psuhoffman

We went through a very similar progression to this last winter. Last year we got a raging Ak vortex for 2 weeks that destroyed all the cold in N America though. This year we’re in better shape if a similar progression happens. But it requires patience. Remember in January when we had a similar pattern at range things were cutting only to end up suppressed. We got teased each time around day 4-5 as the south trend happened. Not saying everything will be exactly the same but I wouldn’t discount squashed with that Atlantic look. Doesn’t mean snow though. Things will be deamplifying so it takes a perfect thread the needle track and we’re talking likely more minor threats. Being downwind the apps hurts even more when a storm is weakening so the gulf and Atlantic moisture are mostly out of the game. Good news is what “could” come next. If this pattern takes the natural typical progression…as the NAO continues to retrograde it will eventually link up with the North Pacific ridge. Once that happens the trough will end up in the east. This happened last year but we lacked the necessary cold for DC to cash in. Imagine a replay of last year but 5 degrees colder. DC has a 15-20” season easy and that’s a big win in a Nina. When I talk about how this could work Im still being relative to the fact we’re in a Nina. If we get a median to avg snow winter there a top 10% Nina outcome and a win imo

I know. Fwiw last year the pattern went exactly how I thought it would when the blocking started to show and the likely progression became apparent near New Years. My 50” up here was about what you would expect. But for 95 every storm was just a few degrees too warm. Several were perfect tracks too. I said it wasn’t likely to be cold just “cold enough” but it was slightly too warm. I have to wonder if it was 20 years ago would it have worked out better and 95 would have had ~20” which is more fitting with a year I have 50”. If that’s the case was it a pattern fail or a climate change fail?

@Eskimo Joe2002 started nothing like this. The pac was opposite. We did have a good Atlantic but the pac ridge was south allowing North America to get flooded with warmth. When the Atlantic backed off it was game over. This isn’t progressing the same way. Of course there are multiple paths to a fail here.

Relax. The north pac ridge isn’t ideal but it could be worse. I’d be way more pessimistic if it was a mid latitude ridge again like recent years. Then we’d have the conus blasted with pac puke again. We know the best we can realistically hope for is a decent winter giving the limitations of the pac base state. Given the options (we know there will be a ridge somewhere in the pac this isn’t the type base state where we can get a huge trough there which would be ideal) this is as good as we can hope for. It’s not working now because we just had an AK vortex and a positive AO and NAO. Would you rather that ridge in the pac retreat and the vortex pull back to Ak and we repeat early last year? Blocking has a lag. We go through this everytime a block is just setting in. Its not instant. But if the blocking has staying power eventually the cold will spread east under the block. History shows a -epo/-NAO in January/February is cold enough. Thibgs could fail. A epo/NAO pattern in a Nina can be frustratingly dry. And we always need luck. And maybe the blocking fades too fast. Dunno. But there are no signs of it yet. So wait until after Xmas at least before throwing in the towel on a pattern that’s still a week away from starting.

The blocks gonna try to work its magic and there are hints that even though that first stj wave misses the connection to the NS the next NS SW might pull some sort of partial phase with the leftover stj energy. But even if all that happens then we might still end up left out if the cold retreats too much or the track isn’t perfect. It’s not no hope. But it’s complicated and we don’t do complicated usually so I tend to bet against it. Every once in a while these crazy setups do work out. Someone with more faith than me should put in a prayer for a Christmas miracle.

I debated not saying anything but I have Covid. I had all 3 Moderna shots so I will probably be fine. Thought I had the flu since I’ve been taking care of my daughter and son who both had the flu. But tested positive today.

@WxWatcher007congrats on the wedding. But so sorry about your father. Obviously wishing him the best recovery.

I get what you’re saying but it’s pointless to do that to yourself. We have no control. And yes ideally we want to time up a blocking pattern with a Nino but there is a reason years like 2010 don’t happen that often. So take what you can get. If Baltimore gets like 17” this winter instead of 6” in a Nina without any blocking, take it! Be happy. Life’s too short. And besides maybe 1996 does happen again eventually. Hope springs eternal.

