ORH_wxman

I like that the front-running wave around d6-7 is trending stronger. That is going to help push the boundary further south behind it.

Even ORH only averages about 2.5” in November. He is less than that obviously.

We don’t even need an epic winter. A mere +2 with average snow would feel like Caribou compared to Philly and DCA climo which is what a swath of SNE has basically felt like this winter.

Yeah there’s a million different ways that system could go. It could be rain initially and then flipping or it could be a cutter or it could be all snow. The cold advects in during the storm on that run so the beginning is warmer…though it looked plenty cold enough aloft the whole time, so if it started as rain on the 18z GFS, it would prob be extremely brief and right on the water.

Our temps this winter have basically made BOS into DCA. BOS winter is about 7F colder than DCA on average.

At least this one has creeped inside of 10 days. I honestly can only count a handful of larger threats that got inside 10 days (the Dec 16th and Dec 23rd storms, maybe Jan 23rd?) before evaporating or trending worse.

You talking about the system at day 9-10? That’s a full blown snowstorm on the GFS….even a Scooter-approved arctic high building in. But let’s get it inside of 5 days. A lot of the models have that system. But some (like GGEM) are pretty warm with it.

I would say it was a little confusing in that it implied the rest of February would be warm which it might not be. Specifically, the weeklies kind of cut it off around 2/23ish…a bit of semantics but the last few days of the month could be more wintry than one might glean from that tweet. But he might have not had the daily breakdown available…week 2 as a whole is going to be warm but it is front-loaded warmth…that 2/24-2/27 period might be cold. I agree it was a pretty accurate description of weeks 3/4.

18z GFS would be quite a shock to everyone’s senses…getting those 60s later this week and then only having that one colder day on Saturday to rebound back to 40s/50s next week before that boundary presses south and we get 36 hours of snow at temps in the upper teens to mid 20s (depending on proximity to coast). Anyways, that one could still cut too. Less likely though if the front runner system around D7 is stronger and pulls the boundary south behind it further south…I think that is a major key to the D9 system.

Weeklies are still weenie-ing out.....I am not sure I buy the west coast ridging/+PNA pattern with aleutian low it keeps showing....however, it does show that UK/Iceland ridging retrograding westward into the NAO domain which would help a lot even if the west coast ridging doesn't happen.

You’re north of pike…good chance you get at least one advisory-plus type system. Hell, it could be next week

I'd agree....even an east-based NAO like building into Iceland/eastern Greenland would be pretty good. But that look seems unstable with the flat ridge over the south....I'd expect it to try and build back northeastward unless the NAO is forcing it from doing that. It's an active look though, so if we could keep on the cold side of the boundary, there could be multiple storms to track in a fairly short time.

If you retro that UK/Iceland/Scandi ridging, then the pattern becomes very loaded for snow....that's prob the one way to get any type of sustained period for snow threats as we go into early March. I currently put it at a low probability but high enough chance that it is worth watching

Yeah it is pretty similar description to what the weeklies did on Thursday....they started cooling off right near end of month and then went cold/stormy look for first 3 weeks of March.....ensmebles today are similar for end of Feb...colder, but not frigid. Gradient look....trying to build eastbased NAO ridge too, but I'm not buying that until its inside 10-12 days.

How would anyone have the weeklies yet? They don't come out until after the regular ensemble run is finished.

A -NAO is good to have for what Tip calls "sub-index events"....basically like in a -PNA/-NAO pattern, you have that firehose of shortwaves spraying the west coast and they run into the NAO block and get forced south of us as overrunning events or SWFEs or "NJ model" redevelopers. When you have a big +PNA, it's probably bad to have a monster west-based NAO block....that's congrats Carolinas up to Mid-atlantic...and I agree with Tip that the PNA rising is the bigger correlation to large-scale big-ticket QPF events (aka, our "big dog" storms) than the NAO. One of the reasons winter weenies like the NAO blocks (myself included) is that they make it harder to get cutters so if you have snow around, its less likely to get melted out in a big rainstorm or warm sector. It keeps it wintry....more useful in mid-winter for that than March admittedly where we are fighting the solar insolation more and more each day.

Yeah...might get going in the first week after the 4th or 5th, but otherwise, I'd think the meat of it would be like Mar 7 to the equinox....at least that is what the weeklies showed, but it's hard to trust them, even at week 3. I'm going to assume no NAO blocking until it's pretty solidly inside of 12 days.

Yeah it was a little more pressed with PV....still not as good as EPS, but we're talking clown range here. And I don't think this Feb 23-Mar 4 period is going to have just non-stop cold/snow anyway. It's a gradient pattern where we'll prob get a cutter too....but at least we'll have the chance at an event or two with so much cold lurking in Canada. Any chance for sustained snowy threats would have to be due to a big block forming like the weeklies showed. Plenty of reasons to be skeptical of that.

06z GEFS looked better than 00z....you can see it trying to form an NAO block as we close out the month...if that retrogrades a bit, that's how we'd get a nice March period

Getting pushed south toward us a bit from that UK/Iceland ridging trying to form…that’s what the weeklies went wild with another week later by retrograding that ridge into greenland. I’m skeptical, but if we’re looking for a fun ending, that’s what we’d be watching.

PV trying to creep down into northern Hudson Bay…that’s typically where it starts to get pretty interesting for us. It’s what help set up the historic cold shot a week ago…though we didn’t capitalize in terms of snow. Need to get it inside 10 days.

Remember when CC made a permanent ridge out west because of the “pacific warm blob”? Guess that fad is done. Now it’s the SE ridge’s turn to be the new fad. Get ready for a new one next year if we get El Niño and SE ridge goes poof.

The east-based NAO trying to form near the end of those runs is probably the thing to watch if there’s going to be a more sustained period of chances. Both GEFS and EPS are starting to show that…starts with Scandi ridging and then tries to start building into Iceland. Whether it goes into a full-blown block beyond that like the weeklies show is the question but that is probably the one path to a more prolonged “exciting” period.

I’m not talking about the next 10 days. I’m talking beyond that. Obviously the caveat is that it is clown range. We’re essentially arguing whether we think persistence will break. If it doesn’t, then yeah, no argument that it will stay warm. But persistence is a funny thing…it works great until it doesn’t. That particular type of AO neutral pattern (with PV displaced south a bit) didn’t look warm to me at our latitude.

It’s good to be skeptical of changes this winter. They’ve typically either not happened or they have been short-lived. I just felt the need to comment that the LR did not look warm to me. I can see how it theoretically goes warmer. We still have a SE Ridge. But we actually have above normal heights for once in S CAL/Baja, so the lower heights in the PAC NW don’t bother me as much. There will still be cutters in that pattern too…but with so much cold lurking north, it’s not hard to get a decent snow event either.