psuhoffman

The old gfs sucks with boundary temps in a storm. I would sweat a 300 hour 3 degree surface issue.

Sometime in January that year I remember we were about 36 hours out from what was supposed to be a 3-6" snow from a wave coming up the coast. Everything had it. Except the NAM. I remember being in the computer lab at a governors academy seminar and everyone was flippantly dismissing the nam since it was all alone then the next run everything lost the wave. It was just gone. We got some snow showers with the front and out here I eeked out an inch from squalls but that was it. That was when I both realized that year sucked and that no matter what always believe the model with the least snow.

Yes because the day 15 on the weeklies looks just as bad if not worse and flips. That means it is possible. Likely? That's another argument.

We're tracking day 10 anafronts now. Ugh

Bob did but that's a thing. If the mjo goes through a cold phase and the soi tanks then had a weak run through warm phases in a nino that's actually a cold signal.

Disaster because everytime they come out it looks great week 3. Its a running joke now with Bob Ok they have teased us a couple times but this latest iteration/progression hasn't slowed down "yet". It wasn't good week 3 last run. It got good week 4. Its typically been good week 4 then goes to crap as it gets into week 3. The real test comes the next few days. If the look evaporates as it should enter week 2 then whatever is altering the pattern away from what the SSTs argue for is likely a season problem that isn't going away.

Oh for the next 2-3 weeks we're toast. Punt them. It's over. All I was saying was where that EPS run ends day 15 could get cold enough relatively quick if that epo ridge builds a bit more. Yea it looks like a furnace on the anomaly but it's still chilly in Canada. I'm not even saying I buy it. Just that day 15 wasn't far off. I actually like where the EPS was going vs Gefs. Yea the gefs has the better epo and nao faster but it also rotates a tightly would tpv into Canada that locks all the cold up there and creates a fast west to east zonal flow under it. Eps doesn't do that. If it continues to build the ridge west and the ridge migrated up into Canada we would have high pressure on top of us. I'll take that over a PV in Canada driving NS lows across the lakes. PVs are great for crazy cold but they muck up a snow threat more often than they help.

My optimism was based largely on the assumption the soi and mjo negative influences were temporary. But now a lot of guidance recycled the mjo into phase 4 and the soi goes back up. Throwing out that it would be an unheard of occurrence for a +oni winter, that has to be troubling. If the better look continued to get kicked down the road at some point it becomes obvious that the cause of the mjo and soi issues are likely more long term than we like and things are in big trouble.

The pattern is only starting to get ok day 15. I wouldn't expect any uptick for another week. We will likely suffer through some more rainers as the cold slowly builds in once the pattern flips.

@Bob Chill for example pump the Epo/pna ridge a bit more and turn our flow slightly more northerly and we are fine. It's still "cold enough" to our north.

It looks awful but...(I know don't throw things at me) that would flip fast if we can get the flow out of the NW instead of off the PAC. That air up over Canada is still cold even at +3-5 departures there. You get a direct discharge down into our area and it would be chilly. Ideally the cold would form over us on that map. In reality it came from the north but it was warm for up there...not so much here. Whats frustrating about the gefs is it develops the look we wish the EPS would up top but it sets up the PV too far north and tightly wound and bottles the cold up in Canada then has a weak west to east flow under it across the US. That would be fine if we had cold in place. Hello overrunning city. But with the puke antecedent airmass that just means more warm. I would almost rather no PV and hope we can get cold enough with home grown cold and a flow right out of Canada during peak climo then a badly placed PV. Of course my location and elevation bias me as I can do really well with marginal boundary layers.

Is the epo ridge going day 15? If it isn't the wheels have fell off the weeklies AGAIN because by now the ridge should be getting established there if it hasn't pushed back the progression again.

I've punted the next 2-3 weeks. Im looking for signs the long range pattern change for post Jan 20 into Feb from the weeklies is still progressing. Stop expecting something to look good in the next 2 weeks given the absolutely awful spot were in.

Waiting on someone to tell is how awful the EPS looks

Geps agrees with gefs in Pacific pattern flip to -epo day 10 but also agrees on torching the eastern US days 10-15 anyways.

There is warmth everywhere though...the whole northern Hemisphere is like 70% higher heights at times. And our area specifically has been just wrecked. I think it will take a while. In examples where we were coming from a totally wrecked NAM temperature pattern and a favorable longwave pattern develops it takes a week or so to transition. If that look were to lock in the flow into the CONUS from the pole would slowly build cold and eventually we would be ok. But it's not going to happen all of a sudden and history suggests the pattern change helps north and midwest first before us so we need the changes soon because even if the pattern flips around Jan 20 it will likely be Feb before we see the benefits.

lol just re-read it and get it now... thanks. Totally missed that.

Not dismissing your theory that the current increase in warmth could cause additional lag times in winter...(fits the pattern the last few years) BUT those storms you mention were historically rare anyways...only a recent glut of them spoiled and skewed our perspective of HECS type storms.

Hate to be repetitive but you are right because in a nino the MJO is typically muted... and the two are linked...a nino places warm waters (which usually translates to convection and heat release) in places that do not favor strong MJO waves through phases 3-6. That is why this mjo event was a record for a month with a nino sst.

