psuhoffman

I said Feb 20 as my target a while ago... you all keep jumping on "threats" before that

OK today has kind of sucked WRT guidance so far so I will try to post something optimistic... I could see how we end up with a big storm from this progression after day 10. The system cutting through the lakes is going to get stuck under the block in the 50/50 space...that energy coming through California swings east under the block and... maybe

But haven't we done this dance enough times lately? There was a 50/50 (but not blocked in) with a better high this time, so the steady progression of the boundary NW has been slower and more subtle, but its the same exact trend as EVERY storm during that period after the January 12th Storm. This time we had better conditions to our northeast but a worse trough axis to our west and so its going to offset probably. But for the last several weeks we have not had a favorable trough axis and not enough blocking that would be needed to offset that problem.

I am not going to react much to one GEFS run. But some of the changes happen early on. Yesterday there was a serious move towards some hard core blocking around day 9/10. That is just gone all of a sudden on the GEFS. That isn't day 15. Let's see what the EPS has to say soon. If the EPS abandons the blocking again then I might be more inclined to worry.

@Bob Chill I didn't like the mslp and h5 look on the 12z GEFS but the snow mean looked good so I decided to look into just how bad the algorithm is screwing it up. I really bad. E9 for instance gives me 6" of snow day 11 from a storm that cuts to Chicago and the precip type algorithm says I get maybe a few hours of ice then rain... There are others. In reality the GEFS has almost unanimous support of the op with cutter after cutter after cutter through day 15. Yet somehow it "sees" snow on that mean map. In some cases its not even ice...its 34 degree rain and gets counted as snow. Its seriously off and those maps are completely useless. We knew that already but its worse than I thought.

no wonder no one mentioned the GEFS...took a step back. Still decent but after a really great 6z it stepped back quite a bit.

That is highly variable. For my location I have always had at least 1, but I have had a couple years with only 1. The most I have had in a single season is 7 I believe.

All i see is cutters thru 384 Pretty uninspiring 12zGEFS run. Totally lost the blocking in the long range. Does press the boundary south some and get us cold day 12 on but do we have any optimism the boundary would hold south of us when a wave approaches with a -PNA and no blocking? But its just one run, the GEFS is jumpy, 6z was a great run. I guess I will wait. Looked at the MSLP and Convection in the PAC and both still indicate severely -SOI and MJO phase 1 towards the end so not sure why it degraded the pattern. This will go down as one of the worst epic fails ever for my specific location if we finally get the MJO and SOI to cooperate and somehow don't get the typical positive response after they muted our nino pattern all winter long.

Oh not saying I think the GFS is right either. Let's see what Dr. No has to say soon. That will go a long way to influencing my opinion of the 12z run.

lol yep...kept trying to give me 10" of snow all week leading up to that rainstorm... even until like 48 hours out then it finally shifted way north.

It's been sticking to its guns while the other guidance jumps back and forth between that idea and the stronger cutter solution. Doesn't make it right, it could be consistently wrong.

Can you get them to turn all their fans to face the NW and blow that ridge up into the NAO space for us?

I considered the less then ideal PDO in the fall as well...but 2 things threw me for a loop. There is a bit of a conflicting signal there, with the warm pool near the PAC NW coast and some "cooler" waters to the west...but yea that warm pool east of Japan was no good. But I wasn't sure how hostile it would be. A lot of predictions thought the PDO might end up weakly positive. The other was the fact there were 2 -PDO winters in the analogs and they were near the top, and both were epic. 1964 and 1966. In hindsight the -NAO of that decade probably makes using those years as analogs a mistake. You are right that if we throw out the 1950s and 1960's that since 1970 EVERY nino that was good had a positive PDO. OOPS...live and learn.

