cbmclean

I continue to poo-poo the value of a -NAO in the first half of Dec; it's useless without antecedent cold to block in.  Well maybe not useless, but certainly much less useful.  That said, I think Chuck's point that it would be nice to see the +NAO base state change is exactly right, and so far, no evidence of seeing that happen.      

Lest anyone be in doubt that we are still in a -----PDO Lan Nina basestate take a look at the MJO forecast.  It actually did a backwards propagation (often forecasted rarely occurring) in phase 5 and looks poised to do it again in phase 6.  Convection REALLY likes to be in Maritime Continent/E Pac.

25 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Welp, I went even lower than him. I'd be happy to be wrong, in our favor.

You calling for less than -16 inches?

6 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

We way undercut guidance this morning. Currently sitting at 29.8, the coldest reading of the year here

We were also colder than advertised but only got to 32.7, seems impossible to freeze this year despite it not being that mild.  The tomatoes and peppers still carry on.

6 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

@Maestrobjwa

I think you’re not getting what I’m saying. One anomalous result in one season at one location is not indicative of a climate shift. It’s just a fluke. 
 

Look at 2010.  Baltimore got 32” more snow than Albany NY that year. Was that some indication the climate had shifted and Baltimore was snowier than Albany or was it just a one year fluke anomaly?  

I can confirm that Eastern NC has NOT been getting more snow.  Last year wasn't bad by our standards though.  It made us happy.

1 hour ago, Steve25 said:

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but the end of December 2017 into January 2018 was one of the coldest stretches I can remember in recent history. I recall there was like a 10 day stretch where it didn’t get above freezing in Baltimore. Many nights in the single digits, many days that struggled to get out of the low 20s. 

That was a historic cold period in Eastern NC.  RDU set a record for most consecutive hours below freezing.  A pond at a park near my house froze over, which I had never seen in my life before.  My PWS recorded 0 °F, and there was shore fast ice at the Outer Banks.  Crazy times.  

After all the hype, didn't even hit 32.0, much less a hard freeze.  My growing season goes on.

23 minutes ago, eyewall said:

This morning in Raleigh's Historic Oakwood. Colors are real nice here this year. 

Oakwood dominated by... maples? 

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Latest CFS says yes to snow lovers for late Nov through January. Looks like a solid Feb torch though

 

 

Feb torch is a classic Nina trademark, and has been extra strong in the recent -PDO regime so I'm expecting a hostile Feb by default.  If the E CONUS actually got a cold and productive Dec/Jan, I wouldn't be too broken up abut a mild feb though.

2 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

Not that it counts for anything, but I’ll again reiterate my preference that we delay any droolworthy pattern until Dec 15 or later. Climo improves so much through the first few weeks of winter. Shoveling feet of pattern for Thanksgiving just helps keep the leftovers chilled on the front porch. 

Understood but...

The most consistent winter feature in our ---PDO period has been the Xmas torch.  The second half of December has been a horror show other than a few notable dry cold periods (including 2017)  Of the two "flavors" failure that have dominated recently (SER and Pac Puke), the problem in late December seems to be more Pac Puke.  Like clockwork I know somewhere between Dec 5 - 10 a big AK vortex is going to show up on the extended and march toward verification..

Second, a good Nov/early December might not help us, but a bad Nov/early December can surely hurt us.  I believe it was 2020-2021 where we had the first extended period of -NAO in a decade and we were all excited, but the preceding November was a +++++++AO cluster and all of NA had no cold air, so the -NAO just blocked in mild a

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

The "flavor" of 2017-18 was probably about as good as we could hope for this winter, the Baltimore area was the local screw zone snow minimum in general but it featured two legitimate cold/snowy periods and even with both failing to fully reach potation around here even the minimum areas got close to a median snowfall that winter.  If we repeated that general pattern with truly cold period from mid December to mid January and then crazy blocking the whole month of March...plus there were a couple lead/trailing wave opportunities in February and one produced a minor snowfall... so even the in between period wasn't a total hopeless period... considering there are some total snowless duds in the analog set I would sign up for a repeat of that winter and say please and thank you.  

