SnowGoose69

The massive banana high may result in a large area of light snow. Unlike 2/6/10 even if we get screwed overall we may get something

The NAM hasn’t been as hideous beyond 60 the last couple of years. As a matter of fact there’s been times it’s caught onto flat solutions before the globals did

Its been a typical El Niño up there or I guess atypical in terms of how big the departures are. I believe even in 02-03 places like ND/SD torched most of the winter

12/09 had a vort in Canada but it was fairly unstable and we knew all we needed for it do was split and it did. The vort in February 2010 wasn’t anywhere as near as strong as this one. The timing was just miserable on it. The flow was also more WSW with a negatively tiled trof I believe.

It’s pretty darn potent. If that idea is right we would have to hope the timing is off. There are windows between those rotating vorts where the system would be able to come more north if you sneak in a 12 hour period between them

Impossible to know at this range when a Canadian vort is going to rotate down. If the timing is off even 6 hours the storm comes further north. Also possible since we have northern energy in Canada largely playing a role here that the NAM and GFS might sniff this out more accurately inside 72 than the Euro which sometimes struggles with energy up in Canada

The GFS is definitely taking the system too far NW with the setup at 500. More so when it’s down in the TN Valley/western Gulf region but it ultimately impacts the entire track

GFS track is too far north with that setup. Would definitely be further south and east than that. Not necessarily by a ton but certainly not that far NW

LOL that looks just like 2-23-89 almost across the board at H5 across the nation

The good news is that it may be rain anyway so people won’t have to see them get snow down there again. The air mass is putrid down in the gulf coast region on many of the ensemble members despite the fact that’s a perfect track for snow in BHM ATL GSP on many of the members it’s more likely than not to be rain

The GFS and even some members of the GEFS tend to not like pattern changes that are establishing in the 8-16 day window. You’ll generally see at least 1 if not 2 of the Op runs and about 30% of the ensembles on a given day of model cycles try to break it back down to whatever the regime you’re coming out of is. That’s been evident on the GFS the last 72 hours post 280-300 hours on some runs. The ensemble average though is still generally showing the overall switch to the +PNA establishing

The tendency in El Niño winters is for the GFS to suck and the Euro to perform very well. Also of note is that the CMC does seem to perform better during El Niño years as well. As we transition into more of a Niño pattern the GFS may become increasingly useless.

If we can hold some sort of El Niño semblance I think there’s a tendency for spring to be mild. There aren’t a ton of cases of back to back El Niño’s (I think just 4 in the last 80 years) but I believe they all had warm early springs following the first winter. 1953 and 1991 I think are two

It may come down to the speed of the incoming trof and cold push out of central Canada. The timing needs to be just about perfect or we end up with cold and dry or another 2 days of mild and wet

11-12 ended up being what 10-11 should have been. 10–11 was the strongest La Niña since 88-89 and for whatever reason it behaved like an El Niño with insane blocking and storminess. I’m guessing it was a lag. We’ve seen the lag effect many times before. 96-97 ended up being what 95-96 should have been based on ENSO. 93-94 seemed like an El Niño but was neutral and 95-96 may have been an El Niño STJ lag with all the storminess. Exactly why I wouldn’t be surprised to see 19-20 possibly act more El Niño like than this winter did simply because we will have been in an El Niño base state for a long time where as this year we exited what was basically back to back cold neutrals

I think if it stays strong enough to pass through 8 and 1 it’s remote that it ever re-emerges back into 3-4-5 in any strong manner. Maybe it gets back in there in weak amplitude

Those years have been popping up because I think CPC classified us as neutral this week as either PSU or Bob posted here. One also posted that some other indices match those years as well and they all were neutral after a La Niña.

The ETA basically changed forecasting accuracy. If you look at how good the 2 day forecasts improved or even the 24 hour forecasts from 1993 to 1998 it was remarkable. The one amazing thing about the 95-96 winter I always point out is that virtually none of the storms busted inside 24 hours markedly. At least up here. We had one or two that ended up snowier than forecast but no major forecast error really occurred one way or the other on any. If that same winter repeats in 91-92 not a chance that happens

I remember in 04-07 or so the NAM was actually very good. I don’t know if every other model got better or it just got worse

Not really. Many people recall that because some Op runs showed it but the Euro weeklies never really showed much hope prior to 1/10 at best. 2 weeks ago week 5 was great, week 4 was good, week 3 was lousy. That’s about where we are now. Week 3 great, week 2 is meh, and week one is lousy. Week 2/4 is where the error mostly happened

My hunch is it flips day 8-10 and never goes back. Or at least doesn’t til some time in March. I’m not buying the relatively great look at day 8-10 is going to go to crap again when the MJO is in phase 8 and the SOI has more likely than not been negative for almost 2 weeks

Disaster because everytime they come out it looks great week 3. Its a running joke now with Bob Not really. Two weeks ago week 5 was pretty much where it looked real good. Week 4 probably was better than week 2 shows now but not necessarily by a ton

The Op Euro and EPS has shown a pretty broad scale trof dropping into the eastern half of the country now for 5 consecutive runs day 8-10. It really hasn’t had the look of a transient feature at all which is why the 11-15 day EPS has been fishy to me the last 2 days or so.

That’s entirely possible if it’s weak magnitude. A weak 4-5-6 run through in February if the SOI has been persistently negative for several weeks probably wouldn’t result in a pattern this bad

I remember being there for the January 2010 storm and we were about 1-2 hours away from disaster and repeating 2007. Thankfully right as we were nearing it we flipped to sleet and avoided another mess. I think we got about 3/4 inch of ice between about 10am-1pm before we went over to sleet. Got 6-7, inches of snow the next day which was mostly unforecast outside of Mike Morgan who either got lucky or saw something nobody else did