CoastalWx

Even 02-03 on the coast was frustrating as n and w of 128 cleaned up through Jan. Feb came in with violence.

We say this every winter, but eventually something works out. Persistence isn’t always the best way to forecast.

It's different as the PAC will improve.

HBR into NE Quebec ridging on that one. Worth watching, and then we finally get the PAC to cooperate more. A little more optimistic feeling this morning.

Neither am I. More or less the conus.

Man that depth too.

It shows 5” of rain

We have some skill. I don’t have the stats to back it up, but it seems like lately we have a lot of volatility vs like pre 2015. I think 15-16 was the last real successful call that I can remember, but we also know it was a strong nino.

I think it’s more of a joke vs many thinking no skill or pure voodoo. There is some skill. I know when I say it, I’m doing it in a jokingly way.

The big respite we have had since 12-20 or whatever was modeled too. The collapse though of a more favorable look, was a surprise. At least to me. Back in early Jan that looked like game on. Obviously that didn’t work out.

It’s been like pulling teeth with the NAO to go negative. We’ve had brief stretches (hell a month in 2018), but it’s been all out positive overall as you said. At some point it will turn around though. Just like our stretch of favorable PAC regimes will turn too and possibly become more unfavorable.

Yeah this is a case where deep erly flow will cool that 850-950 layer right where it shows it. Earlier in December, high res pivotal had exorbitant amounts of snows with marginal temps. I couldn’t figure out where it came up with it as the same areas were just above 0C. My point was just to take those snow maps with a grain of salt.

I try to avoid doing that and keeping things more professional. To be honest, I haven’t followed him much this year so I couldn’t tell you if I agree or disagree with what he’s thinking.

So I do believe in MJO stuff like Tip. IE constructive/destructive type setups. Like Will said it’s difficult to predict, but the physics behind it play a role with the whole Rossby wave train, especially in the NPAC. That’s traditionally where we look, but it circles the globe. Many argue how fast or slow it circles the globe...in fact some even think it’s a convectively coupled Kelvin wave. We really don’t know a ton about it. In any case Ventrice showed me an example (I’ll try to find it tomorrow) of a low frequency standing wave pattern responsible for the 13-14, and 14-15 winter. I’m sure it’s not everything, but I was pretty impressed by it. So that definitely played a role. By no means am I saying that the strat PV doesn’t matter. I think it does. I do cringe when some make a forecast based on the strat over Siberia on the gfs op run. I feel like we’re always trying to find a smoking gun. Perhaps a few times we used the PV to forecast and it worked. But in my mind, I don’t see how that alone could be successful. I’m not sure what’s going on. Perhaps this new temperature regime with warm water everywhere is really screwing up analogs. Every vendor I saw including WSI was thinking cold. Instead it’s near record warmth since 12-1 over a large part of the conus. We really don’t have a lot of skill unless we know it’s a strong Nina or Nino. This winter is bringing a big slice of humble pie to many long range calls.

Every year it’s another version of solar or PV somehow being made into something much more important than it should be. Sure it matters to a point, but we are giving something that virtually has a physical boundary that separates the troposphere to the stratosphere, way too much power in governing our weather. It’s the same with the warm blob NPAC argument.

Look at 50mb. That was towards Siberia.

It was on the other side of the pole end of Jan into Feb 2015. So much for needing it on our side. Just goes to show you the other things like MJO and other sub seasonal variables matter more.

We have the same high resolution. On some model lab sites it’s the standard res. They work fine overall though. I’ve never had an issue.

Ahh the strat voodoo. Take a look at what the strat looked like on our run in 2015. Probably not what you envisioned.

That would be serviceable down there at the end. There is a window near and after that time where we could go on a run. Not sure how long, but I’ve heard that talk.

There's the AK cold dump. She's not gonna let us out.

I know, but it was disobeying physics.

The maps you’re looking at are definitely not as resolute as the pivotal ones.We do get the higher resolution euro. But, and I think this is what you are referring to earlier, the snow maps were spitting out snow when 925 and 850 temps were just above 0C.I know I made previous comments earlier in December about how they were giving the snow amounts that they showed.

I honestly haven’t looked at those maps today. But in the past I was wondering how the F was it generating the snow that it did with those temperatures at 925 and 850.

This should be looking more at wetbulb temperature. Not where a 0C isotherm is.