psuhoffman

Is it...the blues out west look pretty close to this... Remember blocking changes what works out west. Without blocking that wouldn’t work. With blocking you want that trough off the west coast to kick everything along and promote enough ridging over the CONUS to prevent suppression. If we had what we think of as a ideal pac with great blocking everything would get squashed. That’s a cold dry look. On the plot you posted I don’t see a disaster. The WPO vortex backed off enough to allow some epo ridging. The system south of AK is far enough south not to flood pac puke across. It’s part of the flow not detached. I’d like a little more pna but it’s not bad. If we have blocking. Look at my response above. I think some are looking for the “ideal” pac but what is ideal changes based on other factors. It’s a balance. What’s on one side changes what we want on the other. A full latitude EPO/PNA ridge at the same time as a -AO/NAO is really rare. First of all you almost need the tpv to either drop into the US or completely vacate our side to get that. And when we have gotten that mid winter it’s tended to be a cold dry look. Think Jan 1977. Imo the snow mean hasn’t responded yet because after the New Years storm it’s dry. And that’s to be expected with that blocking look. The New Years period is the HA storm on the front end as the blocking goes up. The wave break from those 2 systems help get the block into our canonical location. Once there though waves will likely slow down over the CONUS...blocking. We would then need the blocking to start to relax some. Or...the Feb 2010 option when a really strong stj wave attacked the blocking aided by a trough off the west to promote enough ridging (and the wave was strong enough not to shear out) to get that moisture to attack the block. But waves will likely be less frequent after the blocking establishment

Day 10 That’s a lot of red in the right places

One last observation. The runs that show snow around New Years do so by splitting the energy out west. There are multiple SWs crashing in next week. Runs that keep them separated and bring them out in pieces are further south. If they consolidate into one amplified trough out west the storm cuts.

Trough is way too amplified too far west. Pumps ridging ahead. No confluence. Cutter. But a whole lot of higher heights up top by day 10. I know patience is difficult but after the AO/NAO bottoms out and starts to relax is our favored time.

Those are the big 5 storms

@Ji Just sayin maybe we should let this play out. The blocking is just establishing itself next week. With each wave break it retrogrades more into a canonical blocking regime. Both the TPV and SPV look to get obliterated soon. We typically score after the blocking peaks not before.

Not hating the mean precip distribution during that same period either

Finally starting to see the temp anomalies we need showing up.

Seen worse

Would it have been iconic?

Fixed

That was always BS. We are still suffering from that fall pattern though. Left us void of a domestic cold air source. Sometimes in that situation blocking takes a while to pay off. Seriously go back end look at the January 2016 thread. We had good blocking for a while before that storm and I remember this exact same conversation. My guess is if the PV gets obliterated and we get a -AO for a significant portion of winter we will do ok. Maybe better then ok. Probably not good enough to make you happy though.

Hard to tell it all gets mixed with timing issues between the waves. Track for the period after looks good but it’s all rainy solutions on the eps. Disappointing

There are definitely 2 camps in the Eps. Cutter and more southern track.

Yea something it’s trended towards today...there are 2 systems in close proximity crashing into the west next week. Earlier runs had a bit more space and the initial wave ejected. The 2nd dug in the SW and was eventually a threat around Jan 3-5. This run (and EPS supports) there isn’t much space and the lead wave washes out and most of the energy gets absorbed into the second which amplified the trough way too much to our west. EPS has a good look around day 11-13 fWIW

The pac isn’t a dumpster fire that wave is just too amplified too early. The look day 10 is good.

Ji isn’t totally wrong. The analogs to that look aren’t that bad. Lots of snow outcomes. That kind of blocking historically would overcome a bad pac most of the time. He might be on to a sobering reality that in a warmer regime now it no longer can. I’m not jumping there yet. One run. Last run snowed on us. I’ll see how this plays out. But there are a lot of runs that torch us right through a crazy block period. If that ends up reality I would be a little disheartened...not just by the short term disappointment but the long term implications. to be clear i don’t mean if we just get unlucky and a phase happens too late or a storm gets suppressed. But if we get a -3stdv AO and a west based block and everything cuts...I don’t care what the pac looks like history suggests that line of look can overcome the pac. If we need both the pac and atl to be perfect to get snow...well we won’t see it very often!

Yea this run it dumps way too much energy into the west.

With the pac not ideal we still need spacing. The wave slows and amplified too early allowing too much spacing between it and the miller b that becomes the 50/50. Look up top is good. Other things are the problem there. We need that system to eject and be less amplified out west to work.

Cutter

CMC never gets it here. For the second run it gets to TX then loops for 4 days blocked from moving east at all. From what I’ve seen the ensembles are all over and don’t key on anything. A lot of shred factory dry members. Some miller b screw jobs. A few big hits sprinkled in. Some misses to the south. Shotgun spread so no signal.

I guess those were ok storms

Maybe I’m wrong but I never thought it was established enough yet for that first wave after Xmas. Its the waves after that that interest me.

Good gfs run. It’s catching on.