weatherwiz

Woah that is awesome

Yikes just saw the GFS for next Saturday lol. Flying to Florida that day so I'm banking that will happen

EL Nino's typically peak in the late Fall/early winter then begin to weak (exception being super strong events which tend to maintain there strength through winter). But this should not really have an impact on anyone's thoughts for how the rest of winter will proceed.

It's always an exciting time when firing up the May 1st thread. Sometimes it even helps get winter going. But pretty crazy, in a few weeks we'll only be 4 months away

Was coming into Springfield from Windsor Locks and ran into a nice little snow something

ehhh I wouldn't put it past some to do so.

Don't hate the pattern at the end of the GFS run. Great to see that type of look. Hopefully the people that punted January punt themselves

Didn't many places in the West last winter (like ski areas) have some of their snowiest winters on record? I would have to think many of those areas are close to historical lows STD. Be curious to see if things change for them at all...but if the pattern evolves in a way that makes it more favorable for us that would not be good news for them.

True but depends on evolution and processes involved. In the event occlusion were to occur and it happened within the Southeast...that probably would drastically negate widespread heavy rain potential because the degree of WAA (which seems to be a huge driver in the potential) would be significantly weakened as would the degree of large scale lift. We saw something similar occur not very long ago. Don't remember if it was later in the summer or earlier in the Fall.

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.