raindancewx

You guys crack me up with the comments. Keep 'em coming! I reckon you guys have 70,000-100,000 posts between you two. Why not actually spend some time enjoying the weather instead of just being snarky? I spent my little three week vacation from the site skiing and snowshoeing every day just about. This is what I was referring to for snow. Year represents the period ending January 16th. So 1962 is July 1961-January 1962. Caribou Snow, July 1-Jan 16 1962: 23.6 1975: 56.2 x2 2002: 30.2 2018: 64.1 2021: 40.0 Blend: 47.8” Actual: 43.0” Boston Snow, July 1-Jan 16 1962: 13.8 1975: 7.0 x2 2002: 6.6 2018: 22.9 x2 2021: 17.5 Blend: 14.0" Actual: 12.2" New York City, July-Jan 16 1962: 7.8 1975: 1.5 x2 2002: 0.5 2018: 17.5 x2 2021: 10.5 Blend: 8.1" Actual: 6.8" Philadelphia, July-Jan 16 1962: 8.6 1975: 1.0 x2 2002: 0.0 2018: 12.7 x2 2021: 6.6 Blend: 6.1" Actual: 4.6" Baltimore, July-Jan 16 1962: 11.4 1975: 2.0 x2 2002: 0.0 2018: 5.2 x2 2021: 1.6 Blend: 3.9” Actual: 3.0" Washington DC, July-Jan 16 1962: 4.2 1975: 2.9 2002: 0.0 2018: 2.7 2021: 0.0 Blend: 2.2" Actual: 12.1" Richmond, July 16-Jan 16 1962: 13.1 1975: 0.0 2002: 7.7 2018: 6.1 2021: 1.0 Blend: 4.9" Actual: 3.0"

Deepest reds start at +7F. Been a warm first half of winter. Well over half the lower-48 is more than +3 or hotter for the first half of winter.

The 7th deepest red is getting near 170W. None of the blues are deeper than the 6th deepest. I've been expecting this event to weaken pretty rapidly in February. Think it will be over in March. SOI is more likely than not to finish January negative as an example of a real-time response to the warmth advancing. The 90-day SOI has dropped below +8 too. Date Tahiti (hPa) Darwin (hPa) Daily Contribution 30 day Av. SOI 90 day Av. SOI 16 Jan 2022 1009.09 1007.55 -14.46 2.47 7.12 15 Jan 2022 1007.03 1007.60 -24.40 3.32 7.51 14 Jan 2022 1008.50 1005.95 -9.70 4.71 8.00 13 Jan 2022 1011.05 1005.35 5.14 5.64 8.43 12 Jan 2022 1013.14 1008.60 -0.32 6.01 8.61 11 Jan 2022 1011.99 1008.45 -5.04 6.46 8.80 10 Jan 2022 1007.84 1008.35 -24.11 7.04 9.02 9 Jan 2022 1007.02 1008.30 -27.74 8.33 9.43 8 Jan 2022 1008.45 1008.65 -22.65 9.56 9.77 7 Jan 2022 1011.09 1008.10 -7.63 10.53 9.97 6 Jan 2022 1012.63 1006.80 5.75 11.13 10.08 5 Jan 2022 1012.95 1006.50 8.67 11.33 10.17 4 Jan 2022 1011.63 1006.30 3.40 11.59 10.23 3 Jan 2022 1011.64 1006.80 1.09 12.00 10.27 2 Jan 2022 1011.96 1007.80 -2.11 12.36 10.40 1 Jan 2022 1013.42 1008.00 3.82 12.84 10.62

The storm this week for the East & South confirms two of the snow ideas in my forecast from October: 1) I wrote "most storms not cold enough for all snow" for the East Coast - kind of obvious, but people forget, 2) All analogs featured fluky snow deep into the South, despite record SE warmth at times, mostly in January. I had mid-Dec to mid-Jan as the timing target for fluky southern snows. Also mentioned significant ice storms were likely just north of the area of warmest anomalies in the Southeast. If you look at January 1962, the temperature profile has resembled early January so far nationally. That's a pretty snowy month in places like Nashville, Memphis, etc, as it looks like this month could be. Memphis had 5.0 inches in January 1962, top ten January for snow in the past 90 years as an example, with 2-4 forecast, on top of 0.5 so far. More generally, my weighted analog blend of 1961-62, 1974-75 (x2), 2001-02, 2017-18 (x2), 2020-21 is within 2-3 inches of observed totals for July 2021-January 14, 2022 so far in Boston, NYC, and Philadelphia, so this is probably going to be one of my better snow forecasts, as I had the West pretty snowy at times too.

