Daniel Boone

Light Snowshowers here currently.  Storm Total Rainfall of 3.73". 5.91" since Sunday. 

Edit: Spoke too soon. just had a mod/heavy snshr go thru.

1 hour ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

My parents told me about the late 70s, but I wasn't born until '83. My mom grew up near Duffield, VA and told about some huge snowflakes during one of those late 70s storms. 

Speaking of cold the long range GFS cuts off the trough just off the west coast and we get, if not snowy, a cold look:

There and gone from one run to the next, but at least another option on the table and maybe that is the sort of look we start to see as the MJO wave progresses east. 

November '76 I witnessed 3" diameter Flakes. More like patties as they were thick. 

Carver's, Bnawx you sound just like me, lol. Those late 70's Winter's were a snowlover's Dream !  They were long, cold and snowy. Before TWC came along I would watch every evening local TV weather cast. Sometimes I would jump from one channel to the other and catch other casts. Then came TWC and I, like Carver's would glue to it any time I could get the chance. Those were fun time's.

  I actually began my weather watching in the late 60"s. I'm an Antique. Some great Winter's then as well , in particular 1969-70. 

14 hours ago, Carvers Gap said:

If there is any term I truly hate in professional development, it is "deep dive."  When I hear that term, it makes me want to dive under the table.  So, why am I using this term today....I am sort of making fun of the term.  Anyway, if you have a better term for dialoguing (another term I truly an uncomfortable with) about various aspects of global weather such as the PDO, AMO, IO, AO, NAO, SOI, MJO, PNA, EPO, QBO etc....I am open to suggestions.   Anyway, I thought maybe we could fire up a thread to learn.  I thought of this thread idea, because one aspect of my seasonal forecast that I forgot to include was the PDO.  And the PDO may well have been partly driving the bus this winter(and the past several in North America).  Anyway, here is an article(second link) I am working through.  So, what do you all know about the PDO, and maybe how has it been impacting NA weather?  I "think" the cold phase PDO is connected to Nina ENSO states as cold water is along the Pacific NA coastline and water water is in the north central Pacific.  The warm PDO is the exact opposite.   I am not ignorant not he subject(I do lack overall expertise on this), but I truly need to learn more about it, as I think the warmer anomaly of water over the north central Pacific is pulling the trough into the west.  And the physics of that is what I am trying to understand! How is the warm water in the north central Pac pulling that trough into the West(or is it)?

https://legacy.climate.ncsu.edu/climate/patterns/pdo (primer)

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/30/9/jcli-d-16-0376.1.xml (working through this article currently)

 

The -PDO in conjunction with the Atlantic SST State probably the biggest Killer's. QBO just exacerbates the problem as well.

3 hours ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

6z GFS shows some of the better potential with the -NAO and crucial 50/50 pattern, while the 0z shows how it could go downhill:

Not a textbook perfect look, but it gets it done for some of our area. Lower heights over the Canadian Maritimes locked in by an east based -NAO. I used the COD NEXLAB scheme below, just because it has more blue over me. 

 

0z shows how this could all develop the other way. NAO doesn't push west enough and everything stays north of us:

 

 

 

 

A lot of uncertainty on the ensembles wrt the late month. Look at the spread on the 0z EPS for the 24th of Feb:

Spread really starts around the 22nd, the time frame for the NAO to first start to flex. I personally think it is a bit rushed, as things tend to be in out in model land. 

 

MJO actually made it through the warm phases on the RMM plots fairly quickly for once:

Excellent work Holston ! Hopefully that 50-50 will come through this time.

The 50-50 has been the missing piece 

29 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

So I gather that SSW effects (and the timing of them) widely vary and are usually difficult to predict?

Yeah. Fingers crossed it'll work in our favor. Really, tbh, about the only hope we got. 

As we all know, Models will go nuts for a while in response to the SSW. So, I wouldn't take alot of stock in what they're depicting now. There'll probably be about every solution under the sun. 

1 hour ago, Weather Will said:

WB 18Z GEFS.  If you want snow in  March, need cold anomalies.  Under half of members are cold for March 1.

SSW going to have models going nuts for a while. 

5 minutes ago, Carvers Gap said:

The Euro Weeklies are still cold, but the mean is not crazy cold like last Thursday's run was.  Most of the run is BN, but seasonably so.  The front two weeks are warmer, and the last 30 days are BN.  That looks about right to me given the SSW and MJO phase 8 progression.  So, maybe some signs of spring if one rolls with the trend....but still a pretty cold start to spring if true.  The control run is quite cold, and also snowy for western parts of the state.   I still think I see more snow IMBY.

I agree with your assessment Carver. I'm thinking a further east trend with systems the farther along we go. Probably be cutters and eastern trajectory one's early in but expect more similar to what we witnessed this last system. So, odds look more promising for snow in our snow starved eastern area's, particularly if the SSW stimulates the usual Blocking. My added 2 cents worth. 

3 hours ago, eyewall said:

At least 75%. I am 46 and this is the worst winter of my life to date.

I'm 60 and it's the least snowy I can recall here. Just 2.6" so far. 

2 hours ago, Carvers Gap said:

Cosgrove says analogs are warm for spring.  The Weeklies are super chilly.  Could go either way.  I think of March, April, May.....I would order the months in terms of cold(against the norms and coldest listed first):  April, May, March.

Most times I agree with Coz but, not this time. Reason being, SSW, MJO and Enso change. Btw, meant to mention in the post of who Coz is. He and Dave Dierks were friends in College. Dave credits him for taking Meteorology as a Major. 

2 hours ago, PowellVolz said:

New Found Gap changed over around 10:30ish and now they have a few inches. I’m still in disbelief that we have a ULL passing to our SE the second week of February and even at 5k in elevation is struggling.


