psuhoffman

Sadly if the Eagles win out they still win the division on tie breakers with the Cowboys at 9-7. Today was a clinic in how to F up. Penalties. A trick play. A dropped pass that would have set up a first and goal at the 2. A missed FG. They are a poorly disciplined team.

A standing wave in the central Indian Ocean is kind of a wash imo. Ideally we want a standing wave near the dateline. But I’ll settle for just keeping the mjo out of amplified phases 3-6 this winter.

2 in December isn’t as good as later in Winter. It’s kinda what we see now, not warm but typically not cold enough. I’ll take it vs the alternative though.

BWI: 20.4 DCA: 15.7 IAD: 23.6 RIC: 14.9 SBY: 12.2

Is he the kid from Delaware?

The MJO hanging out in warm phases isn’t good. But there are a lot of factors that drive our snow chances and some of them run in cycles. It does seem like we fight a hostile base state more lately BUT we also tend to score more frequently when the pattern is good. I wouldn’t sweat any one factors short term tendency all too much. We have been doing alright anyways. Just for some perspective. Snowfall at BWI by decade. Avg and # of above normal years. 1970s 17.8”/3 above 1980s 18.5”/4 above 1990s 17.7”/2 above 2000s 18”/2 above 2010s 24”/4 above so the last decade was the best in Baltimore for snowfall since the 1960s. Obviously it’s not hurting us that much. If anything the extremely anomalous 3 year run from 2013-16 raised expectations such that the last few winters seem worse than they are. While not great they were a pretty typical 3 year stretch. Nothing too awful by historical standards. Truth is we had the best snowfall decade in a long time yet some people act like we’ve been getting screwed. Does the mjo matter, yes. Will it hurt some if we spend more time in phases 3-6, yes. But we’ve been ok and other factors have a say too. It’s also too small a time scale to make long term conclusions imo.

The look of the seasonals is pretty much gone. Even on the weeklies it’s mostly ambiguous with some mediocre looking weeks and acrually a period right after Xmas that looks pretty good imo.

How do we know the mjo is actually going through the torch phases 3-7? The last attempt was completely thwarted and guidance is ambiguous right now wrt if this next wave progresses. GEFS thinks it is but euro and CMC guidance suggests another aborted attempt. I have very low confidence (even compared to normal) where we go past day 10

I’m not concerned but will point out the smoothed our blah look on the ensembles day 10-15 is not because they mostly think that will be the pattern. It’s becagas they have no clue with huge divergence and a mean that combines a lot of variance (some good looks and some bad) into an ambiguous mean. In short that look is not likely and it’s going to end up adjusting one way or the other and depending on which camp is correct we could end up with a pretty good pattern or a real crap one.

Did you bother to read the study before deciding it’s trash?

I certainly would use the NAM as confirmation but I do think the ULL qpf is being underdone by the guidance.

Where are those crazy weenie gem ensembles when you need them.

I’m not expecting this and am generally optimistic we get some snow from the ULL but one thing to be careful of if the coastal ends up closer but not close enough, we could end up in the subsidence outside the banding. If the coastal was further away it would actually increase our chances of convective banding with the ULL. A trend towards a closer coastal ups the ante for all or nothing.

Where do we live again? i continue to be interested in that. With our elevation we could still get surprise coating. Of the last pathetic vort pass was able to cool the column this one has a chance.

I’ve suddenly got a headache

The pacific base state is almost the opposite of what we had to fight most of last year. Every attempt to shift seems to snap back pretty quickly. On the other side the AO/NAO seems to be variable but that’s not nearly as hostile as most of the last decade. The next week or so is big as that is about when the signs of problems wrt the pac showed up last year. Give me a -epo/+pna pacific base state with a variable not hostile AO/NAO for Dec-Mar and I’ll take my chances!

I think what a lot of experts “mean” is that the warming isn’t going to have a major impact on the TPV. It’s confusing the way they talk about it because warning is warming and anyone can see the temps and deduce it’s warmer. But when they say a major SSWE they typically mean is it having a major impact to the troposphere. There is a lot of discussion that this current warming isn’t going to do that for various reasons that I don’t care to get into since most of its above my pay grade.

I think for now it's also relevant to see what the op GFS does because the GEFS is currently based on a completely different model. For now we don't have an ensemble suit for the op GFS and so while we definitely cannot put that much stock into a single run at range, its the only thing we have giving us a hint at what it "thinks" att.

I think 99% of us here know not to take ANYTHING in the long range too seriously. But that said, it's still better to see good runs than bad ones. And looking at general pattern trends is not the same as looking at a specific synoptic event at day 15. So I think we should be able to post when something looks good in a general pattern sense and log it into "this is good" evidence without having to always have the disclaimer that we shouldn't take it literally. I would rather just ignore the random posts we get every so often by some clown telling us not to look at long range guidance.

The WAA could come back, and I won’t kick it out of bed if it does, but I’m mildly interested in some snow with the upper low. I know the guidance is pretty dry and warm with that but given that track I find it hard to believe we don’t at least get some instability snow showers.

I am pretty sure we are going to "warm up" by around Dec 7th-10th as we briefly lose the pacific and the TPV is moving across the pole creating a brief but extremely positive AO. What I am looking at is whether we can flip back cold again sometimes mid December in time for the holidays.

The best news is that the AO looks to quickly flip back after a short spike positive.

Even during the back to back La Niña’s when odds of climo snow are like 18% he predicted above both years! Rotfl

I’ve always suspected the North Atlantic Tripoli sst look was more an effect than a cause. As @Bob Chill often points out a few degree difference in cold waters in the high latitudes isn’t changing the equation that much. The difference between 42 and 50 degree water is not adding as much heat and moisture to the atmosphere as a change from 78 to 86 degree water. Imo the warmer SSTs near Greenland are from the ridging with a -NAO and the colder sst near New Foundland is from the constant parade of storms forced through that region by the NAO blocking. Because the NAO tends to run in multi year cycles that can create the mirage of causality at times. I do think there is a feedback cycle though that can contribute. For instance, the colder sst profile in the 50/50 domain is often caused by storminess there, and enough storms blowing up there can help contribute to ridging into the NAO domain. So there can be a chicken or the egg type play there. For now I’m not going to over think it. It’s just plain good to see lots of lows bombing into the 50/50 space. If that continues it will up our chances significantly.