CAPE

I am thinking of changing the thread title to "Winter 2020-21 Pissing and Moaning".

He gets too emotional. I apparently hate snow now because I understand that it doesn't typically snow much in December around here lol. I will back off on the salt.

You seem a little hysterical. You don't seem to be able to make a distinction between having a little fun with the situation, and serious discussion/speculation of the data we have in front of us.

Do you ever pay attention here? Get a grip dude.

I am simply in touch with reality.

Given how bad things are looking... are you currently accepting applications?

All MA weenies seem to pine for/ romanticize the idea of snowy Decembers. Sorry. You want that? Drive to the micro climate mountain regions, or head to NE.

What is the rationale for this? A weak Nina? The reality is this- climo mean/median for the coastal plain of the MA, and even the Piedmont in most years, clearly shows that December is more of a fall month, and it simply doesn't snow much.

^Wheres Mersky? Obligatory reaction required here.

Track tropical. Could be epic. When winter comes, be prepared to travel. There should still be some really good deals on airfare.

lol "possible in the future." "need 100 times more ensemble members". All to tell us what we already know. A legit -NAO during winter is now an urban myth.

I guess we can hang our hats on solar min to possibly contribute to HL blocking in order to tilt the expected generally unfavorable pattern a bit more in our favor. IMO that correlation, along with the QBO, to negative AO/NAO episodes seems very nebulous. If I was making predictions I would not give either of those factors much weight, esp in what looks to be a Nina winter. Not sure what else we got though lol.

More data on temperature tendencies during a La Nina winter. Certainly some variability, but you can see from these panels that a mean ridge in the east is pretty common. The problem with the years that are on the colder side, is they also tend to be dry for the SE and MA region due to dominant northern jets (Polar/Pacific).

1927

^ that was the year I moved down here from Carroll county. I was like- damn people said it doesn't snow much here? Really??? eta- that Superbowl Sunday storm is easily top 10 in my lifetime. Terrible game though.

Yeah you are right. It was 1988 that was Nina. Jan-Feb 1987 was sweet.

I pretty much said the same thing in my post above in response to Maestro's post. I have fond memories of 1986-87, esp Jan and Feb. Was that winter a cold neutral? I have seen some references to it as a weak Nina, but not sure that's correct. The latter half of the winter behaved more like a NIno IIRC. It also featured some decent HL blocking.

Sorry not laughing at you, but the bolded made me laugh. A SE ridge (and generally warmer temps along the east coast) is pretty typical in La Nina years, esp moderate to strong La Ninas. As always, other factors/indices will impact the overall pattern as well, so not like it's always a complete torch all the time. Lucky for us, this winter looks to feature a pretty weak event, and may end up being more of a cold neutral. Given our apparent "new normal" background state however, I would still expect frequent episodes of SE ridging, with the mean trough located out west.

Not that anyone should be based on what any of these climate models are depicting at this point, but this pattern should look familiar. Hard to bet against the 3 month DJF h5 mean looking something like this when all is said and done.

Some may try to claim one or both of the last 2 winters were a Nino, but the atmospheric response was anything but. Technically, 2018-19 was a weak Nino, but it was puny. For all practical purposes, the last 2 winters were warm neutral.

That may in fact be the long term trend, but there are always going to be variations, and other influences will likely mitigate that from time to time. At some point everything will align and the Pacific will be "favorable" again. That will probably happen 10 times before we see the next -NAO winter.

ENSO state is a major driver, so especially when it is clearly in a Nina or Nino phase(moderate to strong), there are established, reliable correlations that can be made about the general pattern. I cant see that suddenly "not working" anymore. Last winter the ENSO was warm neutral and the Pac SSTs were pretty warm everywhere. The winter before, the Nino was super weak and undefined, and there was little atmospheric response until very late. MJO can dominate under those conditions, and especially last winter we saw that, with the strong tropical convection persistently where we didn't want it.

lol Pretty much He parrots what other people say, but does it very very badly.

It constantly vacillates between pure crap and pretty decent, and everything in between. Pretty useless, like all of these LR climate models, at 3-4 month lead times. That being said, we pretty much know what the baseline is at this juncture for the winter months, so start from that. (expect total suckage as the default)