@WEATHER53 sorry I was snarky last night. I’ll try to be less hostile. I was thinking about how you criticize the spread of numerical guidance at range and how they are designed to show every possible solution. Well you’re right…in a way. They shouldn’t show EVERY solution but they should have spread to show every reasonably possible permutation. A model run isn’t a forecast. It’s a tool to help make a forecast. And we know we don’t have the ability to model the atmosphere at long leads completely correctly. Seeing all the possible permutations then using meteorological knowledge and skill to determine what is the most likely reality is more useful than if the guidance spit out one solution that was wrong most of the time. That would be pretty useless. So the spread is useful since we know the simulation won’t be perfect. That’s where we have to step in and figure out what’s the most likely outcome.

Fixed

I would love for the two waves before and during Xmas to work but their long shots. But the guidance is turning that Xmas wave into a monster 50/50 and preserving the west based block. If that’s accurate look for the period after that for a legit threat. Any legit wave would have a good chance.

It wasn’t AWFUL but 15.6” total (considering bwi climo was ~ 22” during that period) with that pattern would have been a let down. It was also worse up here. Low 20s I think which is a bottom 10% snowfall winter here. Cold/dry if my memory of the records is right. Just crazy that 2000 was better wrt snowfall when the pattern was absolutely sheet 90% of that winter.

I’m pretty inclusive Sounds like gerrymandering

Lol. I gave people nightmares a few years ago a few days before a big threat by posting a ton of h5 maps and half were hecs storms and half epic fails and you can’t tell the difference. Unfortunately it’s way easier for a good pattern to fail than a bad one to work. And that’s why our climo is what it is. ps @WxWatcher007still owes me for that one.

Naw thats some BULL because I remember he was calling for some epic cold/snowy winter (his status quo defacto forecast) and this... looks pretty bad on the whole. What I have said is we had a favorable enough look for about 3-4 weeks that 2002 shouldn't have been THAT bad. It wasn't going to be a good winter but we should have gotten 1-2 decent snows and it would have just been a more typically blah year like so many others we forget about...not the dreg year it was wrt snowfall.

This is why I talk about luck so much.... this winter... was snowier than this winter...

IMO the key is for the pac ridge to stay poleward. We do need NAO blocking to get much snow in a nina. But if we really want to stack the deck we need the pac ridge to stay north and not become a flat mid latitude one like the last few years. So long as the pac ridge stays encroaching into the EPO domain we don't need the NAO to be some raging beast like last year. In mid winter a -EPO-NAO is a pretty cold pattern here. Whatever the models might show now...that cold in western canada will press southeast under the blocking. If we fail its more likely to be dry than warm imo. We did manage to mostly fail in 2011 with that look...but we were so close so many times to that being a pretty good year. 1979 is an example of a -epo-nao working really well. That was a enso neutral year though. 2013 and 2009 look similar in the means but the atlantic and pacific never worked in tandem. As the atlantic improved the pacific ridge would shift south. If we can get both the pacific ridge to stay poleward AND the nao to go negative at the same time I like our chances.

Where did ya move to @North Balti Zen?

I don't waste a lot of time digging deep into synoptic details of storms past day 5 but one thing I have noticed is that the runs that have a better storm eject the northern stream system further south out west. The runs that eject that feature further north end up without much of a storm at all. It seems the STJ isn't capable of getting it done alone, and this would be typical so believable in a nina. We're probably going to need the NS to phase in and at a far enough south latitude for this to work. As for a "trend" that feature seems to be bouncing all over run to run on the guidance. But the preponderance of evidence is north/no good. But there is a large enough minority clustering of guidance with a further south NS feature not to completely write it off yet. But its more complicated than just "north or south" trend since there are two features here and we actually need a south trend with one of them in order to get a north trend with the other.

