NittanyWx

Im not one who would qualify as someone who had a favorable view for snow this month until perhaps past MLK and you can look at my posting history about it.

I'd also say that I'd adjust +1 C from any analog in the 50s. Gotta be honest with the current state of our climate and account for it if you're gonna use it as a forecaster. This is the type of stuff that trips up the cold crowd on WxTwitter

FWIW I think the time to push panic button is if you're not seeing PNA height rebuild last 10 days of Jan. So you're getting an idea of that in about 10 days.

It's very difficult to get a weak source region to deliver anything now in the east. Possible isn't probable and that's the view I'm taking 1h Jan. We're missing HP in eastern Canada for any length of time outside of that Jan 6-8 period (36-48 hours or so) and that would be the only window I'd say 'maybe' at the moment for the bulk of SNE. I don't think a coastal works there for snow though outside of the far interior. Think you'd need overrunning into N/NE winds from the retreating HP. That said, I do think it's a good thing that you've got at least some cold air this side of the pole mid Jan. The way out of this mild pattern is gonna have to start in the west. For me personally the game changed once you saw that massive jet extension because of the damage it did to NA snowpack buils and the sheer amount of Pac air over the continent. At that point any way out was gonna take some time and several step changes. This is step 1 and 2. For the end month period to deliver, you'd look to see this trough slide eastward around the MLK period and seasonal rebuild of Nino induced heights out west.

I'm glad you got to experience that storm here because forecasting it was a pain in the ass.

Never done TV. Did radio for 8 months at the start of my career. I had some coverage in Willimantic, CT and Keene, NH among my radio stations.

We haven't had it to this degree. We are at record low snowcover right now nationally and for NA.

I think the giveaway was threefold on how bad the source region is/was: 1) Snowcover, or in this case the complete lack thereof 2) Lack of appreciably anomalous HP upstream And 3) +25s in the front weeks for N/NW Canada preceding this h5 change. While I don't disagree you generally will get better performance at h5, I think this was a situation where the forecasters had enough in front of them to say 'you know, I don't like the source despite the h5, I'm not gonna paint this significantly colder than the model because I don't see a mechanism where I can tap into anything'.. The play was to reduce the much much above for a small period and get closer to normal. But I think by mid-Dec you had a lot of reasons to question whether even normal is valid.

Go, avoid the tourist traps. Definitely do the sunrise bike ride at the volcano.

Yeah exactly on your last point, which I think was well articulated over the past few weeks. Could snow isn't will snow. And I think the main gripe I'd have if I was rooting for cold/snow is that plenty of folks shared the h5 of the weeklies as a sign for 'massive changes and improvement', yet there'd be no one sharing the t2m, which accurately showed the air being advected via PNA spike was mP due to an extended jet. Here's what I mean...two weeks back I was asked what I thought about the weeklies at work and I had the h5 charts sent to me and the following: 'seeing on twitter a lot of folks think this is a colder pattern east for New Years...thoughts?' My response was, did they share the 2m charts? The source region sucks, this isn't gonna deliver anything meaningful/prolonged in early Jan. The 2m charts were pretty damn warm at the time: Well, here's what we got at h5 surrounding New Years: I dent think that's a bad job by the weeklies at all. I do think, however, that it was a bad job by certain forecasters ignoring the source region and assuming that the Pac jet would magically ease and cold would just appear. There were plenty on here who disagreed with that premise, but I'd say that was more the minority opinion at the time. For what it's worth, the EC Ens has also had a cold bias, so risk is this may come in even warmer/closer to Euro weeklies. As forecasters, there is some element of strategy to what we do and what we communicate. If I see an h5 that's 'better' but I see no source air to advect, I'm not gonna ignore that source air and say 'you know what, the weeklies are way too warm because of h5 and it'll roll forward colder' personally. I'm not saying that to tout my forecast, I'm saying that because I think people got trapped up at h5, whereas some correctly (several in here to their credit) didn't see the mechanism for getting meaningful cold into NA for anything more than a slight step change/transient cool shot that wouldn't last without reinforcing HP and an airmass that wasn't cold to begin with and had no snowcoveras it was advecting into the region. So, yes, it can snow there, but a lot has to go right. I think the conversation was skewing more towards 'this is a hell of a lot better and split flow is exactly what you want'. The premise being there was longevity to a colder look and this would be normal. My point was the weekly didnt show that, it showed a better h5 but still a very marginal airmass. It's only 'exactly what you want' if you have a source airmass. Still keeping tabs on Jan 6-7, but outside of that there's not much in this for early Jan on either cold or snow

