Bob Chill

Back pain is a bitch. I had to get an MRI back in 2008 due to chronic sciatic nerve pain (I didn't know what was going on other than a hot knife stabbing my hamstring daily). Mod degeneration of L3-4-5 and impingement on my sciatic nerve. I've managed it for 10 years but at some point I'm going under the knife too. Next step is steroid injections and when they stop working I get to have fusion surgery. I'm actually much better than I was in 2008 but that's just because of phys therapy/weight loss/posture etc. There is no real cure as I'm sure you already know. I'm surprised I've made it this long without steroids. The weird thing about nerve pain is exercise like biking/hiking/swimming provides relief. My days are numbered though. I'll keep buying time until the inevitable. It's my own fault though. Between football as a teen and being a ski bum in my 20's I did some damage. No regrets

A foot of ice is tricky to pull off and Nov is not the month for it. Maybe Dec 5th.

You need to switch from blunts to glass bongs. Keeps memory clearer. At least I kinda remember something like that.

lol. Nah, not at all. It just is what it is around here. We spend more time discussing things that aren't real more than real stuff. At least most years. I still can't believe we haven't had a region wide 6-12" yet. I mean wtf man. It's a disaster.

This post can be pinned and carry 90% accuracy over all of met winter.

He can only get mine once. Quit the hobby permanently or death

It does. These ocean/troposphere connections are always the chicken or egg argument and I don't claim to know the answer. However, once the SSTAs are established I strongly believe it helps create a feedback loop. Similar to "the blob" in the GoA.

GEFS/GEPS both pop an -EPO last week of the month. GEPS signal is so strong it's a closed ridge at 16 day leads... lol. Wut? We're seeing a lot of absolute primo upper level panels for a coastal storm lately. They keep getting better too. I said a bunch of times back during the 13-15 stretch about how I would like to see what would happen with a nasty -EPO and -NAO. heh. Might find out...

Man, I'm lovin the new weenie emoji. I feel like I earn something every time I get tagged. Both the GFS and Euro have a closed low tracking under the block with a 50/50 in the way d8-10. Even if it's real it's going to be hard to beat temp climo but just the fact that we are seeing this progression is a sight for sore eyes. We had one back in Jan 2016 didn't we? lol

Personally, I could strictly look at 500mb and below all winter every winter and do totally fine figuring out how things are going without knowing a thing about the strat. We can have plenty of trop blocking without any type of warming event or disruption and vice versa. The only thing we really care about as snow weenies is to not have a combination of a strong/cold strat pv AND a strong +AO. Outside of that (IMO) us weenies are all better off not worrying about it.

Assuming the nice looks are real...lol...we really need continuation into December before I'll feel good about repetition. November is really good at fooling weenies by going off on a total tangent before "the real" winter pattern sets in. That said, closest analog to this is Dec 2009

Smartguys? What wx forum am i not aware of?

I'd be perfectly happy if your outlook verifies. I do find it jnteresting that your forecast focuses on modoki influence driving the Pac/NA bus on balance of met winter. Looking at current ens guidance it sure looks like a nino to me but I've mostly discounted the influence as there is no gradient in the Pac near Nino 3.4-4. It's just a massive bowl of AN sstas in general. But hey, it's completely acceptable if a modoki takes over. Lol I don't do seasonals but I've had a strong gut hunch that winter in the mid atlantic would be pretty close to avg in both temps and snowfall. Iso says that's unlikely and honestly I was a little surprised with his overall forecast. I'll hug yours and @griteater's for now. Grit, I was going to comment in your thread earlier but my wifi kept dropping and pissing me off and then ADD took over. Lol. You couldn't have written a sweeter outlook for the MA region considering mixed signals and no clear easy clues. I'll just hug a blend of yours and Ray's and tune up my shovel before Dec.

This time is different in that the current potential -NAO never showed up on weekly or seasonal guidance. It appears to have snuck in under the radar which should be expected because long range nao forecasting and accuracy doesn't exist. We're at 7 day leads right now. Still not close enough to go all in but close enough to believe some sort of -nao is happening. How long it lasts and how it affects our wx will be discussed under the microscope for the next week straight. Worse things to discusss in Nov I suppose

Prob should keep it open until we can rule out winter wx before Dec.

I know you know this backwards and forwards but a -NAO does not automatically mean cold. It's completely normal for most or all of Canada to be AN with a -NAO and our region to just be average (with a bias for below but only with help elsewhere). Especially during nino events. I'm not sold that enso is going to drive things this year but given recent developments with ens guidance it sure looks like a nino to me. lol. First half of Dec is still pretty hostile for snow here and early Mar is better snow climo to put it in perspective. Sucks to say but odds favor no snow even with a -NAO in early Dec unless there is a legit cold delivery. I'm not remotely worried about early Dec as much as I am the season as a whole. Parking a west based block leading into met winter is never bad and always good even if we don't snow.

Yea man, and it's a textbook west based block and not some convoluted bootleg deal. It's quite surprising but that's how the NAO rolls. We haven't had a favorable/blocky winter pattern in Dec since 2010.

