PhiEaglesfan712

1 hour ago, stadiumwave said:

 

Agree on the end of month, but disagree on JAN. The best analogs have JAN as the coldest month. So, I think based on the law of averages, we have a decent shot of seeing at least a period of winter in JAN. 

This only works if December torches, like in 2015, 2021, or 2023.

A cold December, like this one, makes it more likely, based on the law of averages, a torch will happen in January. The period of winter might already be happening.

The MEI finally updated. Here are the values for the past several months:

MJ 2025: -1.2

JJ 2025: -1.2

JA 2025: -0.9

AS 2025: -1.1

SO 2025: -1.2

ON 2025: -1.1

Alabama only got into the playoff because of their name. Take away their name, and their resume is no better than teams like Illinois or UConn. Actually, those teams beat the ACC Champion. Alabama lost to the 13th place ACC team.

If Alabama is the playoff, then let Illinois and UConn be in at as well.

51 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

If you are correct about a 1989-90 turnaround, that would be astounding. 89-90 saw the biggest, most dramatic pattern flip in the last 50 years. We went from an ice cold arctic tundra in November and December to palm trees sprouting in January and February….

Pretty much all the metrics are screaming at me "warm January and February". I mean, we got a deep -IOD. The last 2 times we had that, January and February literally torched.

89-90 is once in a lifetime, though. We had the coldest December, than turned into spring in January, and winter never really returned.

PHL temperatures (Dec 1989-Mar 1990):

Dec 89: 25.5

Jan 90: 40.3

Feb 90: 41.2

Mar 90: 46.1

A 15-degree increase in between December and January is absurd. That's something you see in between spring months (and sometimes, you don't even get a monthly swing that big).

The Decembers in 95, 00, 05, and 10 all ended up in the 31-34.5 range (and this December may end up not even being that cold), so the turnaround won't be as dramatic.

Why not just run the ball there? We were already in field goal range. The only thing you can't do there is throw an interception.

This is eerily similar to the 2023 collapse. That was the 3rd straight loss, also on a Monday night (in 2023, it was against the Seahawks, which also ended in Hurts throwing an interception).

4 hours ago, raindancewx said:

Assuming my general idea is right: Cold eventually retrogrades to the West, you should see ice storms, blizzards, and tornadoes (probably in that order) in the Southern Plains later in the winter.

If you're convinced Chuck is right, you had a several nasty ice storms in 1989-1990, as well as in late 2005 in December. There was a warm up I believe in 2013-14 too, with a pretty nasty ice storm in SE Canada at some point in December - don't really remember when.

We did have pretty extensive cold waves at times in Dec 2013 like we're seeing now. But with the even more expansive coverage, you had an almost immediate snap pack to a thaw/warm pattern the following week.

 

This was the height of the Dec 2013 cold snap locally -

2013-12-05	39	19	29.0	-8.8	36	0	0.35	3.5	3
2013-12-06	37	11	24.0	-13.6	41	0	0.00	0.0	2
2013-12-07	33	18	25.5	-11.8	39	0	0.00	0.0	1
2013-12-08	38	18	28.0	-9.1	37	0	0.01	0.5	1
2013-12-09	33	9	21.0	-15.9	44	0	0.00	0.0	0
2013-12-10	34	10	22.0	-14.7	43	0	0.00	0.0	0
2013-12-11	44	13	28.5	-8.0	36	0	0.00	0.0	0
2013-12-12	41	19	30.0	-6.3	35	0	0.00	0.0	0

Now that you put it this way, 2013-14 qualifies as a textbook wall-to-wall cold winter in the Eastern US. Pretty much 5 months straight of cold. Plus, it was a season that showed early cold, with a colder than average August and September.

1 hour ago, Krs4Lfe said:

Yeah at some point this cold air will have to ease up. Very few winters have almost wall to wall cold. And in this climate, it’s nearly impossible. All the more reason to capitalize on the cold now and get some snow 

13-14 and 14-15 are probably the closest we're going to get to a wall-to-wall cold winter in this climate. Both years had 4 out of 5 months well below average (November and January-March).

My gut tells me that December will come in cold, but not historic cold like 1989. It will end up in the -4 to -6 range, like 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010.

January and February will probably torch, though.

27 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

On the other hand, the weak-negative-ENSO/strong -QBO matches that are working out really well (1989, 2005) did flip to a +EPO pattern in late Dec that lasted all of January. We are following those analogs closely right now, but I do think that 90N High pressure tendency may overcome the sustained warmth that those analogs saw going later into the Winter. It is interesting to see the long range models flip warm though, which happened in those years. 

The big difference between the 1989 and 2005 analogs is that we got the flip back colder in February 2006. We even got a snowstorm on the 11th-12th. I can see this one happening again (you could even argue that we already did in 20-21).

With 1989, there was no going back to winter once the calendar flipped to 1990. Spring pretty much began in January that year. 89-90 is a once-in-a-lifetime analog that will never happen again. It should be retired.

27 minutes ago, LVblizzard said:

Euro too. Looks like they both want to really dig the s/w with that clipper. Definitely something to watch.

If it's a clipper, you can forget about it. The last time a clipper panned out in this area was on January 22, 2005, and that was over 20 years ago now.

47 minutes ago, Chadzachadam said:

The cold really caught me off guard this morning after it was pretty pleasant yesterday afternoon. Wind chill of 12 on a cloudy day is pretty brutal.

