Inverted_Trough

Don't think it's possible to talk COVID without delving into politics. As long as it doesn't get too personal we should let it go.

It's a hypothesis which has been posited by some in the professional field. And it's been part of the political narrative to absolve blame or to show that we took it seriously. But so far I haven't seen any data that supports this hypothesis. Our infection counts are nearly an order of magnitude greater than everywhere else (and yes, I know we know we have a larger population, we've tested more, etc.) I think there may be some evidence that it delayed the onset of the contagion, since things got worse in Europe before here. But what good does additional time do for you....if you don't do anything with that time? What exactly were we doing with that additional time we bought? We did nothing. That's our fault.

Maybe if we purchased a few less F-35 aircraft, or didn't have to maintain thousands of nuclear warheads that we'll never use, or wasting money on a border wall, we could have spent money on a bigger ventilator and PPE stockpile. The DoD gets a trillion dollars per year and yet we don't have an adequate ventilator stockpile. Pandemics happen and will continue to happen. It's just nature. It's up to us to be prepared and we clearly weren't ready. The fact that Hollywood has churned out several pandemic movies over the past twenty years shows you they were more clairvoyant than our leaders are

Italy 'banned' flights from China before we did. Obviously that didn't work. The virus was already here by that point. In any case, let's say restricting flights from China buys you more time. You have to actually do something with that additional time in order to get any benefits. We did nothing with the additional time. Didn't ramp up any tests, and we spent most of the time believing "it's just the flu" Most of the Asian countries (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.) have done a phenomenal job with containing this virus. Western Europe and the US have done a terrible job. There's no way to sugarcoat it. What do those Asian countries have in common? They went through the SARS epidemic. In other words: They were prepared from the get-go and took it seriously. We didn't. In fact, South Korea and the US had their first COVID case at about the same time. But South Korea has done a much better job at containment.

That's certainly possible. But some of the other Asian countries like South Korea and Singapore have got a better handle on this virus than we do. I think their recent experience with SARS and MERS made them a helluva lot more prepared - and less complacent -- than Europe and the US were.

Yes there are narratives on both sides, but I don't think it's a 50/50 equal split. The conservative side does peddle into the fear, conspiracy and propaganda more than the other. I know that'll offend political sensibilities but it's true. It normally is an effective political strategy -- and it's great for TV ratings -- but, as you can see, it not effective when there is an actual crisis. Cable news is pretty terrible in general. I think the fairness doctrine was a good idea.

Does Ryan Maue trust the climate change science? I thought everyone on WeatherBell were politicized deniers.

I thought it was the Global Warming Oscillation?

I've got the +AO, +NAO, -PNA, +EPO, MJO Phase 6 blues.

Last winter was decent especially compared to this winter. But for some reason everyone predicted an epic winter last year, and when that didn't happen, people were much more disappointed than they otherwise would have been. In retrospect it wasn't a bad winter, but everyone here seemed to have high expectations for some reason. I hadn't heard much about the MJO until last season, when that term was thrown around every day it seems.

I'm already looking beyond this summer: Summer of 2021 is going to be a scorcher! Summer of 1944, 1955, 1966, 1977, 1988, 1999, and 2010 were blazing. There appears to be some correlation to the solar cycle I guess.

We've basically had three patterns so far this winter: 1) AK vortex Pac Puke 2) Monstrous Cenral PAC ridge 3) Hudson Bay ridge (which flooded Canada with anomalous warmth) Now we have an AK vortex again I guess you can say the thematic features have been the raging positive AO and the MJO being in bad phases

The only consistent feature this winter has been the ++AO/+NAO. When psu made his dire predictions, there was a monster central PAC ridge. That ridge actually faded two weeks later and didn't last as long as feared. We've actually had several different 'patterns' this winter, but none of them were good aside from November...which was too early in the season.

I see your point, but I also found some of those past winters where NYC/NE get hammered - while we always get fringed - actually way more painful than this type of winter. At least when virtually everyone gets shutout, it doesn't feel that bad. 12/30/00 and 12/26/10 were gut punches that took a while to get over.

From this I infer that a +AO must have some correlation with a -PNA

Model verification scores have demonstrably gotten better over the last several decades. Can you show me some data that shows those verification scores have flat-lined over the last 20 years? The data I've seen shows those scores steadily getting better as time goes on. What would the other route be? The Farmers Almanac? If you're looking at 384 hr verification scores, then yes, I'm sure those haven't gotten better. Frankly I don't know why the discrete models go beyond 240. The ensembles are useful beyond 240 but the discrete models are useless at that range. But inside of 144 hrs, they're pretty good. Inside of 72 hrs, they're remarkably accurate - which wasn't the case 20 years ago.

Oceanic heat content, 850 mb temperatures and 500 mb temperatures aren't affected by UHI. They've been rising in tandem with surface observations. The Arctic is unaffected by UHI and their temps have been skyrocketing. Although, since UHI and population expansion are also 'man-made', even your Heartland Institute talking points acknowledge anthropogenic climate change.

Game over. Again.

Well we've heard that some folks would rather have a parade of storms and take their chances that it'll work out with the cold air timing. Looks like Feb 2020 will give you that opportunity.

If it rains under that setup on the GFS, that's exhibit #1 that climate change -- err, I mean our new ambient "base state", to avoid political sensibilities of some - is having an impact on marginal events.

The halftime show was entertaining. If you don't like it, watch the puppy bowl or kitten bowl or something. I like the mix of African, Arabic and Latin American influences into the performance. Seems like that was overshadowed - or people were oblivious to it - because of the faux outrage over some gyrating hips.

Winter of 59-60 was a complete shutout at DCA through Feb 13th. But what's also interesting is that there was a significantly negative AO/NAO throughout that winter, including the snowless December and January. Eventually that negative AO paid off after mid-February. But goes to show you that simply having a negative AO/NAO doesn't guarantee snow.

Besides Feb 93, when was the last time we had a good old fashioned gradient pattern with waves coming at us every 2 days? Seems like every winter we look for overrunning gradient patterns - and sometimes the models tease us with them - but they rarely materialize. The early 90s seemed to have a lot of gradient patterns though.

Yep, absolutely. I remember that month well. It was putrid. Even worse than this month. At least there were a couple of semi-cold shots in the upper midwest this month. But January 2006 was a furnace across virtually the entire CONUS.

We should set up a Flat Earth Society sub-forum, so folks like Plow'n can rant about how Copernicus was wrong, and the world is only 6000 years old