SnowGoose69

I posted in the SNE thread how if you just took the a trained monkey could forecast this winter by saying where was the last cold neutral or very weak La Nina to follow a decent El Nino. That would be 80-81, 03-04 and 92-93 were warm neutral so you can basically throw them out. So far if you remove the Xmas 80 cold outbreak this winter and the next 2-3 weeks look a heck of alot like 80-81. It was pretty darn cold but could not snow at all. the pattern completely broke down after 2/10 and torched. It was not a Nina pattern though, it was just basically a raging zonal one

Strangely enough Feb 81 was mostly just zonal. The entire country likely torched based on the individual day height maps I see. It seems though that more often the last 25 years however that the February pattern in La Nina winters loves to revert back to whatever the December pattern was in the GOA/AK area. It would be strange if February reverted more to 12/8 onward with the sort of too far east and large displaced Aleutian low like a strong Nino. Prior to 99 or 00 many La Nina Februarys simple went classic Nina, 89 was an exception where the pattern sort of resembled December 88 but there was a SSW I believe which made Feb/Mar 89 as cold as they were over the Plains/Lakes and at times SNE down to MA

Right now this winter is attempting to follow 80-81 which was really the last case of a cold neutral winter following a decently strong Nino. It also peaked at Nina status very late, more in Jan than the usual Oct-Dec. The snow totals were awful though and 2/10 onward was a raging torch. December by modern day warming matched decently well too in many areas, the Xmas cold outbreak skewed 80 too.

Whether thats legit or not who knows. Might once again be the model trying to default to the ENSO state

I could definitely see if the MJO gets decent amplitude through 8-1-2 that any flip takes awhile to happen and its closer to 2/10 or 2/15 before things really change. I've never liked relying on late peaking Ninos or Ninas to be able to turn the background state as well as ones which are established by October or November.

You lose the darker height anomalies from Baja up to BC over the previous few days, some of that is simply the resolution further out but seems like maybe the ridge is flattening somewhat at the end.

D16 on the 06Z GEFS looked ugly as it seemed the W Coast ridge was about to be totally punched and the flow was going to go zonal but at that range who knows. Also the patterns have been continually getting broken down too fast on ensembles for 2 months

You wonder if this winter is gonna be like 18-19 inverted. Models keep trying to show some type of more La Nina pattern beyond D10 and it never develops.

The only problem I see is the overall look has degraded in regards to storm potential. The D10-16 look now resembles more 12/1-12/7 than what it showed a few dayd back which is the classic stormier look. This now seems more cold and dry

The most shocking thing on the 12Z Ops is the CMC/GFS look nearly the same D8-10. The bad thing is it does not take an expert to see the Pac flow is still insanely fast at D10

The subsurface looks mild though, at least last I checked. would not be surprised if thats still the case if it fades fairly quick in the next 4 weeks

The La Nina is so weak and the PDO has dropped in intensity I am not so sure the idea we just go to a typical Nina late January and February pattern is going to work

The tendency since mid November has been for ensembles to be rushing changes to the pattern by 5 days or so. Remember 15 days back it was unanimous we'd torch by 12/21, instead its more 25-26 now, some of the previous changes were rushed too. Not surprised to see it be more 1/8 vs 1/2 when things really might shift

I am not sure they are able to get out there and measure if a precip change happens or the snow ends well before a measurement time. it seems they just do the standard 7am-1pm-7pm-1am measurements

Yeah much stronger La Nina though and the high latitudes were may more unfavorable that winter, we still had alot of storms though and January was very cold early. Also had a near miss in February, that winter was like 95-96 compared to winters recently

Everything amplifies now. This is why here in NY we've lost alot of those weak overrunning type storms we used to get. The waves now just become 988mb lows vs weak waves.

The GEFS/GEPS both reverted more western trof near 300 hours but quickly went back to the same pattern after 320. Its almost as if both keyed in on a strong storm signal. Any storm in that window would probably cut or come close to doing so anyway

It really makes no sense based on its MJO forecast but I guess there does tend to be a lag, I said last week it might be closer to 1/10 before the pattern really becomes favorable. 1/1-1/5 was being optimistic

The NAM wants no part of it yet but that may just be due to it being out of range

Too much of it is luck though and the sample size is still small. For example, everything imaginable went wrong in December 89, it almost happened again in 2000, but chances were there all month long both years. 2000-2001 would have averaged below normal without the 12/30 storm obviously, so I guess the predictive measure the winter finishes below normal is a good one. But the rest of the winter being poor snow wise, not so much as if not for that remarkably lucky storm we'd still have had 23 inches of snow in Jan/Feb/Mar of 2001 which is darn good.

Oddly enough those totals at JFK/LGA seem somewhat suspicious to me at same time. I'm not sure how LGA added one more inch and JFK 0.7 more after 7am.

The MJO plots now show both the Euro/GFS trying to go stronger through 8 and 1 as well.

Flow tends to be faster and you have more Miller Bs vs As

I think a wind profiler in ATL that ingested data for NCEP had broken. Something like it had a 50 degree error in winds aloft.

The first halves of both the Dec 03 and Jan 11 events were fairly bad positive busts, one had nothing and we had 6-10, the other I think maybe was forecasting 1-2 and we got 6-10