Holston_River_Rambler

It's amazing how quickly the deterministics flipped. It seems like they were locked in on some sort of storm tracking east of the Mississippi for a week's worth of runs and the we had that massive storm on an 18z run Monday. I don't think there was any sort of a step down process. It's like they were drinking over Christmas and then sobered up and said "pattern conducive for eastern snow? No says I !" It may be the MJO is about to come out in 6 like y'all said over night. I saw GaWx mentioning that yesterday on the GFS suite's RMMs. Perfect timing I guess, lol. It looks like it is getting riled up on the less favorable regions: If that is really what is going on, it'll take it at least a couple of weeks to cycle through into the Western Pac and would line up with what the OP Euro and GFS (non AI) showed over night. La Nina and MJO over the Maritime continent seems to = ye olden qpf fire hose. The other thing I noticed was that the long prophesied jet extension isn't quite as extensive as promised and that I supposed that would tend to pull the whole pattern back west some too.

Very timely observation.

I remember when it had our cutter and FROPA yesterday as some meandering cutoff across the souther US.

I think Carvers is headed to Nash vegas for the Music City bowl, and he usually gets us started in the AM. Def. some pull back across multiple sub forums here and Southernwx against all the excitement of the fantasy storms yesterday centered on Jan 8 and beyond We'll see how the wheel of models spins today.

There is a plant directly upstream (Cardinal Glass) but I can't see how one glass plant could generate that and to not even mention all the below: Could be reading it wrong, but evidence on satellite suggests to me some new ideas today beyond what we've talked about before. For the most part I try to mouse over the band area in the above gif. I get a little excited towards the end and mouse over some clouds flowing over the mountains, lol. There is a defined area of downsloping to the lee of 3000' high Chimney top, but I also noticed a few other features this AM: This band seems to me to be very very dependent on a specific wind direction, and I'd bet those other features and their leeside convergence have something to do with it too. Hypothesis: lee side convergence created by a specific wind vector between the southern side of High Knob (4000+') and the northern side of Chimney Top (~3000'), two of the highest peaks in the TN Valley basin outside the Smokies, play a significant role in the development of this band. A more famous and somewhat different example I found is the Puget sound convergence zone: graphics on the above image are not mine but from this site: https://opensnow.com/news/post/puget-sound-convergence-zone-explained

One thing I was wondering about was whether or not the level of the radar beam enhanced the appearance of the returns, but the on the ground truth sure looks like it is a legit band.

There is apparently a TDOT camera in just the right area at mm 53: Under two miles up I-81 a mm 54.8: I wish I had planned on a Kingsport trip today, so I could do some investigating.

Cloud streets meant business this morning:

I made a throw away account on imgur and will either screen shot static images or save to my desktop gifs generated by a site like tropical tidbits. You just have to drag and drop the saved gif (.gif) or image (I think it has to be a .png or .jpg) to the box on imgur. Then you click "copy image address": Then you just paste that link directly into the text box here and hit the "enter" or "return." It should automatically populate the image or gif at that point.

"Lots to consider, but in summary, the early January Pacific trough regime will be largely negated by a polar domain that will continue to be conducive (lower PV that is close by and uncoupled from stronger stratospheric vortex, and stratospheric vortex that often stretches towards northeast US) to allow for colder interludes into the northeastern US. The current Pacific trough regime is then forecast to act as the precursor to a mid-January reflection event, which will induce the Alaskan ridge regime necessary to ultimately trigger a wave 2 split of the PV in February, which will all about ensure an ending to this winter season that will be nothing like the tame ending that we have come to expect from cool ENSO winters. Needless to say, the month of January should be anything but mundane, so stay tuned" https://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/ Pacific trough -> Alaska ridge:

I haven't contributed a whole lot lately, but haven't really seen anything to add. I did notice in the main ENSO thread that someone pointed out the Euro is showing some strat trickery, so I thought I'd look into that Sure enough, it is showing a bottom up warming starting over Siberia and pushing that to north central Canada/ Greenland: Doesn't quite make it up to 10mb, but something to watch. Some of this seems to line up with 40/70 benchmark's idea of a strat reflection event in mid January, but it is still only one run of one model.

Models that run that far out in time keep trying to churn up some big storm with cold and plenty of STJ moisture between let's says Jan 7 - 10, details of course TBD, but wouldn't be surprised if we do get a bigger storm in that time frame.

I should add it was waaaaayyyyy out in fantasy range, but still....

Anybody happen to see the HP the 0z GFS snuck out on top of Greenland?

Merry Christmas!

The idea seems to be a jet extension caused by a +east Asian mountain torque will help dislodge the Aleutian high. Here it is on the 18z GFS: Big high drops down into east Asia: Momentum gets added to the pac jet: Aleutian high dies: I almost wrote the "mountain twerkers" lol. Hope that jet extension doesn't go too far. That's burned us in the past.

The mountain torquers seem rather excited. Got to have a big old HP slam down from Siberia into east Asia. Of course we have to hope some hitherto little known index does not screw it up.

And if the now advertised PAC jet extension can dislodge the Aleutian Ridge

I think a lot of it just depends on how the NAO evolves and how long it hangs around. Probably not getting an answer on that one soon.

Euro has the dreaded La Nina qpf firehose look to it:

It's not a winter if we don't have at least one anafront where the cold doesn't make it across the plateau quickly enough for East TN Valley.

Yeah, wild swings based on the placement and evolution.

I know it’s all fantasy but I think the 6z GFS was about to give us a new years present if it had run about an extra 36 hours.

Wonder which PV he's talking about in the above? Stratospheric or tropospheric? #PolarVortex doesn't make it clear. It's almost as if he's looking for clicks or something. A strengthening -NAO can put pressure on the SPV and the TPV. Example from 0z Euro: I chose 30mb because that pressure level is lower and closer to where the potential -NAO is forming. The same processes that are helping to create the -NAO on the recent deterministic runs are also fluxing heat poleward at the tropopause. 500mb: Tropopause: Pac jet doesn't look terrible to me in deterministic progs. Right now, yeah, that's not good: We never really want to see it all the way across the Pac. But going forward, looks buckly to me. Of course that and anything can and will change. I'm encouraged this AM by the OPs finding the -NAO again and that wavy pac jet look. I seen years where that jet was just a fire hose all the way across the Pac in to California.