snowman19

Let’s be honest, this winter will be judged on how much snow it produces. 99% of winter lovers base a winter being great or a fail on how much snow it produces. Even if this winter turns out to be -5F from Dec-Mar, if it ends up dry with below average snowfall, people will call it a huge fail and say the winter sucked. Great winters are remembered for snow not cold

The twitterologists have been hell bent on turning this into an I-95 snowstorm for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Most rational people knew that was a lost cause

I hate to ask but do you think we see a continuation of the dry/drought pattern we had from mid-August to late November? Last week’s storm just being an anomaly in an overall feeding back dry cycle?

The risk with the upcoming cold wave is cold and dry. Unlike last year where we had the El Niño juiced STJ screaming along with a bunch of moisture and shortwaves….opposite this year and the strengthening -PMM supports a continuation of a weak STJ. We will be relying on vorts in the fast, progressive northern branch flow to “do something”. While that may work for New England maybe, south of there remains questionable, which is why the models aren’t showing a big coastal signal to go along with the cold in early December

That’s a good question….this is going to be a test to see what happens once this WWB/+AAM/Rossby wave flux wears off….does it just rebuild itself again or do we go back into the same old PAC pattern that we’ve had for years now?

The big issue is that we don’t have arctic air yet and the airmass that’s going to be in place is extremely marginal. While that may work later on in mid-late December/January/February, even early March, it’s not going to work near the coast in November unless there is very rapid deepening of the surface low off the coast and the midlevel lows take a good track to allow for strong UVVs/dynamic cooling and cold air drainage

Besides low snowcover and the warm lakes, Hudson Bay is still ice free. That is also going to modify the arctic airmasses

Multi model signal for a very strong SPV next month:

Just to add to this SPV disco, if the MJO (4-6) forcing does start to exert itself and we go back to a La Niña/-PDO like atmosphere with a -PNA, as @Stormchaserchuck1 mused, at the same time of a potential coupled SPV forced +NAO/+AO, then yes, the pattern could get very mild. And as I discussed yesterday, there is a possibility we go Niña in region 3.4 by the end of December with a projected EWB next month. “Commodity weather” pointed out that there have been cold-neutral ENSO Novembers that have gone La Niña by the New Year in the past. I don’t know what to think right now after this total mismatch we’re seeing to start December TBH

I don’t think the issue comes the 1st 2 weeks of December. The thing that would support the NAO and AO/NAM going very positive is the SPV. The SPV is forecast to get extremely strong and cold on the models and “couple” with the troposphere. They also have it moving directly over the pole. *IF* that happens it may be a problem going into mid-December

Got about 2 inches of snow in Sloatsburg. Snow and rain now, mostly rain though. The high UVVs must have moved out stopping the dynamic cooling for now. 34 degrees

That’s the issue with 2013. 1st, the PDO wasn’t starting as a record breaking -3.5 in October like this year and 2nd, the PDO started weakening by the beginning of September, 2013. This -PDO started weakening just after the beginning of November. 2013 had almost a 3 month head start on us and it wasn’t starting as a record negative event. Even though this PDO has weakened, it’s still strongly negative, in actual numbers and appearance

If we do in fact see a strong MJO pass through 4-5-6 in December as is being projected and there is no semblance of a typical phase response, then it will be a really huge clue that a different forcing mechanism is trumping it. Agree with that. As far as whether we see a very weak Niña or cold-neutral, there have been cases of cold-neutrals in November that ended up being Nina’s by the New Year. Do I think it’s likely? Probably not, but that said, the models are predicting a pretty healthy trade wind burst in 3.4 next month:

It’s becoming clear that the massive WWB no one expected, which turned ENSO region 1+2 into an El Niño had huge effects on the Rossby wave train, spiked the AAM positive and completely altered the long wave synoptic pattern. It changed the entire 500mb in the North Pacific (-WPO, -EPO, +PNA). The retrograding -NAO was happening regardless, totally different forcing mechanism with that. Now the million dollar question is did this start the beginning of a legit long term big shift North Pacific pattern for this winter or is this a temporary flux? No one is going to have the answer until we are into December. The models still show a big trade wind burst in region 3.4 in December, but will it actually matter at that point? Once the -NAO block dissipates, it’s going to be a purely PAC driven cold pattern, i.e. 13-14….does it continue??

The op Euro/EPS has gotten as bad as the op GFS. There’s no difference between them anymore they equally suck. I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them

Obviously

That’s true, however, the claims of a full scale regime shift of the PAC and Atlantic that some in the Twitter crowd are making right now are ludicrous. A pattern change projected by the models the last few days of this month into the beginning of December doesn’t = full scale PAC and Atlantic regime shift. Those don’t happen within 2 weeks

I don’t know if what we’re seeing is related to a temporary and transient flux in the longwave pattern due to the sudden, unexpected (and very strong) WWB altering the Rossby wave train and subsequently causing a +AAM spike or the start of something bigger. It’s going to take more than a pattern shift from 10/28 into the 1st week of December to figure that out. We are going to have to wait until we are into December to see what or if anything changes. The wild claims on twitter that the PDO is about to go positive is absurd. The PDO is still extremely negative, just not the record breaking -3 anymore. And the WPAC warm pool is still there. While I’m open to anything at this point, I’m definitely not ready to completely abandon my winter forecast or say that the PAC or Atlantic is having a full scale shift This is not about to magically flip to a +PDO:

WxTwitter has decided that the early December is “locking in” for the winter. The hype is off the charts. I think some people may end up looking really stupid….. @MJO812”locking in for the winter”. Really dangerous making definite proclamations like that. Sets them up to look really ridiculous

Agree. The maps spreading all over twitter right now showing accumulating snow into NYC are completely laughable. People don’t know how to look at soundings, only the pretty 10:1 ratio snow maps. NWS Upton is not expecting any accumulating snow whatsoever within 35 miles northwest of NYC

@mitchnick Here’s phases 6-7, Neutral, December:

My guess is that the tail end of November into the start of December is “hangover” from the big WWB event we just saw. Once that wears off, the question becomes, are we then at the mercy of the MJO? Because if we do in fact see an MJO 3-7 pass with amplitude in December, we are going to go into a mild pattern on the east coast. All 5 of those phases are warm here. One of the 1st signs I would look for is the SE ridge/WAR suddenly getting stronger on modeling. But again, maybe we see some strange mismatch this year? The only way to know for sure is to wait and see like you said. And based on the RONI, we are in a La Niña despite what the old, traditional ONI may be “saying”. The warm tropics are clearly skewing the old indexes

Region 1+2 in an El Niño….yea, looks like an east-based La Niña to me lol Anyway, as you know, because of AGW, the RONI may be a better measure of what ENSO is really doing right now and FWIW the models are still showing a strong EWB in region 3.4 coming up RONI: And as far as the MJO/tropical forcing, if the models are correct with a robust wave going from phases 3-7 in December, then we should expect changes in the long range pattern. Unless, there’s some total mismatch like you had alluded to possibly being the case. Here are the composites for MJO phases 3-7 in December with a -ENSO, they are all warm in the east:

I woke up and expected the 6z NAM to be juiced to hell and showing 6 inches of rain but surprisingly it’s the driest out of every model lol

As long as it matches with the month and ENSO state. So you would want Phase 6, Dec, -ENSO