The PDO is starting tor revert toward neutral. -2.00 in December is still incredibly low on the Nate Mantua method historically. https://oceanview.pfeg.noaa.gov/erddap/tabledap/cciea_OC_PDO.htmlTable?time,PDO 2020-11-01T00:00:00Z -1.12 2020-12-01T00:00:00Z -0.9 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z -0.16 2021-02-01T00:00:00Z -0.54 2021-03-01T00:00:00Z -1.17 2021-04-01T00:00:00Z -0.91 2021-05-01T00:00:00Z -0.94 2021-06-01T00:00:00Z -1.18 2021-07-01T00:00:00Z -1.87 2021-08-01T00:00:00Z -1.12 2021-09-01T00:00:00Z -1.53 2021-10-01T00:00:00Z -2.55 2021-11-01T00:00:00Z -2.52 2021-12-01T00:00:00Z -2.0

Here is a comparison of the 12/13 Rex Block (12/31 storm) and the forecast 1/14 Rex Block by Kamchatka. Expecting a pretty cold storm and a weak low underneath it sometime in the 1/31-2/3 period.

Mid-Dec to Late-Dec period of active Western storminess looks like it will come back. This is a pretty substantial rex block forecast in the short term for Kamchatka that will translate to storms for at least California and Arizona in the 1/31-2/3 time frame. Here is December 13 for comparison ahead of the big system around 12/31, with a similar rex block in a stormy period for the West.

The real time stats for ENSO indicate rapid weakening at the moment. We've gone from -1.1 below the surface to -0.8 or so. Nino 1.2/3 are warming rapidly. SOI for January is around -6 currently. I think you'll see Nino 3/3.4/4 reach their coldest readings at the surface this week to two weeks from now before warming pretty quickly. Last year peaked at 25.28C in November 2020. This event may peak at 25.5C or something in January, or when CPC inevitably revises December. Should be another DJF without a 25.5C average (-1.0C v. 1951-2010) in Nino 3.4. Last one was 2010-11. The subsurface is now warmer than last year in mid-January, looks like.

Cracks me up to see people so happy with the snow in the East today and in recent days. It's extremely common for the East to get snow after a wet West December in week two of January if you look at the history. I think three of my five analogs had snow for the NE on 1/7.

Bye bye.

For those of you into tornado stuff, the 1962 Spring was very active. I suspect in two MJO / harmonic cycles, you'll see the current pattern repeat in April. There were some major tornado outbreaks in April 1962, late month. The December pattern with huge moisture dumps into the West should return in March when the WPO flips positive again too. March 1962 was also quite tornadic.

The year I flagged as a similar hurricane season, 1961, in my analog set has now seen the severe cold of 1961-62 show up to some extent. This look should last for a 1/4-1/3 of the month before changing. Nearly identical to the rolled forward blend of years following super-cold Plains centered Februaries I had in my forecast. Pretty happy with my forecast so far conceptually. Cold NW look idea has been fine so far. February will be the big test. February 1936/1978/1994/2018 was my match to last February. So interesting to see closeness to January 1937/1979/1995/2019 in 2022, even if it only lasts a week or two.

