joeride

February 16, 2021

14 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Is that normal for up there or just a good year? I know the one coop in the area averages about what I do but they could be in a local minimum.

December 16, 2020

January 27, 2019

5 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

@showmethesnow @C.A.P.E. @Bob Chill

I’ll try to keep this as non deb as I can. This could still flip. I’m not saying we’re done and winters over. But...when I saw the signs the NAO was unlikely to flip again...for the 3rd time, this progression was what I saw as inevitable.

So let me post some of the “epic” looks from the weeklies from several different runs.

look at the ridge axis and pna out west on all those and the NAO.

First of all a full latitude ridge into the NAO domain isn’t a NAO block. It won’t have the impact we need on the longwave trough axis even if it shows up on a numerical chart as a -NAO. The pacific has never been right, but I think what many missed was it was never actually supposed to get great. It was “ok” but the NAO was the driver. Look at those panels. The epo/pna isn’t the driver in any of them. There were some off runs of a random week in all those weekly or cfs runs that had us excited with a pna ridge but 80% of the good look was NAO driven. The epo has always been centered too far west to be the primary driver of a snowy pattern here.

Our epo snow looks feature an epo ridge in western Canada not AK. And a pna has only been a sporadic thing that last a week it is on one run and gone the next. So the attempts to find a way to make this work without the NAO never interested me much. I don’t see a path there. The guidance hasn’t been wrong about that either. It’s been wrong about the NAO. So I don’t put much stock or hope into the “Maybe it’s wrong” theme. It hasn’t been wrong about the epo locations at all. And I’ll make an argument that if you adjust for the NAO error is he coming retrogression of the epo ridge is the direct consequence.

If the NAO block fails as wavelengths shorten an epo becomes less helpful and correlates with cold and snow here less. And that’s even with an ideal epo axis. An epo off the west coast is useless for snow. The trough axis will naturally shift west the later we go and it was already too far west in January.

So my gut “uh oh” was that I saw signs the NAO was failing again. And if it fails the epo will retrograde some and the trough will end up west of us. The epo ridge has been a stable feature except for the 2 week AK vortex period around the holidays. But it’s been consistently too far west to help. Even if it stayed centered around AK it would likely become even less helpful. But now it looks to retrograde a little which would be really bad without any NAO help.

If the NAO block develops that same look becomes workable. The pac jet undercuts the ridge. The energy is forced under the block which knocks down the WAR and then suddenly you have the look in those panels above. Remove the NAO block and you have a massive full latitude eastern NAM ridge.

So im not saying we’re done. It’s still only January. Long range could flip. Maybe the euro is dumping too far west and GEFS isn’t as bad and if the NAO truly develops it would flip quick and Bob is right that often that happens fast without warning. But what I was and am saying is the attempts to get it to snow a lot here without the NAO are unlikely to work this year imo. I guess if someone is in the camp that the NAO is hopeless then I am saying it’s over lol. But I’m not in that camp. I don’t know what the NAO will do. But unless the blocking look that was the driver in the “good pattern” we were expecting develops this is not likely to end well.

Lastly...when I say won’t end well that is a matter of perspective. I’m not saying it won’t snow again even if the NAO fails. But I don’t expect any epic run of snow oh snow warning events or a mecs/hecs levek event. But we can fluke our way to something in almost any pattern. A wave following a cutter could finally work. We got a 4-8” snow in feb 1997 during a flat out god awful H5 pattern because a system lucked under us. It happens.

And keep in mind my mood can’t be separated from my results. For many in here if we get 2 more snows and about 10” total this was an ok winter. But I’m still 32” away from average and 11” from my least snow ever. For me that same result would make this the worst winter ever out of the 14 I’ve been up here. So I might be more negative about a mediocre look than some will. For me I need epic just to save me from a total dumpster fire winter. So I’m probably in a much more negative POV than the dc area and I’m sorry and I’ll try to keep that out of my analysis from now on.