SnowGoose69

Late in the season it’s fairly easily for JFK or ISP even with a south wind to reach the lower 90s. Higher than 93-94 probably won’t happen but you can easily get there

No it was a weak La Niña last winter and a near neutral the winter before, perhaps a very weak La Niña early in 16-17. Well ahead of last winter there was some belief a weak El Niño might develop but by May or June of 2017 it was evident that possibility was over. Neither winter really behaved as expected. The near neutral 16-17 behaved very much like a raging El Niño or raging La Niña in December which most blamed on either the MJO or a lag effect of the strong El Niño. 17-18 more resembled a weak El Niño at times with a fairly snowy winter in the south and Tennessee valley. About the only guarantee I have right now is mid October into early November will be cooler than normal and then mid to late November will flip which seems to occur most of the time in any El Niño. The question always is what happen after 12/5. The better El Niño years will flip cold again around that time while the bad ones never do

BOS and PHL are the only two major airports I know of who never have SNINCR or 4/### in any of their METARs so there is at least one other airport with a similar issue to Boston

Could be the opposite we saw with Irma or one of the Atlantic storms last year. I remember NHC seemed to be keeping it stronger than it likely was because it was near land and they maybe did not want people to think a category lower was going to make things significantly better. Here it might be they know its never going to landfall as a 3 4 or 5 so why freak people out more than they need to be several days out

Wednesday has serious potential if that front is delayed 12-18 hours but right now the timing looks like 08-14Z which would probably just result in showers. With that strong of a low up in the Lakes it might end up more as a Tuesday evening system before it’s all over. I would be surprised if this slowed down vs sped up

Power out in Merrick

Already 0.38 in Merrick

You’re correct. I saw the same map. The tendency in La Niñas is for systems to track into the Lakes, be Miller Bs, or be way too flat and miss way south. I don’t think the latter happens too often because CLT and ATL have massive negative departures in La Niña years (as massive as you can get when you average 5 and 3 respectively) but I guess occasionally they luck out with a squashed wave during a La Niña. They did 3 times last winter in SC and GA. Of course the location of the anomalies in the Pacific matters a ton. I think some are overlooking that for this winter. If the anomalies end up too far to the east, even in a weak El Niño it usually isn’t good for the NE or MA. I think 06-07 was an east based weak El Niño if I remember right

It’s also clueless with all that stuff after 23Z. I would think this event is all over by 21-22 at worst for NYC

The north shore tends to be hit much more frequently for some reason. I always assume it’s simply the instability axis which storms can tend to follow. Yesterday that one cell up near SWF was tracking SSW for a long time despite the fact almost no steering flow between 500-700 was anything but NW or NNW. As soon as the back edge of the MCS clouds cleared areas to the SE of the cell it began moving more SSE. Almost as if the cell knew that the sun was now heating areas along the steering flow path. LI also tends to do better with lines that approach from the NNW vs W because the sea breeze impacts them later and allows them to stay stronger vs lines that approach from the west and begin feeling impacts of south flow across NJ

Yeah I saw that run. It may be the furthest west now other than the NAM sand SREF

It seems maybe 1-2 out of every 10 significant east coast storms in a setup similar to this the models view it as a kicker. 80% of the time they are right but that 20% when they are not is ugly

Wait until the airline issues a waiver which probably happens later today otherwise you have to pay a change fee

ATL is probably going to rebreak their all time warmest February which they broke last year. I’m estimating +9-11 now which would break it by 1-3 degrees

What is the standard bloom date there? I mean when I lived in OKC the early blooming stuff such as the Bradford pears in a normal year were out by 3/15-3/18. You being further south than that I would assume 3/5-3/8 is pretty normal for the early stuff. It doesn’t take much of a heat wave to push stuff out once you’re within about a month of typical blooming time is what I’ve noticed in New York over the years. If we get a hot stretch in late March everything will open. I know that last year Augusta lost their flowering azaleas well before the Masters, something that did not even occur in 2012

The Euro has been better in that Day 8-15 range all winter as far as general pattern. Back in December the GFS went crazy with a SE ridge 12/20-12/30 in the long range. The EPS then joined it for about a day or two and everyone thought the GFS was right. Then both models quickly reverted to a rapid cool down after 12/25. The GFS has had issues all winter trying to pump the SE ridge over the CONUS which just hasn’t verified for any long periods. It’s been more out in the NATL when it has verified. The CFS has tried this too

It probably will come end up around -3.5 or so if I had to guess

The setup out west isn’t quite as favorable as the ridging isn’t as pronounced so I wouldn’t think we would see things setup as far south

The GFS is grossly overdone with that whole cold push in all likelihood. My guess is this won’t be a snow event for the most part anywhere south or east of a BHM to just north of GSP line.

The tendency if solar activity is elevated with no ENSO mechanism is usually for zonal flow. For whatever reason it can have a lesser or different effect when it’s elevated when there is pronounced ENSO. It’s sort of like how some MJO phases during El Niño are bad while they are fairly favorable during neutral or La Niña years. I think 1 and 8 can be poor in December El Niño’s but are otherwise usually good phases go us in the east

I’m not sure, the sample size is so small. It’s not been good in the northeast though at all. 96-97 (neutral after one year of La Niña), 01-02 and 12-13 are the only real good cases and all were pretty lousy. Some of the more reliable longer term forecast guys out there have theorized solar activity and MJO have a huge influence in those winters because you don’t have an ENSO influence to “buckle the jet.” 01-02 had awful solar an MJO for the US. I think the winter was mostly spent in phases 4-5.

Typically if you’re coming off a multi year La Niña a weak El Niño on the order of 0.2–0.7 won’t do a whole lot with the southern stream. You usually need to kick into a decent 1.0-1.5. And history shows that is USUALLY what happens. 57-58, 72-73, 76-77, 86-87, 02-03, 09-10 all came off multi year La Niñas and the two which could be modeled (02-03 09-10) showed up well in advance on the climate models. My hunch is if we don’t start seeing a pronounced move by April in the ENSO models to a 1-1.5 by next winter then you can probably assume we go closer to neutral as when you’re in a negative PDO phase or on your way into one which may be more the case now, the ENSO models usually verify too high on predicted El Niño’s beyond 6 months

With the weakening EPO ridge this is going to track fairly far north if it happens. This won't be suppressed. A track somewhat north of the CMC would be a likely scenario

It’s entiry possible it’s a climate change issue due to melting of ice in that area. The same impact over on the Pac side could by why the massive EPO ridge is making appearances the last 4-5 years. I’m not sure who, but one of the well known Mets predicted this 6/8 years ago that NATL blocking would become a thing of the past and the EPO ridge would start to become dominant over the next decade. Furthermore, the massive EPO ridge pattern feedback to make a -NAO difficult to achieve. I would have to find it but DT had a good video once explaining why when you have the big 93-94 13-14 pattern it’s virtually impossible to get a -NAO because of the downstream impact over eastern Canada from the -EPO

It’s really been a story of great timing for you guys down there so far. The pattern hasn’t exactly been favorable at all for winter storms being a La Niña with no STJ but the 12/8 event was a perfectly timed wave with a cold push and now today’s storm develops despite what looked like a meh pattern 5-6 days ago for anything. I’ve seen El Niño winters where timing has never worked out once the entire season