ORH_wxman

What’s weird is the SE ridge is kind of displaced westward right now on weeklies…a little different than a few days ago…and the heights even further SE like near Bahamas/off SE coast are actually BN. Kind of weird…almost El Niño-ish.

Big blocking would help out going into January imho. Most guidance keeps wanting -PNA and a SE ridge. If you overlay strong blocking, then it reduces the chances of cutters and torches. Lot of uncertainty though with the blocking. But it’s def been increasing on all guidance.

06z euro looks pretty nice for 12/23. A solid 1-3” deal for a lot of folks.

Euro skynet was decent for 12/23 too. Hopefully we can get that one to give us a couple inches.

Lot of hyperbole amidst kernels of truth.

It’s def a weird pattern. If we can retrograde that ridge/trough couplet about 200 miles west (not really that large in the scheme of things beyond 200 hours), we’d prob get a pretty damned wintry stretch even if no true biggies. On the flip side, we know how ugly it could get if everything shifts a little east.

I expect anything beyond D6 to jump a decent amount in terms of shortwaves. That’s often the case anyway but especially going to happen in this type of flow. Longer range is kind of a clown show right now. I wouldn’t want to forecast what early January is going to look like right now.

It’s an unstable longwave pattern so these types don’t last very long. The closest analogs are mostly El Niño years. Early Jan 1952, late Dec 1957 and Dec 1965. Hopefully those roll over the same way because those years had some great patterns a few weeks later. But I kind of agree with @brooklynwx99, it’s not going to verify exactly as depicted for 10-14 days on end. It’s prob going to trend toward something a bit more stable. Hopefully that means on the snowier side for us and not the furnace side.

While the longwave pattern is kind of ugly (and it’s an unstable look), the shear number of shortwaves flying through the flow will give us some chances. So while the probability of any one of these succeeding in being a 4”+ snow event is pretty low, if we have several chances, maybe one of them delivers. Most of us would be fine with a couple inches that gets us to Christmas but once the holiday has passed, I want some bigger systems.

Couple inches of snow….hopefully it keeps trending just a touch colder. Better than yesterday’s chinook on Xmas eve. Has another messy system on 12/26 too.

Boundary has definitely sunk south some on guidance since yesterday.

Canadian tries to get some light snow in here 12/23 into 12/24 overnight. It has a bit of a more substantial system for 12/26.

No they didn’t that well. That’s like 8-10” below climo. Where they got skunked a bit was the 1990s compared to ORH and BOS.

Ok yeah. When you burn a month in La Niña early on, usually a bad thing. There were places close to the coast in E MA that got skunked in Nov ‘71 but still recovered. Obviously rare though…Feb ‘72 was a huge month despite La Niña. Usually February is the weakest La Niña month.

‘71-72? November ‘71 was good but Dec ‘71 was kind of a dud for snow.

Gonna see a lot of guidance changes in the day or two IMHO for next week…you have that pig ridge in the central CONUS but it’s flat and somewhat zonal so little disturbances are FLYING across the country in the flow….makes for decent model chaos. On top of that you have some blocking trying to form in the Atlantic which adds in more uncertainty.

Gotta watch 12/23-24 too for a little disturbance. Obviously there’s the Xmas day threat too but not every model agrees on timing.

I think we’re def gonna have chances over the final 10 days of the month. It just will come with a lot of risk. There’s some weird blocking that’s been showing up too and the orientation of that will be a factor too. There aren’t a ton of analog patterns to that look. It’s kind of an unstable wave pattern there.

Let’s hope the weeklies are wrong. They basically furnace us the entire month of January, lol.

Took away our high pressure to the north for Xmas. But whatever…we’ll check back in once we’re inside a week. 12/23 wasn’t too far off from something decent either. Seems like the ridge axis was further east than other runs. Subtle but important differences. OP vs EPS

I read some fascinating papers and articles on the lives of human species (both Neanderthal and Homosapiens who arrived later in the period) in Europe during the 20k-80k years ago period…basically most of that was during pretty strong ice ages. They were able to figure out from bones and other artifacts that someone who survived until age 35 back then had a body more akin to someone in their 70s today. Lots of arthritis and other health issues and fast aging. Pretty amazing when you think about it. What a tough environment to live in back then. Even in much more recent times going merely back to late 19th or very early 20th century, nearly half of babies didn’t reach the age of 18. Unheard of now.

They also had a climate where their September was like December is in the Holocene. Back to school in snow gear?

Yeah I’d put Friday's system as narrowly into Grinch territory. Usually they happen closer to Xmas but if it’s 6 days out that is prob close enough. At least we have a shot at redemption though. It would be nice to get 2 in a row after we weaseled a decent snow event before Xmas last year.

Really solid event for the Cape. Especially this early in the season. Not bad to pull borderline warning criteria on Dec 14th.

He def knows his stuff. I learned much from him my freshman year at Cornell (he was a senior there in the met department when I was a freshman)