weatherwiz

I was wondering if there was any chance this could end up becoming an occluded dud and we get nothing much outside of some showers or whatever. I think there there is too much northern stream interaction going on to prevent such a scenario.

Really not sure what to think of it. I mean when you look at how 500mb evolves, the scenario is a plausible one, doesn't mean it's likely but at this stage you can't really discount anything. The PWAT anomalies are absolutely insane. 5+ SD across a large area

It really sucks we don't have a better supply source to drain in colder air. That is going to be a wall of precip given how intense the WAA is going to be. Sucks we also can't drive the southern stream system offshore a bit more with the north stream energy phasing in. I hope we can get something like this next month.

Severe season begins May 1 but we don't cancel severe season on May 20th when we haven't had anything

watch it just become a weak wave and rapidly weaken after doing what it does in Florida and we get nothing except thin wispy cirrus and winter's version of Bermuda blues.

Going back through composites and I think I need to re-think my scale and interval levels, particularly with OLR. How I came up with my scales I used was just looking through several periods and finding values that were in the middle. For OLR I used -30 to +30 with an interval of 10. I think using this scale is generating a bias when assessing the maps. Where tropical forcing is located is important, but I have to wager that the strength of the tropical forcing is just as important. With my scale, I think it is making some years look "intense" when the tropical forcing weak probably weak. I see on the NOAA daily CPC page the scale they have is -80 to +80 with an interval of 15...that might be a bit much though for composites. Since the goal with the composites is to easily compare periods, it's important the scale remain constant.

Totally on the same page as you. There was more I wish I had the opportunity to dig into before attempting an outlook but just didn't have the time. If this winter does suck though there is definitely going to have to be some re-thinking. I know you focus alot of your composites on ENSO event post 1950 and I've been going back to 1900 (obviously when looking at earlier years there has to be awareness about the validity and accuracy of some of the data) but just from what I've looked at with EL Nino events...there is a striking change in how EL Nino's have behaved over the past 30 years. There certainly are numerous reasons for this but too me it's pretty striking. I'm starting to work on La Nina's now so I'm curious if the same is true of La Nina. You made an incredible point though in your winter outlook when discussing SST's in the Pacific. The lack of a gradient within the equatorial PAC basin is pretty striking and that is going to have major impacts on pressure centers, etc.

I think it was @brooklynwx99 who posted this yesterday (or maybe it was Tip) but the EQBO is really helping to keep the PV in check. I hate having to rely on SSW's but if we can somehow muster up a SSW (and on our side of the globe) that could be what helps drive things in a more favorable direction. If we have to wait for the MJO to progress into a more favorable phase...I'm going to start losing my confidence in a better January/February.

I think in my winter outlook I referenced one of my concerns was getting caught in a 1994-1995 type pattern. I thought/still think our saving grace is going to be from an Arctic which becomes more favorable...but we're probably going to need to see the PAC at least become somewhat favorable (at least to unload cold into Canada) or we really could be screwed.

As the board has evolved and many of have been positing for 10-20+ years, lots of personal relationships have been developed and that certainly bleeds into posting style and habits. It's definitely great to have a mixture of fun and science but it seems like the fun/ribbing posts have started to outweigh great analysis/discussion the past several-plus years. Perhaps that is largely due to just not having much to discuss, but often times when great discussions start it ends up getting drowned out.

George Washington probably knocked down more trees than these fake wind systems

maybe that energy can hang around long enough and have some interaction with the energy diving through the upper-Midwest

Maybe a nocturnal tornado outbreak across Florida Saturday night

Holding out some hope for next week. I held onto hope that the Patriots could still sneak into the playoffs until they were mathematically eliminated Sunday. Holding out hope for next week until we're eliminated

I'd have to imagine the Inter-mountain West region has to be extremely above-average. Could easily go check the numbers so far (and may just to see if that hunch is correct) but isn't peak climo in terms of temperatures for many of those areas like now...or within the next few weeks?

January 15 - March 15 will feature 2 blizzards and 5-6 major snowfall accumulating events (6-8''+). Our fist region-wide storm will be one of the blizzards. Models will "show" this as rain but there will be hints within the upper-levels that may not be the case. There will be lots of wavering on guidance and then all of a sudden an 12z Euro run is going to go bonkers...everyone laughs and the rest of guidance begins to follow suite.

Still hoping for some severe wx in Florida when I go between the 23-30. Preferably between the 24-29 b/c I fly in the 23rd and fly back the 29th.

I agree, if you could use a sliding scale on the maps that would increase their value. This is something you can do on bufkit, but the downside of this is you're only looking at a point location and if you're going to look at many locations, it becomes very time consuming. Positive depth maps are certainly paint a much more realistic picture. You're exactly right, you need to know how to use them. This is what irks me about them because they are so irresponsibly tossed around on social media (and this includes some meteorologists). People just focus on the output numbers and the hype train is off the charts. I think they are a detriment to the field of forecasting in that they hurt more than they help. They just lead to lazy forecasting. It's just run to the snow maps, see what they show, and then make a snowfall forecast based on that.

Yes, I think the two can certainly be related. I do recall you making such mentions in the past. It seems to be becoming more true in the times of a warming climate as well. When we don't have the cold air readily available, we have to rely on so many factors to get things to work out. Majority of our colder air and periods (and this has been happening for a while) are occurring on the backside of systems and post storm. But once we lose the influence of the backside of systems, what happens...we're just flooded with milder air again. We first need to get some sustained and established cold source. We do that and the game becomes much easier.

I'm sure this isn't totally final, but as promised. Very good at determining which areas will see snow and picking up at some of the local elevational changes (which isn't anything special really) but outside of that...garbage.

If things don't work out this winter one thing I may be upset at myself about (although not too much because digging into seasonal forecasting is only something I really started getting back into late last Fall so there was a time constraint) is not digging deeper into is how Canada. While we have seen some favorable patterns over the past several years at times, one thing which has always seemed to be lacking is an abundance of cold in Canada. Can't say it's been absent, even thus far, because we have had some chilly periods but the timing of the cold air has not worked out. But we really need to: 1) Develop a pattern which will allow for and favor cold air building into Canada 2) Evolve the pattern to favor the cold dumping into the Northeast Isn't this why the EPO is important or the WPO? Doesn't the WPO do the work of building the cold into Canada and then the EPO/PNA dump the cold into the mid-West, and then AO/NAO do the work for us? (In a nutshell)

Don't disagree with that, just saying that you can't just look at the one product (anomalies) and assume it's warm.

Great post, people need to take this into consideration when posting 850 temperature anomaly plots. Pretty red colors in January in Canada doesn't equate to "warm". I also wonder if that "unfavorable" look being modeled is what sets the stage for some fun times as we move through January. I think this has been discussed quite a bit by a few...the idea that we would likely go through a period where the pattern is highly unfavorable before we finally turn a corner.

That's exciting. Going to miss the NAM though had some fun times with it.

Hopefully it is in the works to make some enhancement to these short-term mesos that can make them more reliable outside of 24 hours or start running them beyond 24 hours. I know the HRRR does so at 0/12 and 6/18 but if skill beyond 24 hours can be increase for these pieces of guidance that could help quite a bit in some situations (or I guess even add to the confusion).