I think the poetry thread happened in 2015 before the switch flipped but I'm old and memory and stuff... Like I said before, "favorite" anything in this hobby is 100% subjective but one of the metrics I use to rate a winter is how much dead space and how interesting it was. 09-10 is no doubt the king of snow totals. It was basically ridiculous. But between the Dec event and late Jan sneaky slider there was a lot of thumb twiddling. The last week of Jan through the second Feb storm was the greatest 2 week tracking period ever and there isn't a close second. But being honest, missing out on the late Feb storm did bum me out more than a little. The lack of any real winter wx from the 2nd Feb storm on was a let down to me as was the speed that 50" of snow melted. The way the Dec storm got washed down the sewer on Christmas was a little depressing also. 13-14 had me glued start to finish. It was never boring and dead space was limited. I pulled off over 16" with the Feb storm so there was a "KU" in my yard and the barrage of arctic air and cold snow was remarkable. We had some ice that year to complete the buffet. I distinctly remembering in late March (after 16 events stretching from 11/27 to 3/30) being worn the F out from tracking and was actually looking forward to the door closing on that winter. For those reasons 13-14 takes the top spot in my book but our "books" are very personal.

It's a subjective grading system but for me 13-14 was the all time greatest tracking winter of my life. Minimal deadspace, events from first week of Dec to last week of March, and some damn crazy stuff like snow in the teens multiple times including March. Even had an all snow west track! The low temps we had at times were crazy too. Bay froze shore to shore at the bridge... one helluva year on so many levels. Prob a function of a nasty +AO through many recent years. Not a good pattern to get clippers running through central VA....

IMO our region has the most near misses than any other location in the east. The good thing is we generally get some chances every winter. The bad thing is too many things can often go wrong. The "wrong list" is proportionate from west to east. My area is ok most of the time as forum divider storms usually have enough frozen precip to put me somewhere in the middle. Once you get as far east as your hood it becomes an island of sorts sometimes. You root for different things with events that hit you flush. If we get some blocking that changes the disparity in your favor as locations across our sub become more equalized.

For reasons that nobody really knows for sure... the NAO has an embedded decadal or multi-decadal cycle. It's streaky over longer time scales. Obvioulsy we've been experiencing the bad streak lately and luckily "stole" 2 damn good winters during this big +NAO streak. What made the 2013-15 stretch so special (and unusual) was the # of snow events. I'm way too lazy to look it up but I'm pretty much 100% sure you will find few if any winters in the last 100 years that featured a strongly + NAO and 10 or more snow events. It was a remarkable stretch that will probably never happen again in my lifetime. It's not like we need some raging -nao to get snowfall but that stretch was raging positive. From a wx enthusiast perspective, those back to back winters should be at the top of the anomalous/unusual list. I'm really hoping current guidance is a sign that the bad streak is over. A -nao really helps with marginal setups and tricky stromtracks. We don't even need below normal temps in the heart of winter to get snow with a nice stormtrack. Cutters can still happen with a -nao but even with those have a much better shot of front end snowfall when HP is doing like 90mph NE into the Atlantic. I'm really sick of cold high pressures running away all winter.

This thing that we often lose sight of is the fact that the NAO domain is simply not predictable beyond a week or 2. It's always been that way but with the advent of weekly and seasonal guidance it's easy to focus your eyes on those forecasts. However, the NAO can no doubt be persistent at times and I agree with your last statement. If AN heights do lock into the domain space over the next few weeks then forecasts that show it continuing are much more likely to verify than ones that show "a flip".

I said this in a different reply somewhere but the only reason I took a break is the board became the opposite of fun for me. Hopefully this year doesn't turn into a whine and cheese dumpster fire again. Nobody wants to read that crap 24/7. This board isn't supposed to be therapy for unstable people who can't handle reality. It's supposed to be a place where we discuss weather objectively for better or worse. Don't get me wrong, I get annoyed with our climo as much as anyone else at times and I vent and poke fun at futility too but I don't feel the need to make sure every single person hears about it every 5 minutes for 100 straight days. If there's one piece of advice that every single weenie needs to think about it's don't get invested in any snow event until it's inside of 72 hours and even that is often pushing it. 95% of our events aren't resolved (or even real) until we get into the 3 day or less range. A d10 fantasy op threat isn't a threat. It's a random idea that there may be a threat. The subtle nuances that go into us actually getting snowfall can drastically change the outcome nearly every single time. If you're going to freak out with every failed event, at least wait until it's a legit rug pull before freaking out. IMO- legit rug pulls don't even start happening until inside of 72 hours but that's just me.

I agree 100% with @psuhoffman last post. I'm just trying to see a clear path to how we don't have a sh!tty December. For winter as a whole I really have no strong feelings one way or another yet. Recent trends suggest seasonal/weekly guidance screwed up early Dec as it's been evolving into something far different than first shown. Just a week or so ago the CFS weekly showed this for week 4 That's already evolved into this: EPS/weeklies are doing the same type of thing. The big +AO/NAO shown run after run may in fact be completely wrong. I think that's the only thing worth thinking about right now. How do we enter and move through the first half of Dec. If it features blocky flow with a -AO and/or -NAO then idgaf what any seasonal guidance has said this fall. Winter is off to a much better start than any I can think of since the 09-11 stretch.

One of the best MNF games I've seen tonight. Wilson is like a cyborg in the clutch. Never fails