purduewx80

Was suspicious of the NAM because of that, but now it seems like it may be on to something.

barely flurries in northern NYC, nothing for most of the city. in fact the sun is poking through now and then.

Buffalo gusting to 68MPH now, may not be the highest they see. KBUF 241907Z 24036G59KT

Where are you getting that the rest of Feb is 5F above normal? With the exception of today and Sunday, the rest of the month is at or below normal, with some fairly substantial negative anomalies likely Tuesday-Thursday. There is still plenty of support for cold storminess on the ensembles as we turn the calendar to March.

Unfortunately, some of the best frontogenesis associated w/ this system is going into saturating what was a very deep layer of dry air, shown below on the 12Z OKX sounding. While the DGZ was quite thin, if you take into account the wet bulb temp, it's rather deep in that 700-500mb layer. Likely why areas just to the SW are going from 10SM+ vis to <1 in a hurry, earlier than modeled. The lower-level fronto bands farther south aren't quite tapping into the DGZ, but the better lift is producing +SN.

Could look at it as a result of the PNA, but yeah, that was largely the source of the warm air aloft. The western trough also helped steer it our way. Low level cold held due to the position and strength of the Quebec high.

Separate but related is the record cold season PWAT at San Diego this morning:

The transition worked in from SW to NE, plain and simple. Take a look at the 00Z CHH sounding, for example. The warm layer from 700-800mb rushing in on 50-70KT SW winds caused the changeover - there is certainly not an ocean SW of here. BOS was switching over from SN to a mix of SN, FZRA and PL at the time. The switch to RA or RAPL was caused by those stiff SE winds down low off the Atlantic, however. Be careful of judging precip types by any radar product you find online. They are often determining precip types based off a combo of model initialization and observations, many of which (automated stations especially) aren't able to differentiate between snow and pellets or fzra, etc.

The ocean has ZERO to do with mid-level temps. That warm layer yesterday was brought in on stiff SW winds. It's more important to understand why southwest flow events bring in that warmth.

nah, not similar to jan 20 or any other storm this winter - at all. if it were similar, it would be raining and well into the 30s by now.

06Z is 5 hours away... https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/ https://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/model-guidance-model-area.php

It's interesting that Seattle typically sees 2x as much snow during La Nina and neutral years vs El Nino. No surprise they're cashing in during this -PNA, Nina-like pattern.

81.4" since Dec 1 and 114.2" since Jul 1. That's +48.2" for the season.

yeah, you're exactly right.

to date, not so good for the east as a whole.

As a reminder: Dec 1 - Feb 2 anomalies (from Maue's twitter):

We really aren't that far off a Virginia/OuterBanks to Benchmark track for the secondary on a lot of the ensemble means. Given the source region of the high coming into the Plains now, there will be plenty of low-level cold air around. If anything, I think a lot of the interior could end up starting as snow and ending as freezing rain/drizzle, with any substantial warmup above freezing limited to the coast.

Just 1 operational run as an example, but last night's 00Z GFS: That is a monster +height anomaly showing up.

I'm not saying it won't snow like crazy, I'm just saying it's unreasonable to expect snow on the ground for 7 weeks straight.

Expecting snow to stick around for 7 weeks in NYC in a warming climate and ever-expanding urban heat island is highly unreasonable any time of year, let alone Feb-March.

Agreed. The last few runs of the op GFS have shown a substantial -NAO block that develops by the middle/end of next week. EPS/GEFS have it to a lesser degree but that has been the case for a good part of the past month, to no avail. There does seem to be a pattern in the past ~decade to see a -NAO in spring rather than winter, so if that comes to fruition, I think it could stick around through March.

I wouldn't exactly say rare.

you were one of the few to call that november storm. nothing wrong with being a ween as long as expectations are realistic. there are conflicting signals next week, but there is still plenty of evidence that the pattern has changed enough for us to be in the game.

Surprised none of the have mentioned the 12Z JMA...

front passes early and there will be plenty of low clouds around.