NittanyWx

Snow and sleet, 21. This is a big time sleet fest Hudson valley and ct as expected. Wedge remains stout.

Down to 22. I live about 4 miles north of the Merritt, my desk is in Stamford. Down to 19 at the house.

I am, just speaking in generalities. I don't see much of a diff between lower HV and CT surface temps for the bulk of the day. Vis down, roads covered in Stamford already.

Wedge is pretty strong up here in the Hudson Valley. Temps are gonna stay sub-freezing southern CT/HV through the entirety of the day I'd think.

23, snow in Stamford.

Wet bulbing up here in Fairfield County as temps down about 2 degrees, column looks saturated. Quick 1-3/2-4" to a ton of sleet remains my idea for southern CT.

Light snow in Stamford,, 25. Gonna be a sleet fest all day today, temps dropping.

Most model pages don't have an 800mb chart. So, take a look in the soundings.

Track of the 700mb low leads to a screaming southwest wind between 850 and 700mb. Unlike the surface, where HP is dominant and allowing for cold air to wedge, the mid-levels aren't going to have as much resistance to WAA. Winds will turn quicker in the mid-levels, and as a result, we get a lot of sleet.

Just watch the correlation coefficient on radar scope. Sleet ain't hard to see.

Low levels hold on to colder longer than expected, mid-levels torch quick. Probably thump 1-3/2-4 and then pile on the sleet. In terms of pure snow, NWS is too high I think. Add some sleet in and I can see where they're trying to go with it. CYA in case mid-levels dont torch as quick.

If there is truly a group of mets trying to spin the idea that an SSW is causing, somehow, tropical forcing to get stuck off the coast of Vietnam and in the maritime continent (or whatever all over the place means), and that, somehow is overwhelming an El Nino (which was collapsing in the east Pacific in Jan) and all of that is screwing up the snowfall patterns, I'd say they've lost their damn minds. That makes no freaking sense. You're talking about of a correlation of a weaker correlation somehow overwhelming an even weaker correlation to snowfall.

The whole thing.

Nothing written here makes any sense meteorologically. The baseline assumption that a weak El Nino guarantees a snowy winter...no. The idea that the SSW overwhelmed an El Nino and somehow caused the MJO to be "all over the place"...no. Just none of it makes any sense.

This is a cutter with secondary coastal development. The Lakes piece is going to do some sort of cut no matter what. Energy transfer to the coastal and cold air supply/wedge due to HP in eastern Canada to me are as important as the primary. Some confluence helps here.

To me, this is all about heights in Canada. Higher heights in Canada and some stronger surface HP and you've got less likelihood of inland runner ruining things. You want some confluence in this scenario. I think there's an interesting analog from Feb '08 that was a fairly similar scenario. Not ideal, but similar.

Nino ain't driving the bus here, guys. Certainly not driving my forecast right now.

This mid-Feb period is the narrow window I was referencing last week. Period with a true phase 8 forcing, less hostile Pac side and potential for +PNA. If we're gonna pull off a snow storm, that's your best chance for Feb.

And for the record, every single meteorologist is going to have misses in a winter. I personally had a terrible November. But I do think this winter had way too many people hashing out ideas that they couldn't fully explain or only had a half understanding of. And I noticed the always cold/snow crowd again got run over because of this (JB, DiMartino, etc.). Think the next couple of weeks turn stormy, but the window for an east coast system that can deliver meaningful snow is fairly tight. Some things working for the east coast are a decent supply of cold air in Canada and an active storm track. Think you can squeeze something out of it if we can get a true phase 8 in Feb with some +PNA help. But, P1 Feb can actually be hostile on the PNA for us and make inland runners more likely.

Not the case for all. I again remind everyone of the echo chamber. What I hope people learned this year is that there is no such thing as a rule of thumb when it comes to mid and long range weather forecasts. This winter challenged a lot of preconceived ideas and half thoughts, and I hope people learned from it. In the very least, I hope people learned that SSW's are complex processes in their own right, and that's before you try to figure out if/when the warming breaks through the tropopause. And I hope people learned that these processes take time before potentially influence the pattern, and even then it doesn't mean much in figuring out how it impacts sensible weather spatially. And also, guys, need to ditch the Nino/Nina = x for our backyard when it comes to snow. Theres no statistically signicant correlation.

The echo chamber...

Yeah that's a chunk of it for sure...other component is AAM. At least these AAM trends look a bit better of late..

By the way, for those of you who look at OLR, I don't think these screams that we're in P5 in a traditional sense right now. You've got dateline and W.Pac convection. What you haven't been able to do is shed Maritime continent convection.

This isnt true. It has weakened the amplitude of the MJO, thanks in part to a westward moving Equatorial Rossby Wave firing up convection into the IO. Looking at the VP space, that's not altogether unlikely right now. Certainly had a better handle than the GEFS which amplified convection to the point that it was literally off the phase space chart.

Huh? The EPS shuts off dateline convection which, based on recent VP trends, does not seem that farfetched.