Treckasec

Definitely a weenie run, but I thought I'd post this for archival purposes...

The upcoming pattern may just be more common in El Niño's... Even Jan 1996, Dec 2010, and Jan 2011 [La Niñas with a significant snowstorm] are on that list! It's surprising just how close to a robust snowstorm the pattern is, but there are wrinkles in the details preventing the storm from currently seeming more significant... While analogs are helpful, reality will always prevail over similar—yet different—situations. It's certainly something to watch, given that we have a number of days left to track the system, but ensembles haven't been very enthusiastic... It may be a signal that this storm doesn't have as much leeway to grow more significant, but stranger modeling madness has occurred in much smaller timeframes!

Is there a resource you (or someone else who'd know!) could point to for reading about the R# and how it relates to mixing winds to the surface? How are you determining the R#, and what values are you looking at as a threshold for more wind mixing than.. For example, the BUFKIT momentum transfer product, would suggest?

It's... Not the best for snow :O) It gets hyped up quite a bit, but it tends to overdo snowfall ^ That's an 80-hour forecast for April 7th, 2018 And for January 20th, 2019, just to provide another example... 73-hour forecast:

The ceiling of this convective event isn't very high... Even in the marginal area, instability/SFC instability looks rather limited, which should cap the potential for strong storms. For NE, the low seems to track too far south for any appreciable surge of warm air to allow for more instability... I don't see any models showing any organized convection moving through the NE region (HRRR, 3KM NAM, WRFs on TropicalTidbits)... Only stratiform rain, it seems. I would keep expectations very low...

I think that there's a little too much of an... Obsessive nature when it comes to having fun, wintery patterns... There's far too much emotional investment when it comes to hoping for a snowy winter, and it is difficult to wade through many of the posts when I'd rather everyone just have fun, regardless of the weather outside! There certainly is far too much complaining, and it's a shame how much I love weather forums like these, because I keep lurking (and occasionally posting) despite the toxicity... It's too much. I'm glad that you had fun and had a proper escape from the silliness. Hopefully life can get better, because I think that it says something about the state of things when we're clinging to weather to make us happy.

Do you (or anyone else) have any examples of strong storms that followed large SOI drops? I only ask since I've heard a lot before about there being a correlation between the two, but I am not sure how well the connection verifies!

For what it's worth... Only some of the winters between 12-13 and 18-19 exhibited that average pattern. Those winters are: 13-14, 14-15 (not a great match, though), and 17-18. Those winters were better 'round these parts compared to the other winters: 12-13, 15-16, 16-17, and 18-19. Though, I do remember this region having some difficulties in 17-18 with being too far west for some of the coastals. Regardless, that average pattern has generally not been terrible, even if it hasn't been conducive for large, slow nor'easters like those seen in 09-10. 12-13 13-14 14-15 15-16 16-17 17-18 18-19

Are you seeing low-level drizzle/showers moving in the direction of surface winds?

@raindancewx Thank you for sharing the basic methodology with which you decide on your forecasts!! At least, it's neat to see what major factors you look into to determine what the winter might be like. Regarding last year, I think that it's understandable that many were caught off-guard after seasonal models (and eventually, weeklies) were pushing for a -NAO to develop, with subsequent eastern U.S. troughing... Of course, these things never transpired! But given the persistence of weather models—which we give more credit to than us humans—it seemed that a cold winter was inevitable! Until it wasn't, of course : ) So with that said, I don't think that people were outrageous to have expected a cold winter, and I was personally expecting to have one as well! But I enjoyed reading your posts and your reasonings for why you believed that the winter would not be as snowy/cold in the NE as people said... And it turned out you were right! I definitely look forward to your next forecasts, whether they spell out a warm or cold winter in the eastern states

When considering the expanse of the cooler SSTAs, it seems like the ENSO should lean on the cooler side, rather than on the warmer side. Unless we lose those cooler subsurface + surface waters, I would think that a cool neutral is more probable.

They're just (somewhat) joking is all! (We need help...) They're acting as though we're going to have a positive NAO stretching from late November, all the way to early March!

Rainfall finally ending now... Weather stations within a few miles from my area are reporting from 5.00" of rain, up to ~6.50" of rain.

Nearby weather stations (Tabernacle, NJ) are approaching, or have already exceeded 3" of rain for the day, with 2.5" of that rainfall having been in the past hour. Sizable puddles and "ponds" have formed in the yard here.

