psuhoffman

A lot of the factors we’ve been discussing are what is causing that. I just haven’t worded it the same way. We’ve discussed how the pacific had key cell has been expanded shifting the jet north and accelerating the NS. This runs interference on getting a southern storm to phase and come up the coast. If the jet never digs south…if instead it’s racing among to our north constantly throwing SWs across the lakes it both screws up our thermals and suppresses any southern wave. Additionally the warm waters near the MC keep causing the MJO to stall and go nuts in the Nina hostile phases. This acts to suppress the STJ. Like I said we’ve discussed how these things are killing our snow but not necessarily worded it the way you just did.

Makes total sense. I showed by the numbers DC had had the same snow climo as used to be typical for central SC the last 8 years. Since 2010 it’s had the same snow avg as central NC. So places like southern VA and NC would be southern GA or Northern Florida now.

When I look at this I think warm. It’s definitely not ideal. But I don’t think 3rd warmest winter ever across the US! Warm yes. Not close to warmest ever. @Ji shame we can’t talk about this in the main thread, it would distract from the one whole post there today!

I think in some cases I didn’t weight the right factors enough and I didn’t correctly calculate how some would influence the pattern. I under valued the PDO. Severely. I also thought the pacific base state would mute the very strong basin wide nino into a moderate basin wide nino. Which is a good pattern. But what happened is we got a hybrid with the worst of both. The Nina like base state showed up with a western pac ridge. This acted to shift the Nino trough east so that it acted more like an east based Nino. It also supercharged the jet due to the compression between the western pac ridge and the trough to its northeast. This continually flooded the US with pac puke. It also shifted the jet north and ran destructive interference with attempts at blocking. In summary we got some of the shitty long wave features of a Nina but with enhanced warmth of a Nino.

When I did my winter forecast I tried to come up with as broad a sample size as possible. But keep in mind the further back you go to get more example the less relevant they may be. For QBO research says the direction it’s moving is as important as the numerical value. For enso I combined the mei and oni and the modoki index to come up with comps. If we include all Ninos that came in between 1.2 and 1.8 on my combined mei oni value, and all QBOs descending entering winter with a value near neutral or negative it gave us 7 years since 1950. 6/7 were above avg snow. And not just above avg but way above avg. And they all featured remarkably similar patterns to get there. The one outlier 1992 had a well known excuse, research showed the eruption that year threw off the pattern. I know 6 is a small sample size but it’s the best we will ever get in analog based forecasting. And when the sample shares a strong pattern commonality…I think it was fair to expect above normal snow this winter based on that data.

I asked you how to Improve and you said stop forecasting 7+ days. So is your issue that we have a long range thread at all? We are all open to a better way of long range forecasting if you have one. You make seasonal forecasts don’t you? Aren’t they wrong sometimes? We are not good at that yet. Even the best bust a lot at long range. Can’t you accept we just don’t have the ability to be accurate all the time yet?

What are you talking about the last 8 years have actually been snowy!

The crazy thing about that conspiracy theory is some of the stuff we do right here on earth takes more technological advancement than going to the moon. They don’t question the smart phone in their hand but they question launching a tin can to that rock in the sky.

But the fact it’s warm everywhere isn’t good either lol

That’s been true for a while. Both have similar timing wrt nao. But the eps has been 48-72 hours quicker getting that trough out of AK.

Had this discussion with someone who knows way more than I do. There are some factors that make sense. One is cost. We were willing to spend an exuberant amount in the 60s due to the politics of it. Not so much now. The other factor is we were willing to push the envelope and take risks with human life to get there first then we rightfully are not now. What was an acceptable risk to life then is not now. Yes we’ve come a long way but the truth is we accomplished that a little ahead of the curve. There was a high risk we could have got those astronauts killed that we aren’t willing take take now. And trying to do it more economically also adds to that challenge. It’s not that we can’t do it. It’s can we do it cheaper and safer that’s the issue.

