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RIP Greg Biffle. He cared far more about Western NC after Helene than every government agency combined.

I'm pretty sure when he says "big snow," he's specifically talking about a big dog (which the bare minimum to qualify IMO, outside the mountains and eastward-facing snow belts, would be 12"). That's just my ha'penny of a contribution to the pedantic conversation as merely an observer from halfway across the country...

RRFS has some big gusts tomorrow too

The crazy thing is since they switched all the airports at the same time, you wouldn't even notice a problem [except relative to your personal station] unless you compared to cooperative station data. If you only compare to other airports, it looks legitimate. PIT is similar to AGC in both months, and warmer than BTP and AFJ. But if you look into the data, you notice PIT/AGC went from warmest by far to middle-of-the-road. BTP and AFJ went from warmer half of the distribution to among the coldest sites.

MJO delivering but pacific won’t let us take advantage. Really wish La Niña would fade a little earlier, maybe we could break this patten quicker

This is even more egregious, and it's been like this month after month. The airport sites (WBAN stations) were uniformly the warmest until the switch and now they are not. Notice especially PIT goes from the warmest station in the entire climate district to middle of the road, dropping from about 3F warmer than the nearby Moon Township NWS office site last December to only about 0.5F warmer this December. Note that the Emsworth site had a lot of missing data in 2024, and that's the only one warmer than the two airports. That's an unexplained 2.5F variance at the first order site versus a reliable cooperative station with no change. It's been like this every single month since the change.

solidly negative pna for the foreseeable. If the mjo heads back into the COD and exits into 4,5 then the only hope will be a herculean block to develop and that may only partially save the easterners. Other than that we might end up going full blown torch. I'm going to Hawaii in Feb. Hmmmm, last time I went to Hawaii was January 2012 #Forch #Morch

CPC's most recent 8-14 pushed the warmth a bit more to the west, the normal to first 'warm' now runs thru central VA NW up to Michigan. One or two more pushes west would be appreciated!

Well, I don't have exact numbers. As far as I can find, no analysis was performed before the change. Some sort of pre-switch testing, but no systematic analyses like they had done back in the 1990s. Just very suspicious IMO. Why are all of the airport stations (with the exception of Islip-Macarthur) so much cooler this December (so far) relative to last compared to the cooperative stations? Upton NWS office used to be the coldest by far... Shirley Brookhaven AP was always significantly warmer, now they are almost the same? Westchester even colder now?

I have it by luck on my phone as I happened to started saving a few in Dec of 2021 and Jan of 2022 I think because of long range hints on the CFS (of all models, which I also saved a bunch of…so kudos to the CFS then!) starting to show very long range big colder changes in late Dec and especially Jan. Since then, I happened to saved a lot near and after the 2/16/2023 SSWE, which showed that the -NAO/-AO were initially way underdone/missed. Since then I’ve saved a bunch during the winters.

Less blocking today which is why the runs were warmer in the aggregate....which makes sense. If we see less blocking, we're gonna be pretty warm after Christmas.

I’m not Will but it was a big deviation from the blocking that models showed yesterday and last night. Wouldn’t react yet, but hope it comes back at 00z. Recall the op runs last night showing snow in NC lol.

I wasn't aware of that disparity. That's a pretty sizable change.

41.1/37.5 and raining here in the last hour or so.

Have to figure that JF was/is going in hard after him...

Virginia Tech?

Lol you guys are du....ahhh skip it

Clear break in that todays showed more, or less blocking Will?

Yes, the hodographs, as taken by themselves, are prime tornadic hodographs. However, the reason why they are like that is due to the surface inversion. If the surface inversion was mixed out then the 0-1 length would be shorter, but still capable of causing trouble.

Don, I don't put as much stock in the temperatures from the first order sites since the transition to the Vaisala sensors earlier this year. They have consistently been running between about 1-2F cooler relative to cooperative stations in every month since that change.

Haha believe me, I strongly considered not engaging at all. The points you make are exactly correct, and why I made my post. His entire post just felt strange to me.

True, but we just had a snowstorm produce widespread 6-8"+ from I-95 south and east (other than lighter amounts in the urban heat island near NYC) with -PNA, though in that case the NAO was slightly positive and AO highly positive. *If* we are going to see a 6"+ snowstorm in a -PNA pattern during a La Nina, it almost definitely will come from northern stream system e.g. a highly amplified clipper/Miller B.

... but, that's if x-y-z. For now, the NAO has to be stamped down. I don't trust the 12z removal any more than huge balm. We've been doing this for a week with that aspect and it's still not very confident or clear where total Pacific --> N/A relay --> NAO domain is going to orient. Comical. We could be 32 or close to 70 depending

Pretty clear break on Atlantic blocking from yesterday/last night on longer range ensembles (esp EPS....GEFS weren't quite as different). That's really the crux of it in the D9-15 range right now. If we get good blocking in the Atlantic, we'll probably be on the cold side of the boundary enough to get some events. If not, then we're gonna torch for a week in the means. The one good constant though is we tend to keep reloading the -WPO anytime it starts to wane, so that alone will probably help us not endure weeks long torches. The cold is always not far away when you have that healthy -WPO.

Looks dreadfully boring the next few weeks