BlizzardWx

I don't know if others feel this way, but I get really sick of the PSL interface and just making one map at a time. So I made some code that you can put into google colab. It allows you to set up your parameters via function arguments and you can select a range of years and get individual plots for all those years. It lets you do composite plots too but what I really had in mind was if you wanted to say, look at 50 hPa heights for December for the last 50 years. You can do it quickly. It will just get you 50 maps in like 45 seconds. It's just for Anomaly plots. I can't guarantee it won't break. But it seemed to work for what I tested. Anyway, I know a lot of you make these plots so maybe this helps somebody. There are some commented out examples at the bottom. psl_code.txt With that said, the reason why I made that is I wanted to look at the polar vortex position in relation to the winter. I see two current paths in model guidance. The AIFS camp that wants to keep the PV over Canada and the GEFS camp that moves it further east. Here are some matches I found. With that said, the group I grabbed for 50 hPa look colder than current guidance for mid month. So maybe my composite wasn't so great or maybe it'll trend colder at some point. Not sure. Looking ahead, the central Canada centered PV case rolls forward to a cold eastern half of the country in Jan-Feb. Not surprising given the analog years I found. It's similar in the PV-east case, but January is warmer. Maybe this is all garbage. But the thing that has caught my attention is the PV being displaced south over Canada. It just makes the cold more available and its probably why so many of the similar PV years were cold. I am not sure I buy it being as cold as these show to be honest and maybe by late December it'll be different enough that this analysis didn't mean anything. Time will tell of course.

SST changes are pushing the warm pool east. This may help to favor MJO waves pushing into our more favorable phases through the winter, at least to some degree.

Pretty strong momentum build up in the tropics ongoing with the MJO wave. I saw Webb saying that he thinks this will help keep the -PNA at bay for a while longer.

And the guidance seems to want to put the restrengthening vortex over Canada for much of the next few weeks so we keep the cold close even with it strengthening. People need to realize how some of our best cold can happen this way.

What is the website for these ENSO based MJO plot composites. Thanks in advance

Some guidance wants to bring one of the PV lobes into North America. The 06Z AIFS does this near the end of its run, and unsurprisingly is building some very cold air at the surface at this same time. Obviously that is what we would want to see heading into December.

I saw this graphic on X from Eric Webb showing the cooling lower stratosphere in the tropics. It seems the trend in strengthening the MJO is likely related to models catching on to the effects of the stratospheric warming as well as the final warming at the south Pole (strengthened Brewer Dobson circulation). Perhaps this is what will finally allow us to see a robust MJO through phases 7-8-1.

A lot has changed in the last month. Waters have cooled east of Japan and warmed in the east Pacific, a trend likely to continue. The PDO by my calculations is closing in on -1, and should rise further with this pattern. The -IO has collapsed. With some decent cooling near the MC, hopefully limiting MJO 4-6 this winter. The +AMO is strengthening but with a tripole pattern. RONI remains below -1. Global temperature anomalies dropped another 0.1 C in the last month.

https://x.com/webberweather/status/1990921925745410375 Webb says the tropical troposphere is already El Nino like. I wonder if this is playing into the strengthening trends for the MJO mentioned above.

Pretty deep vertically for areas with a wind reversal too.

00z ECMWF at 50 hPa has a full PV split with 3 daughter vortices, one right over the US. That'll help heading into December.

These aren't very polished, but for fun here is the GFS, GEFS, and CMCE 10 hPa zonal mean wind for the next 16 days. CMCE is on board with the SSW in the mean, GEFS is lagging.

Might be an ice storm pattern for my part of the world with cold air under cutting mild SW flow aloft

I was coming on here to mention this. It's showing up in the GEFS mean too.

Over my way it began when it stopped for you all. Snowiest February on record and the Oklahoma state record coldest temperature.

No, it's a daily value. It's gone down a good bit the last little while.

On my page you can plot the daily values for most of the indices anybody cares about. RONI is below -1.2 now. https://weathersigma.com/sst?i=RONI

I've slowly been working on a weather model/ climate index page. I think it's far enough along to share. https://weathersigma.com/sst Within this tab you can select a range of dates to display. I've run it back to the start of 2024 if you want to check past data. Each map has a bunch of index values along the bottom. They don't perfectly agree with other sources but some of that is related to exact methodology, region of choice for the index, data set, and so on. My IOD doesn't run as cold as what I've seen on here, for example. If you find it useful, find errors, or it needs changes, let me know. But I hope it'll be useful. It updates daily like the world climate service site. The 2nd image is an IOD plot, which can be selected near the bottom of the menu.

I saw JB referenced @GaWx on one of his blogs and called him by name. Maybe JB reads all of the hate about himself on here too

The issue still remains why that occurred, but this does make sense otherwise.

I remember last year the mid level PV was often partly to mostly uncoupled from the lower level PV, or maybe it was just much weaker than the mid level vortex. Am I remembering that right? I wonder if there are any hints of that happening again.

FWIW this is exactly what I was talking about in my last post. People need to stop reading into what happened at exactly their house (mesoscale randomness) and assume it means anything in the big picture. That level of precision is noise and does not mean a pattern was good or bad.

I'm not sure exactly how you would do it, but I know I'd like to see more winter outlooks or past winter discussion focusing on snowfall potential rather than what fell at specific points when possible. Maybe another way to look at it would be to say is this objectively a snow producing pattern even if it didn't occur at Central Park (or wherever). If we could remove luck (mesoscale patterns) from more of our analysis I imagine it would be more constructive to discussion of the patterns at hand. I think some of what @donsutherland1 has been showing is kind of a step in that direction. You could in theory score a pattern based on its historical correlation to snowy patterns to say how good a winter should have been regardless of what actually happened at some point. Just a thought.

I do think the pattern coming up will favor slowly moving that warm pool in the central Pacific a bit further east with continued cooling influences east of Japan and along the west coast, at least for the next 2 weeks anyway.

I appreciate your views and everybody else's. I come here to see viewpoints from all angles. I'd say the same thing to you as well as everybody else, please continue to contribute. I value it.