so_whats_happening

From the other thread since I did not realize this was created.

I would love to see at depth how much warm water is there now (throughout the PDO region off Japan), I think Bluewave posted about it awhile back. Im not so certain of an El Nino atmospherically we are not making a change up even with oceanic trying to make moves.

I may just say uncle if this storm Sunday does anywhere close to what some models are projecting... Anyways here is that last few weeks of TAO subsurface some interesting motions taking place. Rather than this reconfiguring the subsurface this just looks like a 'burp' of warmer waters for now as we head into spring and summer. Oceanic and atmospheric things are not aligned and look to be even further apart from each other over the next few weeks to months.

Unfortunately those 10 or so days were not all that fun for here. Eastern NC though I'm sure was just in love with this pattern lol. From the looks of the Nina phase 1 passage is taking place this weekend. Large cold dump with warming through much of the plains showing up. Going forward it does show cold building back up into Canada to be unleashed again at some point maybe the last week or so of February into early March as we move into Phase 2/3?

By using that same logic the law of averages would assume we would have extensive cooler than average year(s) coming up too since we have been an endless year after year warm regime.

Honestly we haven't really needed much influence from the strat this year other than it maintaining at or below average in strength most of the season. i'd rather have the 500mb take the lead but it would have been nice to lock it in with an actual split. I will not be looking forward to a below average March and April if one were to occur this late in the season.

https://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/ag/strat/produkte/winterdiagnostics/

Vortex stretching is the term but Im still not seeing a split take hold even with the Euro to 240. It took roughly 30 days to translate to the surface in 2018 (split occurred around the first few days of February) leading to the snowfall events around presidents day and into March. Much different outlook this go around.

All this to say I do want to go out with a bang for the season but my hopes are slowly fading like the winter season.

Unfortunately it still looks as though things will be intact through Strato to Tropo. There has been residual high latitude blocking on the Pacific side of the arctic a lot this season which has allowed us to remain relatively cold through many of the months. If we can hold that pattern into the second half of February as things relax yet again I would not be surprised at a similar progression as we saw in January for February. The SPV just does not get demolished like we typically want to see. Well again we saw something similar to this last year around this time. From about the 3rd week of February to mid March there really was not a whole lot that took place. I want to say there was a quick snowfall that snuck in but this was the overall pattern at 500mb after the event took place. The graphs below show a funky wave 2 tried to set up but ultimately ended up being a wave 1 event and tiny lobe was over Greenland for a bit. Similar things don't always produce the same event but I wouldn't expect much out of this if we go down that path. That is actually fairly typical in split events (if the split event were to occur) the larger more intact lobe goes to Eurasia while a piece splits off to our side. It is the lack of a true split that leads to almost being another wave 1 displacement event again fairly similar to last year at this time. This was what the Euro and GFS had leading up to the event. I wish I had saved the later portion but I guess I deleted stuff.

This is rather disappointing and honestly can't say I'm surprised. Something like this happened very similar last year around this time with the pinching off of a little lobe of SPV in the Eastern US/ SE Canada. It was around mid to late February when this started to take hold.

DCA _ NYC _ BOS _ ORD _ ATL _ IAH _ DEN _ PHX _ SEA -2.2 -2.3 -2.5 -1 -0.4 0.9 2.1 2.4 1.6

We are officially in a WQBO descending phase so we should be right near that transition come next winter so may be a little interesting to start off. Not sure about the transition to full on Nino but plenty of time to discuss.

Fair point it really has been awhile for that type of pattern. There is a large amount of cold air this year which I have been told ad infinitum that this will not be a thing going forward. The longevity is something else this year.

Yea seems like a coast to coast type of pattern. Which is not terrible for this time of year makes me happy to see a potential moist pattern finally trying to set up regardless of snow or rain.