psuhoffman
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Everything posted by psuhoffman
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First of all, the reason Siberia can get so cold is it is a much larger land mass and sheltered from any marine influence. It is much further and the body of water that is typically upstream from them is the north Atlantic which is much smaller and cooler than the pacific. Second, the predominant longwave pattern or flow. Look at this below. I have highlighted the pac jet there. How would any cold from Siberia be able to get here given that flow...cross polar flow is completely cut off by the pac jet blasting across N America. Furthermore how would our source regions even be able to develop home grown cold with that flow blasting warm pacific air across the whole continent. It is not always cold in Siberia, well WRT normal anyways... right now it is...see below But the flow shifts and becomes more progressive and that cold is forced out into the pacific and quickly gets obliterated as it mixes with the pacific maritime airmass...so look at next week It's now warm in Siberia, but its still not cold here its just warm EVERYWHERE...literally the only cold in the whole hemisphere WRT normal are two small pockets over Greeenland and Alaska, both of which are under a TPV at the time. 90% of the land masses across the whole N Hem is well above normal. As for your other questions regarding how much of this is random v "you know what". I can't say. I can say the pacific pattern which is responsible for this is partially cyclical. We are in a hostile PDO cycle. But I can also say that there are some factors contributing to this which make it worse which have been linked to "you know what". The expansion of the pacific basin circulation which is linked to warming has compressed the jet speeding it up making the problem worse. The warm pools in the western Pac/IO are making this worse and also linked to warming. And of course as the pacific warms that's going to be a problem since that is what is upstream of us. I have no idea what percentage of this is just cyclical and what percentage might be warming but its likely some of both.
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Another good euro weekly run if we’re keeping score. Just worth noting yesterdays flip back to a -NAO wasn’t a one off fluke.
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Except for the 3 blizzards many still got more snow that winter than like 5 of the last 7! There was a 3-5” snow for the western burbs Dec 5. A coating late Dec. 1-3 early Jan. 4-7” late Jan. 3-5” early Feb. 1-3” in MD late Feb. And that’s ignoring the ridiculousness of “except for 3 blizzards” but yes I know you’re mostly kidding.
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Most of the area got a coating just before new years and 1-3” around Jan 8th. It’s wasn’t as snowless as you make it you were just getting frustrated because the pattern had way more potential and we were hecs hunting.
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That’s why getting the TPV out of the Baffin area is so important. We don’t need Canada to be “cold” but we do need to get enough northern flow in eastern Canada to prevent it from being 100% maritime air and to get some cold transported into our area. The TPV is far enough northeast there to allow the flow to turn NW behind it. Still not ideal but 1000 times better than where it is now.
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I guess we could live with a crap longwave pattern if we just keep getting lucky with thread the needle perfect secondary developments and h5 cutoff lows.
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I can't believe they still put out those exact same maps as when I was at PSU in the 90s. And they were crap then!
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It's also possible we might get the Pacific longwave pattern to retrograde just enough that a more neutral Atlantic could work also. It's a scale, the more help we get on one side the less we need on the other. Historically the easiest way to make this whole thing work though is if we can get a true -NAO. That would make this whole thing a lot simpler. But we do need the TPV to get away from Baffin. Sitting there is going to create a strong west to east flow under it and blast maritime air across.
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That’s definitely a first step. But so long as the nao stays positive the flow to our north will be west to east and pac maritime air will dominate. The pac trough would have to retro really far for that equation to work, see 2003 and 2015 for what that would look like. But I don’t think we’re likely to get that. Ultimately until the nao goes negative we’re going to struggle with temps and be rooting for a lot of convoluted things to go right to overcome very marginal at best thermals.
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He knows 90% have no idea what he’s talking about. The way I look at it…to simplify, in a true west based modoki Nino like 2003 and 2015 the N pac trough is likely to set up far enough west that the nao isn’t as critical. In a super east based super Nino like 1998 the pac trough will be displaced so far east and dominant the nao won’t matter we’re screwed. But in all the rest the NAO is critical in determining our fate. If the NAO is negative enough to buckle the flow we will get enough trough in the east for the equation to work. If the nao is positive there is nothing to stop the pacific airmass east of the pac trough from just blasting across the CONUS under the positive NAO. Luckily the tropical forcing in a Nino is such that it also has the e highest correlations to -nao of the enso states. Add in ascending solar, descending -QBO and a weak spv and we “should” be good. Right now Webber can troll because with a raging pos NAO that pac configuration won’t work. But watch what happens if the nao flips.
