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Let's assume for a moment that this new biomarker proxy evidence for global sea ice extents can be accepted as consensus. That's a big if by the way, but let's go with it for now. What do you think this would suggest in terms of explaining the aggressive declines in the Arctic and the relatively flat trend in the Antarctic in recent decades? Even more importantly what would it say about future trend trajectories?

Note that Comiso does not include data after 2015 which saw anomalously low sea ice extents. And to provide some balance to the quote above this also appears in the article. "The positive trend, however, should not be regarded as unexpected despite global warming and the strong negative trend in the Arctic ice cover because the distribution of global surface temperature trend is not uniform." The authors note that the positive trend from 1979 to 2015 could be linked to 1) higher frequency of cool phase ENSO cycles 2) freshening of sea water and/or 3) ozone depletion by CFCs. It seems as though there are two mains points to the publication. First, the positive trend is real. Second, it's difficult to test the various hypothesis to explain the trend because the CMIP5 suite of models does not adequately predict the trend as-is in the first place.

The Euro has some similar eye candy as well.

Last night's Euro run was +4.5 SD at 168 right over the pole.

Anyone have low down as to how Mangkhut figured out a way to break the HWRF?

Saturday might be a player as well in Missouri.

That is a huge powerhouse trough and upper level low showing up on the 12Z EPS. By 18Z on Friday (hour 174) it has 3 fully closed 500mb isohypses and that's just an ensemble mean. The 12Z GEFS also shows big troughing during this period. That's a pretty strong signal for a big weather maker. And it's that time of year so...

We may see some accumulating snow in MO this weekend.

No. First, just to clarify, the academic jargon of "ice free" typically means less than 1 million sq km of extent. Second, based on the stuff I've read the consensus seems to be in 2040-2060 timeframe in which the probabilities of "ice free" go likely. At this point though I think we're going to be lucky to make it to 2040.

It's still more than week out so a lot could change. But, the EPS and GEFS means for the QPF swaths are not encouraging for Oklahoma.

The Feb 1st timeframe has been hinted at by the EPS and GEFS for a couple of days now. The weekend of the 27th is a different trough.

St. Louis has been in a snow drought as well. It's been 4 years since we last saw a bona-fide (6"+) winter storm. And as we move into February things get more depressing. St. Louis hasn't had a 6"+ snow in February in over 20 years! So I'm not holding my breath that February will bring anything of interest, but who knows. The trend has break at some point.

It looks like the ZR product on the COD site is messed up. I'm thinking it's scaled too high by a factor of 10.

Euro is really rockin' the cold air next weekend. There is a 40F temperature swing from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning.

I don't know...looks pretty good to me

EPS and GEFS ensembles continue to show a pattern change in the days leading up to Christmas.

12Z EPS control run has nearly the same storm as the GFS. And the GEFS and EPS pattern evolution hints at something brewing in the days leading up to Christmas. So, who knows, maybe we're seeing a bit more skill than usual of modeling with an active pattern in the works. Or modeling could just be teasing us again.

The best way I heard it explained is that the sun is 400,000x brighter than the full moon. So even at 99% it is still 4000x brighter! And yes. I too thought the light dropped off rapidly at the last 60s. I couldn't really perceive the shadow racing at me, but it went dark pretty quick. So what do you guys think? How bright would you say the corona was? I was thinking it was about 1 or 2 full moons. It was brighter than what I was expecting. And really vivid.

I just want to reiterate how neat the experience was. Those who weren't in totality had an overwhelmingly "meh" response. But, those in totality always responded with "wow, that was so worth it" or "I'm already planning to do it again in 2024". This is something everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime.

We setup near the Perryville Municipal Airport on the MO side of the Mississippi River. I knew CU suppression was a very real effect, but I had no idea how effective it would actually be. We went from solid coverage at 12:40p to very sparse coverage at 13:10p and then just wispy remnants at 13:20p. In probably the most frustrating and unlikely coincidence ever we had exactly 1.5 minutes of cloud obstruction and it just happen to be from a lone dying rouge cloud that moved right in front literally seconds before totality started. Fortunately we had 2:40 of totality so we got a solid 60s of an unobstructed view of the corona. And wow...that was awesome. Pictures and videos don't even come close to doing justice to the experience. I'm all in for 2024.

We are in Chester IL. The town is active but the sky is clear.

One thing to watch for in southeast MO and southern IL is moisture convergence initiating storms. The GFS, HRRR, and to a lesser extent the Euro show this. We are still targeting southeast of St. Louis and will probably head down I-55 and possibly cross the Mississippi at Chester, IL. Morning rush hour traffic on I-55 is north towards downtown STL...obviously so I'm hoping I-55 southbound will be clear. I-270 southbound is sometimes slow in the mornings, but it usually flows pretty well too.

The convection allowing model runs last night showed a lot of promise especially the closer you get to St. Louis.

I'm tentatively planning on heading that direction as well. I'll make a final decision tomorrow morning though after looking at the satellite. Several of this evening's convection allowing model runs have been favorable even for a large portion of the MO path.