psuhoffman

Those plots use 1990-2020 climo means though.

It looks colder because several of those years are from a colder period. That’s all imo. The biggest take away between that and the Nina h5 is there tends to be a flatter pac ridge and a more +AO. But that correlates. A poleward ridge can lead to heat fluxes that weaken the TPV and can foster blocking. In a flat pac ridge the faster flat jet actually speeds up the TPV and precludes blocking.

@SnowGoose69 here is the Jan/Feb composite h5 for all neutrals following a Nina. let me vomit. We’d be way better off with a stronger Nina ridge than that puke there! Last year we had some discussion that last winter behaved more like a neutral after a Nina and looks a lot more like that comp above than the Nina comp with a stronger pac ridge. The Nina was very weak and fading by winter.

I can’t always prove the why behind the what. I can simply find statistical correlations. In the last 40 years our snowfall in enso neutral following nina years has been the worst category. Worse than Nina’s and other neutrals and obviously ninos. My only theory as to why is a weakened Nina lag. In an actual Nina sometimes the pac ridge can be poleward and in those cases we can get cold and some snow. It’s still northern stream dominant so big mecs+ level storms are rare south of 40* and it’s hard for us to go above avg without any big storms but at least they aren’t awful winters with near median snowfall. I think in a neutral with a Nina lag we seem to get a weaker flat Nina pac ridge (like what’s coming the next 2 weeks) and that’s the worst often with a trough to its north over AK! We get a continent flooded with warmth AND an eastern ridge. Shit the blinds pattern for any snow chances south of Montreal. We would be better off with a stronger Nina response and perhaps a poleward ridge at times.

Not everyone follows daily. When they come in and comment not knowing about this thread people invariably reply there. That’s what happened today. And CC is extremely linked to discussing long range patterns since one impacts the other so it’s somewhat unrealistic to expect no cross pollination of conversation. What I don’t get is I don’t see this reaction anywhere else. Both in some of the other regional forums I participated in and on other weather based science boards. It’s only here that people go berserk when CC gets brought up in a thread about predicting weather. Other than the politics of it, and I’ve reached a point where IDGAFF about that I’m 100% focused on the science and weather people can shove their politics up their u know what.

Underwater volcanoes

Unfortunately my research shows there is a lag time wrt fading la nina patters. There is absolutely no evidence that a La Nina that fades towards neutral during the winter produces an increase probability of snow later in winter here. In actuality, the Nina's that fit that category had lower snowfall in Feb/March than La Nina's that did not fade. Snowfall can be a fluke so I also looked at the H5 patterns, and saw no evidence the canonical Pacific La Nina pattern was more likely fade late in winters where the La Nina faded. I can accept what you are saying about a fading El Nino might be true. Perhaps an el nino patter breaks down faster and there is no lag. But there have been examples of fading el nino's where the canonical nino pac didn't break down until well after the nino SST's did. I would have to look into it more to try to understand the why behind the what. ETA: Also...there is some evidence that a neutral following a nina is even worse than a nina. So that might explain why a fading nina does us no good.

@WEATHER53 also, the best way you can make your point is to discuss your analysis and show the better way you think is out there to analyze and predict long range patterns. I want to get better. If there is a better way than the current analog based methods I use I’m open to it. But vague criticism with no productive suggestions is unhelpful. Even if I wanted to act on your posts what exactly can I do? You’ve provided no tangible suggestions.

Personally I’m discussing what happened so that I can understand what mistakes I made and not make them again. If I don’t analyze what caused the non canonical Nino pattern then I can’t improve my forecast next time we’re faced with a similar scenario.

Yea but it has the trough north of Hawaii making it sort of a hybrid and that blocking. I’m not holding my breath we see either next year. But flukes happen. And all we need is to get lucky in a short window. Most remember 2000 fondly but other than 10 days the winter was an awful long wave pattern. Look at this mess…and yet we remember it as a good winter. A fluke like that could happen But we hit 3/3 on waves in those 10 days. It’s possible but odds are against us.