I usually expect a tempered threat for severe thunderstorms when the atmosphere is as saturated as it is today, since updrafts are weakened by having to lift air with a high moisture content, and without any pockets of drier air to get entrained in the storm to produce downbursts and gustier winds in storms, more thunderstorms end up being garden-variety than not. With that said, veering low-level winds in the area might allow for isolated supercellular storms & a brief tornado, though garden-variety storms and downpours should be the "main storm mode" today... Convective allowing models such as the NAMs, HRRR, and the WRFs have been showing some line segments of storms forming, with possible bowing structures... Though there isn't any dry air aloft to enhance downdrafts, there can still be strong/severe wind gusts in storms—particularly when segments of storms bow out.

Impressive! It looks like an area of strong, straight-line winds going off of the velocity on radar... The portion that hit you, at least! I was wondering if those winds were mixing to the ground, or if they weren't... I'd like to hear more confirmation, but those strong winds aloft are serious.

Could it be possible that the photo was taken at a section of the line that was bowing out? That might've caused the "round" look to the storm, outside of the wide lens/panaroma.

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/public/state/images/

https://weather.us/radar-us/chester/reflectivity/KDIX_20190426-204151z.html Here is a solid radar archiving website! You might want to check it out for yourself... I'll post the radar capture for 4:40 PM (Because of DST, the time is off by an hour on the website) It looks to me like there is a little appendage over your area on this frame... There very well could've been a spin-up at this time! https://www.weather.gov/crh/stormreports?sid=dvn You should file in a storm report, and describe the damage & wind intensity + the possibility that this could've been a spin-up in the QLCS. Impressive stuff, Lady Di!

I don't think this was a "meh" event at all! Severe thunderstorm criteria were reached/damaging winds were reported in locations such as Philadelphia as a relatively stronger portion of the QLCS moved across our CWA, as shown in the storm reports... Given the dynamics of the storm system, the time of year, and the time of day, I think this severe weather event is appreciable at the very least! And while most storm reports have likely been recorded by now, I'm sure there'll be some more to come in..

That deeper model analysis/interpreting is very important!! I don't know about UKMET's phasing biases and if it has a tendency to phase more often than not, though I would imagine its south bias suggests that it is less likely to phase(?), but that's just a guess...! The specifics of each storm will affect models in different ways of course... I'm inclined to hedge against snowy solutions for areas close to the coast and farther to the south though! My reasoning is certainly not very scientific, nor as educated as the logic an actual meteorologist/forecaster may use, haha... The tendency with recent storms on models *seem* to be a north trend, though these patterns/trends may certainly be broken at any time ... But with models (such as the EPS, GEFS, and their OPs) trending away from more suppressed storm tracks with snow tracks favorable for snow/all snow, I feel that getting a true snowstorm is becoming less likely... For this specific storm at least! But like forkyfork just posted, there is a pretty darn strong high in place, so CAD (and the high's push on the low pressure in general) may be being under-modeled at the moment! With that said, I still stand by the idea that this storm should be more rainy than wintry, but considering how many model runs there are left to sift through before models converge on a solution, I guess we can't really settle on a solution at all! Just keep observing the trends...

The UKMET was too far south in the long/medium range with the previous system (remember having trouble finding the MSLP low because of how south/weak it was on the UKMET?) ... And considering it seems to be a known bias, I wouldn't recommend getting to giddy unless it's supported by more reliable models and ensembles (such as the EPS, and even the GEFS to an extent) The Deep Thunder model seems to gather attention every so often, and then become obscure again ... I can only remember one forecast from the Deep Thunder model around a year or two ago, where it projected close to a foot of snow in my area (this was around the 84 hour tracking range), where in reality, the storm ended up more repressed and with much less snow... I wish I had maps to support this, but sadly, I can only go off of memory... My main point here is that despite the promising press surrounding this experimental model, I think that it is best to not hug the model—or any for that matter—without stronger model support and consensus. Overall, it seems that models are tending towards more rainy solutions, followed by "vodka cold," as some like to say... :0) At this juncture, colder solutions and trends are certainly possible, but I think that tempering expectations and not being swept up in the model hype is the best thing to do for now.

Our last extended(ish) period of a generally -NAO was in March... And though it was only for a month, it did deliver. For the time being, it's nice to have a threat to track—regardless of whether or not it works out. It takes away some of the pain of this generally putrid pattern we've been stuck in While we've been looking two weeks ahead for these past two months, we can certainly hope that our "fabled" February is going to make an appearance ... soon!

Wow! I found the site just yesterday ... Especially nice on that site is being able to find soundings for the FV3-GFS