psuhoffman

Naw the issue is with the upper level progression of the trough. 6z achieved a hit by phasing a northern feature with the southern one. This run went back to having the northern piece slide by to the north and the southern gets burried again. The euro is all northern stream and so it bombs late to our north. We need the in between idea. Strong enough southern feature that it is the inception of east coast cyclogenesis but enough northern stream phasing to pull it north. Actually I’m not sure the northern vort is really a true NS feature but same concept.

He never hypes or exaggerates so I guess this is serious

I’m sorry. I’m awful at that sometimes and saying things in a way that doesn’t offend. I know you know what blocking is. I was kinda confused. But that post was mostly because there was starting to be comments about whether we were getting real blocking from others. I don’t know if they saw your post and went off on a tangent with it or it had its genesis somewhere else.

So long as the QBO continues a slow decent and doesnt have a reversal with temporary secondary spike (that happens sometimes) it’s fine. When the QBO has been descending and below 5 in winter months they have usually had a favorable AO. We were already at 5 for November so assuming no reversal we should be ok wrt qbo.

Euro favors bombing the first low to out northeast but that vortex then sets the table for the next wave.

I read that before the ETA I think. Sorry. That does clear things up. The difference though is important going forward. Last year we never had legit blocking. Even early it was just luckily timed transient ridges. This year there has been a real tendency for blocks in the AO space. We’ve had 4 so far. 2 EPO blocks that migrated up over the pole, one short lived but legit -NAO late November that forced a damn perfect H5 cutoff low under us but did us no good because of a crap antecedent airmass, and now another NAO that looks to last about a week and will force another couple waves under us. That’s important imo because the QBO and the North Atlantic SST both argued for a more favorable look up top then last year but I wanted to see some evidence of it. Last years the pac was mediocre imo. It wasn’t good enough without any AO/NAO help. But we still managed a decent number of frozen events. And several good storms missed just north because of no blocking. This year I’ve already counted 3 systems that were blocked under us and maybe 2 more coming. They did us no good because we’ve frustratingly lacked timing lining other factors up. What does disturb me right now is the pacific. I have believed it was temporary but it’s starting to look more permanent than I expected across guidance. None of this will matter if the pac transitions to a Nina look with that current raging jet. It doesn’t make much sense that it would do that. But nothing last year made much sense either. It’s very possible the raging fire that is the oceans right now has altered typical climo response to certain anomalies. But I am confident we will get more help up top this year. Whether it will do is any more good wrt snow is yet to be made clear.

^that ain’t gonna work

CMC is weaker with the energy ejecting from the pac trough then washes it out into the central US ridge. Nothing survives to the east coast.

Lol. Well without that extreme blocking with what the pac looks like that storm would cut so hard Santa might have issues launching his sleigh in all the rain.

Too much blocking. The high lat ridge is centered closer to the east shore of Hudson Bay than Greenland. That “can” work but it does open the door to suppression. On top of that the tpv near 50/50 pinwheels a lobe down at the exact wrong time to flatten the flow on top of it. That could change over 7 days.

Originally they were to give a hint at meso scale features the globals couldn’t resolve. Now that the latest versions of the euro and gfs are run at 9k and 13k I believe the 12k NAM is pretty obsolete imo. The 3k is still useful. But while it can show what the meso scale structure of a system might look like, meso scale models aren’t going to get the exact location of a meso scale snow band right any more than it will a thunderstorm from 24 hours out let alone 48 or 60. When people expect that it’s going to fail every time. So if your using them to get a better idea of what the potential structure and meso scale features of an event might look like it’s useful. If your relying on them to give the exact placement of those meso scale features...good luck.

It is but in fairness that’s mostly freezing rain after 2/3 inches of snow. The snow map counts ice as 10-1 snow.

Thank you. Anything I post I consider public and fair use. I would only ever have an issue with someone intentionally taking it out of context or editing it to do such.

Implies an all frozen even up here.

I respectfully disagree (and just posted a thorough explanation in the main thread) with the claim that it’s not real blocking. But I agree 100% that it won’t likely matter wrt snow chances with the pacific looking the way it does. The NAO could offset a mediocre pac but not what’s coming. But the upside is blocking regimes can after recycle and persist and if the pac relaxes we would be in business. The blocking regime coming will save us from a dec AO number that would have been a bad omen for the rest of winter. We will likely end up with a near neutral AO and NAO number now. That’s a lot less hostile for our chances in Jan/Feb. There is very little correlation with March either way.

