TimB

This might be the worst one yet.

Is it too early to mention that 59 is the magic number for all-time warmest winter low at MDT?

Never mind.

GFS run should be incoming momentarily. Good news is it can’t be any worse than the 6z, which pitched a shutout on snowfall for the southern half of PA outside the mountains.

The thing to remember here is, yes, we have a lot of garbage Decembers around here. However, I just looked at the past 40 years of snowfall data by month and something stood out to me. If you define a “garbage December” or “garbage winter” as one with below normal snowfall, there have been only two garbage Decembers that didn’t eventually end up as garbage winters: 2004-05 and 2014-15. And 2004-05 was barely below normal in December (7.3”, normal is 7.7”). So 2014-15 stands out as the only recent “crappy December, decent winter” year (0.2” in December, 47.5” for the winter). So yes, a bad December is often the death knell for an average or above snowfall winter.

You’re right, it’s better to use absolute adjectives like “coast-to-coast”, rather than subjective ones, to describe the ridge that exists late in the GFS run.

Mild, but in a December 2015 kind of way.

November finishes at -2.1. For once, the lows were -2.6 and the highs were -1.6. Way below normal precip for Nov. (only 0.88”), slightly below normal snowfall. Fall finishes +1.8 (+2.3 highs, +1.3 lows).

If you’re into rain, maybe.

At this point, just have to hope GooFuS is lost and the others have a better handle on the situation.

Not sure about PIT as the coldest location in the eastern CONUS, but I’ll take it.

EC saves the day!

It’s setting up the 12/12 heat wave again…

Have a feeling that’s going to be the only interesting thing on the GFS run. It’s 8 days out so can’t really take it verbatim.

At this point I hope we get an ice storm that knocks out the power for each of the remaining Steelers games.

That one at least starts as zr if you take it verbatim.

Temps surge with the Monday system.

GFS is running, so soon there will be something new to complain about.

I would figure it’s difficult to impossible for a lot of posters on these boards (myself included) to set low expectations regarding winter. Even if you understand how the ENSO stuff works, even if you concede that climate change will make our winters progressively less cold and snowy, there’s still a hope that a particular winter will defy the odds, and occasionally they do, and that’s why we stick with this hobby. It’s like a slot machine giving you a small win every once in awhile to keep you coming back.

Just remember, even 76 at MDT would be an all-time December record. The odds are against it, but the odds were also against what happened in the Pacific Northwest in June.

Both overnight runs have that same garbage in fantasy land. The hot, humid day is even the same day on both runs.

Even the famous 18z run the other day with the Arctic blast early next week came on the heels of a 6z run where one of the panels had a 72 imby on the same day. Models seem to be continuing their inevitable recognition of a December pattern we don’t want.

To be fair, +8 months are statistically somewhat easier to get during the cold season than they are during the warm season. I wouldn’t go as far as to predict a +8 December, but the signs that December will be disappointing are really starting to add up. Nearly every GFS run has 60s imby at some point, and I imagine it’s the same or worse at MDT.

In Warren at the moment and enjoying some mood flakes with a couple inches on the ground from yesterday and a couple more inches coming tomorrow. No idea back home.