FWIW the guidance has sped up the progression on the Atlantic side. But the pacific has not. We would start seeing better tracks once the Atlantic shifts but we probably still won’t be cold enough until the trough in AK retrogrades west.

There is no evidence yet since we’ve been in a -pdo recently. And it was quite snowy the last +pdo period. But…the last few years there were short periods where we got a +pna and because the pac was flooding so much warmth into the western ridge it just spread east and all we ended up with was a full conus ridge centered west but still way too warm east to do any good. The only times we’ve been able to get truly cold is when there was a perfectly centered epo pna full latitude ridge. My fear is if that continues even in a +pna…well on the bright side years like 2014 and 2015 would still work. But those are incredibly rare. In the last 50 years only 3 featured that kind of full lat epo/pna ridge combo. 1994, 2014 and 2015. Yes that would definitely work. But it’s not a common thing even in a +pna. I want to see evidence we can get cold without a super rare long wave configuration where 8,000 things are all lined up perfect.

How confident are you things improve significantly once the PDO flips. I honestly do think so…but I really want that to be true and I’m aware of my bias.

Or is that worse because it implies the current mess we’re in (a torched -QBO Nino Feb) might be more than just the PDO. My worst nightmare is the PDO flips and the pacific continues to flood North America with puke anyways.

But you’re discounting the link between enso and the epo. It’s rare for a strong Nino not to impact the pacific pattern more than it did.

I did mean an actual legit snowstorm. It’s gonna be late March. We’ve had a decent number of minor snows already. So in this specific scenario I’m not much interested in some 2” front end thump or clipper or whatever. If we’re going to get a big snow from a coastal I don’t think a typical low coming at us from the SW running into cold with a WAA dump will work. We’re going to need some stalled coastal bomb with a kick ass CCB and crazy rates to overcome a mediocre airmass at best I just don’t see us going from the current continental thermal profile to a legit cold one in late March no matter what the pattern. We’ve had trouble getting sustained cold from any pattern lately in mid winter for F sake. But its a misconception that I’m only a big game hunter. It’s just when we’re looking at day 15 crap as we’re often doing since the day 1-14 has looked god awful much of the time lol, it’s way easier to see signals for a big storm that some minor event. You can’t pick up on a fluke anafront or clipper or weak progressive boundary wave at range. Frankly we can’t even accurately pick up on bigger storms but at least we can see possible pattern markers sometimes. That’s why I mostly talk about big storms. And yes I do prefer a big snow to a small one duh. But once an event is in range I track a 2-4” snow all the same. I was active in the threads leading up to all the events this year even though none were big.

Because we are in a -QBO strong Nino. Baltimore averages 42” of snow in -QBO moderate or stronger ninos. Even the median is close to 40”! Every other category of seasonal pattern drivers is under 20”! There was legit reason for the optimism. You know I’m usually pessimistic. I’ve usually predicted low snowfall lately. But I got fooled this year too. The sad thing is we just wasted a type of winter where we almost always go way above average on snow. And it’s rare. Only happens once every 15 years on average. This was a true disaster!

Fixed

I doubt we get cold enough for a typical storm. Any snow we get will have to come from a dynamically driven create your own cold scenario like March 58 or Palm Sunday 1942.

Why do you have to be repetitive. I’ve see the mjo talked about and posted 500 times. How many times are you going to talk about the mjo.

What Ji said

Context. Markets are wisely responding to the warm first 2 weeks which are the colder half of March and look like a torch! Even if we bet a colder back half and a few truly cold days and some snow March is going to end up below avg demand for nat gas.

I’ll preface by saying I’m extremely skeptical still. But it’s worth pointing out a blocking regime in a March is historically not necessarily cold but can produce snow. If you look at the raw temps the week of a March 58 for example, temps are avg. if a blocked amplified wave gets forced under is in March that can work. That’s a lot of ifs though. Just throwing it out there.

you know he is a toolbox