psuhoffman

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

But it wouldn’t be a bust. Those are two of the top analogs so wouldn’t that be expected?

Does he ever? But he was the champion of the 2014 talk online that’s for sure. He was maybe the most bullish in how he talked about winter whether he made a detailed specific call or not.

In fairness he is in NC where they’ve had no measurable snow for 3 years and it increasingly takes an incredibly anomalous pattern to get any chance of meaningful snow . He might also be simply hinting that his forecast for a very cold and very snowy winter is in trouble not necessarily implying it’s gonna be a total did. He wasn’t specific at all so we can’t say exactly what he means. But it was a very very depressing thread that’s for sure. He definitely changed his tune.

They were all in my list I looked at. 2 of them made my top 5.

And John’s in the thread throwing gas on the winters cancelled fire wow. In 24 hours he went from “don’t worry it’s just a temporary minor warm up” and throwing around 2014 analogs to “winters in big trouble” lol.

So no 2014?

When did that happen, it was just 2 days ago he was saying the warm up looked minor and temporary at worst.

I predicted a ton of snow just last winter. You want me to be JB?

Are those control runs going to be accurate no. Not a chance. But this is about probabilities. Math. There is an inherent amount of random chance and luck too. Even on a dry pattern all it takes is to get lucky a few times to end up with above normal snow here. Or maybe the whole pattern is just wrong. That’s possible too. But we are trying to glean what hints we can. And when the guidance is saying something that also is supported by analogs it’s a hint. That’s all. Nothing more. Doesn’t mean it will definitely happen. But the fact many of the years that were similar to this one features some cold periods yet low snowfall and now long range guidance is often hinting at the same thing is worth noting I think.

Of course it’s not. But that’s not the point. The point is that there have been a lot of runs of the long range controls for the gfs and eps with a snow minimum near or over us. And that fits the analogs for this season many of which featured snow minimums over us. That’s it. Read into that whatever you want.

2001-2016 was a very favorable cycle if you look at the predominant long wave pattern. Almost opposite what we’ve had since. What I was saying is the closest comp we have to that favorable a period was 1958-1970 but the snowfall didn’t nearly live up for us. The anomalies shifted north. It’s hard to compare periods prior to 1950 because the upper level data doesn’t go back that far and so we’re kinda flying blind. But we can look at raw snow data and see that cycles of high snowfall have been decreasing for a while.

So would I but it is also telling that so many runs have the snow minimum somewhere near our latitude. Especially when it fits the analogs. Now that doesn’t mean the minimum ends up nothing like that one run that was kinda comical but it does temper my expectations

Yes but like most of the analogs it’s a dry cold. The snow mean is really low and look at the control which has similar temps lol basically has us sitting at the midpoint of winter below avg temps and under 1” of snow to show for it.

Agree with this... the -AO/NAO do still help, so long as we don't have some -3PNA countermanding it. The fact is we have had a horribly god awful pacific several times that did offset and waste a great NAO. Add in that two of our most recent snowy winters were EPO/PNA driven without much AO/NAO help and some have started to imply the NAO/AO are no longer that important. But I don't believe there is much evidence of that, it's just the NAO/AO can no longer overcome a horribly hostile pacific anymore.

I got 3.8" last December from exactly that type of setup. It's actually accounted for much of my snow the last 5 years...but most of them have not worked out for lower elevations. I commented on this last December also...the track of that secondary frontal wave was actually perfect for 95, the heavier precip missed me to the east, and the mid levels were cold enough, but as has been the case several times lately the lower levels simply weren't cold enough to support snow. This has happened a few times over the last several years. There was another very obvious example in Feb 2021, perfect secondary frontal wave where the lower levels simply were too warm despite a perfect track. I got 6" up here but that too the best precip missed me to the east but it was just rain because the boundary was just too warm...even up here it was 32-33 during the snow. We still get these setups often, it just hasn't been cold enough in the lower levels for them to be snow outside our higher elevations in this forum even when the situation works out from a synoptic setup in other ways.