psuhoffman

@frd One last point before I go. Not sure I agree wrt the north Pac SST. When we were in a VM look I researched similar years where the warm pool was south of Alaska not tucked into the coast like a typical PDO look and I found that it still tended to set up a favorable epo ridge. The little bit of cool water along the coast isn’t enough to seriously impact the pattern. But since then the north pac sst has evolved into a more canonical pdo look. It’s a weak pdo look for sure but not hostile at all we are having serious pattern issues wrt the central pac ridge mostly due imo to mjo forcing centered west of where we want. Mostly west of not along and east of the dateline. But the problem is not north pac SST related imo.

The tropical pacific (being the largest body of warm water combined with being upstream from us) is a major driver. Seeing such an anomalous ridge there also is a clue it’s a cause not an effect. Well in reality the ridge there is an effect of other things like convective waves but it’s a primary effect not secondary. And a ridge there has consequences downstream. Think of the atmospheric like waves. A ridge there , given normal wavelengths, pumps a ridge in the east. it’s the exact opposite of what we want... I hope I explained that well enough.

The guidance misses good patterns from day 15 too. And in years where we recycle good looks they cry wolf on warm ups too. (See 2013-14). But the issue is we spend way more time in a crap pattern (wrt snow) than good. Truth is snow is an aberration not the normal here. If you add up all the typical pattern looks the majority aren’t snowy here. We get a lot of our snow from rare anomalous periods when we hit the jackpot. If you take away the rare periods where we get one of two anomalously rare patterns (an east based EPO/AO combo ridge or a west based NAO block) our average snowfall would be like 5” a year. So they are naturally going to cry wolf on a good look more often due to more opportunities.

Daily https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/composites/day/ monthly https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/composites/printpage.pl

I’m going to take my own advice and take a break for a while and hopefully things look better in a couple days. No reason to bring everyone down.

It’s a cold shot, but it’s a crap pattern for snow. Look at the central PAC from 150 hours on and animate the EPS and GEFS. Notice the most anomalous feature in the whole NHEM is the stationary ridge north of Hawaii. So long as that’s there our snow chances are Fooked. We would be needing some serious string of lucky convolutedness to overcome that. Flukes happen but having to rely on them is not where I want to be. Any run of any guidance that has that is a bad run imo. I don’t care what else it might show.

Yea it’s heading in the right directing but then reverts to that...there obviously will be periods of fluctuations but if that is the main base state we’re in some pretty big trouble barring phenomenal luck. We are still 1-2 weeks from me conceding that but in years that had a dramatic flip like 2005 and 2015 there were precursor signs in advance. If we get to mid January and it still looks like that (or anything close to that) out as far as we can see...it might be time to admit this year is very likely going to seriously suck. I’ve kept the thought to myself but everyone acts like we’re due for a lot of snow, but climo wise we’re actually way more due for a 2002, 2008, 2012 type region wide dumpster fire epic fail year. Not saying I’m there yet. I still think there are enough positive signals to think we lock into a total crap pattern all winter. I’m really curious to see the new QBO numbers next week. If that stalled or reversed I might be more pessimistic. My guess is still this is temporary. It’s probably going to last way longer than we want, but not all winter. But man if we were going to have a total fail year it would look like that EPS run...

No kid gloves needed with me.

@frd only issue I have is the “Nina” thing. We have most definitely not been in a typical Nina pattern. December H5 for Nina’s in the last 25 years This December The coming pattern does resemble a Jan Nina profile a bit more, at least wrt the central pac ridge, but it still has some massive differences in other places such as the WPO and STJ departments. It’s a weird hybrid pattern. It’s a crap look. It’s actually way worse than a typical Nina look honestly. Lol Perhaps Tom was only referring to the similarities wrt the central pac ridge and didn’t want to explain all that.

That is exactly the opposite of what we want. I will give it another week or so before making any conclusions but I really hope this isn’t the dominant winter base state showing itself. If so it’s going to be a real struggle, even by our standards. I’ll probably check back out until things look more positive. I don’t want to repeat the obvious when it’s negative. Hopefully by New Years we will see the light on the other side.

Silence Perhaps he is enjoying the holiday.

There are some signs the PV will weaken again towards day 15. There is also a camp within the ens that starts to build the epo ridge over the top towards day 15. The op gfs does this too. That’s one way out to a pattern that’s conducive to snow. Until then we can hope for a fluke or a flawed sloppy setup. They can happen mid winter pretty easy in a “non shutout” look and as others have said without a strong SE ridge we have a shot but anything is a long shot until we get the HL look to improve.

I haven’t seen anything from Massiello in days. You just inferring from his silence or did he actually say something pertinent that I missed?

I agree with this, from the perspective of a seasonal scale it was a thread the needle.

