cbmclean

4 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

... but the last couple runs have actually left a glimmer of hope. 

14 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Me, no. But some in here think warming is debatable, somehow thermometers are subjective tools in their reality, so it’s worth pointing it out. 

Meh, you might care too much about what they think.

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

If the jet is shifted north in the pacific the compression of the flow between the subtropical, polar, and arctic jets in the pacific speeds them up.  Its also shifting the NS north.

That would make sense to me if the arctic cold pool was "standing its ground" as it were, but since the high latitudes are warming faster, I would expect arctic/polar jets to retract faster then than the STJ, thus lessening the latitudinal temperature gradient and leading to weakening of the jets.  

1 hour ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

The pattern has been more zonal, vs major troughs.. now, the -PNA that we have seen since 1998 and then 3x more since 2016 is a real anomaly, and not a product of global warming. 

I hope you're right...

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Last time the pattern change got all the way to like  day 8 then collapsed.

That was what made it worse than 2019 to me.  That year the epic look hovered just outside d16.  But this year it was moving nicely up in time and then....  Just so frustrating.

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

That 2002 is a much stronger AK vortex though with more conus ridging. So was 1998. So were the other examples. Again I’m NOT saying it shouldn’t be warm. But it’s taking less to cause crazy torch patterns anymore. 

Do you find that unexpected or surprising?

14 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

lol.. you guys.. Raleigh, NC is going to go 1000 days without any snow, no flurries, nothing. Richmond hasn't snowed in 2 years. 

RDU record is 1,164 days from December 1989 to Feb 1993:

https://abc11.com/north-carolina-snow-nc-drought-last-time-it-snowed/14449555/

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

It’s not that I’m not nervous about this. I’ve seen some things that bother me. There were times people were using the pacific as a blanket scapegoat and I pointed out at times we had the exact opposite long wave configuration yet the SER remained!  But our last +pdo it snowed plenty. On the whole 2014-2018 was extremely snowy. So we have no evidence yet that a pos pdo has been affected by this recent tendency. 

Sure, but I was more referring to the fact that a +PDO might not have saved the Jan 6-7 event.  But perhaps it might reduce the probability of such events because the cold wouldn't have to constantly fight against SER and thus it might take only 1 - 2 weeks for thermals to recover from pac puke instead of 3 - 4. 

It's all speculation of course.  We simply watch and wait.

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

Carrying this reply into this thread. 

The Jan 6-7 event this year is a perfect example of what could have been a 6-12” snowstorm in our area had it not been a couple degrees too warm. 

A lot of cases we point at may not be clear cut, but this Jan 6-7 one is the most clear cut to me. Unforgivable and inexcusable. After seeing that one fail, I basically threw my snowfall outlook out the window right then and there. 

And I fear that this one is one we're not getting back because even when/if the PDO flips we'll still have the pac puke.  This wasn't primarily a SER fail but the fact that the entire continent was taking weeks to recover from the near-record pacific onslaught that almost completely eliminated snow in the CONUS outside the high elevations. 

I think it is the tag-team effect of the PNA/SER and Pac Puke which has made this last period so hostile.  A pac puke comes along and scours the cold out.  Then once it shuts off the source regions begin to recover, but the PNA/SER tendency constantly fights against the cold making it to the eastern conus.  It takes weeks to slowly push the thermal boundary back over us and then it just gets wiped out by another pac attack and the whole things starts over. 

I have hope that a PDO flip can improve the PNA/SER tendency, but I don't see how it can help much with the jet stream/Hadley cell problem.  So at best we'll hopefully be able to recover faster from the pac attacks.  I hope I'm just being pessimistic.  

29 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

the heat flux from the canada and scandanavian ridges are working in tandem to create the -NAO.

But is it a "reflection event" or an "absorption event"?  Because if we have the "wrong" one it's just dookie. 

24 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

This is where I am, but apparently some are now saying the PDO is permanent due to lower SO2 lol 

One of my hobbies is now researching the nature of the PDO.  Laugh at me but I usually start research on Wikipedia(it's a great place to get an overview!) and I came across mention of an "Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation".  Anyone ever heard of that one before?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdecadal_Pacific_oscillation

17 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

I’m not convinced that lower SO2 is the biggest or the only factor, but if it is permanent, then this recent 7-8 year period is our new normal. 

I'll have to see some studies on that; until then I see it as just idle speculation. 

2 hours ago, CAPE said:

Zero. Idiom. You really take everything you read here literally lol?

I've been told I'm a literalist.

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

2010 was a brief interruption of the negative pdo cycle when it briefly peaked positive. I thought this Nino would do the same, but the pdo stayed negative. 

I didn't really get the impression that the PDO was the number one villain this year.  Sure it didn't help, but if I had to pick my number failure mechanism it could be the frequency/strength/duration of pacific trough jet extensions.  The first event took out four weeks of good climo and was primarily the cause of the failure of the otherwise promising early January period.  The second event killed late January and early Feb.    

Likewise the collapse of the modeled epic pattern in late Feb was due to the failure of the advertised HL blocking.  Is that connected to the PDO?  

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

We can flip a coin on that one. 

