WPC extended Disco:
Model guidance is in pretty good agreement on the upper level pattern through the period, especially over the central and eastern U.S. under the broad upper trough. All model guidance shows Arctic air making it down to the Gulf and East Coasts, which will clash with southern stream energy to produce a potentially high impact winter storm across the southern tier. There are some southern stream differences among the models that may affect sensible weather.
The 06Z and 12Z GFS solutions were the only deterministic solutions still hanging on to a slower upper low lingering near Baja California into next week, while other guidance (including AI) has trended much more progressive with this feature. For this reason, the WPC forecast favored a faster solution with very limited influence from the GFS. A faster solution allows for increased moisture across the south-central U.S. ahead of the upper low with a broader precipitation footprint.
There is still a significant amount of uncertainty in the QPF forecast this weekend. Models have been trending northwards with the heavy precipitation axis, which is in line with what the AI guidance has been showing, so adjustments were made to the NBM to reflect these trends in the WPC forecast. The WPC forecast used a blend of the ECMWF/GFS/CMC/UKMET early in the period, then increased contributions from ensemble means through the second half of the period while decreasing the influence of the GFS.