Reporter: Yoda, you've just won the first 2 billion dollar powerball in history, how do you feel? Yoda: Decent

About a week ago I said Feb 20 on based on the timing of the progression in the Pacific. I tried NOT to crap on the period before that as the guidance looked "hopeful" and some were excited but I never jumped in because frankly I have seen this same pattern fail so many freaking times before I just can't bring myself to try to kick that same football again. Sometimes they do work, it's not the worst shutout pattern there is, flukes can happen...but I was never that excited UNTIL... we get some stable blocking and the boundary shifts south more. The trough axis is just way too far west right now without blocking to have a good chance. I really really really hope I am wrong and next week trends into a snowy winter wonderland. I am still optimistic after. I have seen nothing on the pattern drivers this time to indicate the train is coming off the rails like I did back in Mid January yet. I am not going to get too caught up in run to run variance in the long range guidance, until I see a sign the MJO/SOI is going to fail I am leaning on that and sticking too it.

Daily SOI already down to -10 today...the drop should continue and become extreme after day 3.

I can only take so much of the tin foil hat crap

Don't worry the euro will...oh wait it said the exact same thing last night! I think we need to wait for the response to the coming SOI/MJO phase changes to get some more stable permanent blocking and thus shift the trough axis and press the boundary south. That is why I have never really become excited about next week. I still have hope I am wrong. Not throwing in the towel on anything yet... Maybe this whole "guidance isnt seeing the CAD" thing is right. But I have seen this pattern over and over and over again look good at range and shift NW when it gets into game time. In most of the -EPO-PNA gradient patterns that worked either the EPO was centered much further east in western Canada, OR there was a displaced TPV to our north suppressing the boundary south. We have neither of those and this falls into the category of "usually teases and then fails us". I have no idea why the guidance likes to press the cold boundary too much in the long ranges in this type of pattern...but they do, and they do it again and again and again. I am not sticking my head in that door to have it slammed in my face again!

That storm is a cutter on ALL other guidance right now so did we really have any actual expectations pinned on that? The GFS just had one run with a hiccup like that one Euro run a couple days ago. I guess the fact they both had the same hiccup means that idea of the h5 cutting under is there as a possible solutions if the 50/50 goes ape but the fact it's only shown up on those 2 op runs out of the last dozen or so across all guidance, with almost no ensemble support...means its an extremely low probability with a cutter by far the most likely solution.

This is seriously insulting to the people that work on NWP. Each run of each model uses their best mathematical ability to model the atmosphere. The results out in time are wrong because we have not yet fully completed all the equations that govern the atmosphere and our ability to measure all of the variables that go into it are incomplete. But they are doing a darn good job compared to 10 and 20 years ago, AND a hell of a lot better then if we still had to rely on current conditions and extrapolation. Good luck with that beyond 24-48 hours lol. You're insistence that there is some nefarious motive among the entire weather community across various nations and agencies both private and public is both ridiculous and insulting!

The MJO and the SOI are linked. So there is causality that the MJO going so strongly into phases 4-6 prevented the SOI from dropping which prevented a typical nino atmospheric pattern. But I am not sure what the cause of the hyper destructive MJO wave was. JB seems to think the warm pool you mention had a role in that. I don't know. Something obviously favored forcing around the Maritime Continent this year and that is NOT typical of a nino and ran interference all winter up until now. Maybe we will find a cause, or maybe its just weather being weather.

One last thing... I also agree with Bob that the PDO region ended up being more of a problem than anticipated.

