wncsnow

The EPS has been the GEFS daddy for as long as we can remember and you know this

I have been perusing data again and was looking at the most snowy 5 year periods for the foothills from the last 75 years. Most Snowy- 1960-1965- 70-80 inches of snow. Winter of 1960 had around 30-40 inches alone (most of it coming in Feb and March). 1968-1973. 70-80 inches of snow. Winter of 1968/69 was the snowiest on record for a lot of our region. 35-45 inches of snow fell that winter alone. 1943-1948- 65-75 inches of snow. Around 15 inches each season. 2014-2019- 60-70 inches of snow. Big storms in 2016 and 2018 helped this period make the list.

The snow drought continues in WNC. And the dry conditions will continue through the end of the month. Its almost a guarantee December will be way below average rain for most of the state.

Here is another map at 6 days.

Its the EPS and I can show 200 hour maps that show the same. Anywhere from 6-16 days look at or above average according to the EPS.

Come on guys. Lets look at the EPS, It shows above average for over a week. Dec 20-29 all looks at or above average. Only thing that will save us is CAD or rain or both.

Upper 60s on Christmas eve and pushing 70 on Christmas Day is pretty torchy to me. Why are we even looking at the GFS or GEFS its awful.

Interesting inversion. One of the quickest cold shots I can remember

12 here.

Finally dipped into the teens here

It dropped quickly here the past couple hours. Down to 27 now.

Still above freezing here. Down to 35.

I don't see much to be excited about. CAD could keep us from torching but no winter weather threats on the horizon.

Yeah its 38 here and breezy but it was supposed to be below freezing by now here

Slowly dropping as the cold air bleeds over the Blue Ridge

We just need the Pacific to be neutral not super negative

Beautiful 60 degrees out

Dry air+downsloping= no chance

It's been 5 of the past 6 winters with La Nina's I believe. The one strong El Nino was a terrible winter for snow lovers too.

I have conflicting thoughts honestly. On one hand, the cold seems poised to stay on this side of the globe. Canada is frigid and looks to stay that way through at least the next month. We need a mechanism to keep driving it south. The Pacific is the main culprit here. Its roaring and record flooding is occurring in the NW. It can take a long time for the Pacific jet to behave the way we want it to after setting up like this. A lot of Mets who I respect still think January could be OK for us. There's a lot of uncertainty maybe more than normal due to the conflicting factors I have detailed. Another worry I have is the lack of a southern jet showing up in tne long range. A lot of the models and ensembles are going very dry for the rest of this month. My biggest worry is this pattern sets in longer than we want and the next thing you know its early February. Most of us haven't had an impactful winter storm in February or March in over a decade. I'm not sure it can come a major snowstorm late in the season anymore at our latitude.

It turned out to be a weak NWFS. Not even a dusting in west AVL or Black Mountain.

Yep, we have seen this song and dance many times.

Strong gusts in Asheville with showers

And we can't get a trough to center in the right place to save our lives the last 6 or 7 years. There is a tendency for them to center over the lakes or the NE when we need them further west. We could possibly score with that scenario and a strong CAD but the NAO hasnt helped either and the cold scoots away.

As @NorthHillsWx said, the pattern has been too progressive and we really need a tall ridge (+PNA) in the west to get this northern stream energy to dig further south. We are exiting a La Nina but I worry about atmospheric lag. As we all know February and March are usually toast in La Nina years. Most of us haven't seen a big snow in these months since 2014 regardless of the indices.