psuhoffman

Lol Jackson is only about 6000 feet. Good lord if someone gets elevation sickness from that I can’t imagine if they went to Breck or A Basin. Lol.

Lol with some luck 2018 could have been a good year. Every so often you can get a good Nina but that might have been the year and we just got screwed. Most places around us had above normal snow that year. Frankly in the last 40 years our odds of a big year in anything other than a moderate nino are very low. It used to be a neutral was a pretty good enso state also but lately they mostly end up crap too.

Winters like these happen once a decade where everyone outside the northern mountains get screwed.

Unfavorable pac forcing combined with a strong PV. Years where there was a significant pattern flip from warm to cold during winter 1958,1960,1966,1972,1987,1993,1999,2000,2005,2007,2014,2016,2018. There are plenty of flips from cold to warm also. But by New Years the combo of a strong phase 5/6 mjo wave in conjunction with a strong PV coupling with the tpv hinted that this year was at risk to be a total dud. That combo is the leading cause of our total wasted years. This result isn’t a big surprise.

Thanks. JH makes it hard to to get good shots. Gorgeous scenery. Epic terrain. Very nice authentic town also. Probably my favorite US destination. Revelstoke in BC is awesome too but getting there is a mission.

It was a VERY expensive weekend

Video from my Jackson Hole trip https://gopro.com/v/wEZbW9b3ENrOP

I doubt anyone actually expects it to snow

Read my post above. My comment was about the pattern and nothing to do with what I want, whether that winter was good/bad, or snowfall totals. Snowfall is very fluky and can be a bad way to determine pattern similarities alone.

I didn't say it was a good winter...but the pattern ended up a hybrid between the cold/snowy west based nino analogs and the warmer more east based super ninos. It certainly was warmer and less snowy than the analogs like 58, 03, 10 but it did feature more "chances" at snow in the mid atlantic with cold periods than 1998. All of them other than the one big HECS missed NYC but that details while very important to ground truth doesn't mean a lot wrt to the larger scale pattern. There was a weak wave that missed NYC to the south right before the HECS. There were small accumulations in VA and MD from that. Another wave right after got suppressed and failed to amplify and no one got anything. I got 8" here in MD from a storm on Feb 9-10th that stayed south of NYC. Then there was a 4-8" snowstorm in VA and southern MD that missed to the south of NYC a week later and then an ice storm right after that. Then there were 2 threats in March, one the first week and then one around the 19th that put down some snow to the south of NYC and were threats to be a bigger storm but failed to phase and amplify. There were several periods of cold/snow threats that winter...mid January, another mid February, and then 2 cold snaps in March with threats. In between there were full on torch periods that skewed the mean temps very warm. But that was different from 1998 when there were very few periods where it was cold enough for a snow threat. NYC got screwed over and most of the other threats failed to phase or amplify and stayed south of NYC but there were snow threats. IN the end it was probably way closer to 98 or 83 than 2010 but it did feature more cold periods and snow threats in the mid atlantic than those years.

Any hope of that factor changing left the building a while ago. At this point whatever minimal chances at snow remain hinge on getting a lucky wave track from short wavelength induces chaos.

In fairness 2016 ended up somewhat in between. After the December into early Jan torch the rest of winter there was significantly more cold available than in 98. There were numerous additional snow opportunities with cold around after the HECS in Feb and March but they failed to come together. There were several perfect wave passes where the system just failed to amplify. 98 simply lacked any cold wall to wall. 2016 has some characteristics of both and with some more luck could have been even snowier in the mid Atlantic.