After my morning scan of all the guidance... the MJO/SOI is still on target. No sign of degradation in those signals. SOI tanking begins in 2-3 days and really becomes extreme by day 5/6. The next MJO wave looks to be initiating now and begins to gain amplitude into 7/8 in the next few days and all guidance reaches high amplitude in either 8 or 1 in the long range, which would fit the seasonal trend of high amplitude slow progressing MJO waves. I loved the 6z GEFS and the EPS was darn near perfect...just needed that SE ridge slightly more suppressed and it would be ideal, and it is trending that way imo. My one and only concern is that the favorable period might be muted somewhat by "other" influences. I do not think the SE ridge is solely a product of the Pac and so the PAC forcing can try to overcome it but there is a chance we waste a bit on the front side of a 2-3 week favorable window "getting" that ridge beaten down. As far as March... I think if this pattern progression is real this time, and I think it is, we would have a favorable pattern into at least the first week of March. I would bet the second as well...with a breakdown probably happening sometime between March 10-20th. But that is about when we run out of climo road anyways so who cares. How often do we get a longer pattern than 3 weeks to lock in anyways... even if our best winters USUALLY the best patterns come in 15-20 day chunks and then a relax or reload period. We don't have time for that so this next pattern progression is it. I totally agree the nino has not been the pattern influence we hoped or needed. But I think some are also overdoing this "collapse" as well. It's there, at least from an SST perspective. It was never supposed to be a strong nino. It was always weak to low end moderate at the high end potential. The ONI got to .9 which was in line with all the analogs I identified pre season. (slightly higher then some, slightly lower then others...but my top analogs were all in the range of .7 to 1.1 ONI) The failure of the nino to couple with the atmosphere to create the needed pattern influences might be due to other factors. But I think it's important to note the SST because "IF" we get a -soi period with an mjo phase more typical of a nino we could see the more classic nino pattern emerge for a time here late. BTW...I know you know this stuff but so others can follow... Look at the seasonal SST for the last 90 days certainly looks like the modoki nino analogs I looked at pre season. Current SST After a brief period where it became basin wide it has retreated into a more classical modoki look, as is typical of a modoki, they initiate in the central Pac and propagate east and then retreat west late in the season. Obviously it pulses week to week but overall the SST wasn't off, the atmosphere was, and that is important IF we get the typical mjo/soi response the last 30 days of the winter season for what our expectations should be. But look at some of the analogs that were being thrown around pre-season. Keep in mind these scales are not the same. The yellow starts at anyting above 0C anomaly on these and the charts above start at +.5C so if you normalize for that difference the similarities in the enso SST are pretty close with these most recent 3 top analogs. 2003 2005 2015 The best match from purely the ENSO SST is probably 2005 followed by 2015 and 2003 but none are crazy wrong. Even 2005, which most remember as the worst of the lot, once the nino coupled we had a run with 3 SECS level events and several other minor events mixed in from Late January into Early March. The pattern was slightly less ideal then some of the other years but I also still think 2005 could have ended better with some luck... a slightly further south transfer with the January storm and its a MECS instead of SECS. Slightly more amplification with either of the 2 late season perfect track storms and one could have been a MECS instead of a SECS. Get just one of those three 4-8" storms to be a 10-12" type storm and suddenly that was a good year instead of mediocre. But I digress So I think from an SST POV things did happen as expected, it just didn't have the impact we expected. That happens sometimes, we really want a moderate...weak nino's can be very good...but they can also have the issues we are seeing this year with a failure to couple. I guess I didn't give that enough weight going in, at first I was kind of hesitant about that, but once I started to see all the long range guidance go right to the good weak nino analog look I figured it wouldn't be a problem. In reality the guidance was simply weighting the enso SST too much and missing the MJO. If the nino was stronger it would be able to influence the pattern through the noise of the other influences like the QBO SSWE and MJO. But it obviously wasn't strong enough to do that, and there were other more dominant destructive pattern forces at work this year, like the MJO. All that is a long winded way of saying, the enso is where it was supposed to be, and so if we get those other forces that have been destructive to become favorable...the "nino" could kick in or enhance those other factors once they become positive instead of negative. We will see.

It’s jumpy but guidance overall has been correcting towards expected outcomes given the mjo/soi in the long range.

@C.A.P.E.@frd basically there are two ways to edit this rut were in into a good pattern. 1. Shift the epo east (a lot) or severely displace a tpv to our north to suppress the ridge in the east. Unlikely. 2. Get the NAO blocking to finally go nuts and force the pac energy to cut under. In that scenario we might be better off losing the west based epo altogether so it stops dumping troughs into the Rockies, which is what guidance suggests in the long range.