weatherwiz

Time is starting to run thin though, especially with not much - if anything in the pipe line in terms of anything big except that mid-month period but there is disagreement on how legit it is. Obviously we can get snow and big storms into March but it becomes much more difficult to do (outside of NNE). But once we hit that time change...bring on the warmer weather.

Going to enjoy what's left of winter and continue enjoying and admiring the scenery outside, but in another 4-5 weeks...I will be full on ready for warmer weather and looking for that first stretch of 60's.

Oh wow didn't realize this but the RONI is going to be the official monitoring and prediction of ENSO for the CPC https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/pdf_2026/pns26-05_Relative_ONI.pdf

Euro doesn't look too bad for Friday night and Saturday. Not looking in at zoomed in but looks like maybe even a bit of an inverted trough into parts of RI/eastern CT? Probably be a good 2-3" region wide I'd think

Just caught the post after the reply. Thanks for the clarification, this actually makes much more sense. So ultimately, we *could* (if a storm signal remains) end up seeing guidance transition from the coastal look depiction to something more along the lines of an overrunning signal (or dare I say...cutter)? Would not be the first time we've seen this happen

hmmm I thought opposite when looking at the teleconnections. Rise in the NAO with a declining PNA All of this during a period which looked to be active with shortwaves progressing within the flow across the country. I know the OP shows a storm but not necessarily basing my thoughts on the OP...but seeing the OP with a storm kind of backs up the potential?

Our best chance upcoming is going to be that mid February time frame. I don't have much confidence moving into the second half of the month...there's been increasing signals with a flip on the PAC side and introducing more trough amplification into the West and we know what that mans for us. A bit of vitality showing up with respect to pattern evolution second half of the month...that look makes me nervous because it could be signaling the hemisphere is making strides towards the seasonal transition. Not saying winter is over or snow threats are done because slight tweaks in the evolution opens a window. So for now I don't have much in the way of expectations and proceeding with lower confidence moving forward.

Agreed. These things don't just come in quiet. I think there will be snow showers and squalls around all weekend, perhaps not widespread but there is definitely some moisture around. Orographically areas likely favored

could be potential for some decent OES across the Cape Sunday/Monday

The period around mid February is quite intriguing I think, at least in terms of the evolution of teleconnections which I know Tip has touched upon. But during that period the NAO is forecast to become less negative over time with the PNA becoming more neutral. Will be very active in the shortwave department. Obviously how everything evolves is a different story but that is a period to 100% watch

That road doesn't usually see any sun until like later March or April lol. Went out yesterday and was glad the roads that do get sun were in pretty great shape.

That explains it. TBH I've been trying to avoid looking at the temp/dewpoint because it just makes it worse. Not looking forward to this upcoming weekend. I might watch the SB from the inside of a fire place

Despite the temperatures and abundance of sun today I am impressed by the lack of snowmelt. The road here is still a complete disaster too

Hopefully it breaks down

It might only be early February and we may still have several weeks of winter to go, however, that doesn't change the fact winter is getting into its back half which means spring is approaching and pretty soon severe weather season. While its usually not until late May or early June when we start getting some real severe threats May 1 is a great proxy to use because we can sometimes sneak in some early season events and it gives time to switch the mind into convective forecast mode and start sniffing out guidance for potential threats. Just like professional athletes need a pre-season to prepare for the season and shake off the off-season rust, this threat offers the same thing...a good place to talk convection and shake off the rust. With this said, we'll open the countdown at 88 days Its coming and coming quickly

It will certainly change. I really wish we could get a good 2-3 year period of ENSO neutral conditions. I think that would go along way of stabilizing things for a bit

Well technically it doesn't only affect the northeast coast of the U.S. it has an effect everywhere but the effects (or the results) or just the by product. For us a byproduct is just shitty luck, for areas to our west and south the byproduct is increased potential.

Yeah I'll check this out more, Phys.org is pretty great. And thanks for the last paragraph, that is precisely what I was trying to illustrate but could not put into coherent wording. I think having a sound fundamental background in this understanding can go along way in medium range forecasting. If there is one thing I would really love to study further and understand it's wave spacing and factors which influence wave spacing...and then how forecast models handle wave spacing.

Can't sum it up any better than this really. When the pattern is not right or the pattern doesn't evolve in a favorable fashion based on historical precedence, it's incredibly difficult to get things to work out.

The fast flow idea is something which definitely needs more research...not just in the sense of comparing charts but using the complex mathematical equations to either back up the idea or debunk it and also factor in wavelengths. It's something Ray and I had some dialog on earlier last month and I didn't have much of an answer but I've continued to think about it and have generated some hypotheses on why the fast flow would seemingly hurt us but no where else. An idea which comes to mind is the fast flow greatly alters both the position, strength, and orientation of the ridge/trough evolution downstream of the jet max. When it comes to "fast flow" I don't know if there is any literature which provides some methods or means to defining it, I am going to assume just a simple, "deviating from the mean" so with that the focus on my mind is the strength of the jet max. The second part of this, and this is where I don't have much thought or reasoning is, because of where we are located geographically with respect to "normal" trough/ridge axes and evolution...the faster flow just screws us. Let's look at it in this sense: During the summer, what is one reason why it is extremely difficult (or what seems impossible) to get the extreme heat into our region (I'm talking about widespread >100°F)? The position and orientation of how the southern ridge evolves...it either does so to pump the heat into the West, central states, midwestern states, or mid-Atlantic. Now there are other factors such as airmass modification due to convection, fronts, etc. Back to the cold season, but with the faster flow you are either increasing the likelihood for cyclogenesis and rapid LP strengthening well west of the Appalachians (hence west of us getting hit) or a bit farther off the mid-Atlantic coast or even southeast coast (hence south of us getting hit) but the faster flow disrupts storms potential from coming up the coast. I think this could be similar to that of tornado alley. There has been alot of discussion of whether tornado alley has "shifted" from what it was once perceived. But historically tornado data shows a concentrated area of tornadoes within the Great Plains ("original Tornado Alley") and a secondary concentrated area within the Mississippi Valley area (with a gap between the two). This gap could be explained by shifts within the trough axis based on the flow so either you get periods (years) where tornado activity is concentrated within the Great Plains or where it is concentrated several hundred miles south and east...so the area in between these two has a lower concentration of activity just because of where they happened to reside to the location of the trough axis. This could be a incredibly cool and fun study for someone to heavily divulge into but would requite using primitive equations to explain the flow, changes in the flow, and downstream implications.

I don't think the sun isn't doing anything to the snowpack in this atmosphere. Evidence of that is looking at the roofs of peoples houses.

This type of cold hits different when there is snow on the ground. How deep winter should be. But I am soon ready for warmer weather and some stretches of nice spring like weather. That first stretch of 60's we get is going to be something.

Actually I've seen very few myself. Maybe a few. For my birthday my girlfriend got me this little device thing where you like put it over the spider and then slowly move a notch and it traps it so you can put it outside. It actually works kind of well but I told her I can only deal with that up to a certain size. I think there has only been one in the bathroom and I caught one crawling on the floor when I was cleaning. Other than that, nothing else.

Guess we'll just call this the storm that could have been. I for sure thought this was going to come up the coast days ago but totally wrong on that. dendrites post this morning illustrated why it wasn't happening and those signals with trough, dPVA, and dynamics were there the whole time to tell the story.