Not bad for rolling forward a match of severe Plains Februaries that matched last year. This is the 1961-62 part of the pattern that I thought would show up when i did my forecast in October. The look above will hold for 5-10 days in January before a lot of the Western / Eastern extremes burn off. At the surface, the La Nina remains weaker / warmer than last year to the West. My forecast called for weaker conditions to the West with more of an East-based look. Specifically wrote the event would have trouble moving the coldest waters at the surface west of 150W. Unlike a lot of East-based years though, the Indonesian waters are near 30C, so it's hard to get the Eastern US to sustain cold, since you force pseudo MJO 5 responses with that warmth. I think of the WPO+ signal as the canonical Dec MJO 5 response, and that's what you had this year. Nino 3 in Jan-Dec 2020 25.88 26.51 27.41 27.86 26.92 25.93 25.22 24.50 23.91 23.88 23.90 24.41 2021 25.04 25.68 26.52 26.79 26.69 26.30 25.49 24.65 24.45 24.20 24.09 24.01 Nino 3.4 in Jan-Dec 2020 27.15 27.12 27.76 28.18 27.66 27.39 26.99 26.26 25.89 25.46 25.28 25.44 2021 25.55 25.75 26.48 27.10 27.47 27.45 26.91 26.34 26.15 25.77 25.76 25.54 Nino 4 in Jan-Dec 2020 29.17 28.97 29.07 29.15 29.01 29.09 28.89 28.47 28.21 27.96 27.80 27.54 2021 27.27 27.24 27.67 28.20 28.71 28.83 28.68 28.54 28.23 28.04 27.99 27.75

Just a cold cold rain for me. Mountains look amazing though. My investments look like they did quite well in Q4 too. The county generally had 0.2-0.5 inches reported by trained observers. So parts of the city finished December with average precipitation.

There are worst starts to winter: More Kamchatka lows today and in the next few days. We should get more help after a break in late January.

Solar activity really popped in December, up to 67.6 sunspots. The subsurface cooled to -1.18 from -1.09 in November. Very similar behavior to 2011 still, which dropped from -0.92 to -1.07. Suspect we rebound warm faster than 2011-12, which cooled a bit more in January 2012. La Nina or not, we had a shit load of snow even in the Southwest in the past few weeks, but since it was warm, the valleys largely missed out. Ski Taos has a base of 46 inches this morning.

Canadian has less cold in the Plains. Has an east based La Nina in January slowly weakening in the new run, turns into an El Nino in mid-Summer. Canadian did pretty well in December, had most of the US warm. I had the NW cold and SE hot for winter. So this is consistent with that idea.

CFS has the -WPO returning, with the corresponding California dryness you'd expect. I don't really pay attention to mountain torque over the Western US and things like that, but if you buy into that type of stuff, it does support the -NAO flipping. I thought it'd be fairly neutral in Jan-Feb overall. We did have a pretty big period of blocking late Nov and late Dec, so not quite a -NAO December in the way I imagined but close enough (~3 days off on my end). Snow pack entering January is the highest in California in a decade. There are a lot of potent systems by Kamchatka in the coming days, so late January should transition to a more active period again. The CFS continues to show most of the West (but not California) wet in January, with the South hot and the Northwest cold. The stalled weakening / slight gains in the La Nina in December is, once again very similar to 2011-12 in terms of ENSO development. So we should see the La Nina begin to rapidly weaken in January. I'd expect the weakening to begin in earnest 1/10.

I mentioned a decent storm on my Twitter for 12/30-1/3 as early as 12/10 based on the GFS showing a Rex Block setup over Kamchatka on 12/13. That setup almost never fails for NM & CO. I personally don't really care what any models show more than 3-5 days out, especially with the airplane data sampling problems with COVID.

My comment above aged fairly well! Idea when I blended 2017-18 with 1974-75 as the main analogs for winter was to include a very warm year in the West with a very wet year in the West. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/28/us/california-december-snow-record-drought-climate/index.html As of Tuesday, more than 202 inches of snow -- nearly 17 feet (5.2 meters) -- had fallen so far this month at the University of California, Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, at Donner Pass east of Sacramento. Scientists at the lab said this month is now the snowiest December on record for the location and the third snowiest month overall. The top month was January 2017 when 238 inches (6 meters) fell, and it's not likely enough snow will fall in the next three days to challenge that record. Records here go back to 1970.