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They went back to flipping the NAO/AO negative by early Jan and run the table that way. PAC backs off some creating the “it” look for mid Atlantic snow. I don’t bring them up everyday. I tend to view them over a period of time for trends. I brought them up the other day not because they suddenly were bad but because they were bleeding the wrong way consistent for 5 days. I finally thought it was worth mentioning after multiple worse runs. Usually I wouldn’t bring them up again so soon except since I seemed to start a mini shitstorm (it’s a technical term) with my observation of the negative I’d point out they had a very good run today. I disagree. As long as you don’t freak out over every single run. Each run has the same exact value the old 2 runs a week had. Only now you don’t have to way several days to see if it was a fluke. You can watch trends. Come to some conclusions quicker perhaps. More data is better so long as you aren’t emotional about each run. I know that’s a big ask though.
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https://x.com/webberweather/status/1735025491352912155?s=46&t=JDI46BeqOMUGnLaA2k6MTw his troll game is A+
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Frankly some of our snowy Nino periods were even warmer than people realize because snow cover severely depresses temps.
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Euro weeklies bounced back in a big way today.
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I’ll admit I judge a pattern purely by how likely I think it is to produce a snowstorm. I could care less if it’s +3 or +20 or even -5 for that matter, if the long wave configuration is unlikely to produce snow it’s all the same to me.
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It as warm as 2015 is a pretty low bar. Don’t be fooled by the fact we got incredibly lucky with a secondary development along a frontal passage…if the predominant December pattern were to continue all winter we aren’t sniffing some of the ambitious (including my own) snowfall predictions. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as some recent total duds but again that’s a low bar. While it may not be the super torch some trolls hyped it’s not what we need for a snowy winter. Yea there has been some improvement and positive signs today but let’s not pretend we’re in some good pattern now.
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I choose to read it this way
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Correct me if I'm wrong but I think they still haven't aligned the GEFS to the new FV3 GFS. So they are not as cohesive as is typical of most Op/Ens tandems.
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Historically absent a NAO block the other feature that showed up next most frequently in our warning level snow events was a "west of Hudson Bay" ridge. If we can get that ridging up top centered a little further west we would have a chance. Of course ideally getting the vortex off Baffin Bay will help enormously but I really don't see that setting up shop permanently...the SPV is too weak, any TPV will be susceptible to destructive interference.
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IF, big if, things were to continue to follow a 2015/16 type pattern progression but slightly colder given the weaker enso, I would take that. Our area just missed out on about 3 other big snow events in Jan-Mar because temps were just a few degrees too warm. A pattern repeat of 2016 but slightly colder could be a big win.
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It's way too early for that, I still think its going to work out. But...if it fails we would have to look at all the options, effects of last years eruption, there was a pretty significant solar flare recently, did tropical forcing end up in a state more conducive to a +NAO than the typical Nino, or random chaos... and of course it has seemed to be harder to get a -NAO recently, especially if you factor in we've been in an ascending solar phase where blocking SHOULD be more prevalent recently yet it wasn't. But I am hopeful we never have to do that analysis.
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Given the weak SPV it's possible for the NAO to shift quickly, all it would take is a good wave break to possibly set off a chain reaction. One thing that does bother me a little... in the years that flipped in our favor there was pronounced Scandinavian ridging ahead of time in late December that proceeded the NAO going negative. We don't have that this year...it looks like we will be relying on wave breaking to get it done and that's not how it went down in past Nino's that had an NAO flip Dec to Jan.
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One may have had it 12 hours sooner but both picked up on it about the same time since it showed up quick and not at super long leads.
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That and this is a basin wide nino which isn't a bad thing...provided you have some NAO help. But were not in a modoki like 2003 and 2015 where the pacific low will be displaced far enough west to work absent any NAO help.