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Yeah, it's just ridiculous. Parts of the area may not reach Atlanta Climo. I'm still in hopes enough comes together end month first March to save it from being least snowy on record here. 

Tonight's SRM's trend should be showing with each run now irt snowfall uptick. Rgem gets onvoard, we're good. 

32 minutes ago, Maggie Ace said:

Temperature has been dropping steadily the past hour. Was 50 now down to 43. Light NE breeze here in the Valley. It "feels" like snow out there now. Keeping on eye on mPing.

You'll get slammed. 

11 minutes ago, tnweathernut said:

For east TN - Just noting we are in early ish February, with a near perfect track of a surface low, and a great 850 low pass incoming (including a deform band setting up somewhere in east TN) and we are leaning rain, even inside the deform.  This satellite picture, knowing the date, should make your mouth water if you like snow.   Just goes to show how poorly we do snow in the south.  I'm still hopeful some in our region find flakes, but my hopes for a widespread snow event tapered about 36 hours ago.

Yeah, it's sad. Perfect track but, no typical cold around. Only in this poor excuse of a Winter. P. S.., I've saw a similar system dump heavy snow in April. 

18 minutes ago, PowellVolz said:

RGEM scored during the ice event but the Euro who had been the outler, adjusted a couple of days before. It will be interesting to see who scores. Very rare to see the Euro this locked in for several days to end up whiffing.


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Yeah. Too bad Euro is not what it once was.

3 hours ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

SPV looks like it will be annihilated by the end of the month. 

 

 

Those gifs are starting about hr 90, so it's not all that far out there now. Not sure the exact day that we will see a SSW, but I think one will be official in the next 10 - 15 days. 

Here is the 3D vortex:

Now we wait and see how this will play out by the first week of March or so. I don't necessarily think we will see impacts here by then, but I suspect there will be some impact on the N. Hemisphere's pattern by then. 

 

For once in a long time, the MJO signal wants to fly through the warm phases on the Euro and GEFS suites:

 

Looks to me like it is trying to make it fully into the western Pac in 7 - 10 days. I would almost be willing to say we have a shot at a storm in 20 - 25 days based on that progression, and how the pattern has been playing out since Fall, so March 3 - 8? How the literal fallout from the SPV lands could impact this progression constructively or destructively though IMO. 

For example, let's look at the Feb 2018 SSWE that occurred around the same time this one will. Radar illustrates the pattern's evolution from progressive to blocky, specifically a -NAO. 

 

Radar loop starting Feb 24, 2018:

 

SE ridge city. Boundary primarily over the TN and OH Valleys. 

 

Around the 28th, things start to change:

The boundary is still in relatively the same area at first, but after the first wave rides it, notice how that storm kind of gets stuck over New England. After that instead of everything moving from the TX panhandle to the OH valley, you see most shortwaves running from the Midwest to either East TN or a bit north of us in the Mid Atlantic. That would be an NAO. 

From Feb 20 to March 1st the N. American H5 pattern goes from this:

 

to this:

 

Looks like the Pacific pattern was not so great that year (imagine that), but the NAO at least offset that a bit. This year we have had a pretty regular window of a week or so each month where the Pacific gets a bit better. Can we time that up with an -NAO like we did in December? Will shorter wave lengths help us this time around? 

I think we want to start to look for some sort of a jet extension. Right now it is really retracted. In the left exit region of the Pac jet, you usually get a trough. For now that has been in the far western Aleutians or Kamchatka:

 

 

Ideally we want the jet extended to around Hawaii, so we get a semi permanent trough over the central Aleutians or Bering sea and that ever popular trough just east of Hawaii and ridging into the EPO and PNA regions. 

Look for reliable people on twitter to start talking about an east Asia mountain torques. I forget which one we want, but one will give us a jet extension. We just don't want the jet to extend too far lol. If it is all the way across the Pac like it was in early January that is more of a super El Nino pattern that floods the CONUS with Pacific air and you get the Central Canada Hudsons Bay ridge downstream of a mean trough over AK and western Canada, instead of -NAO type ridging. 

 

Excellent analysis ! Nothing to add to that. 

20 minutes ago, Silas Lang said:

It wasn't a whole lot. Think around an inch or two in most of the valley. Still, a better solution than the rest of modeling at this point. 

Yeah, hi-res euro showing decent amounts northern valley and plateau.

1 hour ago, Tacoma said:

Yep WSW are up for Asheville with 4 to 10 but when you go to the snow map it shows Buncombe County .9 inches of snow where as before this it was 2.7 inches of snow.  Shows Waynesville 3.2 and Brevard 2.3, that doesn't make sense.  

That's the blend of models output.

1 hour ago, snowbird1230 said:

They issue a warning followed with this crap

They may be doing what KMRX does and display the NBM output.

47 minutes ago, Met1985 said:

Yall can bail anytime yall want to but im still optimistic about everything especially for us mountain folk.  The foothills is a different story and may I remind you the NAM has had issues recently with snowfall and with accumulations. 

Good post . Spot on. The Nam last I knew still has a warm bias. Don't think it was ever corrected. Also, I think your location and 2500+ ele should do fine.

Just now, Buddy1987 said:

NAM warmer so far at 18Z. I did see Euro however and it did look pretty darn good. 

hmm., faster arrival time before daytime heating should make for colder. tht's what looked like is what caused models to back off on snowfall; the later arrival of precip till Sunday afternoon.

8 minutes ago, Buddy1987 said:

NAM can't make up it's mind. Moving in precip much quicker than 12Z did. Don't know if it will make any difference for those that are on the fence with temps and time of day etc..

Actually, it should help. 

2 hours ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

Where's the facebook meteorologist who types in all CAPS @Greyhound I trust that person's forecasts the most. 

Or that famous dyslexic hothead one, lol