psuhoffman

Models are getting better at this

And there it is

I’ve never been more sure of anything. The one thing we are great at is epic fail.

No we will get 2-3 teases where it is cold enough but storms track just to our west as the pattern transitions. Then exactly when it’s simply too late to work we will get the totally perfect coastal bomb that would have been 50” if it was one week sooner but will just be rain mixed with just enough slush bombs to make it hurt more.

Hints of the tpv breaking down at the end of the gfs. Just in time for our 37 degree epic perfect track phased bomb rainstorm

So the obvious issues of the pac and AO have been covered...but there are transient troughs making it into the east now due to shortening wavelengths and that’s our “fluke chance”. But another issue muting those odds is that the next 2 troughs (on guidance at least) amplify and stall to our north and do not progress east. It’s much harder to get a follow up system to amplify under a system than behind it. It’s not leaving enough space. Then when the trough lifts it does so quickly and to the north instead of a progressing east which also limits the chance of a WAA wave on the tail of any cold shot. That progression is the fabled warm wet cold dry we love so much.

Yea I nailed that the sun would come up this morning...everything else is details. I’m being a smart ass of course and you’re right but in my experience the cfs gets the whole picture correct so infrequently, and is so god awful with major pattern drivers like the mjo, that it’s useless.

The only time I even look at the CFS is when it came up in discussion. It’s useless. But simply using the AO isn’t going to work past a week since the current AO doesn’t have much predictability past a few days. It can flip quickly sometimes. Now certain patterns that create stable feedback loops like the current pac/AO combo can suggest persistence. But simply using the AO value to predict the next week/month is risky.

If it can happen by mid march we can still score but there is nothing suggesting this It’s going to happen a day too late. You know it.

We are getting an easy snow storm around March 20th What’s going to happen is late March the PV breaks down and blocking sets up but because it’s late March and the mid latitudes are torched by the antecedent pattern we will get a perfect track slow moving coastal 960 bomb that stalls just east of OC and dumps 3” of rain at 37 degrees and mixes with slush bombs at times just to tease us even more.

There is a correlation between tropical forcing, glamm, gwo and the high latitudes. So my guess is they correctly saw those hostile base states. Even ignoring the angular momentum stuff had you shown me the plot of what the mjo was going to do from Xmas to March back in the fall I would have predicted a dumpster fire then instead of waiting until late December to realize we were fooked.

That would help but there is a strong correlation between the unfavorable RNA pac pattern and a +AO so I think there is some connection beteeen the 2. There are some examples of a -AO with this pac but it’s very rare and most of those examples were during the extreme blocking regime that dominated between 1956-1972. Outside that period almost every example of this pac pattern featured a very +AO also.

Not to this level. There are some examples of weakly +AO regimes with a -NAO but it’s nearly impossible to get a -NAO with this strong a PV/AO for the same reason you can’t get a favorable epo in this regime. The tightening strengthened flow around such a strong PV won’t allow ridging to survive long if at all in the NAO or epo domains. The strong flow around the PV will obliterate attempts to ridge there. But also the fact that strong ridging in the NAO domain would likely knock down the AO value some.

Very true...also this level of +AO (record setting) is impossible to overcome on a larger seasonal scale (other than a fluke event) because to get this strong a AO it’s very unlikely we get the epo ridge needed. A strong east based epo ridge naturally reduces the AO value some because it enchroaches in that domain some. Plus this strong a PV will strengthen the zonal winds around it blunting attempts at any ridging either in the epo or NAO domain. So while we can sometimes overcome a +AO in a year like 2015 with a monster epo it’s probably not possible to overcome this level of consistently 3+ stdv AO.

Good. Obviously the rest of us were put on this earth just to make you feel better...so that’s all that matters.

The whining and complaining is one thing but acting like a jerk is uncalled for. You learn a lot about people from how they behave when things aren’t going their way.

Do you feel better now?

Op was a super tease. Finding ways to miss despite a pretty nice pattern. Op gfs really develops a -epo. I’ll believe that when it actually happens.

When you can't even easily decide what the best way to fix that would be (progression or retrogression) you know how bad it is.

I mean I guess it's all perspective....if we make a map where the only criteria is "saw measurable snow/didn't see measurable snow" we were all winners!

Some of those were not good analogs to this year though... they were crap but for different reasons. I agree that there is not predictability but if we are looking at what happened in the past when "THIS" happened before, looking at radically different winters that just happened to produce no snow but for very different reasons isn't really useful imo.

Honestly I don't think there is any predictability here... but simply odds favor crap because odds favor a crap winter 70% of the time ANY year. Only 30% of our winters are avg to above avg snowfall... Also there are lots of moving parts to these analogs. For instance...2009 isn't a great analog with the AO but it was a perfect match in the pacific. Possibly the low solar prevented what should have been a raging positive AO with that pac pattern...or maybe it was something else...who knows... either way 2009 wasnt really good (except compared to this year) but it was followed by 2010. If we add that as an analog then suddenly we have 2 recent examples of a crap pacific like this leading to a historic snowfall winter next year. But then we are manipulating the data a little to include 2009...or are we? What is more important the high latitude pattern or the pacific? I dont know. But you can probably splice this up however you want to show whatever you want. In the end I don't think one year can predict the next.

I am not going to run the numbers right now...I am busy at work, but don't tell Mersky. However...I know off the top of my head that most of the really god awful years that I found in that analog set to this years pattern I put together back around New Years were followed by not so great years the following year. One that sticks out that was followed by a great year was 2002 but we had a perfect enso the following year...so I guess if we get a moderate central/west based nino then yea we could have a great year next year...but other then that most of the rest were followed by some variation of crap to mediocre at best. However...most of our winters are crap to mediocre so that isn't really indicative of predictability other than normal odds. But most were at least somewhat better, but again that isn't saying much since its really hard to get years with this little snow so even a repeat of a similar crap pattern is likely to produce at least a little better results. In summary...off the top of my head from the numbers I remember from my analogs that turned out to be correct for this year.... odds favor another pretty crappy year next year purely from a "what happened after similar years in the past".

Don't ask questions you don't want the answer too

@C.A.P.E. I might actually check out the JB video today just to laugh at whatever ridiculous tact he tries to spin guidance to support the cold/snowy March forecast he has been humping hard the last week. I mean after he completely bombed on Dec/Jan/Feb I would think he will be full tilt trying to save whatever cred he has left with his latest ridiculous forecast in the face of absolutely no guidance support. Might be entertaining...