Some have called that storm a “thread the needle” but imo it was a very good patter (just not long lived) for a snowstorm. perfectly placed east based EPO ridge, +PNA, -AO, and a 50/50 with just enough ridging in the west based NAO domain. The NAO was probably technically neutral there but there are enough other good things going on to mitigate. We don’t need a perfect NAO if everything else is lined up right. Problem that winter was that PAC alignment was a short anomaly from the base state the AO/NAO were ok that winter but the PAC with that AK vortex and huge ridge in the central PAC took a huge crap on us most of the winter. The one time it took a break we got a big snowstorm

We completely wasted 2 weeks of a beautiful -AO period because of a hostile pac. That’s the most discouraging thing.

Considering how long Christmas stuff is up now I would say Christmas is winning.

@Bob Chill merry Christmas. I don’t have time for a deep analysis but there aren’t any great analogs to what some runs are showing wrt the -pna,++AO and still cold. All the current ncep analogs had a SE ridge and were pretty crappy. So either this will be a really anomalous period or the guidance is flawed and expect more SE ridge as it gets closer It’s a pretty mixed bag where this pattern progresses too. Some of the analogs go on to crap winters (2002,1992). Others go on to decent or even great years after (2000,1979). Others are a mixed bag. But the common denominator is the NAO. They mostly remained flawed PAC side but the years that got some Atlantic blocking later improved. Years the NAO stayed positive sucked. Past resukts don’t always predict future outcomes so....just a quick rundown of how this pattern usually plays out and where it goes.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone from the Hoffman Family!!! Although this one is a much more accurate representation

Lol. Classic. Not quite yet but getting there. Wife is sick. Was in NJ for a Xmas and 50th anniversary party for my parents this weekend. In PA now visiting my Wife’s family. Hosting 12 people on Christmas Day at my house. In the middle had to drive to York in the middle of the night to pick up a play house for my kids because when it finally arrived 2 weeks late the other day it was missing parts. Had to redo half the lights because a power surge knocked out 3 strings and I changed the fuses and they still won’t work. We’re still getting the house in order after renovating both bathrooms and the kitchen following a massive plumbing failure. It’s a lot with 2 young children. It’s all good though, I love the holidays and stress doesn’t really get to me. But with everything snow chasing can take a back seat for a little while.

Lol. Actually way to busy with holidays to worry much about snow. Hopefully things look better in about a week when I can really care again. My life right now is close to a scene from Christmas vacation.

@leesburg 04 It depends. There is a lot of ripping and reading on Twitter. The better forecasts use a combination of real time data, experience, analogs, and nwp guidance. First you are dismissing the fact that most people could look at a day 10 eps h5 plot and have no idea what it means. But beyond that, long range nwp is going to be in error. Using experience to predict the error is a big part. How to adjust the guidance. Problem right now is there isn’t an easy minor adjustment to what guidance is showing up top that fixes that mess. But it very easily could be wrong. But there is not much skill to day 11+ forecasts. Even the best have very low verification scores. That’s just reality. I think myself, bob, Cape, showme wxusaf would ALL rather be discussing a realistic medium to short range threat. Problem is we spend most of the winter without one of those to talk about so we’re left reading the long range tea leaves for hints when things might improve. We all know it’s very low skill stuff. But it’s all we got. I don’t begrudge anyone who would rather just ignore it until things enter realistic range, as long as they don’t poop on the people who want to discuss long range patterns also.

Forecasts change when the objective evidence they are based on change. If you don’t believe in that perhaps you should stick with JB.

@frd wrt isotherms forecast...his ideas wrt to tpv seen good now but a lot of what he used as causality I don’t see. AAM has only been slightly low lately after a short period slightly above normal early Dec. And now it’s rising and forecast to enter a high state soon. Furthermore we have most definitely not been in a Nina like pattern. A lot of what he expected December to lead to where we are now didn’t take place. Yet we may now be where he predicted anyways. Hopefully this isn’t then as a shot at isotherm, it’s simply I am highly skeptical of all seasonal forecasts (anything past 2 weeks) including my own. They are all predictions based on predictions based on predictions. Sometimes $&@& just happens.

I hope. But att guidance is accelerating the start of that regime and intensifying the look. If true this one is a gut punch. You all know I am an optimist when warranted but I don’t pull punches either when it’s bad. This would be a gut punch. My optimism has centered on the fact the high latitudes have looked persistently favorable imo. Even when the tpv was unfavorably locates there was still ridging intruding into the high latitudes somewhere. An unfavorable tpv location can be a fast recovery issue. It’s unlikeky a compact tpv stays stationary for long. But a huge intense vortex taking over the whole High latitudes can be a whole season problem. Seeing this blows up what I was handing my hat on. That said I’ll end on the only positive which is the guidance could be wrong and sometimes that look can be temporary. It’s not much but it’s all I got. I may take a break for a while because I’m not going to blow smoke but I also don’t want to fill up the thread with doom and gloom. So until I see some positive signs I’ll probably lay low.