will be good sailing, but last weekend's subzero weather built enough ice to encourage people load up their boats and hit the road.

It will be very windy Friday and Saturday with gusts 40 - 50 mph -- bring your storm sails. A small heavy jib, might suffice those two days.

Broadalbin Weather Forecast

From the Saratoga ice sailing facebook group:

" Just did a quick scout of Sacandaga at Broadalbin launch. Drilled 7”+ before drill died. Local reports say 10”+. Snow on surface now water. All we need now is cold temps. Those won’t arrive until Friday night (mid 20’s predicted). I’m thinking this has good potential for Saturday. Could sail it tomorrow but I think it will be puddly, and gusts over 40mph predicted. As always be very careful on this body of water due to it being a reservoir with constantly changing levels and frequent pressure ridges.  carefully Scout and drill everywhere before taking high speed runs."

Arctic Blast is History

We Begin a Warm and Wet Week

Sunday, February 5, 2023

The coldest air mass of this winter and the coldest since 2016 made a brief visit Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. My thermometer here at Beckwith Hill bottomed out at -7 F early Saturday Morning, recovered to near 10 F by 5pm and continued climbing to 20 F at midnight. Some shallow ponds that had a bit of a icy surface coating made two inches of new ice during this period, but the Hudson River has nothing but a bit of thin brash surface ice freely floating with the tide at this hour. Most of this will mix out and melt as temperatures go back to 40 F for most of the week. Runoff and surface stream flow will resume again tomorrow. Absent a 10 day Arctic outbreak similar to what happened in 1978 from February 9 - 19th, I think it is fair to speculate that we will likely be skunked this year. Summer may be cooler than last year (more like a "normal" year) according to some pundits, which would be a welcome change -- the current setup could be the prologue of a banner spring for 3 - 4 powerful Nor'easter's come March, April, and early May.

Arctic Cold in Downeast Maine

Thursday, February 2, 2023

The coldest air is just east of us in Newfoundland. Here in the Hudson Valley the wind is out of the south and temperatures have remained in the 20's for the past two nights. Some of the shallow ponds have formed a bit of ice, but we need temperatures of 10 F or lower to make some real thickness. The core of the jet stream is directly overhead running from Arizona to Maine pulling in warmer air aloft and fending off the Polar Arctic air mass to our north. Flights from Los Angeles to New York were getting a 150 mph boost in their ground speed yesterday. I ran BUFKIT this morning and the models are still showing a Friday to Saturday blast of near zero degree temperatures for Poughkeepsie, but looking at the maps visually, it looks like the coldest air is sliding east and retreating north and may miss us.

Still No Sailing in Sight

Hopes for an Early February
Freeze Seem to be Fading

January 29, 2023

The week started out with nuisance snow and rain followed by a cold night which slicked up area driveways. Warm and sunny weather followed and melted most of the snow by mid-week -- tonight a modest drop in temperature will follow the passage of a weak cold front, but overall, temperatures will remain above the seasonal average until the end of the week at which time frigid arctic air may bleed across the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers into northern New England and build a few inches of ice. The large lakes such as Winnipesaukee in NH and Sebago ME are practically ice free and may barely close by the weekend before the warm air from the southwest scours out the cold air again and the lakes return to open water. Should this come to pass, we will probably be skunked again this season.

Quoting the National Weather Service:

"As mentioned, the ensembles and global guidance are in agreement
that the cold outbreak is short-lived with temperatures returning
back to normal by Sunday and the start of the new work week."

And Larry Cosgrove:

"Analog and numerical model forecasts for March are mostly in the mild
or warm category, so the clock is running if you want a more typical winter
setting to arrive."

March could be wild with the clash of air masses spawning thunderstorms, tornados,
and powerful nor'easters east of the Rockies.

No Sailing in Sight

January 22, 2023

High pressure off the Delmarva Coast will squeeze a weak low pressure system inland of the coast until it arcs east through Long Island into the Atlantic. A mix of rain and snow will develop late this afternoon and early evening across the Northeastern US. Valley locations should see mostly rain and little snow accumulations while snow, perhaps as much as 8 inches, will fall in the higher elevations to our south and west and across much of New England.

Temperatures should fall to near normal levels by midweek as another stronger storm moves across the country from New Mexico to the Tennessee Valley and into the St. Lawrence Valley. If the current forecast track holds, we should see rain here in the Valley from this storm as well.

Some forecasters see the potential for an arctic outbreak the last week of February, but with no ice in place, winter winding down, and the general global pattern of the cold air sitting on the pole all winter, I think we would be hard pressed to get anything more than a smattering of ice that will rapidly disappear. We would need a ten day deep freeze of zero degree nights to generate some short lived sailing. In 1978, we had such a freeze from Feb 9 - 19th and there has been late ice many years -- but making 8" of ice for the big boats from nothing is hard to do after Valentine's Day in this era of global warming.

January 16, 2023

While the West Coast is getting battered with round after round of wind, snow, and rain storms, the East remains relatively tranquil and warm for January. The large nearly stationary low that developed off the Delmarva Coast last weekend is slowly weakening, but still managed to create strong winds with areas of snow, sleet, and freezing rain from Cape Cod to Downeast Maine last night. A bit of light snow even made it west into the Taconics, Berkshire Hills, and Green Mountains for a few brief hours.