It's not actually a linear thing like those charts imply. There are conflicting areas of convection that are both calculated into mapping those charts...as the one near the MC dies out the wave in the Pacific takes over as the dominant factor in mapping those charts and so you suddenly see the wave move towards phase 8.

Last year was really odd. I’ve never seen that good an Atlantic combined with that atrocious a pac. I’ve said before there are two types of Nina’s. Ones with a flat pac ridge and ones with a more poleward ridge. The ones with a flat ridge typically are warm and ugly wrt snow. if you imagine the flow in the map above its straight across the pac and enhanced by gradient between the flat ridge and the vortex to its north in the wpo and epo domains. That’s as ugly a pac as possible. What's odd is those Nina’s typically don’t feature much blocking. That kind of pac isn’t very conducive to a -NAO. Usually that kind of enhances zonal flow in the pac will destructively interfere with attempts at blocking. But we got some of the best blocking of the last decade. A very odd combo. And the blocking did save us from a year like 2008 or 2012. We had way more chances and places not far NW of 95 did ok. That isn’t true in a typical flat pac ridge Niña where it’s common to see little snow until you get well into New England. But that dreadful pac prevented a good winter. This year the pac ridge isn’t flat it’s been poleward and projections continue that base state. Look at the gefs for the end of the month. The north pac is completely reversed from Last year. The ridge poleward alters the flow. Now the flow into the conus is from the arctic not off the pacific. This type of Nina also is more typically linked with blocking. The poleward ridge transports more heat into the high latitudes and disrupts the polar vortex making blocking more likely. If the pac ridge remains poleward AND we get some blocking we should get a colder outcome then last year. Dry and miller Bs are still a way we can fail in that look but lack of cold not as much. This is the setup I expected to get at least some point this winter and why I went with below avg snowfall but not way below and a more decent outcome for a Nina. But luck will have a say. We will get chances but we have to score on some.

They can’t be worse than your call. I was wrong about December also…but I don’t go around throwing stones…

2002 is probably the best example of bad luck. Not saying that year should have been good. But we had a good enough pattern for enough time that it shouldn’t have gone down that badly. 1996 is provably the best example of good luck. Yea we had some good patterns (and some bad ones) but almost every threat hit! And honestly some of the looks that created snow weren’t that amazing. Not like 2010 when the pattern really was so good that a repeat of that longwave pattern in a Nino likely would repeat those results or something close.

We should have dismissed that just on the fact there are no comps. The only thing that came remotely close to what models were spitting out in Dec 2017 was PD2 but that wasn’t as long duration, did have a more concentrated system, and was in a Nina.

People forget we wasted this for a month in O1/02 2 storms got suppressed. One phased late. One missed just northwest of us and a good overrunning setup under performed and de amplified as it got to us. But we got about as unlucky as possible from early December to Mid January. Then the bad pattern set in late January and so it was game over. One point specific to those other scenarios 2001/2 that look set in early December and broke around Jan 15. If we repeat the same pattern but start around Xmas I like our odds better. 2018 we also got unlucky with a pretty good longwave pattern for about a month. But we never got much Atlantic help. In a Nina that’s huge. The NAO is even more important in a Nina to slow down the fast NS and force it to dig and amplify under us. It’s really hard to get a significant snow here absent blocking in a Nina. So if the Atlantic cooperates some I’d like our chances more than Dec/Jan 2018 also. But when I say that I just mean our chances to get a decent storm and make this year an ok one. My bar is pretty low. But it will still come down to luck I think some don’t like when I point out “luck” because some like to try to find reason and certainty and some think I’m excusing bad forecasting. But what I’m really doing is admitting we don’t have the skill to discern the meso scale factors that will determine one locations snowfall results at any range. We can try to identify some general longwave characteristics that will increase or decrease our probabilities at longer leads. But then we need the details to break our way and since we don’t yet have the ability to account for those little discreet details we label them “luck” or chaos. I don’t know if we will ever have the ability to accurately account for every little factor at long ranges (I kind of hope not) so for now calling it luck is good enough for me.