psuhoffman

No, but the elephant you’re talking about is there behind all of this. Ya it’s part of the reason 90% of the mid latitude land mass of the whole NHem is torched there. That’s not something you’d see in a more balanced period where “means” weren’t out of calibration. That’s something you see when what is “normal” is changing and the means used to make the blues and reds is constantly behind the curve. But my point was specific to the fact the pacific is 100% opposite of what we have had most of the last 8 years yet NAM is still torched. Yea what little cold there is is in the east but we need a colder profile than that to have a high % of snow. It’s 15 days away, not something to panic about yet, but it’s an ugly look is all.

That was a day 15 plot not 15 years. We’re not talking about the future I’m talking about now.

Good luck getting that to last long with that background thermal pattern across NaM. It’s 15 days out but that’s ugly. But that wasn’t my point. The pacific is good there and the whole continent is still torched. Our cold air source is Fckd.

We just need that cold that’s…wait…where is…ah FCK

So much for “it’s the pacific”

Closest we got was -1.3 for a month. Most of the snowy Ninos were positive pdo. There were some slightly -pdo years in the 60s that were snowy. But in that era a -nao offset a hostile pacific. What’s been happening recently is a hostile pacific causes such an extreme SER that it links with the nao ridge into a full latitude eastern ridge. I don’t think that same equation works anymore. We probably simply need a +pdo Nino.

If it can get above -1 for Winter we bring some better cold neutral and weak Nina analogs into play. The snowier months in those parameters were above -1. Jan-Mar 2014 averaged about -.3. March 2018 was -.8. 2006 was slightly positive. 1996 was +1. January 2022 is one of the only examples of a snowy month with a severely -pdo so it’s not impossible but most of our snowy months come with a pdo above -1. however we still have a long way to go, yea it’s rising. But it’s coming off a record low it’s still very negative by any other standard and it would be unprecedented to go from -3.5 in the fall to near neutral by winter. That’s the main reason I didn’t include 2014 in my analogs.

We are the furthest southwest of all the major eastern zones affected by HECS storms. Since these storms generally move SW to NE that means we need a storm to develop faster and further west. Everything about cold enso is worse for that. Weaker STJ so storms are less likely to approach with an already developed mature feed to our south. Dominant NS so more chances for there to be the need for stream interaction that can slow down or complicate development. Or a NS dominant wave that simply tracks north or develops too late as it moves east without enough STJ. Really we need an STJ dominant storm to get an HECS here. History shows they NS dominant waves just won’t develop in time for us to her more than low to moderate level snowstorms. In a Nino with blocking our geographic location can be a positive. We can even get storms that track far enough west to be a problem for the immediate cost to our northeast. Or we can get STJ events that peak early or can’t climb due to blocking. In a +PDO Nino the greatest snow anomalies are over us. The opposite is true in cold enso. This doesn’t mean we can’t get an HECS. Nothing is impossible. But in a cold enso Philly northeast is favored and we miss most of them and it’s not a fluke it’s climo.

A more progressive wave is a much more realistic way for us to get a snowstorm.

Obviously it’s way too far out to worry about specific Synoptics yet. But since 2000 there have been 6 cold enso HECS level storms and every one of them missed us east like that. So if we do get a HECS storm this winter it’s highly likely to miss us exactly like that. It’s not a fluke. It’s cold enso climo.

Oh I totally agree. That’s why our goalposts are realistically between a near total dud to best case a slightly below avg year across the area. But some were rooting for an EPO driven pattern even last year in a Nino. I was just pointing out if we ever want a HECS or a truly snowy winter (say widespread 30”+ across the area) an EPO or TNH driven pattern is not most likely to be the way to get it. IMO we need to hope once the PDO flips the temps across NAM can return to a status quo that allows blocking to work again.

We have…but most of those years you mentioned were horrible PDO matches and not good enso either. Remember a stronger Nina is actually better for us oddly enough. 05-06 did barely make it into my analogs and it was the best result among them. But it really wasn’t a great PDO fit. 96 and 2011 both happened during opposite PDO cycles to where we are now. Unfortunately if you look at weak cold enso events in a strongly -pdo cycle there are no snowy years. The best we could hope for would be a year like 2022 that is just a little below avg snowfall across the region. (Yes I know a few local areas bad above normal they don’t need to remind me every time but all the reporting stations were below avg). But the majority of -pdo cycle weak cold enso years were single digit snowfall. It’s frankly the worst combo we can have for snowfall. But we can root for a fluke. We only have a sample size of like 10. I’m sure if we had 100 chances 1 or 2 fluke snowy results would happen. And most years did have at least one snow event so I don’t think a total shutout like 2023 is likely.

It’s also worth pointing out that some have transitioned to rooting for EPO driven cold patterns because lately our more classical ways to snow have failed due to not being cold enough. But this last week was an example of the issue with that. EPO driven patterns are often dry when it’s cold. 2014 and 2015 were anomalies not normal.

For most no. But it’s worth saying that there comes a point, and we aren’t there yet, where it won’t even matter what the pattern is. It just won’t be cold enough unless we get increasingly anomalous setups.

If you pull back and stop focusing on our locations specific snow chances the biggest issue I see is this… We need cold anomalies to snow. Our coldest day of the year has an avg high near 40. But if you simply look at a 5 or 10 day mean temp anomaly for the whole northern hemisphere the warm expanse outnumbers cold by 2 and sometimes 3-1 across the mid latitudes. We got lucky recently that one of the small (globally speaking) pockets of cold did end up over us for a week, but how often are we going to win if we need cold and 2/3 of the whole hemisphere is warm at any given time?

There’s a tiny spec of cold in the NW tip of AK

If the icon is getting this much attention…

Kinda like our winters

They were all below avg snow except 65 but same as 96 I exclude that as an analog due to being an outlier with the PDO and the predominant cycle we were in. Nothing about that period matches this one. If we just look at weak Nina’s that occurred during a strong -pdo they were all really bad wrt snow. Most weren’t complete shutouts though. But no examples that were snowy.

@CAPE Is right 96 was always an outlier where we had a positive PDO Nina in which the Nina never coupled with the long wave pattern. For a while it skewed the composite of weak ninas due to small sample. But it easy to solve this, exclude +pdp Nina’s in years that are obviously -pdo. And -pdo weak Nina’s are just awful, every single one.

Most of the analogs I identified were a torch in the fall similar to this year then flipped colder sometime in mid to late November. But the true flip back to a dominant SER didn’t happen until closer to Jan 10-15 in many of the years. Our best window before March might be from Xmas to Jan 10 or so. Quite a few comp years had a cold shot and some snow during that period. For a few what little snow we got was in that window. From Jan 15-March 1 it was very ugly in most of them. March was a wildcard. A few flipped cold again. Some went warm.

There was measurable snow in November or Early December up here in many of those analogs. Didn’t lead to a snowy winter.

FWIW 8 cold neutral or weak cold enso seasons during a -PDO. These analogs were in almost everyone’s set that I saw Dec The rest of winter every single one was below avg snowfall. So why was this December cold unexpected and furthermore why does it seem to have raised expectations? Isn’t this just exactly what should be expected and since none of the other cold December’s lead to a snowy winter why should we think this one will?

But why? All the bad low snow analogs had a cold period in December. Do we not remember how excited everyone was in Dec 2016 and 2022 leading into those two snowless winters? How is this winter playing out any different so far? Dec 2016 Dec 2022