psuhoffman

If you just look at the Atlantic and ignore the dumpster fire that is everything else it looks good. lol. It’s too early in the season for that look to work. But if we can a repeat of the last month with an epo ridge dump of cold followed by the current look...I think we will come out ok. I probably sound like a broken record but Im hugging that until it becomes evident it’s not going right, but hey I don’t like being miserable all the time so I tend to have a “tomorrow will be a better day” attitude.

I got around 38 but not sure I count.

That look, -NAO, -PNA can work better later in winter. A theme I’m seeing with years that featured a somewhat similar look early and shared enough common factors to take them as credible analogs, what changed wasn’t so much the pattern as the seasonal reaction to the pattern. With more depth to the continental cold airmass and shorter wavelengths a -NAO can offer much more resistance to attempts to press a pacific airmass across NAM. This time of year it’s a struggle and that pacific look blasts a ridge unto the central US so even with a massive 50/50 -NAO we’re just not torching as much and dry. Whar we do need is for a period of epo ridging in January to help NAM build a cold profile. Then if we recycle into this pattern it will be a better result for us. Back in the fall I mentioned it’s hard to find good analogs because if you ignore the enso state, most of the good analogs in every other way were nino years. That continues wrt pattern analogs. So perhaps given were in a very long lived warm neutral bordering on nino at times, and given all the other pattern drivers are in a phase typically associated with a nino, using those analogs would have been a good idea. Some of the best pattern matches so far have been 1965-66, 1986-87, and 1997-98. The first two went on to good things later in January. 97-98 tried and had a beautiful storm track but the super nino meant the pac onslaught never let up a minute and NAM never was able to build any cold. I find that outcome unlikely this time. But as @Bob Chill says sometimes the weather will just weather so we will see.

The EPS isn’t perfect but it is less prone to sudden drastic shifts. An ensemble is useless if it’s a bunch of op minions saying “me too”. How to tell the difference is easy. If it were over dispersed the long range would always look washed out and ambiguous due to spread. When the long range often shows strong anomalies and goes through significant changes run to run that’s a sign of under dispersion.

Even if it comes up, and it isn’t, it would be rain.

I’m silent because I’m withholding judgment. Since the gefs has an underdispersion issue I tend to take a 24 hour cycle of runs as one entity in my mind. It cuts down on mood swings. So while I admit 18z was alarming I’m not assigning the gefs is caving yet. But I do think it was rushing the progression anyways. I am disappointed so far. I thought we would do a little better to this point. We’ve had some workable looks. A couple perfect h5 tracks where low level temps were a tad too warm. A trailing wave that was a string out mess. A couple scenarios where we needed progressive and it trended amplified. This last one wasn’t an awful look but the lead wave died and despite a good 50/50 the high was pathetic and couldn’t hold long enough to get any front end with the second wave. I’m not saying we should have had 10”+ by now or anything but with a little luck we could be sitting on 3-5” region wide if a couple of those went slightly better and the whole mood in here would be different. Now we go into the first dead period having struck out so far. I’ll admit that’s a little depressing.

It’s going a different route but the day 15 eps isn’t hopeless. Get slightly more ridging into the NAO and that trough will be forced under into the east allowing some rising to build out west. That would offset the tpv mostly. Especially heading into Jan. That look can work. But I’m extrapolating and taking liberties. It’s mostly a crappy look as is. Just not hopelessly far from a way out.

I agree I would love a winter with a relatively short but deep winter with snow period.

It’s almost opposite. This time in 2013 the pacific was mediocre but the Atlantic was a hot mess on wheels. The early Jan snowstorm and arctic blast was thanks to a brief west based -NAO combined with the “ok” pac. the NAO blocking forced a storm under us that started out in the upper Midwest. Very rare for Chicago and our area to get significant snow from the same system. There was a brief moderation after that. The arctic blast and snow later in January was courtesy of a perfect pac, full latitude pna epo ridge with a mediocre Atlantic. There are always lots of moving parts. And some patterns work better in one part of winter than another. We generally need Atlantic AND pacific help early in Winter. Dec 2009 was a perfect NAO and PNA. Later in winter an NAO Block and PNA EPO ridge is often too much of a good thing and just cold dry. In late Jan and Feb we want a west based -NAO and a mediocre pacific. Ideally a split flow which often shows up as a -epo -Pna numerically. Some winters that share some similarity to right now wrt pattern progression early that went on to good things in january were 59-60, 65-66, 86-87, 93-94. 3/4 went in to have good blocking the rest of winter. 94 was all epo and that’s we we got a lot of ice and mix events not snow. There were some duds that shared commonality too though. 97-98 had a similar pattern around Xmas. 98 did have blocking but the raging nino torched the whole continent all winter. I doubt that outcome again though.

There are multiple conflicting waves though. The gefs is definitely picking up on convection towards the dateline towards day 15. There are also areas of convection in unfavorable locations near the maritime continent. The gefs could be keying on the wave in the western Pac. There are multiple permutations that could be why the gefs and eps are divergent.

I’m willing to wait quite a bit if this is where we are heading (and there is evidence from analogs and tropical forcing not just blind hope to suggest it is).

@frd @Bob Chill @WxUSAF I’m in general agreement wrt pattern evolution. Makes sense the gfs is too fast and the eps might be too slow in weakening and displacing the TPV. Oddly the gefs bailed on its mjo projection into 7 and now goes into 6 like the eps yet still (for now) accelerates the pattern flip.

Sorry I should clarify. We’re in a warm neutral enso state. But the representation of sst anomalies is in a modoki like phase with the warmest anomalies still centered near the dateline. There are pockets of both warm and cool anomalies along the enso domain further east. Webb seemed to imply it was moving towards a canonical nino representation. Maybe I was misreading it.

Umm that’s weak but a classic modoki representation with the core of warmth near the dateline.

I was up in Quebec for that week and the Eastern Townships got dumped. Pretty epic skiing at Sutton. Then I went up to Tremblant which missed the storm and wiped out going way too fast on ice. Still have back and shoulder issues from that.

You’re describing my place exactly lol. If/when you want to head up this way I would be glad to give advice on where to look for that combo. There are several roads and neighborhoods up here that fit that description.

That was the joke...

Or you could just ignore them like I do.

It was the Jan 30 2010 storm it got here. But only because it was always too amped and that storm ended up way more amped than modeled.

It’s run by the NAVY. It replaced the NOGAPS. I honestly don’t pay much attention too it.

We’re all waiting on the CRAS to confirm!

Both have internal consistency with their depiction of tropical forcing. The good news is even if the euro is right wrt an emergence of mjo forcing in phase 6, it would only be a little behind the gefs. It’s not like it’s emerging into phase 3!

Nothing good. Trough west ridge east and no sign of an end.

That’s the storm this weekend. He hadn’t given up yet.