NorthHillsWx

lol we’ve gone from expecting a good year with multiple threats to hoping an inch or two might bail us out in late February. Pattern is good coming up, I agree, but until it actually snows here again I’m going to pout and believe it’s impossible

It maybe moved slightly north so yea that’s a good thing but it’s not even close at this point. I was referencing it driving more 70’s into NC mid month

Don’t look at the 18z GFS without a drink or 6 if you were hoping for positivity

Woke up to 67.4 AGAIN this morning. Absolutely absurd warm stretch for late January. 70’s Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and knocking on the door this morning before the front rolls through. Gotta be one of the most prolonged 65+ stretches in January in my lifetime

6z GFS tracks the LP over the abacos islands in the Bahamas so we’ve got plenty of wiggle room for northward shifts! #suppressiondepression

Delusional is coming to the sanitarium and expecting anything of substance

Broke 70 again today

I’ve accepted it

6z GFS not what we’re looking for. Has above average surface temps for most of us every day except February 4-6

High of 77. It’s late January.

The fact this forum is debating geographic regions instead of analyzing digital blue today is telling…

Low of 67.4! That’s gotta be one of the warmest lows in January ever here

Anddd the GLL is back

Back to back to back***

18z happy hour run was not very happy but obviously still doesn’t go out to the possible pattern change

High of 73. Muggy out

Right and that’s the problem. The pattern this year stinks. We have nothing in short term to go off of. Supposedly El Niños are backloaded here and indices are trending great for that time period but it absolutely has to produce or we are out of time. It’s been so bad the last 6 years we haven’t had anything to track within 5 days. Haven’t even had anything we could lose in that period. Long range ensembles and indices are the only thing that have shown favorable patterns, short range guidance hasn’t even needed to be used

Not to say Larry was wrong, but if we go back three weeks, the weeklies were screaming this whole period would be below average. That ended up being the aforementioned 3-4 day cool snap. How are we to trust the same weeklies saying the same thing at the same range and expect different results?

The warmup was advertised. What wasn’t advertised originally was the short duration of the cold before. It was all wasted in the Tennessee valley. If you look at RDU this month, we’ve had 8 days above average, 11 near average days, and 5 below average days. Im sure this averages out to near average for the full month, but with a very warm end to the month and a very warm December, it’s extremely likely that 2 of our 3 main winter months will be above average. Now that’s somewhat expected during an El Niño year, but the last pattern change that led to the cool outbreak from a sensible weather perspective was really just a few post frontal passage cold days overshadowed by a massive warmup. The fact we’ll be close to 80 in late January is more impressive than two nights in the teens. Add in the snow drought and a 2-3 week wait for the next cold/possible wintry chance, and yea, these 3-4 day cold snaps bookended by weeks of average to average + temps don’t really cut it. We know we don’t get wall to wall cold ever but a front every 2 weeks would be nice instead of burning the better part of a month waiting on the next cold snap and praying it won’t just be 3 days long

It wasn’t even a week here. We had a cold day, 50’s the next day, near 60 the day after, then 2 days with cold 30’s highs and two days in the 40’s. Really just 3 cold days and two below average days. Very unimpressive in central NC. I have no doubt the pattern will change back, but to your point (and this goes back to last year too) models frequently have overestimated the duration of these cold periods. If the change in February is a big rainer followed by 3-4 days of cold then another warm up, we are cooked. No one outside the mountains should ever bank on snows past February 20 as they have become as rare as a direct hurricane landfall on coastal Georgia. We simply have punted too much winter to punt again past mid February

384 GFS sets us up for a big dog incoming. We can dream, right?

Well the idea of 3 weeks of solid warmth is getting derailed at least in the ops. Canadian actually first to pick up on the cooler first week of Feb (it’s backed off somewhat). GFS has trended way colder

Looks like 38.4 will be our high today. Down about a half a degree from that atm. I actually think tonight might be our coldest night of this outbreak if we can maximize radiational cooling

Low of 17.2

18z GFS = close but no cigar. Plenty of cold air, shockingly