In all seriousness, I enjoy trying to locate potential in the LR, but it is high risk/low reward. I don't want a storm named after me. Look what just happened to PSU 

Just curious, what is the risk?

3 minutes ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

The field I work in has seen so many advances in machine learning / deep learning in just the last few years. I would think a lot of the recent AI advances will eventually be applied to weather forecasting (if they aren't working on this already). Once that happens I would expect to see results dramatically improve.

They are definitely already working on this.  Several AI or AI/physics hybrid models have been posted on the site this winter.  They have the potential to be powerful but one thing to remember is that many AI methodologies (e.g. artificial neural networks) have to by definition "learn" by using past data.  As has been mentioned many time here past data may have limited relevance in a changing climate.  That may limit their effectiveness going forward.

1 minute ago, WEATHER53 said:

See I don’t have to have an answer for my ibservations  to be correct. Not saying you are doing this but that question is basically a model hugger deflection

if you feel status quo is sufficient then that’s just very different from my thinking.  Every occurrent snowstorm this season has been 50% higher or lower than just 24 hours in advance was depicting 

I would venture that AI is going to formulate an analogue occurrent outcome data base from last 1-25 years and get into a more current and correct manner of evaluation, assessment and forecasts. Also ditch the 7+ day stuff, enhance the short term, destroy the floppy discs. 

I try to be open-minded.  I agree that we probably place too much confidence in modeling in d10+.  And I understand that human knowledge can do a lot from simple analysis roll forward say to ~ day 3.  But from day 3 through day 10 I truly don't see any alternative to model-based forecasting.  If you have a different alternative to propose I would honestly like to hear you out. 

Just now, WEATHER53 said:

What is wrong is we are hamstrung with inefficient tools with a lot of clinging to “it’s all we got” Stop hitting those sites and maybe a message is sent. Plus now we have ninos  not being ninos .  Those examples of possible outcomes wiggled  0-10” within 24-36 hours and even with just 6 hours remaining they missed badly in total qpf  most of which saw 4-6 turn out 1-3” just  4-6 hours from onset. 

What, in detail, is your proposed alternative to model-based forecasting?

6 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

So excited for another nino boost to our climate, let’s see how high we can get this planet! 

Maybe at some point we can max out the register and cause it to roll over into colds again.

I admit I am still curious to see what a nice strong Modoki Nino could do.  I suspect I'd be disappointed but I am still curious.

ETA: apparently Modokis were at one time thought to be becoming more common due to Babar.  Can;t say I have seen it lately though.

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ftp/hrd/annane/DIS/Q3.pdf

31 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

I really don’t understand how 96 happened in a Nina.

There's quite a bit of variability in the "snow response" to ENSO.  Because I love to graph things I have made a scatter plot of ONI values vs snow at IAD.  For the ONI values I have taken the data from here:

https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_v5.php

I have averaged the DJF and JFM values for each year to obtain the single "winter ONI" value for my plot.  I got IAD snow data here:

https://www.weather.gov/media/lwx/climate/iadsnow.pdf

In the plot you can see the general trend for low ONIs to be lower in snow but there is still a ton of variation.  The red point is 1996.  The green point is 2010

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

24”. My avg is down to 39.5 after the last few seasons and median is about 35. 

Eh median is not out of the question then.  I'll be rooting for you!

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

In the current paradigm with warmer PAC and Atlantic and a -pdo exacerbating the issue I don’t think we’re snowing in either is the answer.  I think if we did get a canonical Nino split flow -epo -pna that could work still. But in the current correct pdo with the pacific base state as it is I doubt that’s likely. The persistent MC forcing along with the Hadley cell expansion is interfering with that.  

Yeah I guess we're just stuck waiting for the PDO flip to occur to see what happens.  I don't really have a good feel as to what happens then.  If a time traveler came from 30 years in the future and said "Yeah it flipped but it didn't help much and DCI is now Myrtle Beach", I wouldn't be surprised.  On the other hand if they said "Yeah it flipped and we got back to maybe 85% of what we had" I wouldn't be shocked either.

27 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

It is what it is. No sense getting all upset. 
 

On top of living where I do ( anyone willing to make the commute can do what I do) as a skier I see a lot of snow each year regardless of what happens here. It helps some. 

What are you at for this season?  My home forum is pretty much closing up shop and I'm just staying on here to try to help will you to at least median.

In today's base-state, between the two which do you guys think is more destructive to east CONUS snow: Pac Puke (Pacific Trough regime) or SER/-PNA/Pacific Ridge regime?  They both suck ass, and the three previous winters had nearly endless -PNA but overall I think the SER is less evil than Pac Puke.  At least in the SER regime the source regions are still cold and a nice -EPO can cause it to get shunted our way from time to time.  For Pack Puke, once it sets in we're punting a bare minimum of the next three weeks (often four or five) as the source regions are completely scoured of cold and after it relaxes we have to gradually build it back up.

On the other hand of course, when the -PNA is dominant and immobile like it was last year it is obviously a complete killer.   

While I'm hopeful that a switch to +PDO might help with the SER, will it do anything to improve the Hadley cell/pacific jet situation that seems to be making Pack Puke episodes longer and more severe?