weatherwiz

That was some pretty thick frost this morning. I couldn't even scrape it off the back windshield. Had to wait for the defrogger to do its work.

You can see how that is a distinct possibility here. Just looking at it from a verbatim perspective, but if you have the low passing south of Long Island with a 50+ knot 850 jet feeding moisture into -6C 850 air there is going to be an abundance of moisture thrown into the CCB. Would probably see a pretty hefty band materialize in this situation. Sometimes this can be jackpot city for southern Connecticut just inland.

Absolutely...we're still at the stage where anything is possible really. Based on guidance assessment (ensembles and OP) these past few days we have a wide variety of potential outcomes and solutions. Spread is still high. Hopefully these next few days we start reducing the spread some and eliminating some of these potential solutions which are on the table. I'm still excited - given this is something to track, but important to keep a level head and understand the final outcome may not be what we want.

Excellent initial post for this! Great point too about the tendency for over-amplification in the medium range. I know you and several others have really hit on this the past few years.

ehhh honestly sometimes the word trend is overused. I think Wes (Usedtobe) used to say at any conference he hated that word trend. We have seen several potential events these last several winters where ENS support was very high several days out and even some good OP support in the 3-4-5 day range only for us to start getting inside 72 hours and things just fall apart.

definitely interested. I will go check it out.

I don't think ensembles are going to be much help with this and we're probably not going to get much clarity until we're about 60 hours out. Any "trends" we see now are going to be pretty worthless...we're going to have to see how guidance is handling everything once we get to the 72 hour window. This seems like a constant theme these past 3-4 winters.

So much hostility for no reason. We finally not only get one event to track, but two and that still isn't good enough Those up in northern areas certainly have some legit concern but the 7th is certainly the best signal and threat we have had in quite some time. Still a quite a bit of uncertainty involved and not sure I like the crap of shortwave mess but beggars can't be choosers.

What is even going on??? These last few pages have been an absolute mess. What is the fighting even over? There is too much fine detail going on. There’s certainly nothing wrong with discussing things in terms of verbatim several days out, but there needs to be perspective. At this point, the only thing that matters is there is potential for a storm and confidence in that is in the moderate territory now…you can argue high but that’s risky, even at this range. we have this going: 1) an NAO becoming negative and decreasing 2) a PNA becoming negative this combo can be stormy and that is being reflected by the OP/ENS. We are also seeing the strong high to the north. Based on the evolution of the pattern, we can probably gauge a higher likelihood for track but the evolution of things will be up for question.

Not ready to throw all cards on the table yet, but at least this should be a fun week of weather tracking. Whenever you have energy and a potential storm showing up during a period which long-range and teleconnections suggest the pattern could be favorable it is always a positive. We track and discuss.

Yup. Shame too b/c I like jet blue

Two 16oz can of beers at the hockey game last night…$20 each

Flying back to snowless CT. TV in the flight doesn’t work, charging outlet doesn’t work, and it’s a bit of a bumpy flight and I have a massive headache

At the Rangers/Panthers game in Florida…The ice crew is shoveling more snow than any of us have.

smelling a Cape or bust event

That's ridiculous. Let's look at Jan 1958, for example and compare to the 1921-1950 climatology vs. the 1991-2020 climatology. Sure there are some differences with the anomalies being tempered back a bit, but we're not looking at drastic changes which make older analogs obsolete. They absolutely are still relevant. EDIT: some differences may also exist here as I am using two different data sets but this is because NCEP/NCAR only goes back to 1948 so to make 1921-1950 climatology I had to use 20CRv3.

Don't necessarily need a +PNA. A relaxation of the PNA could be more than enough.

maybe we can at least get a low topped squall line

This deserves both a reaction and a reply. Here's the reply

They're onto 18z

What grinds me most is how much MOS (And I'll put NBM in this category too) scales back to climo, thus they're absolutely horrible in anomalous air masses. Surely there has to be a way to negate this or have climo weighed less. IDK...maybe that is something for AI (please smack me).

Hopefully it all melts before May 1

If this winter ends up as a rat I will be extremely perplexed. I figured this winter would be above-average in terms of precipitation and we're doing extremely well in that department. If you would have told me we'd get 7-10'' of precipitation this month and the result at the major climo sites for snow was a goose egg I'd have laughed. I still expect we'll be on the active side the remainder of winter, but all we need is just to shake things up slightly. An airmass slightly above-average in terms of temps in Jan/Feb is vastly different than an airmass slightly above-average temp wise in Dec. Even if we don't see significant changes...hopefully climo will at least work in our favor.

I've been thinking about this the past few days as I've made some posts about how we need something big to really shake things up. We may just have to closely monitor the stratosphere and hope the signals for a SSW can emerge (and of course hope it does so that is favorable for our side of the hemisphere). If we can get a SSW and prompt the development of blocking things are going to change quickly. Of course this scenario would be lagged but once (if) we see it occur, it's just a matter of when things pan out. I am hoping such a scenario will occur when the PAC relaxes some or enough to displace some colder air into Canada so if blocking does transpire we'll at least have a period where the source region will be better.

I agree, if we get deep into January (mid-month) and we haven't seen improvements or there is nothing on the horizon...and I mean as in days it may be time to start worrying. At that point it will probably be preparations for May.