Bob Chill

One thing that has been very consistent so far this season is the medium range rarely ends up looking like what the long range says. So far things have broken in our favor more often than going the wrong way. Medium range blocking we're seeing now was never even advertised in the long range. Being honest, I really have no clue how the second half of the month goes. Doesn't look like prime deep winter nor does it look like a toaster bath. However, we pretty much always have a warm spell (5+/- days) in Dec. I don't think this month will avoid it.

These minute shifts in front orientation make a big difference right? Gfs and icon sped up the mid level push a little. That's important for the corridor and your hood.

A lot of signs on the ens that we lose the Pac in a couple weeks. Not saying I think we flip warm and stay there but it sure looks like (to me) a relax is coming for north america in general.

Agree again. We need a lot to go right to snow so even a half decent general pattern is still quite far from an actual event. The issue that I see prob wearing the board down over the next couple weeks is inherent chaos/madness in active flow. Absolutely nothing can be trusted beyond 5 days and even if we do pull something off it will unlikely be a long track or even medium track. Lol. OTOH- active/progressive flow loves to "surprise" us when we aren't even looking.

Not trying to sound cold or crass here but... it's been a waiting game for like 2 years so the news was more of a relief than sad. Suffering at the end is so much worse than the end. Holding both my parents' hands through their end of life battle was like 100x harder than when they actually passed. I think the biggest internal issue all this stuff raises is my own mortality. I'm getting close to next in line and I struggle with that sometimes. It's not like I'm super old or anything and should live another 20-30 years at least but still... see the "changing of the guard" over the last 10 years is quite unsettling at times.

Agree. Looks good to me too. The trough along the west coast showing up d12+ doesn't concern me at all either. Roll that forward and we're right back to a +pna and trough in the east. Looks like once the front clears next week we're in the game for a week+. Holiday will be in ens range soon.... do we ridge out on Xmas or track threats? Beats me...

Yea, this trip isn't as fun tho. My uncle pased so dealing with the service this weekend. He wasn't doing well for a couple years so he's in a better place. On an up note... Literally hit 15 mins of traffic near NYC on the drive and that was it. Left rockville at 1:30 and pulled in here at 8. 370 miles in 6.5 hours... wut?

I'm up in Enfield CT and they got 16" of snow. Huge parking lot piles. Nice snow fix but the 2-4" deal next week in my yard will be more fun.

CMC is the most accurate so far unless the euro takes it up a notch

Didn't see the HH euro control posted. Looks good to me http://imgur.com/a/pZFdaQX

@WxUSAF Scand ridge signal growing.... Technically this is an east based -NAO too... heh

That's the tricky part about split/progressive flow. Two streams are burping shortwaves into fast flow. How each piece plays together is rarely if ever nailed down until inside of 4 days and even that is a stretch. What if the northern stream wave ends up being faster and drags the boundary south as the lagging southern shortwave makes a move? What if the northern stream wave doesn't exist at all? Don't overthink ops outside of 4 days unless a block forms. This is a terrible pattern for medium/long range skill. It's bringing back memories of the 2013-15 stretch where our medium/long range chances vanished regularly but things popped up seemingly out of nowhere in the short/medium range.

Here's the event list for my yard in 2013/14: 11/27: T 12/08: 1.5" snow .25" sleet .20 Ice 12/10: 2.0" 12/14: .25" 01/02: 4.5" 01/21: 6.75" 01/28: .5" 02/09: .5" 02/13: 16.25" (13 front / 3.25 ull) 02/18: 1.0" 02/25: 1.25" 02/26: 2.50" 03/03: 5.50" 03/16: 9.50" 03/25: 3.00" (worst measuring event by me. Two closest trained spotters had 3.6 & 3.8) 03/30: .7" 55.70" Nearly every event on this list is either a clipper type deal or a wave on a front except for 2/13 as that was an organized coastal. Most of the events over 2" were frontal waves with the notables being 12/8, 12/10, 1/2, 1/21, 3/3, 3/16 (not sure about this one). The whole season was mostly progressive waves on fronts. For reasons we'll never fully understand, our area had a bullseye on it from start to finish. I'm not expecting a seasonal repeat of that year again before I'm dead. lol

2013/14 had like 6 of them. Maybe more. 2014/15 had another streak of them. These are "staple events" in a progressive -EPO regime. The margins are razor thin and the bust risk is there right up until close to game time but don't view this "event" as anything "unusual" or "not possible".

There's a couple. Here's the one where you can pull single days (or short periods): https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/composites/day/ Here's the monthly/seasonal composites: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/composites/printpage.pl

@frd Here's the lead up to the Jan 16 event. It was just a perfectly placed/large west based -NAO. It formed at the perfect time but it was not at the hands of scand ridging.

Excuse my 3rd grade paint skills but this visual is decent. The scand ridge signal is just now showing up but starting to become more prominent. We want it to push all the way into GL and that will force lower heights/confluence/compressed flow in the 50/50 region. That can suppress storm track and allow slower exits of cold highs to our north. I don't remember exactly what happened in 2016 but iirc that was a bootleg/transient west based -NAO block. It could have been at the hands of the scand ridge. I just can't remember. No matter how it shakes out, scand ridging poking poleward is always a net plus in these parts.

We always need the little things to break right. Next week only needs some sort of transient block to keep hp from running east. Right now that's not looking too good and it's all at the hands of the progressive atlantic. Shove the mass of bn heights balled up over GL south and future cold highs to the north meet resistance. Your short list seems reasonable to me. Just keep bringing the chances and it will accidentally snow here.

@WxUSAF Eps starting to show the scand ridge pushing into GL D10-15 like the gefs. That could be the tipping point that turns a so-so but workable pattern into something pretty good. Get that going and we'll prob start seeing 50/50s and/or bn heights in the 50/50 region.

We can work with this spread. Couple look just like the ukie. Becoming more interested in this...

13/14 had like 6 or even more. It was remarkable how many worked out. We started expecting them and we can literally go multiple years without getting hit like that. Southern stream is active now. You can see the connection all the way west of Baja with the front. I'll have to look at ens members and see what's different with the frontal wave solutions that snow but my guess is the front stretches more E-W instead of vertical. You can see that alignment on the gefs member snow maps.

Maybe we're looking too far down the road? Very complicated flow coming up starting middle next week. I'm expecting lots of twist and turns. Just don't have a feel if the turns will be good or not...

We generally score 1 out of 4 legit chances so we're getting a few misses out of the way quickly.

All rain from this in mid december? Lol.

Strong/organized storm = bad. No way around that except remarkable luck with every.single.feature Oddly, the EPS shows the best chance for snow shortly after the front goes through next week. Didn't look into how they got there but around 25% of the eps members drop snow thurs/fri. Could be anafrontal or could be the trailing southern shortwave. Not sure. EPS doesn't like the followup event. Mostly rainers.