CAPE

I see some slight improvement in the PAC on the 12z EPS at the end. Pac ridge is weaker, slightly further east, and the trough seems to be on the move east. Or maybe I am hallucinating.

9 bucks a bottle is typical if you find a place that sells singles(most do). Otherwise its 36 a 4 pack.

One of you NW of the fall line people should start a thread.

I have a bottle of the Vanilla in the fridge. That is my "least" fav of the 3. I defo need to get more of the Bourbon barrel one.

12z GEFS continues to have a modest signal for something frozen between the 16th and 18th with a cold front that temporarily knocks down the SE ridge. We can track this until it disappears lol. Otherwise it's wall to wall SE ridge and mild, and still hints of higher h5 heights building towards GL from Scand at the end of the run.

@mattie g @nw baltimore wx @Scraff If you haven't tried DFH Bourbon barrel aged World Wide Stout, pick one up(or more, but at 18.3% one will do). Freaking delicious.

They will just have to run for 300 yds instead of 200.

Prime window runs from mid Jan to mid Feb historically. Some of our bigger snows have occurred mid to late Feb, and once in a while early March. Lately March has become more of a winter month.

Some wet flakes and maybe a coating would be nice, esp given the advertised pattern over the next couple weeks. I should head to the western highlands. Looks like some decent winter out there over the next few days. Will be hard to come by in the very near future.

That looks a little better than yesterday's forecast, which had it weakening just as it was moving into phase 6, then into the COD. Looked like from there it might loop and flare up right near the MC again. Hopefully the strength and forward momentum will take it into phase 7 before it weakens.

I have said exactly that several times over the past couple days.That is my expectation, especially imby. Your area could more easily luck into something.

We do pretty well at failing in those too lol. At least we wont be complaining about warm/wet followed by cold/dry.

It wasn't too difficult in Feb 2015. Winter essentially started mid Feb. We might have to hope we get that chance this year lol. eta- One thing of note here- when we look at the advertised h5 pattern on an ens mean, we get the general picture, and in this case, we can clearly see it is stable and unfavorable for snow here. That being said, there are always perturbations/relaxations in the 500 mb pattern that are less discernible on a LR mean , even one that features a sustained blocking ridge. Although our snow chances are severely limited based on the advertised mean long wave pattern, it is not zero.

Pretty much all guidance has a major convective wave over the MC going forward. Beyond that it dies out, but really shows little impetus to progress into the WPAC and towards the dateline. Most likely it will flare up again in the same location(phases 4-5). That big ass Pacific ridge is not going anywhere if that continues. The only way out over the next 2-3 weeks is significant help up top.

Problem continues to be the monster Pac ridge. Until it weakens/shifts/morphs into something other than what it is, the SE ridge will be a mainstay. IF we can get legit +height anomalies up top/in the NA, then the bad Pac can be mitigated somewhat, and compressed heights to our N/NE should suppress/flatten the SE ridge some.

Figures we get would get a locked in, stable pattern that is the exact opposite of what we want, heading into prime climo for cold/snow.

It is not a meteorological impossiblilty, as the 6z GEFS has demonstrated. As you discussed earlier, something well timed on a trailing front with a previous cutter acting as a temporary 50-50 could get it done in a bad pattern, with a ton of luck. The EPS snowfall map over the next 15 days says it all wrt to the general location of the boundary, and is what you would expect. Places like NY state and northern half of NE can do pretty well in an overall crap pattern. We envy their climo, but we live with ours lol. At our latitude(esp mine), we watch and wait.

@showmethesnow 6z GEFS likes it.

53 and rain. Pretty typical weather for early morning on Jan 4th.

That is ugly lol. I just looked at the 0z and 6z GEFS, and IMO there were incremental steps back compared to 18z run wrt pattern improvement in the LR.. This is going to require some serious patience. I don't think there are any quick fixes to get from where we are currently to a favorable pattern for snow. My mindset is expect nothing but mild/rain, with transient cool shots after cutters, through Jan 20th. Keep watching the means to see if noticeable improvement gets pushed back, or maybe occurs sooner. I doubt the latter at this time though.

There are some positive signs, but not sure I would call it eye candy. Micro improvement maybe?. I also don't see the major 500 mb features in any hurry go anywhere- the mean PAC ridge and downstream trough look pretty stable. What could somewhat get us out of this rut and back in the game sooner is help in the NA, and there are hints, but that remains to be seen. My expectations at this point are maybe we can salvage the last week of January, and there is always the possibility of getting lucky before that, but odds are pretty low.

Seems it is becoming increasingly more difficult to rely on historical teleconnections and analogs because of this. That is a topic for another thread though, and we don't want to get you know who all hot and bothered. As for the QBO value, yeah you would think we would be closer to a neutral AO if not slightly negative. We know how to gauge it by looking at the surface pressures near the pole, but the actual AO values per the teleconnections are different, and the measurements can be taken at different pressure heights, so Idk.

Yeah it is what it is. We have to accept the reality of the situation- pretty likely the first 3 weeks of Jan are gone. It can still turn around though, and at least we are seeing some positive signs. Problem is, we are rooting predominately for a favorable NA to be the pattern savior at this juncture, which has not worked out so much in recent winters lol. Given my limited understanding, we have the QBO and low solar working in our favor to that end for the back end of winter. Too bad we don't have a legit weak Nino.

I just mentioned the QBO value for Dec(avg zonal wind at the equator) @ 30 mb, m/s, dropped to 1.66. It has been positive and trending slowly and steadily towards neutral through fall and now early winter. Looking at the temp correlations for winter below, that puts us in regime C. Not bad. Maybe as we get into mid/late winter, this will become more of a driver. Ofc it will help a ton if the MJO doesn't keep looping through the warm phases.

Seems all 3 major global ens are heading in the same general direction up top. We are in watch and wait mode to see if things continue to "trend" favorably.