I think the OP was talking 2016-2017, wasn't he?

4 minutes ago, ATDoel said:

Wind damage from a hurricane is no where near as extreme as wind damage from a tornado, with similar wind speeds.  They aren't comparable.  Most structures outside of the surge zone will survive this hurricane to some extent, it may just be the walls standing but they'll be there, unlike an EF4 tornado that slabs almost everything.

What is the physical basis for a hurricane wind of 190 mph being significantly less destructive than a tornado wind of 190 mph?

6 hours ago, WinstonSalemArlington said:

Good point. Even Wilmington was colder than Greensboro.

Any idea what caused this strange temp pattern?

26 minutes ago, NorthHillsWx said:

What a modeling/forecast miss

What do you mean?

Just had a thought: today's average temperature is going to end up lower than Christmas 2015.

It's ridiculously comfortable out there right now.  We're going to pay for this some time in September or October.  Bottomed out at 56.5 today.  My PWS read 81.4 for a max but I have never been satisfied with its ability to reject the sun so I doubt we made we hit 80 today.

39 minutes ago, NorthHillsWx said:

I’d thought we missed the rain today but I was wrong. It’s pouring. Made it up to 86.7 but with dewpoints in the upper 70’s it felt like it was almost 100

Saw the radar, you're on a streak again.  As usual since June I'm just getting the crumbs but I'm still well over 4" for the month.

9 minutes ago, SEwakenosnowforu said:

How long have u lived in Wilson? Do u remember the snow we got there between 2001-2014? It was insane! It was insane snow!

I moved here in 2008.  I missed the big boxing day snow in 2010 as I was visiting my wife's family for Christmas.  We did have a white Christmas there though, so I can't complain too much.

1 hour ago, NorthHillsWx said:

Yesterday’s 1.94” brings the monthly total to 6.54” here. Incredible flooding in parts of Raleigh yesterday like we haven’t seen in a very long time. It all came down in about 2 hours and some areas got 5-6” in that time

I don't want to even know what Crabtree mall looked like yesterday.  So far, this is turning into one of those old time 90's Augusts with constant rain and clouds.  I used to hate those as a kid as it really killed our pool season.  Now I don't mind so much.

Odd rain day yesterday.  A thin line of not particularly impressive returns parked over my area and gave a prolonged period of light to moderate rain.  Unfortunately I forgot that my weather station was unplugged due to some home improvements so no idea how much we got.  Based on radar estimates on the NWS website it looks like somewhere between 1 - 1.5".  Have 0.97" today.  I believe I am somewhere between 4 and 4.5" for the month.  Grass is green and lush.

4 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

Did we jump to October? Currently 67 with moderate rain and a stiff NE breeze. 0.36” additional so far 4.29” event total 

You'll know it's October when we have out annual fall heat ridge and you're carving pumpkins in 90 °F heat.

1 hour ago, GaWx said:

 That’s 9 of 23 (39%) of Jul-Sep Conus MH hits during 1975-2024 having occurred just during phase 2, alone! The 39% is more than double the ~17% of days in phase 2, meaning a significant/non-random signal for increased danger.
 

Where did you find data about things like a day-by-day count of days by MJO phase?

Thought I was just going to be "crumbed" again with 0.05" before midnight, but overnight something came out of nowhere and gave us a healthy 0.98".  Much appreciated.

Got a disappointing 0.13" today.  Unless something pops up unexpectedly before midnight, I will end up with 3.43" for the month: 0.57" less than I got on the single day of June 16th.  It was a month of fringing and crumbs, with my biggest catch only 0.75" on July 27th.

ETA: Ended up with an extra 0.02" before midnight, for monthly total of 3.45".

3 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

RAH has really backed off rain chances for triangle north today. 80% to 40%. Really need a good soaking 2 weeks without rain with daily temps around 100 has turned it extremely dry in a hurry. Went from not watering the first 3 weeks of the month to barely able to keep the zoysia happy with daily watering 

The solution is to just have a yard made of weeds like me: only 3.30" MTD and still looking good!