Top matches for the SOI for Oct-Dec are warmer than what the CFS has nationally for January. Likely with the cold trapped in Canada in the SOI matches. But the SOI match does agree with the colder West / warmer East idea the CFS has. Impressive for a blind blend of three numbers from the top six matching years. I'm closer to the warmer SOI blend than the CFS. SOI at +12 for December would make your OND SOI matches: 1938, 1942, 1998, 2000, 2007, 2020 SOI Oct Nov Dec 1938 13.6 1.7 12.5 1942 9.2 -4 12.5 1998 11.2 13.2 11.7 2000 11.6 20.7 7.7 2007 6.1 9.9 13.3 2020 4.37 9.24 16.63 Blend 9.35 8.46 12.39 2021 7.66 11.73 12.3 1961-62 has been showing up a lot on the CPC analogs lately. There is no MJO data for that year. My suspicion is you had very similar MJO progression that year, minus the 30-31C heat by Indonesia. 1961 had a very similar hurricane season and extraordinary Summer heat in the Northwest followed by a spectacular cold dump in January. Part of why I included 1961-62 for winter is it does get very get cold nationally (cold also showed up following the similar severely placed cold Februaries I showed before). But I don't buy it lasting real long with the waters so warm by Indonesia. So the other years I had, when blended are pretty warm. The real question is if March 1962 is in the pattern....I think it is. But we'll see soon enough. Idea was 1961-62 would become a better analog over time as we exited the early winter. SOI Oct Nov Dec 1961 4.7 6.8 12.5 2021 7.6 11.7 12.3* *currently

One issue I have with the QBO is the height of the anomaly use varies in the research, and people don't seem to reconcile that when they use it. You can see that paper uses 700 mb heights. But CPC tracks it at 30 mb heights. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/qbo.u30.index

Have to see how we do in New Mexico with the storm going through, but Flagstaff getting 1.6 inches of precipitation in a single La Nina storm can't be super common. Much of the Southwest is going to finish wetter than average for the month, especially with another big system around 12/30 or 12/31. I think Flagstaff averages about two inches in December, but I'd have to look. It's certainly close to a month of precipitation for them just with the one system, with more coming. Phoenix has been doing very well today too - up to 0.80 inches so far. That's at least a month of rain for them for sure. https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KFLG.html https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KPHX.html Some of the years I used in my forecast have been showing up recently in the 6-10 and 8-14 outlooks from CPC. They currently have January 1962 as a similar pattern to week one of January 2021.

Here is how November finished for reference: Nino 4: 28.01C Nino 3.4: 25.81C Nino 3: 24.17C Nino 1.2: 20.67 QBO: -19.78 I did use other years for my forecast. But I still don't see any reason for the La Nina or QBO to rapidly move away from the 1974 and 2017 blend. I'm not a QBO guy anyway. Wasn't the whole point of the QBO nonsense this year that December should have been cold when blended with the ENSO base state? My opinion has always been that the QBO looks like it drives certain patterns because it has one or two heavy anchoring analogs that are very cold or very hot that mask the variation when you run the composite....so this year isn't exactly changing my mind. Maybe someone who actually believes in the QBO can offer their thoughts though.

This December will finish wetter than average for most of the Southwest. If you remember July, Arizona was very wet. It's very difficult for the Southwest to be super dry in December when July is wet if you look at the history. A lot of NW NM will get 0.25" or more today, and then we'll have more around 12/30 or 12/31 I think. Not sure you guys will get something late month, I think it's the wrong track still. Rain should move to Albuquerque shortly. It always feels so weird to go back to dew points in the 40s after so many December days had negative dew points. This is already a good storm for the high terrain for us. For what it's worth, the CFS in January is very wet for Western Colorado, NM and all areas of the SW west of that line, and continues to trend wetter. Plenty more to come. I went with 1-3 feet for a lot of the high terrain in Northern NM with this system. I'd given this pattern a 3 for temperatures for NM - but it's a 5 or 6 for moisture. A lot of the NW will finish wet, and that's not a terrible outcome in a La Nina with the most -PDO in 50+ years.