Thank you. 2 thoughts wrt what you noticed (I noted it also). First it's hard to draw conclusions about that because what those numbers don't show is the frequency of those patterns. If a pattern is more rare it might be the best pattern but have less instances of snow simply because there were less opportunities compared to a more common but less productive pattern. That said, I do think there is also a bit of "too much of a good thing" going on with a -EPO/+PNA full latitude ridge. In a vacuum a -EPO/+PNA/-AO/-NAO are the best phases of each of the 4 major indexes. But when in combination it's not always that simple. When we have a really strong -NAO for instance, some of our biggest snowstorms happened with an unfavorable PNA/EPO combo, but in reality that "unfavorable" pattern out west trying to force ridging into the cold locked into the northeast is what created the big storm. Without that we would have been cold/dry with a weak wave running off the southeast coast. Time of year also matters...we typically need the epo/pna more early in the season and the nao more late. Without any NAO help...by far our best look is that east based EPO ridge nosing over the top creating a broad flat trough under it across the lower 48. The NAO changes the equation. The more blocking (especially later in winter) the less we need EPO/PNA help. Enough blocking later in the season and we actually dont want a big wester ridge. So there really is no one perfect look that is universal across the whole winter season. That study I did was just step one is a larger plan. Right now I have no time for anything. My less frequent posting lately is not just because the weather sucks... its more that this is a busy time of year for me. December/January I have a lot of free time. Between Holidays, end of semester and PD breaks there, and testing I have a solid 2 months with not much going on other than my normal teaching duties and even those...I only have a normal class to plan for or stuff to grade about half the time. Right now is one of the times of year I am slammed with observations, curriculum planning meetings, summer school planning, bridge project scoring, Test prep planning, debate events... I just don't have time. But I have way more in the plans. I just found out I might be getting a rather significant increase in my responsibilities wrt to my summer position so I may not get to all of this but I should still have more time to at least start this list. In addition to what I did in December, I want to do a similar study for our area. Then I also want to look month by month and break down the dominant patterns from 1950 on to see the frequency of each pattern. I also want to break down those splits by month to confirm which patterns work best by each month. Once done I would be able to determine what the odds of snowfall in any given pattern are (roughly) by month. That would make what I posted here a lot more useful. But that will take a lot of time I don't have right now. If I don't get it finished this summer I probably will next December during my next "down time" period.

Fluffy Flakes sounds like a delicious breakfast cereal

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.

That happens sometimes in our total crap fail years... years with a base state bad for snow isn't that unusual...but even within those years to get a total absolute fail takes some bad luck, and often areas all around will have at least some snow. Even in the absolute worst years it is still winter and there will be some fluke opportunities, a trailing wave on a front, a transient PNA ridge. To get a total fail you have to have a bad pattern...but then also get unlucky and miss on the few fluke opportunities that do come along.

We have fail threads now!!!!

I doubt 53 would run a fake name. He is up front with his stuff. I can respect that. He only changed back from Tenman with permission. Mersky on the other hand I am 99% sure is a past member with some axe to grind.

This is perspective and not right/wrong. I don’t consider 40s that cold. Of course I was just skiing with a temperature of -10 and honestly that didn’t feel that bad when the sun was out so I might be a bit if a freak. I’ll admit that. But my bigger point was even the marginally “chilly” periods you can get in April are not going to last. 2018 had 2 cold shots but both were in and out in 3 days with 60s-70s bookending both 3 day periods. 2007 had one true cold snap (about as cold as it can get in April) but it was only 5 days and bookended with 50s/60s. So even in a worst case scenario coldest April possible we will still end up with more 60+ days than below 50 days and it won’t even be close. Cold just can’t hold that late. So yes we could suffer a 3-5 day “chilly” period if we get a monster -NAO but a few days in the 40s in a month dominated by 60s overall is not going to really bother me at all. But that’s just me. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this. Rainy days are the exception btw. A rainy day can be miserable in April but does it really matter if it’s 48 and raining or 58 and raining? Either way I’m not spending much time outside. But again that’s just my opinion.

I like arguing with him but for the sanity of the board I’ll stop.

Yea by far the greatest chance of seeing snow fall in our area is around Davis WV. They have by far the highest mean snowfall plus a LOT of it comes from small upslope events.

I would LOVE to live somewhere out west for the lifestyle...but I would likely miss the chase of the big coastal storms. Snow in the intermountain west is different, mostly dependent on the wind trajectory and upslope. Radar is mostly useless. You don't really get to "track" the big wound up storms the same way. For me the perfect compromise of both getting those big east coast bomb type storms plus more consistent snow and the mountain lifestyle would probably be somewhere like New Hampshire.