George001

The SSW is trending stronger on the models. This is actually starting to get really interesting, yes there is a lag but in New England March is a winter month. There are no guarantees the SSW will be favorable for us, but a shake up of the current pattern is welcome. Id rather roll the dice and hope for the best with an SSW than just be stuck in our current (awful) pattern. If things do pan out with the SSW, I disagree that it will be too late. Early March is just in time for a potential 3 week run of storm after storm. 3 weeks isn’t a super long time, but in a favorable pattern nearly an entire seasons worth of snow or even more in 3 weeks can happen (especially areas closer to the coast).

Do you think it’s possible that the window you anticipated would happen in Jan before a break and then big finish happens towards mid Feb instead before the polar vortex stuff takes over and gives us the big March?

Things are trending more favorably with the polar vortex. Not a guarantee and I would still say the odds are against us making up enough ground to end up above average snow for the winter. However, things look a lot better than they did even a week ago. It doesn’t happen every year, but in our snowy seasons we go on a run at some point with storm after storm. 2017-2018 was a 4 week run in March, 2010-2011 was a 4 week run from late Dec to late Jan, and 2014-2015 was a 4 week run from late Jan to late Feb. Most years that doesn’t happen, but when it does we make up for lost ground fast.

What I’m rooting for is the best of both worlds, the polar vortex weakens significantly (in a way that favors cold and snow for us), and the nina lingers for longer than expected. That could result in a big finish to winter and a weak nino next year.

H5 looks really interesting on both the gfs and Canadian. The western ridge axis is over Montana instead of off the west coast this time. If that ridge can amp up a bit more we might have a decent storm on our hands.

Euro has a low in Wisconsin for the 10th to 11th threat, gfs is a Miller B that transfers the low over Long Island. Still a wide range of possibilities.

Yeah this likely isn’t going to end up being a good winter but that doesn’t mean we can’t get one big event. I find it hard to believe we go the entire winter without at least one big event for SNE (12+).

I know SE ridging is always a risk in Ninas, but I didn’t think it would make it all the way up to us especially with the look we had in early December. It’s strange how despite the Nina being borderline moderate, it’s acting like a very strong one with no blocking (post December). Looking at the SSTs it looks like the Nina transitioned from east leaning basin wide to a more west based Nina. I know that isn’t good for us, but I’m curious about what the warning signs were that the Nina would shift west and influence our pattern in a way that resulted in a mild winter with below normal snow. I do agree with you that we got unlucky, but especially post December the longwave pattern has been awful.

I know Torch Tiger and qqomega genuinely like warmer weather, the Pope I’m not sure about. I honestly think the Pope is just calling it as he sees it, and he believed we would have a really mild winter based on his observations of geese. We shit on the geese thing, but they helped him make what so far has been a spot on forecast. This winter has been quite mild, and I really am starting to think there is something to the idea that behavior of animals like geese in the late fall/early winter is telling. More telling than looking at long range models and trying to extrapolate based on the good ol “alphabet soup” (ssts, pdo, amo, enso, soi, epo, nao, ace, etc…..)

Yeah that’s a bust. I can’t believe we got nothing to show for all of that blocking, and then we torched.

I don’t think it’s done, it will keep trending north.

We don’t know what Feb will do yet. Due to how much ground we gotta make up its more likely than not that the season ends with below average snow, but it’s no guarantee and there is a big difference between slightly below average and a full blown rat.

Not frigid but 534 thicknesses is plenty cold enough for snow. Way better than the abomination this month has been, and it’s not 10 days away.

That’s exactly what we want to see, a stronger and slower wave gives more time for the confluence to depart allowing the storm to come north.

We don’t know what’s going to happen in 5 days, you can try to predict what will happen 10 days out but really none of us have any idea whatsoever. MJO drives the models? Well, how do we know those MJO plots are right? They are always changing as well. I’ve come to the conclusion that forecasting beyond as far as you can realistically extrapolate real time obs is almost completely random. I’m at the point where if a model shows a blizzard 10 days out, I don’t even care because it’s just going to disappear the next run. If it’s on the models 3 days out, now that’s a different story. I’m hearing a lot of talk about the “mid Feb warmup” and then “blocking returning in March” like they are givens. I don’t get it, how can we know either of those things will happen? For all we know, Feb could be a cold snowy -nao month and then we get an early spring with no snow at all in March. Maybe we get nothing either months, and maybe both months are cold and snowy, who knows.

It will come north.

How come

I don’t mind seeing that 228 hours out. It will come north.

There’s actually arctic air around for this setup. The core of it looks to be west of us, but aren’t the biggest snows often just NW of the gradient? It might not amount to anything if the gradient north of us, but we are at least in the game which we couldn’t really say for the disaster that was the record warm Jan pattern.

Eh we also gotta avoid strong or super nino. Don’t want a congrats DC winter.

I ended up with a little over 3 inches, not bad.

Im fully expecting a change to rain but hoping that it can be like 36 and rain instead of 45 and rain, the former won’t eat away at the snowpack as much. The Euro has a low in southern Vermont which isn’t ideal.

Got about 2 inches so far, probably finish between 3 and 4 which is more than I expected. Nice little event here for SNE, and it looks like up north really got hammered with 12-18 inches. Hopefully Wednesday stays cold enough that we get a net gain in SNE.

Honestly even some of the epic winters we’ve had like 2015 you can argue climate change played a big role in. While the world as a whole is warming, oceans are warming more rapidly. When you get an extremely favorable pattern like Feb 2015, the Atlantic furnace can help beef up storms leading to more snow. When the pattern is unfavorable like this year and there is no cold air to be found, that same furnace Atlantic is gonna hurt us in marginal setups. Climate change did not make this winter suck, it likely would have sucked decades ago with this same pattern. However, I do think some of those marginal events might have broken our way so this winter likely would not have been as bad. It’s a double edged sword, with more extreme winters snow total wise on both ends of the spectrum (long term this will likely be biased towards less average snow, which is already starting to happen in more marginal climates like DC). That’s just talking about snow totals though, when it comes to things like snowpack as the average temperature increases it gets harder to maintain a snowpack.

That’s really good to know. I often look at the CFS to try and get an idea of what to expect in the long range. I’m not going to be doing that anymore, any model that doesn’t account for climate change is completely useless.