psuhoffman

Reading certain posts here reminds me of a line from a cheesy 90s movie. “I was trapped near the inner circle of thought”.

You mean we would have almost every December pattern the last 5 years?

It’s been so long people forget how much a great high latitude pattern can mask other flaws.

That is the best and most significant development so far. The high latitudes seem to want to cycle between ok and great so far. Let’s keep that going. The only thing I’m paying attention to long range is how the forecasted puke pattern of the seasonals continues to get pushed back. A week ago we were saying how it continues to be just outside ensemble range. Another week later and it’s still outside realistic guidance range. Let’s keep that going too. Ive been skeptical but I’m about another week from firmly believing that look is just another seasonal guidance mirage.

I predict it will come a day after December 4th.

The single most encouraging thing I see right now is the tendency for the high latitudes to look generally favorable into early December now. November can be a big head fake month with the volatility of the seasonal changes in the jet going on so while I have generally liked what I have seen the last few weeks, I want to see what happens into December before becoming too confident. That said last year the look up top was already breaking down heading into early December. A crazy EPO ridge kept early December cold and a rogue TPV displacement suppressed a storm south of us...but the signs the AO/NAO weren't going to cooperate were already showing by December. Right now keeping the blocking up top going into December is the single best sign we can have that this winter could be different. Get a more favorable AO/NAO this winter and a lot of those "flaws" that killed us last year won't be as hard to overcome. And those periods when the pacific did cooperate become epic vs just mediocre. One other thought I keep having... better winters tend to tip their hat when even the relaxations and "bad" phases that will happen aren't that bad. USUALLY the better years we avoid month long epic torches. We go through a few days here and there, or a mediocre couple weeks...but we usually don't have weeks and weeks on end of shutout no hope patterns. If we can avoid that type of look setting up shop I don't mind a relax and a couple weeks of a warm/mediocre pattern, especially early. That said...we have had plenty of winters that were super warm early and flipped colder and snowier. But, throwing out the older analogs from a colder climo those years more recently...2004/5, 2006/7, 2014/15, 2015-16, 2018-19, mostly didn't turn into epic years. With the exception of 2015 (which had a LOT of luck) we went from dog crap to mediocre. It's simply hard to make up for losing half of climo and get lucky enough or an epic enough pattern to end up with a +climo year when you lose a significant chunk of what is already a short climo window. So while a slow start doesn't mean this will be a total bust awful year...it is a sign that this probably won't be a good one and we will fight to scratch and claw our way to a mediocre year. So I would like to avoid seeing that no end in sight pacific puke pattern with no high latitude help set in. Every run that avoids that is a win imo. I will start to think about actual snow results once we get into mid December and our climo clock starts to tick.

January 66 you’re thinking of.

There are some repetitive themes I like so far. One is that systems have amplified and traversed the 50/50 domain frequently. Last year too often the WAR held and systems either amplified into Quebec or washed out. It hasn’t helped us yet as you need a perfect setup this early, but if we continue to see that all winter it will pay off.

Even if we don’t score early season, I want to see a generally favorable look up top continue. I doubt the pac kills us all winter. Even the last few we had favorable periods. But what we haven’t had is a cooperative look up top. If we get a winter where the NAO and AO cooperate some of the time we probably can eek our way to climo with a variable pacific. That’s kind of how I was leaning in my WAG.

There are a few experts who like to dabble in the dark arts of extended range/seasonal forecasting. But none of those seasonal forecasting gurus post in this sub forum regularly. A lot of us like to make an educated guess at what winter will hold but besides the occasional attempt to read the bones most of us here don’t spend much time analyzing what will happen past 2 weeks. There are amazing experts in here who can measure up to anyone wrt forecasting inside reasonable leads though. But if you really want deep analysis/speculation about what lays behind 10 days you probably want to go follow Massiello, Tom/isotherm, bluewave, 40/70 or any of the others who go into that more in other subs or on twitter.

This is all speculative and I’ve not had time to research it much to verify anything, but I’ve wondered if the decrease in sea ice has encouraged ridging in those regions in November which could favor cold dumping into the conus. Also the increased baroclinicy from the increase in SSTs could cause volatility during the transition to the winter jet pattern. But once wavelengths broaden and the pattern settles into its winter mode, and the waters finally cool and ice over, the pattern flips. Just a thought.

