psuhoffman

@Maestrobjwa My time is more limited these days but let me address some of your concerns. Here is the full version...skip to the bottom if you want to short summary 1) There are some troubling signs I've noted. One thing that really bothers me is seeing more and more examples where it rains with really low thicknesses during peak cold climo and favorable storm tracks. We have had a few of those instances recently. 2) It's also true we have had a lot of pac puke airmasses where boundary level temps are more likely to be problematic. So it's impossible to say exactly how much of this is one factor v another. It's also too soon to know if those 2 are related or to what degree. The prevalence of pac puke airmasses flooding the CONUS is linked to the predominant pac jet pattern recently and there is some speculation that is related to the larger scale climate changes. 3) But its impossible to say exactly to what degree is it this or that. To what degree is this a sea change v a cyclical thing. We know its getting warmer. We know our snow climo is degrading. We don't know to exactly what degree because it doesn't change linearly, the climate has both long and short term cycles. We just have to wait and see. Which brings me to this final comment...and please don't take any of this as an attack. I am in no position to do such. We all have our issues. I have ADHD and know I am slightly on the spectrum and can be obsessive and repetitive. I have my own problems. That said... your posts mostly boil down to 2 types.... A) trying to find meaningful patterns of regularity in the chaos. The problem is any string of random chaos will inadvertently produce some patterns. But without causality these patterns are random and often over time we find not indicative of any meaningful predictive value. Like I said before...if there was meaningful predictive patterns they would have been identified by now. B)comments to the effect of...but then its never going to snow (much) again. Problem with that is again...we just don't know. DC will get another big snowstorm eventually. Everything will break right. We know its getting harder. We don't have enough information yet to say to what degree. Hopefully this is a combination of climo degradation AND a bad patch that will swing back. Maybe we have seen a sea change and snow is much harder to achieve now. We can't say yet. But...pointing it out over and over isn't going to change it. We can't answer this yet...and I know you want that answer....but we just have to wait and see. Short summary version RELAX and just let the weather weather (and yea at times I need to take that advice too!!!)

It's hard to say... the pac in general hasn't looked good most of the time for a while. You're trying to drill down to a level I don't really want to spend (waste?) much time on. I don't feel comfortable weighting exactly which puke indicator is worse than that puke indicator. Does a slightly stronger bad anomaly here outweigh some ambiguous or slightly good thing over there? I don't know. Its all linked anyways so I just weigh it holistically...but I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how bad it is. Bad is bad. I don't have time to analyze exactly what level of bad.

There are some pretty smart people in this field. If there was reliable predictability to seasonal they would have found it.

He seems to spend a lot of time trying to find patterns to explain the chaos. The best we can do with seasonal is perhaps pick out some drivers that can perhaps increase the odds slightly towards certain characteristics. Besides that you have to surrender to the chaos and roll with it. Or you will go crazy Imo.

Yes but not that bad. We’ve had some ambiguity at times. A decent enough enso in 2019. At times a decent pdo sst. That projection was all wrong everywhere. But Imo the current issues with the pac aren’t being driven by local or regional sst anomalies. One problem with this. Since 1950 we’ve only had 7 moderate ninos. That’s less than 1 per decade. And they weren’t all good. 4/7 were. 1964, 1987, 2003, 2010. 1 of the other 3 was mediocre and the other 2 garbage. So…using those statistics if your theory is right DC can only get a snowy winter about 4 times in 72 years. Lol. If that’s true who gives a crap. Those are about the same odds Raleigh used to have as a snowy winter. Time to move.

That Pac sst is hot poo

I was thinking somewhere in Alaska.

Ya picked up on that

It’s definitely going to snow on December 5th. 100% chance.

Elevation elevation elevation. Once you get west of the ridge just west of Frostburg, where you increase to about 2000’+ you will do pretty good in terms of snowfall. Northern Garrett county along 68 from that ridge west of Frostburg west sees about 80” averages. But you will still notice a difference between the towns like Grantsville and the ridges. If you really want to max out once you get to deep creek and south to Thomas/Davis along 219, you will notice a significant increase is snowfall over northern Garrett. This is due to higher base plateau elevation. That plateau maxes out down near Canaan WV where the valley floor is near 3,000’ with ridges just under 5,000’. The trade off though is distance. The further away from 68 you go the more travel time you’re adding if you are coming across MD. Lastly a lot of the snow out there is actually from lake enhanced upslope and clippers. If we’re in a cold pattern they can get a foot of snow from a clipper and the ensuing upslope flow behind it. But it’s not the same as a coastal. Many coastals only clip that area and the heavy precipitation stays further east. That doesn’t mean they cannot get coastals. They sometimes do and when we do get a east coast storm that takes an inside track they can get dumped. But those aren’t storms we typically think of as coastals since their big rain storms here and those don’t account for the majority of their snow. If you really just want to increase your chances of seeing a big nor’easter snowstorm getting a place in the eastern poconos PA or near highland lakes NJ might be better. Those places don’t get as much snow overall as Garrett (about 65” avg) but they get a lot more from pure coastals and can get crushed by nor’easters. You just have to decide what you’re looking for and what’s right for you. I don’t mind giving you some advice regarding likely climo as a specific location if you PM me.

It’s simple…if the angular vector of the tropospheric velocity is in conjunction with the stratospheric vertical thickness values than the QBO is likely to synchronize with the PDO and the hemispheric energies are low because the solar flux is unstable. It snows in winter.

Thank god blueberries go dormant by winter!!!

I ate some blueberries and it gave me the sh!ts

I saw Bruce Springsteen there several years ago. I remember it took a while to get out but I didn’t think it was any worse then trying to leave a lot at an Eagles game or any other highly attended event. But I tend to be pretty patient so maybe it was bad.

It’s never that simple. There are so many brilliant minds in this field and yet long range seasonal forecasting has extremely low predictive success rates. Because there are so many moving parts and conflicting signals to factor. It’s possible we wasted our solar cycle shot last winter. That wouldn’t surprise me. But it’s also possible last winter was just the start of an overdue longer period of high latitude blocking. The winter of 2009 had some decent blocking that did us no good. So did 2011. From 2009-2013 actually featured a pretty favorable high lat much of the time but it really only paid off much in 2010. Going further back 1977-1980 featured quite a bit of blocking following a period before of relatively little help up top. And it didn’t always work out wrt snowfall for various reasons but we certainly did cash in at times during that longer window. We can only hope that last winter the trend up top flipped and we have more luck with future -AO periods. For the record the blocking in 2009 was muted by the pac in much the same way as last winter.

Unfortunately the dumb angle is always a problem.

Sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself.

The mean looks like 1.75

Been crazy busy. I’m helping manage 162 summer programs sites across Baltimore. It’s been non stop 80 hours a week since March. I have to survive 4 more weeks then I have a life again.

I missed all the fun.

The last few years the pac ridge has been dominant. Longer term that will likely continue to be more and more common given the effects of climate change. But what we don’t know is if the last few years was also a shorter term cyclical thing and there will be some reversion to the previous mean.

Imo the expansion of the Hadley Cell in the PAC which subsequently leads to the PAC ridge and tight gradient in the north Pac (in other words the pac puke jet effect) is the dominant winter pattern driver v enso. What’s depressing is we got the best possible high lat pattern to try to offset that last year and it really didn’t do much good south of 40 unless you had elevation.

They have a pill for that.

I just hope there is no dysfunction in my message and he considers all possible replies so as to avoid being premature.

I’m trying to erect a plethora of desirable response options. Just want to make sure there is enough meat on the bone for him to pick at.