Also on the topic of recent winter snowfall performances, 2020-2021 was well above average for a lot of people in this thread. I lived in Conshy at the time and we had 4' but I think the cutoff was pretty sharp from NW to SE

Yeah, those north and west got the snow in 2020-21. The sharp cutoff south and east showed the warmer storm tracks that season. However, in many of the areas south and east that had below normal snowfall in 2020-21, they did better in 2021-22, when many of the storm tracks were colder and closer to the coast in January 2022.

10 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Notice that the Pacific Jet hasn’t relaxed and we have a dominant northern stream. So even though we are experiencing a colder pattern since late November, the warmer storm track of the last 7 years hasn’t varied. This was the case during some of the colder intervals last winter also.

The only time we really had a colder storm track was in 2017-18 and January 2022. Other than that, the classic storm track with a sharp cutoff south and east has been a recurrent theme since 2016-17 (that was even the case in many of the 2021 storms). That appears to continue this year. This doesn't bode well for snow lovers in coastal areas, like Atlantic City.

1 hour ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

P.S. How do you know winter already sucks? Just take a gander in our obs thread 

Just look at the storm tracks, and all the sharp cutoffs south and east. It's been a recurrent theme since 2016-17 (with the exception of 2017-18 and January 2022.) If you live in a coastal area, like Atlantic City, you're not going to see much snow this year.

4 hours ago, BBasile said:

I want a big East Coast storm!  lol.  I'd also be happy to dink and dunk my way to average.  You're right, though.  Winters do suck anymore.  Especially for us to the south and east of Philly.  It's like the 09-10 winter was the exclamation point on good winters.  No más.  

13-14 and 14-15 were really good winters. In 2015, I passed by the Aetna lake in Medford in late February/early March, and it was still frozen over. We don't even get a hard freeze anymore, much less that late in the season.

30 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

There is no warmup mid December.  Where are you getting that info from ? The warmups in the long range have been fake so far.

Definitely agree with that. Plus, December 2023 was warm all the way through. Kind of like 2015 and 2021. All of those years had a regression to the mean in January, with snow and near normal temperature departures.

This year we have a cold December so far. We just need a snowfall, or otherwise, we might have a similar situation to December 2022.

49 minutes ago, Krs4Lfe said:

Just in time for a mid month warmup, as was a bit expected, but hopefully it doesn’t become like the infamous December 2023 jet extension where we roasted for the rest of the month 

December 2023 was an all-out torch. Plus, it was in strong el nino. It's nothing alike to what we have now.

The cold air is there this December. We just need a notable snowfall.

1 hour ago, Birds~69 said:

I keep waiting to wake up to good news or potential but nope...

If we don't get any snow by the end of December, then I think it maybe time to give up hope. I can't remember a time when we had a good snowy rest of the winter after a cold and low snow December. Almost always, January and February torched in years like that.

5 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

I posted in this thread like 4-5 times a long time ago that weak-negativeENSO and strong -QBO has this strange coincidence of having super cold December's. 1989 and 2005 were examples. QBO is a stratosphere index so I didn't want to make the physical connection, but mentioned that it would be something if it happened again. And sure enough, it did happen again. This December is looking like one of the coldest in the eastern 1/2 since 2005. 

December 2010 was colder than December 2005, at least where I live.

If we do get colder than 2010, then 2000 would be next:

Come to think of it, there's a weird coincidence that -ENSO Decembers in years that end in 0 or 5 (doesn't matter the strength) tend to be very cold in the East:

48 minutes ago, BlizzardWx said:

The pattern we have coming up does not have many historical matches comparing it to past Decembers. I'm not exactly sure how to generalize it, but to me it almost appears that the lower latitudes portion of the pattern (say 25-40 N) is shifted east of where you would expect it given the polar configuration. It's a strange to, for example, have robust ridging for 2/3 of the country downstream of the -WPO block like we see days 10-15 in current guidance. I think this may be related to the strong Pacific jet disrupting what would otherwise be a better pattern. 

December 2016 and December 2022 seem like the best matches. We have a lot of the elements of those seasons this year: -ENSO, deep -IOD, la nina background, and strong Pacific jet. Plus, a cooler December. If we don't get the snowstorm, then I really like the 2016-17 and 2022-23 analogs even more (sorry Team Snow).

The only places I think that will do well in the East are places like upper New York (Buffalo to Albany), Vermont, and northern New Hampshire/Maine. Places near the coast are going to have a tough time getting snow.

All of a sudden, the skies have cleared. I see a lot of blue sky out there.

1 minute ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Very impressive to see so many 12"+ days at Washington, DC. Dayton, Ohio, even a bit further northward, has only ever had one such day in all of recorded history (January 25, 1978). So their streak looks like one seemingly endless streak following by a second seemingly endless streak.

I'm pretty sure January 23, 2016 was the last 12"+ snow day in DC. The final measurement was 16, maybe 17 inches, but many people believe it was an undermeasurement.

Apparently 5829 days have passed since then.

1984-85 and 2021-22 aren't good analogs because they had torch Decembers. In fact, both winters only had one really cold and snowy month (January). I'd go as far to say that 84-85 is the colder climate version of 21-22.

January 2016 was 5829 days ago already? Dang, I'm getting old, lol.

8 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

DC has 1” before NYC or BOS even has measurable. Who would’ve had that on their bingo chart in a Nina winter. 

It might be the start of a trend. DC and Baltimore have been doing better than PHL/NYC/BOS since 2023-24. Then again, there was nowhere to go but up after the snow dearth in DC/Baltimore from 2016-17 to 2022-23.

1 hour ago, SACRUS said:

 

2002:  

 

Dec 5

 

 

2003

 

Dec 5:

 

 

2005

Dec 5