I agree completely with the first part. But I’m not sure I agree with the second. Since March of 2018 we haven’t had any real -NAO blocking. We had some bootleg transient ridges as a tpv lobe traversed a location to promote a short lived ridge there. But what’s coming up seems like a classic west based -NAO episode. It also seems likely it gets muted for a while by as hostile a pac as we could have. The -NAO actually begins in only 24 hours as the current wave breaking near 50/50 builds a ridge over the top that links with the current epo side block. By 48 hours it’s a classic west based -NAO with 50/50 low representation. 2 days later even a stronger west based -NAO representation. And it is “blocking the flow” despite a raging fast pac jet and gulf of Alaska vortex the next wave is being blocked under and is about to become the next 50/50 low. That’s a classic evolution. Lower heights exist in the means there because in a -NAO every wave gets forced under through that domain. But one system doesn’t just sit there for weeks on end. If it did we would just be frigid cold and bone dry. A day later (now 4 days unto the -NAO) and we still have a classic ridge over low representation but the pacific problem is rearing its head. That isn’t just a bad pac, it’s atrocious! That gulf of Alaska vortex is pumping a ridge into central NAM. The blocking isn’t breaking down but the central N Am ridge is going to merge and get absorbed which severely muted its effect. But even with that, it still manages to force the next wave under us! With that pacific look that storm should cut to Hudson Bay! If you want to know what our weather would look like without a -NAO with that pac just go back to December 2015. The pattern over the east is blocked, that’s how a system gets suppressed south of us despite a vortex on the west coast. It’s just not going to be able to completely offset a record pac jet in an awful alignment. At this point we’re 11 days unto the -NAO and the pac jet has cut underneath as soon as the vortex off the west coast relaxed some as is typical in a -NAO. The pac is still bad just not the absolute dumpster fire it was. This is still a classic west based -NAO with lower heights through the 50/50 space through the 11 days. Who knows if it’s even right this far out but the representation is classic blocking regime imo. Now at day 15 it’s evolved into an east based block. Ironically the NAO index will be more negative now since its calculated at Iceland. But again who knows if it’s right and the monster Scand ridge would imply we likely cycle back into blocking not break down. The look past day 5 could be BS. But what we see on guidance is classic -NAO imo. It’s muted by other hostile factors. We went through a similar problem towards the start of the last great blocking period in Feb into Mar 2018. We suffered a perfect track rainstorm then a couple near misses due to an imperfect trough axis because of a less ideal Pac. Then a storm got suppressed. It was during the second cycle or pulse of the NAO that we finally got a nice snowstorm in late March. No idea how this will play out. But I do think this is finally a real -NAO. But that doesn’t mean we get snow. We had a real -NAO most of the winter of 2000/2001 without much to show because of a not ideal pac. December 2001 had a great NAO block the pac ruined. It’s hapoened before.

The Australian hasn’t been updated since February

It will be funny if after years of not being able to buy any blocking the first legit NAO block we get suppresses a storm to Florada.

Yea that’s something the models show a lot but rarely happens. We just think it does because they do get way more snow then us and we see runs like that with a setup that’s physically impossible for us and think those lucky suckers. Lol

Yea but that’s a lot closer to a setup we can work with than when it was cutting the upper energy to the Hudson Bay 24 hours ago!

That look reminds me of something. One of our recent storms. But I’m out shopping with the family and can’t look it up.

Rotfl at “source”. Anywats...I’m mildly surprised the “compromise” seems to be leaning closer to the gfs progression. The upper level look is now close enough across guidance that it’s a legit threat. Small changes are all we need. That said when I say legit chance I don’t mean likely. I would still bet against it. But it doesn’t require some Hail Mary miracle. It would only be mildly surprising if it works out.

I skied powder a couple times. Loved it. Slightly less vertical per run than I prefer. Have you hit Solitude? Curious of Honeycomb Canyon is the right mix of trees but not tooooo crazy. Seems like it from the videos and reports I’ve read. Something the level of the Trees on Blue Sky at Vail (maybe slightly more challenging) is probably the right level for what I’m comfortable with when I’m solo and want to come home to the family in one piece.

Thanks for the info. I have skied Jackson Hole many years ago. Amazing terrain. I almost got caught in a rare in bounds avalanche when I was there. My favorite place to ski is Revelstoke. Amazing amount of off piste tree skiing and crazy stupid thigh burning vertical if you want to just bomb down the mountain once or twice. But like Aspen it’s an epic grail quest just to get there. Wrt terrain toughness I’m not sure I need crazy anymore. There was a time bombing down the pallavicini at Arapahoe or going backcountry somewhere was my thing but I’m getting older and I will probably be alone this time since my kids aren’t ready and my brother isn’t coming this year and my only other skiing friend is out of the country...so I’m not sure I feel comfortable doing anything too crazy on my own. I did in the past and recently have thought “that was kinda stupid, if I had made a bad turn no one would have found me for a while potentially”. So the trees off burnt at Snowmass “could” be the perfect balance. Can’t go wrong with Utah though.