The sub-zero air mass is steadily shrinking and retreating toward Greenland this week -- the long range numerical models show little change from last week -- the cold air sits well to our north and once a week burps a weak pulse our way across the Canadian border. I see no real reason for this to change in the next two weeks -- once we are into February it could be a quick slide into a train of wet snow and warm sunny days where our sailing prospects become nil.

In the Northeast in late February and early March, a number of factors come together that cause the direct normal intensity of the daily Solar radiation to reach its annual maximum of about 10% above the average value of 1000 Watts per square meter. People who are outdoors all day in the winter often have a gentle suntan by late February or early March. If you are sitting outdoors in a chair watching the birds at the feeder or if you are charting the output of your rooftop solar system, the bump in output is very noticeable.

 5 x 5

5 Subjects as Seen
by 5 Photographers

Morton Memorial Library

82 Kelly Street
Rhinecliff, NY 12574

Saturday January 7, 2023
4:30 - 7:00 pm

-----------------------------------------------

Announcing Hard Water Sailing:

The Ice Boats of the Hudson River

A Solo Exhibition of Photography by
Adam T. Deen

The Stewart House
Athens, New York

The Exhibition Showcases the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club

Opening: Sunday, January 8, 2023 3 - 6 pm

Exhibition: Jan 8 - Mar 31, 2023 (Closed for February)

January 2023 Weather Outlook

As the new year begins, we are in a tranquil and warm pattern. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center outlook for the January - March 2023 period concludes:

"Positive Sea Surface Temperature anomalies persist over the Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast with the largest anomalies offshore of the Mid-Atlantic and New England."

While some see analogues to the cold winter of 1994 which gave us good ice and sailing on the Hudson River from Verbank to Hudson, this seems unlikely to me given the current trends. The first two storms of the winter resulted in what I consider to be "busted forecasts" -- the phasing of the low pressure systems off the Atlantic Coast that the models predicted, did not occur. Last weekend's epic storm in Buffalo was the result of the low pressure center developing north of New York State in Canada resulting in rain and warm weather wrapping into the system east of the Catskill Mountains to the Atlantic Coast, and very cold air being funneled across the Great Lakes triggering copious amounts of Lake Effect Snowfall. While two cold nights did bring the Hudson River down to freezing early in the week, by Thursday it was 60 F in Poughkeepsie once again as the cold air retreated to areas north and northwest of Hudson Bay. At North Germantown Landing, what was free flowing ice on Tuesday is once again entirely blue water. Northern Maine may make a bit of ice during the long nights of the coming week.

Looking Ahead -- Animated Global Data Modeled

Click and hold on the globe and rotate the view to North America.

Click on "Anim" to put it in motion or hover over the list of hourly forecast times to step  through the model output.

Note in the forecast graphics that the dominant circulation remains a zonal pattern west to east across the central and eastern USA with occasional weak pulses of cold arctic air barely crossing the Canada - USA border.

The cold air can sit on the poles all winter if there is no general circulation moving it to the lower latitudes. It looks to me like we are in for a warm winter into at least mid February if you believe the forecast modeling.

In my view, the forecast models have not done very well the last two weeks, so I tend to ignore everything beyond five days out. Larry Cosgrove publishes his updates about noon on Saturday's -- we'll get his take shortly.

End of the 2022 Season Recap

With a second winter of the COVID Pandemic, we tried to maintain a low profile of our on ice activities -- but that's hard to do in this era of social media and universal Internet access. Within an hour of arrival to set up at Murderer's Creek, word was out, and during the next two days there were several hundred visitors to the ice. There was more pushing, than sailing, but people enjoyed the scene and seemed happy to be out of the house and participating in the small gathering of these old ice yachts that were built in the 1880 - 1910 era of our history.

The winter was marked by less than average precipitation and one deep freeze period of January 21 - 31, 2022.

Contrast this to the last time we had very good ice boating on the Hudson River. In 2014, we had three deep freezes -- Jan 21 - 30, Feb 3 - 13, and Feb 25 - Mar 6th -- and a 21 inch snowfall on Feb 14th. The snow fell and saturated on the river between the deep freezes and build a nice thick layer of snow ice on top of the stronger brash ice below. The NSIBYC restored 50' Ice Yacht ROCKET was trailered up, assembled, and made its first sail in 100 years.

While we were hopeful for some sailing off Cheviot or Barrytown this year, it's clear why that did not happen and why the river ice broke up so quickly.

Friday, February 11, 2022 -- End of the Season

Murderer's Creek opened up this afternoon and one person went through the ice -- fortunately in shallow water up to his chest -- and was immediately retrieved with no ill effects.

A strong south wind, abundant sunshine, and 50° F temperatures rapidly eroded the ice in Athens today.  More of the same is expected tomorrow. Two boats have been removed, and the rest of the fleet will be off the ice by this evening or tomorrow morning.

Sorry, but that's the way it goes in this sport -- maybe next year.

Radar Picture of the Superstorm of March 13, 1993 -- 32" of snow in Rhinebeck NY

20 Radar Road Sedgwick Maine -- Sunrise over the Mountains of Acadia National Park