Done

@brooklynwx99 Moved from other thread.. There are several factors that are all contributing imo. The warmer waters in the western PAC and IO are favoring hostile MJO forcing. The Hadley cell has been expanded lately displacing the jet in the central pacific north. This might also be contributing to the over extensions as the compressing of the jets speeds them up. The warmer waters all around the enso regions are muting the impact of ninos and enhancing the impact of Nina’s by muting and enhancing the temp contrast. There was good research that suggested the contrast is more important than the raw enso anomalies. Lastly this PDO cycle is on roids and bullying other influencers right now. They are all working in tandem to create an extremely hostile base state that’s destructive to attempts at establishing a canonical Nino. Sometimes one might relax, like the mjo right now. But taken holistically as a whole I think it’s just too much for the Nino to overcome for more than short sporadic periods. We knew this, it was discussed as the reason for the 2019 Ninos failure to couple with the atmosphere. But most of us thought a strong bordering on super Nino would overcome those obstacles. Simplest answer is that it was not. There were some voices out there warning this would happen. I acknowledged this was a risk. But I went with the belief the Nino would win. I was wrong. Some of those factors are most definitely related to warming. Some most definitely are just cyclical like the PDO. Others it’s unknown whether they are CC or a temporary thing. We won’t know, imo, how bad off we are until the PDO flips. What I think we’ve proven is that all those other factors have conspired to make a -PDO worse and pretty much impossible to get a cold snowy winter in the mid Atlantic south of 40. But there is no evidence yet that +PDO have been affected. 3 of the last 5 +PDO winters were above avg snow here. But none were after the 2016 super Nino that might have reset things to a degree. But since we’ve been in a strong -pdo since 2018 all we can do is speculate. 2017-2018 was too small a sample size but to be fair both were typical Nina’s and cold at times. Nothing in those years struck me as alarming. That started happening in 2019 on when the PDO went Uber negative. So I’m hopeful that while our -pdos have been rendered god awful by other influencers exasperating what was already a hostile cycle, once we get a +pdo we can still cook wrt snow. We will find out when the PDO flips

Sorry I saw the discussion between Brooklyn and others and thought we were in the other thread. I just hit reply. Do you want me to move my response to Brooklyn over to the other thread? eta: @brooklynwx99 has been away a bit and probably doesn’t know about the other thread.

If I ever get a match 58 redux here I don’t care what the rest of winter was like it’s an A. There was no reporting station right her that winter but Westminster recorded 32”. One of my neighbors whose father was in Manchester for that storm says it was 4 feet! Possible there were some reports of up to 50” now far from here and in marginal temp storms I do a lot better than Westminster. But I get that a sloppy 10” in the cities that melted the next day from a perfect track storm that could have been 30” in Feb would just be like dirt kicked in their eyes at that point.

Underwater volcanoes

Lake effect is cool to experience but it’s not the same level of tracking imo. And not very good skiing there. I’ll save up and shoot for VT someday.

I’m already planning where I might take the kids for some snow/ski weekends so they can see snow.

If there was interest I’d do it.

That looks pretty awesome. Close to Timberline and backwater falls. Can get a beer at Jon Jons. I’d jump on that if I had the resources which I currently do not.

A modoki Nina is worse. We want an east based Nina. West based are the really bad ones. There could always be a fluke. But a west based Nina in a -pdo cycle with our current thermal base system is a disaster waiting to happen.

That was a neutral

Yea i don’t have the ability to do that research. But I find it interesting that the two -QBO Ninos that stick out like a sore thumb for a +nao winter are both years following a volcanic eruption.

@Ji but the numbers are what they are. I think it’s fair to think there is a chance next winter could go our way and end up just a typical below avg winter. Not a total snowless dreg year. But unless the PDO flips and there is no sign of that yet, I think our high end bar is hope it’s just bad not awful. 1996 ain’t happening in the -pdo regime.

2017 could have gone better too. We had quite a few legit threats. They all went sideways but we had some decent pattern windows that winter.

That’s about right. In colder winters there isn’t much difference between my house and say Ebb Valley EM in the valley. But if we keep having winters where most of our snow even up here comes with temps right at 32-33 degrees then the difference will continue to be greater. 200-300 feet which often equates to 1 degree matters way more when it’s near freezing every storm. Back when it used to snow at like 20 degrees up here not so much. The upslope qpf difference is pretty marginal imo. It’s just ratios in marginal near freezing events.