weatherwiz

warm enough

Exactly why I made the post I made I don't think Allan meant to target New England in his tweet haha

I'll take my chances with that. The look verbatim too would favor trough axis more into the Southeast as opposed to farther west. Would help with getting any digging system to go negatively tilted as it digs into the region. Much better then recent crap luck of having all this occur more into the Mississippi Valley.

We can still get snow threats here with above-average 2M temps in January and February. Obviously as you go towards NYC latitude and points south your chances decrease drastically. Also, keep in mind with using 2M temp maps (in this case is) are the anomalies being driven by well above-average overnight temps or daytime temps?

Here's 18z NAM bufkit for ORH Friday. That's not too bad looking for a period of light-to-moderate snow.

Shortwave tracks pretty much overhead. Quite unstable too.

Haven't we had periods in the past where the atmospheric state became totally opposite of the oceanic state for a time and the result was an active pattern with big storm potential? Given the pathetic luck we've been having with this Nina-state maybe having an atmospheric state Nino-like will work to our advantage.

Something will hopefully pan out so we don't have to keep staring at bare ground with dry Arctic blasts every few weeks.

I don't disagree with that at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with discussion. I mean everyone has their different motives, some just love discussing and assessing the potential, some just want the big storm, and some really want to learn more and understand the "why this happened and why this didn't happen". It's just more of the kickback that happens. When someone starts posting thoughts/opinions (whether backed with data or not) that goes against the overall majority, then the discussion becomes messy and is it really discussion anymore?

This is my point! There have been dozens and dozens and dozens of posts the last 2-3 years with "[INSERT PERIOD] looks promising", "models look promising", "ensembles look promising". Every shortwave that shows up on guidance 5-10 days out always seems to be "promising" but what have we to show for it? If every single shortwave and signs of a trough keep getting labeled "interesting" eventually the word just means nothing.

At this juncture, pretty soon we'll be looking into March for these "potential's" and then all of a sudden, one model run will start showing 80's on the 384-hour prog and everyone will be like, "WTF did winter go"?

Our best potential/storm will probably end up coming from a clipper diving southeast out of Canada and developing south of Long Island.

I still say we need to see significant changes to the pattern over Russia/Asia with regards to jet stream structure/evolution there before we see any meaningful changes occur within the Pacific. Everytime we start to see models "look" favorable going out past 6-7+ days, as we get closer, we just revert back to the same background state. We need things to change in a big way. Otherwise its just the same themed crap of horrible antecedent airmasses then bitterly cold/dry behind the system and then rinse and repeat when it's time for the next one. This isn't going to change until there is a drastic overhaul somewhere and for something to spark that overhaul.

Yeah great point. For La Nina's the focus was on 120°W to 170°W for anomalies. Since EL Nino's tend to incorporate a larger swath of anomalies and also more into the N1.2 zone, may have to extend analysis through entire ENSO zone (180° to 80°W) and if core anomalies 160-180 call that West-Based, 160-120 Basin Wide, and 120-80 East-Based

I will definitely check that out! I'll admit...I don't really understand modoki events and what really classifies an event as modoki. I've read around a bit but find differing opinions. Something I need to look into more. I know you've highlighted them in the past so I'll go back through some of your posts.

IDK...I think this can go either way but I certainly can see your argument for west-based. the core of the anomalies are certainly positioned towards the western edge of the ENSO region. May have to really go back and do another look through. This may have to be approached differently then cold anomalies.

1929-1930 1958-1959 1968-1969 2004-2005 2014-2015 2009-2010 I did as basin wide 2002-2003 basin wide 1977-1978 basin wide 1957-1958 basin wide I may have to definitely look more into OLR to perhaps do a better breakdown.

Hopefully something pans out by 01/20. If not time to fire up the countdown to May 1

Well I figured may as well start working on EL Nino composites. Grabbed SSTA's for all EL Nino's to try and break down into west-based, basin-wide, and east-based. I found this much more challenging then with La Nina's. The breakdown I came up with was West-based: 5-events Basin-wide: 25-events East-based: 10-events One thing I noticed was alot of variance in SSTA's across the north-central Pacific and just west off the West Coast. I don't recall such variance with La Nina, but I never saved the SSTA composites for Nina's so I have to go back and do that. But given this I think I may try to also take a focus on SSTA's outside of the ENSO region when assessing EL Nino events

I thought the NBM was to fix some of those issues. It even struggled big time with the Arctic air last week. I think one night DEN got down to like -24 and MOS/NBM was way off. It's pretty cool how NBM gives a percentile output but that doesn't even capture the full potential. Bufkit is still the best way to forecast temps but way too time consuming.

It's amazing how terrible MOS (and this even includes the NBM b/c that isn't particularly good) can be at temperature forecasts. And this statement applies for the entire country.

Going to the Pats game Sunday so thrilled it's going to be on the mild side! Monday is the winter classic at Fenway Park...looks great for the Bruins/Penguins game. Hope they can keep the ice hard enough.

Great post. Certainly can't overlook the EPO and its climatology and how the EPO is evolving as well. I was also thinking this. When we do composites on indices such as NAO, AO, etc. we're focusing on the 500 height anomalies. In reality though, aren't these indices more of a measure of differences in SLP between your consistent pressure systems (I know at least the NAO is). I was doing some composites with the NAO and looking at SLP anomalies vs. height anomalies, there definitely can be a difference in where the core SLP anomalies are vs. the height anomalies. Too make this shorter, I wonder if where the core SLP anomalies are located and structured holds significant weight and could, perhaps, even be more of an indicator then 500 height anomalies itself?

It would be so much work (though having programming knowledge in like Python it would probably be super easy). That def seems like a period of interest.

Regarding the PNA, this is why I so badly want to breakdown these indices on a weekly to biweekly level instead of just having a monthly or seasonal average. I truly believe that having this breakdown will provide so much more insight and guidance into pattern evolution and be a huge asset for medium-to-long range forecasting. By having weekly/bi-weekly averaged values you can make plots and really visualize the short-term changes. When we make our composites and correlations and are tied into the monthly averaged values, and are comparing say snowfall or temperatures or precipitation, you end up with a large spread in the results which leads to a larger standard deviation. For example, comparing seasonal or monthly snowfall totals to the -NAO/+NAO phase. Now the data averaged out yields a better correlation to above-average snowfall with a -NAO and below-average with +NAO. but when you list snowfall totals for each +/- NAO season, there will be a large spread. I think breaking this stuff down into smaller time-scales will eliminate some of this spread.