ORH_wxman

Retrograding low in the N PAC there. That’s a really legit good look versus the marginal look of the GEFS.

This is actually a pretty damned meridional pattern on the EPS today for 12/29….I think this is how we’d sneak something in prior to New Years

Yeah I thought we’d prob sneak at least and advisory event i during the month of December…still could post-12/27 but it’s looking more precarious. That said, Nino Decembers can be hideous even in otherwise excellent winters. ‘57-58 was, 65-66 was, so was 14-15. I don’t think any of those Decembers had an event more than 2” in our area.

It’s serviceable but def not as good as the EPS imho.

I think most of January is going to be decent to perhaps very good. I’m sure we’ll have a period of crap but I wouldn’t expect it to last long. I’m also not a long range expert…and even experts are going to be wrong a LOT when it comes to LR. Early in the month should be our first reasonable period of a longwave pattern that actually is better than climo to produce snow events. I think interior will be favored initially because we’re still working with regular polar airmasses, but the coast should get more chances as we go deeper into winter. I think a lot of people forget (I know Scott doesn’t, lol) that the coast was an epic dumpster fire outside of 12/5 in 2002-2003 until February. Even the cold january they got mostly skunked while the interior was knee deep in pack from Xmas and 1/3-4 interior bombs. For the “what can go wrong” idea…well, we get a decent pattern but it just doesn’t produce a lot of snow…or the better pattern gets can-kicked another 2 weeks which honestly wouldn’t be that shocking in an El Niño .

Nobody ever used to post OP runs beyond D7-8 unless it showed something ridiculous like a cat 3 hurricane landfall or an epic blizzard and it was usually caveated with “just for fun”….I’m not sure why it’s become more common but it honestly degrades the discussion if it’s just posted and meant to be taken semi-seriously. OP runs are demonstrably way less accurate than an ensemble mean once you are out that far.

We don’t get solid airmasses in here until early January with this pattern progression. We can have some workable ones later this month though…interior prob favored of course. But they could also be cutters too. I’d keep expectations fairly low for now but right now, I’d have higher expectations for the first half of January.

Yeah I think there’s a strong case to be made that we should get some legit threats in the Dec 28-Jan 10 range…if that period breaks down into a shit pattern, then it might be time to worry.

Yeah this part I quoted here is what drives me nuts. A warmer climate does start to load the dice against you for cold/snow…especially in very marginal snow climates like the mid-Atlantic or southern states from southern plains to TN valley but from the GL to New England it’s going to be a LOT noisier and the increased moisture may actually help with increasing snowfall even if temps aren’t as cold because you had more wiggle room to begin with. Attribution studies are inherently very difficult and even the ones that find attribution often get misrepresented in press releases and media…like I’ll see a headline that says “Boston winters may average less than half of their current snow by 2050”, but then I open the link to the paper (if they even bother to link it in the article which has become more and more rare) and I’ll see that it’s only the RCP 8.5 scenario that shows this which is the scenario that isn’t even realistic anymore (or barely a remote scenario if we dropped all green energy and went to coal everywhere)…so yeah, technically that is correct, but why is it a leading headline since it’s not going to happen like that? More realistic attribution studies usually might find a correlation but it’s low. Something like “this pattern may occur 1 out of 50 years instead of 1 out of 100 back in the 20th century”…but often that gets phrased as “this is twice as likely!”…while mathematically correct, that phrasing is intended to make a very rare event sound common instead of just slightly less rare.

Most of our brutal snow winters have been dry too but that isn’t always the case. But just to show…here’s the 5 lowest snow winters for Boston since 2000

Most of the CC doomsdayers when it comes to winter don’t have a very good knowledge of historical variability. You mentioned the 1930s-1950s and that was actually a pretty brutal period too in New England for snow lovers…the early 1950s were actually unmatched for a LONG time in terms of warmth and low snow...esp in NNE. It doesn’t require rejecting CC to understand that natural variability works on top of it. We’ve had these discussion in here before many times but you can only lead the horse to water…. I think I posted some maps on how the northern plains/N Rockies were the fastest warming region in winter for a few decades in the late 20th century…now those areas have actually had an negative trend (cooling) since the 1990s in winter while the northeast and SE Canada have had the strongest warming trend during that time. Temporal and spacial difference are going to happen and it wouldn’t be surprising to see another period of colder/snowier winters in the NE after this recent period of warmer/less snowy winters. Maybe this year will help turn the tables since El Niño can help shake up the Pacific pattern.

If we got a 14-15 repeat, it would be impossible to not call it a great winter if you like cold/snow. Or a 57-58. Both were near shutouts in December around here.

We’re paying for that string of awesome Decembers…though honestly, Dec 2019 and 2020 were pretty damned snowy and active but they both got tainted by a nasty cutter or two…including a top 3 worst one in2020.

There’s a reason patience was always considered a virtue…lol. I think most of us have been pretty fair about when to get worried and when not to. It’s a bummer that we didn’t sneak an event in during mid-December but I think we have been pretty consistent in saying if we get to late month and it doesn’t look better, then we can get worried…but that hasn’t happened…if it changes for the worst and it looks like we’re gonna punt a l out of January, then I’ll get worried.

I actually love the ensemble runs last night. Got that retrograding GOA low going toward Aleutians. I think we’re setting up a really nice pattern for early January…we’ll see if we can sneak something in the week after Xmas to close out the month, but I’m not gonna take any toaster baths if that period doesn’t work out….the late month stuff is prob going to favor in and up too with the airmasses still not arctic.

I’m prob getting there pretty early (between 4-5) since I’ll go straight from work and I’ll be either in Quincy or Boston that day.

No, Jan 87 was good. Very active.

Starting to look a lot like Jan '87 over North America....

@Typhoon Tip 12/29/76 was an absolute whopper for the 128 belt down into N RI. It wasn't a super phased monster blizzard, but it produced a lot of 12-20" amounts in that corridor. That is the storm Ray loves because ORH was too far west and only got 4".

Euro still showing that weak signal around 12/23 too....verbatim it runs into a block and gets shoved SW....it's not a big system, but could be the last chance to whiten the ground before Xmas. 26 years ago was a pretty weak-ass looking system too.....lol.

Yeah that was a fun look. Big slow mover too. But I think we’ll start getting some good chances late month and esp into January.

12/22-23 was a big rainer for all of New England.

I wouldn’t totally sleep on 12/23-25 yet if Canada wants to get blocky. Those can go either way…you can end up under a ridge and be 50F and partly cloudy, or you could end up with snow and 27 if there’s a block over Hudson Bay and shortwaves are diving under you. It’s not something I’d bank on, but it’s plausible.

I’d take the Euro and run. That would prob be a few inches anyway.

Ukie is interesting too but it has the ULL a little bit west of optimal so the snow is mostly in far western SNE into SE NY. But at this range, we’re mostly just interested in the trend of a trailing ULL being strong enough to spark cyclogensis to our south…we’ve seen it on the GEM and Ukie….GFS is not biting but I have a feeling the Euro might considering the EPS look at 06z.