Cobalt

We are well on our way to a blue ocean event, as annual arctic sea ice steadily trends downwards. The AMOC is the weakest it's been in the last 1,000 years On the scale of economic damage due to climate change, insured losses due to extreme weather are on the rise. I believe this isn't adjusted for inflation, but even factoring that in shows a steady increase. Note the decoupling between man-made disasters and weather/natural catastrophes. On that note, a 2019 survey found that 72% of insurance firms believed that climate change would impact their business. Given how shortsighted the market is for understanding climate change risks, that is a telling statistic. For a more localized event, the 2021 PNW heatwave is said to have had a return period of about 1 in 1,000 years in today's climate, but it was reported that the event was made ~150x more common given human-induced climate change, and that in a world that is 2C above pre-industrial levels (0.8C more warming), that return period could be closer to 5-10 years. https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/wp-content/uploads/NW-US-extreme-heat-2021-scientific-report-WWA.pdf I understand that you used the word "attribute" specifically to question whether climate change has had a direct role in any given event, but you should know that's not how our climate system works. Instead, I posted the above examples to show how ~1-1.2C of AGW has nudged different indicators of our planet's climate in specific and predictable directions. Adding more energy to a system will do that. All 4 of the examples I've provided have literature behind them that suggests that climate change has contributed to the shifts that we've seen. Again, not direct attribution, but substantial contribution. A shifting of baselines you could say. I think they were poking fun at how you suggested that December was the start of a "cooling cycle of local climate", followed by a substantially AN month for your region and much of North America.

which is alarming when considering how much the Earth has warmed in just the last .0000022% of its lifespan. A blip on any natural timescales. It's been pretty overwhelmingly warm on the whole, with colder months being more of a rarity. Not just for the US, but for the entire northern hemisphere as a. Keep in mind how this is also using the 1991-2020 average. Using any previous baseline would cause this period to stand out even more. Our last horrific dud stretch of winters was much more localized with its warmth.

Thanks to the Montreal Protocol in 1987, international collaboration enabled the phasing out of several chemicals that contributed to depleting the ozone layer. And after phasing out these chemicals, the rate of increase in the ozone hole virtually diminished. Atmospheric ozone is set to return to 1980 levels by 2040-2060. All this to say that the "doom and gloom" science prediction didn't verify because international collaboration favored immediate changes to prevent a long-term issue. Something we unfortunately haven't been able to do for AGW as of yet.

Incredibly stationary distribution of temp anomalies. Despite all of the shuffling in h5, the look over time remains the same. How it started: How it's going ' Pessimism aside, even in some of our warmest recent Februaries (2017, 2018, 2022), a snow threat or two slipped into the scene, even if they were light events.

About the best time to see a run like this take place.

Revenge of the fifth (of March 2013)

Persistence, going with the warmer/less favorable look has been pretty reliable so far this entire winter. As for February itself, we've seen the -PNA/SE Ridge look persist in 5 of the 6 past instances (Feb 2021 being the only exception due to a stoutly negative AO/NAO), and so it's not far-fetched to think that the guidance might end up pretty spot on with it showing basically that exact warm Feb look. Remains to be seen. As for attempting to be more optimistic, even our warmest Februaries during that stretch (Feb 17, 18, and 20) had at least 1 or more snow threats for NC/VA, so maybe we can get lucky. It's just hard to count on.

I spy a 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 on this list as well. All years from this recent stretch of futility, and all but one (2021) went on to have an AN February. If there was any wonder as to why we've been reliably snowless during this past 7 year stretch, reliable warmth is an easy culprit.

Just in time to ruin Spring

A solid increase of about 0-2 millimeters worth of precipitation for southern areas compared to the previous run

Curious as to if the GFS is keying in on the wrong wave entirely. It's been persistent in bringing a band of snow to the S part of our area near 18z Tuesday, meanwhile the rgem, ggem, and icon have been focusing more on 6z Wednesday. Interesting nonetheless edit: GFS did nudge North with the Wednesday precip, but by just a small margin.

15-16 felt like a preview into what "good" winters of the future will look like. Perhaps a 1 month stretch of BN temperatures, even sharp but brief cold shots like with what happened during Presidents' Day Weekend, but in the aggregate, an AN temperature winter with AN snowfall, hoisted up by 1-2 major snowfalls and very few of our bread and butter marginal events. Even just looking back at our recent 7 year snow drought, our "snowier" winters of the bunch have really only been snowy months, a 30 day or so stretch that was just cold enough to support a few decent snowfalls. January 2022 and 2019 come to mind when thinking of that.

Just slightly off, might need a 1143mb high rather than an imperfect 1043 one. In all seriousness, that's a 2 run improvement in terms of presented precip, and the 18z GEFS did have a few extra hits in there, so curious as to whether that improves as well.

So close, but at least it's good to know that surface and 850 thermals and would suggest an actual shot of snow out of this as per the GFS depiction. Would like to see models juice this wave up as we enter range, as they've hinted off and on.

Surprised WW didn't post this, the EPS actually upped the ante on both waves, with a bit more of an emphasis on wave 2. Odd that none of the operationals have done much with the 1st wave lately, because the EPS and GEFS have been keeping it somewhat alive (I would separate the two but I am running out of upload space)