IMO they talked about "it" but just not in the same way we do now. Understanding of the MJO is a fairly recent thing. But going back we knew and would talk about the longwave pattern in the Pacific and how we needed a trough or ridge here or there to change, or get the Jet to relax...things like that. The issue was there wasn't as much understanding of the causality. Saying the "MJO" is simply cutting to the causality behind those unfavorable longwave configurations that lead to a crap pattern downstream here. Most of the heat added to the atmosphere in the mid latitudes that drive the patterns are coming from the tropical oceans. We are starting to get some understanding of the correlations and how adding heat/energy in a specific location translates to impacting the longwave pattern at the mid latitudes. But its tricky and other factors still can influence and tweak the pattern in ways that matter to us and the amount of heat added determines how dominant that one factor is... and we can't really predict the MJO past a few days very well anyways...so I am not saying the MJO is some cure all for weather forecasting... but where the tropical forcing is and how strong definitely is one of the most significant impacts on our weather.

I am not about to make you feel any better...IF the atmosphere fails to couple and we remain in "neutral" conditions the rest of the winter, (and before the site shut down the MEI was in neutral territory also) then the best analogs to this year simply using enso would become 1985-6, 1989-90, 1996-7, 2001-2, and 2012-13. Not an inspiring list at all... So better hope the SOI tanks and the atmosphere couples soon....

It isn't solely responsible... if it was a weak wave it probably wouldn't be wrecking the pattern to this extent. And there is a causality here we can't pin down. Is the SSWE causing the MJO? Some other factor? Why is the MJO behaving in a way completely incongruous with the SST and analogs. We just don't know for sure. But if there is SRONG tropical forcing either from a nino OR an MJO wave that is going to be the dominant influence on the Pacific pattern which in turn impacts our pattern downstream unless there is some pretty major dominant other factor to offset it. If we had some 3std west based NAO block perhaps we could offset what's going on in the pacific, but with a pretty ambiguous progressive pattern elsewhere that kind of record tropical forcing is going to boss the pattern. There is some chicken/egg with the SOI and MJO since a strong MJO wave in phase 4-6 will cause the SOI to rise because convection in that location favors low pressure there which would be a positive SOI. But that is also why we want the SOI negative. Even getting the SOI negative though won't help us if the forcing in the nino space is too far east and pumps the ridge into central and eastern north america instead of the EPO/PNA domain. Yea this gets complicated which is why its almost impossible to forecast it all at range. But there is a reason by far the number one thing long range forecasters look at first is the tropical forcing. Yea they look at other things like qbo and pdo and such but if the enso is an awful match usually even if the other factors are good they toss that year as an analog because the tropics drive the bus. This year is going wrong because the tropical forcing has been all wrong compared to what we expected given the SST. The forcing does NOT match a modoki or even an east based nino. NCEP still expects the atmosphere to couple with the sst but it better happen soon. IF...the soi goes negative into nino territory AND the MJO wave reduces in amplitude (likely since a -soi correlates with a weaker MJO) than another tour into the "warm" phases of the MJO might not have much impact. Some of the warm phases aren't even "warm" in a nino. I am definitely still no expert with the MJO, and its really complicated with different significance correlations depending on the month and phase and other telleconnections, AND the lag times can change also with those variables...but what has been happen has been pretty much our worst nightmare...an SOI spike coinciding with a record strong MJO wave stalling in warm phases for record length of time. Anything would be preferable to that. But if we get a decent amplitude into 8 before the MJO amplitude wanes and then it goes into the COD before a weak wave emerges in warm phases...that might actually favor a cold pattern establishing and then the MJO being muted enough not to impact it. MAG over in the central PA thread had some data on the MJO in the nino analogs we looked at where flips happened and some of the best winter weather happened with a weaker MJO wave in the warm phases AFTER a trip through the cold phases.

So just last winter the idea of "persistence" failed utterly spectacularly and you are riding that train again already? OK You might be right about this winter...but "persistence" is not a scientifically valid reason for it. If the pattern persists it will be because factors remain in place that are causing it do not change. But patterns and those factors that drive a pattern can and do and HAVE changed suddenly. NO pattern ever lasts forever. Predicting WHEN a pattern will change is the key. If you think the pattern will persist the rest of winter that is a valid opinion...but instead of saying "because of persistence" give the reasons why you think the pattern sucks and then the reasons why those reasons will not change for the rest of winter. That would be a valid argument. "because persistence" is not.

LOL if that does verify...and we get 5 days in a cold phase and then it rockets right back to the warm phases (which wouldn't be enough to do us any good given the lag effect of 3 weeks in warm phases)...that is when I will just check out and call uncle. That right there would be evidence that the base state, despite the SST analogs, is for tropical forcing to be in bad locations for us.

That is our climo...when our median snowfall is only 10-20" across most of the region, and a LOT of that can fall in 1-2 storms, we obviously just don't live somewhere that gets long stretches of cold/snow. Even some of our best years the majority of the snow came in short runs. We very rarely (like once a decade) get a winter like 96, 2003, 2014 where its wall to wall cold and snowy. But other then that...even the good years feature short runs of winter weather surrounded by crap. But this is crappy even for crap.