Already went a couple years back. It's a beautiful place and the people are truly special. Surfed Kuta and Uluwatu, did the temples, spent time with people and got to speak with several regular folks there. It has a special energy about it. If and when I retire I'm doing 2-3 weeks there with the Mrs.

In terms of sensible weather impact it's already dead. Indonesia is one of my forecast regions.

Yeah I'm more looking at it from a week 3/4 prog from the EC weeklies than inside the week 2 frame. I got a few charts I'm gonna share a bit later on today to articulate what I'm saying. As far as the EC Ens goes, it has had a bias for several weeks of heights and temps being progged too low d 8-15 for most of this winter.

You're missing what I'm saying...my post was about weekly h5 view on the EC weeklies for first week of Jan being the basis for a colder early Jan forecast. A point forecast would be averaged into a week 3 mean...

I think you should be feeling good about how this pattern looks at a long lead time. I'm also not calling anyone out specifically.

You're comparing a short interval of time to a weekly mean h5 view though. The source region is and was still garbage.

I think you misunderstood what I'm saying. I'm saying if the weeklies are already seeing it, as a forecaster are you adding any skill on top of it by coming out and saying 'this SSW will dramatically change things'...I'd argue going counter to the weeklies in the dramatically colder direction for example could end up burning you a lot of the time.

I can't blame weenies for being frustrated at a lot of early Jan forecasts. It will end up warmer than many were preaching based on the H5 look of the Euro weeklies. I personally am not canceling winter and haven't seen many do that outside of complaining about mild weather. but this is another case of 'know your source' when viewing h5 forecasts in the week 3-4 range. That said, I think the erosion of mild Pac air is somewhat less hostile than what we're gettng in early Jan

I mean, it can be something that helps turnaround...maybe? It can be relevant to the pattern relative to blocking in the right set of circumstances. But I think the better question is 'are the weeklies already seeing that' in their week 3-5 timelines and further are you doing a better job determining regional temp anomaly distribution than the weeklies are relying heavily on SSW as the basis for your view. Many times the climate models are taking a strato warming event and are assimilating it into those forecasts. So I'm not sure how much forecasting edge you're actually gaining from pointing it out.

It's something to discuss, but it's also only relevant for Feb...maybe...if it actually happens as progged. There's no issue talking about it, but a lot of people do tend to overhype the correlation to 2m temp, and specifically to 2m temp in the east.

You see a very small sliver of the pro's. Social media pros tend to skew cold because it drives interactions. I don't view Bustardi as an operational met anymore so much as a political pundit hocking books. He has long past his expiration date on reliable forecaster in the long range and a lot of folks have wised up to it. Margavage was in school when I was and flunked out, now returns as the 'cold and snow' guy and gets a following. There are a lot of good mets around, a lot, who's opinion I value and respect. Some of them were cold 1h Jan, many were not. But they're not gonna be the loudest voice on twitter.

Just personally I care way more about what's happening upstream right now given lack of carpet and atrocious source region. Think the 'way out' of this very mild pattern has to be this +EPO/-PNA combo, which likely means locally it's mild outside of a transient period around the 5-7 and cuts off the Pac flow into NW Canada for a minute. Then when you return to a more +PNA setup given background standing wave pattern you're advecting air that isn't just mild mP that has flooded into NW Canada.

You may have found a universally acceptable definition of persistence. Edit: card carrying member of #TeamWCanFirst

I suspect you will end up finding progression here in these VP anomalies as well. Particularly as the IOD has collapsed and there's a smoothing of ocean temperature anomalies between WIO and EIO.

This was a fun debate earlier in December.