WidreMann

00z GFS looking alright. If that northern energy can go a little faster (or a lot slower), we're in business.

I don't think they are dry. I think they fail to get cold air in time for when the low bombs off the east coast. That's why I'm also skeptical of central NC seeing much of anything.

Lol. I can guarantee you whatever happens, it won't look like that.

Yeah, just looking at the 168 frame, it would send it over the coastal plain and only the mountains would likely see any wintry precip.

The models have vaccilated over that recently. They actually seem to have moved back to keeping the pattern in place. As for the MJO, it's pretty disappointing. The Euro is more aggressive in moving it eastward, so maybe it'll hit 7/8 by February and then we will have a favorable pattern for the month. GFS always sends it into the COD too early.

I don't see a Pac Jet on the GFS.

I've more or less given up on a wintry pattern for this area. I mean, that doesn't mean we can't squeak out a storm in one of these cold shots, but the SSW/PV split, -AO, MJO, etc. are all failing to materialize and the models are backing off a true wintry pattern. At least it's not two weeks of a heat ridge, so I'll take that.

NCEP site shows much less support for -NAO/-AO. PNA is near neutral too. MJO went COD and now is back in the unfavorable zones. When is this magical cold pattern going to set up? To me it just looks like cold shots and warmups for the next two weeks. Sure, the CFS shows really cold weeks 2-4, but when do I truly believe the CFS (unless it says warm, then we can trust it).

Or just the general difficulty with pattern changes. I am worried, though, about the MJO heading back to unfavorable phases. It might put a hold on things till we get into February, though it'll still be cold at least.

00z Euro drops backend snow for next weekend. The models are abandoning us. I'm sure it's fluctuation, but it's annoying.

Oof, 00z GFS sucks for us. We get a couple days of really cold air, but otherwise just rain storms.

Euro is moving in that direction a little bit too, but not nearly as much. It seems that the key to the GFS behavior is that it brings down a lot of northern stream energy and phases it with the southern stream. The earlier runs had a great deal of stream separation. I've seen the models happily phase at this range, only to reverse later on (usually to slow down the southern stream). So I think we actually have a good shot at having the southern energy amp up as or after the cold is arriving. Or it could get crushed. We'll see.

Might be the GFS northern stream bias, or might be a real trend, but the coastal developing along the Arctic front has disappeared on 18z and looks that way on 00z as well. It's still so far out that I don't feel concerned either way.

No need to use the 540 line in the modern era.

What are the snow totals? That's insane enough that I don't believe it'll happen as such, but I believe we will get something.

How does it look at the surface? Weather.us no longer has the free maps...

1052 is much more likely in the new pattern.

12z GFS continues to show ridiculously cold temperatures in the LR. A low of 20 in Pensacola, FL on the 25th? Insane. It also seems to agree with the Euro on the rain-to-snow scenario in the 8-9 day range. With that much cold air coming down, I absolutely believe the possibility of a backside snowstorm. We just gotta keep the moisture.

GFS seems pretty locked on a cold pattern starting next week. Euro is less bullish as it's got a lot of garbage in the Pacific. I think despite the failure of the SSW to cause a full split and reversal of the zonal mean winds, it has weakened all that substantially and that may be enough to give us a wintry pattern for a while. I have no idea what the MJO will contribute since it's about to go into the COD and then maybe loop back (we can hope). I'm appreciating that this cool down we're having now has been more robust than it looked last week. I was not expecting lower 20s any time soon.

Great Lakes low says NO.

The fact that we had a 70 degree day in early December doesn't really indicate that the pattern for the storm was worse. We had much stronger confluence over SE Canada and the NE US and the HP center was much further south and stayed longer.

We had a much better pattern in December than we do now.

This is not a good pattern for a winter storm here. There is some cold air around and there is a storm system, but the heights are high over most of central and eastern North America. There's a big ridge right on the tail of this thing. While there is a cold high, we have limited confluence and a progressive pattern. More likely than not, we'll see the FV3 18z solution or worse.

About 28".

That may be true now, but there have definitely been events, even since 2000, where the CAD expanded much further south and east.