Nor'easter / East coast winter storm tracking

[darothen]

Thinking about new candidate extreme weather events - big Nor'easter and East coast winter storms would seem to be within arms reach given our existing tracking algorithms for atmospheric rivers (e.g. to track moisture flux incident / impacting population areas) and tropical cyclones (tracking the center low pressure's track and intensity of the storm). The big missing ingredient is a reliable archive of "official" such storm tracks, but I can't imagine one doesn't already exist!

[linear-code]

EWB-97

[aaTman]

The only climatology study I know of is Hirsch et al. 2001 but I can do a little review. I suspect this is a very easy lift with some caveats:

1. Find a closed-contour minimum SLP below a threshold, just like in our TC tracker; let's say 1010 hPa for now with a minimum of 2 hPa.
2. Determine a maximum distance between points, e.g. 750km or use a GCD distance like we do for TCs.
3. Choose a minimum number of hours to have a valid signal consecutively, such as 72 hours.
4. Apply it to ERA5 for mid-latitudes and further, up to ~80N/S, for a set of years.

Eichler and Higgins 2006 used similar criteria to what I had in mind.