You asking the boys club that doesn’t know anything for a condescending answer?

@frd I do think there are legit signs of a pattern shift in early December. However, his timeline and extent of the effects of the mjo wave propagation through warm phases seems dubious to me. Last year we had a record stall in warm phases and even that didn’t take a whole month to propagate out. We started to torch mid December due to the mjo and still got back to a colder regime by the end of the first week of January. So he is expecting another record stall in warm phases to beat last years record? He may be totally right with his numbers but his tone implies a month long warm pattern and if we do enter mjo hell in early December I find it unlikely we are still battling that come holiday week. Now last year the problem was the mjo would blast through cold phases in a week and cycle back to warm phases but that’s another issue. And there was speculation the SSWE muted the benefits of the one decent cold phase mjo wave as well. Just seems to be a lot not being taken into account.

As USAF said the atmosphere is behaving “like” a nino lately. But frankly the climo cycle recently has been a warm December no matter the enso state. I’m not entirely sure if the “warm nino” thing is due to enso or that we have had way more ninos lately which skews the results vs older ninos when colder December’s wasn’t as unusual. We had some pretty cold December ninos in the 1960s and 70s. The Atlantic and Gulf SSTs have been on fire lately. Add in the lag of sst temperatures cooling and that might have as much or more to do with the prevalence of the SE ridge early in winter lately. In essence we might be losing the early 1/3 of winter due to the current warmer SST cycle there. Only reason our mean snowfall isn’t dropping faster is we also seem to have a higher hit rate on big storms when the pattern does rarely get right. Boom and bust cycles seems to be our normal climo now, even more than it was historically.

Mistakes happen over 60 mins. Good teams win and you don’t remember them. But when your offense is painfully limited by the most god awful wideouts I’ve ever seen any mistake is amplified in the damage it inflicts. But my god their receivers are so bad it’s ruining what’s otherwise a pretty good team imo. It makes it hard to even evaluate Wentz imo yea he missed some throws but EVERY qb does. Except Wentz can’t afford too because the receivers are so awful that unless he is perfect they are screwed. I don’t know what’s worse, the 3-4 uncontested drops a game that end drives, or the fact they never ever make a play. 50/50 balls are more like 90/10 against for them. They never go up and bring down a contested catch. And that’s especially bad when they also don’t get open so everything is contested. I know losing Desean wasn’t the plan but that’s no excuse for the rest of the WR core to be this atrocious. And I hope they cut Agholor and just eat the last 5 million they owe him this year. I know that last play was a difficult catch but the throw was perfect and it’s a play you just have to make. He never makes that play, and worse drops 1-2 easy catches a game on top. Im sure the others behind him aren’t any better but at least it would be someone new for me to be upset at every Sunday end rant. Back to over analyzing every model run to make over reactions about the winter

Talent is important, but there are provably between 6-10 teams that have enough talent to win a super bowl every year. Some years, like last year none get hot and they just pinball all year until I’ve is left by accident. But every so often one of them starts to build chemistry and play cohesive and just look like they are all on the same page. When that happens it might not be the teak with the “most” talent (or who we thought had the most) on paper but watch out. The eagles had that happen for them a few years ago. The ravens look like that this year.

Depends... last year the great looks would frequently penetrate from the weeklies into the day 11-14 ensembles range. But never past day 10. But when they would repeatedly collapse back and day 14 would look like crap again on the eps the weeklies would still magically flip the pattern by the end of week 3. It did that numerous times. So no matter what the eps shows day 14 if the weeklies is making a mistake based on a factor it’s miscalculating it might be likely to continue making that error so long as the same background state persists. It never corrected itself all winter last year.

The rest of the winter will be so bad they will record a negative number.

BWI: 0.3" DCA: 0.1" IAD: 0.7" RIC: 0.00001

Never had mine.

The gefs has actually been doing better lately. But that wasn’t really my point. I’m more excited by the repetitive trends in the pacific in the short term and the signs the PV is being best around in general then I am the fluxuations in the long range NAO.

You only look at the EPS?

RR would have too much fun with that.

Woah slow down. I’m still trying to figure out how to tie my shoes and chew solid foods!