cbmclean

8 hours ago, Cold Rain said:

The GFS lr would be hard pressed to look a lot worse for cold and snow in the east.  MJO phase 8 sucks.

That's the thing though, I don't think its going to make it to phase 8.  It will do loop-de-loops in phase 7 until spring.

4 minutes ago, cbmclean said:

Don't have easy access to historical records right now.  What exactly happened in March 1960?

Nevermind.  The link at the previous post answered my question.

1 hour ago, jburns said:

A thousand year event and two-thirds of this forum think we are overdue.

Don't have easy access to historical records right now.  What exactly happened in March 1960?

19 minutes ago, griteater said:

The Euro weeklies are pretty much a complete flip from the previous run...they are warm from mid Feb to mid Mar.  All of the ensembles have a warmer look now in week 2, so we've got some work to do to see a colder looking pattern.  To me, the -VP anomalies associated with the MJO are progressing as expected.  Plenty of time for things to change, but we're not currently seeing the -EPO/+PNA type pattern in the long range ensembles you would expect with the MJO progression.  The stratospheric PV that is getting displaced into Canada could be an issue, I don't know.  Earlier in the winter, we had a stratospheric high over NW Canada and AK that was coupled with the troposphere, which led to the arctic cold waves being sent down into the conus.  We don't have that same type of coupling in the near term forecasts.   

Man it is amazing how fast Fab Feb went to Feb Flub.  I wonder what it was that "faked" all the models out, or were we just projecting our desires onto their usually variable output?

18 minutes ago, Southern Track said:

It could be.  After being really amped it looks to die on the vine and skirt the cold phases along with the COD

I have been trying for a while to find good info about the effect of MJO on CONUS temps.  Found a good citation using my student access via the NCSU library (yay library fees)

Zhou, S., L’Heureux, M., Weaver, S., Kumar, A., (2011). A composite study of the MJO influence on the surface air temperature and precipitation over the Continental United States. Climate Dynamics, 38, 1459-1471

So this article shows why everyone on this thread likes phases 8 - 1- 2 so much.  Interestingly, it again shows that we tend to do better with low amplitude in those phases.

1 minute ago, BIG FROSTY said:

Yes, He says MJO slow moving, tonight he said Feb 17 - March 7  Cold? IDK we'll see soon!!

A link to someone's master's thesis correlating MJO phase with CONUS temps.  If I understand correctly, it seems that if you want a significant Eastern US cold snap, you should root for the MJO to be inthe COD.  That surprises me.

https://www.albany.edu/honorscollege/files/findlay_thesis.docx

8 minutes ago, BIG FROSTY said:

lol, That thread died quickly!!!   Hang on it want be long....................... Just as soon as we can get the MJO in phase 8 the bottom drops out! 

As others have mentioned recently, some forecasts are showing it making a detour around 8 or maybe even reversing itself back to phase 6.  Hopefully that doesn't happen.

I had high hopes for February, but now I am just hoping that the cold/dry - warm-up and rain will average to normal.  It would be nice to sneak an overall below-average winter (even if it's just a smidge below) when predictions were pretty dire going in.

16 minutes ago, Northern Foothills Snowman said:

What about 13/14 winter? We had a good February and March snow wise. How was NAO during those month February and March 2014?

13/14 had 22 out of 90 < 0.  If I recall, that winter had a very friendly -EPO regime which saved us.

By the way, the graphs from my last post were mislabeled, they were 15/16 and 16/17.

Here is 13/14

2 hours ago, mackerel_sky said:

Yeah, easily! It only goes negative in the spring and summer! Negative NAO in winter hasn't happened in last 3-5 winters atleast

Went back and looked at the data for the last two winters from ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/cwlinks/.

To no one's surprise, +NAO dominates, but in neither case was it a shutout.  2014-2015 had 16 out of 91 days below 0, while 2015 - 2016 had 35 out of 90.  This winter we are batting 0 for 58.

Below are graphs I made of the data for both years.

Like Ron Burgundy's dog when it ate the whole wheel of cheese and pooped in the refrigerator, the NAO is going from annoying to amazing.  Crossed over from negative almost exactly on Dec 1 and has been positive every single day since (although sometimes very close to zero).  I am curious to see if we can get through a whole Met winter with not one single day negative.

15 minutes ago, griteater said:

Kind of amazing though that the GFS wipes out a lot of the January cold anomalies by the end of the month.  1st image is the 7 day GFS forecast.  2nd image is January to date plus the 7 day GFS forecast (to Jan 30).

Man, kind of a bummer that RDU could break the all time aob freezing record yet still end up simply dead normal

14 hours ago, Cold Rain said:

Agreed.  You can already see some hints of it.  Most of the indexes we track seem to be moving favorably in the LR:  AO, NAO, EPO all appear to descend toward the end of their projections, while the PNA looks to head up.  The MJO is making its way around the horn (or depending on the model, taking a shortcut through the COD) toward the more favorable phases.  The CFS continues to look pretty good for Feb, and I'm hearing pretty good things about the latest run of the Weeklies.  Plus, there is at least some ongoing assault on the Strat PV.  While a unicorn in and of itself, it certainly doesn't hurt to have that happening concurrently.

In the meantime, the upper level flow isn't conducive to extreme torching or very cold outbreaks.  But, it looks like we keep some very cold air on our side of the globe, which is good.  If it's nearby, it's a lot easier to get transported into the area vs. having to build up in the source region.  We may even have an event during this period to track, for at least some portion of the area (western zones are favored, IMO).  Interesting winter for sure.

This post cheered me, and then I saw a post from Ralph Wiggum in the MA thread: " Strong signal now as we head into Feb for a +nao, -pna, +ao regime. "

Did the models flip flop or something?

By the way, did anyone else notice the excruciatingly tiny -NAO conditions predicted starting Jan 22.    Bring on the blocking!

3 minutes ago, Cold Rain said:

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/forecasts/reforecast2/teleconn/forecast.html

Thanks.  I find it odd that the CPC lists AO/NAO/PNA but not EPO, while the NOAA page lists NAO/PNA/EPO but not AO

7 hours ago, Orangeburgwx said:

The thread for Wednesday has already been made

He was joking about starting a thread for the 384 hour GFS fantasy storm.

41 minutes ago, FallsLake said:

Indices look better today:

AO - Looks to go strongly negative (good)

PNA - Looks to drop negative but go back positive in the LR (OK)

NAO - Looks to go neutral in the LR (great because I don't think it can go negative in the winter anymore) 

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/teleconnections.shtml

EPO - Going slightly positive (not good)

Where do you get info about the EPO?  There is nothing about it on the CPC teleconnection page

1 minute ago, Red1976Red said:

what happened to people just wanting cold in the winter to be happy? we getting lots of it and more so than other years. on top of some isolated big dogs and just recently a dumping of rain. it can and has been worse in other winters. 

I am very happy with cold.  This last cold snap was like balm to my soul. 

I have decided to take my first steps to become a weenie, instead of just a lurker.  I checked out this Tropical Tidbits sight that you guys mention so much.  Man the information there is almost overwhelming.  Who maintains that site?

Edit: Never mind, I read the About page.  Still very impressive and useful for non-tropical weather.

Somebody mentioned Brick earlier this evening.  Does anybody know what happened to him?

There was discussion about the NAO a bit earlier.  Got this interesting time series from the CPC.  The current positive regime doesn't seem to be quite as bad as 1989-1993.

1 hour ago, Cold Rain said:

Yes sir!  I’m loving every second of this cold.  Stay cold as long as you want, old man winter.  The way I figure, it can be cold for 25% of the year.  The other 75% is fine to be warm.

After the last two "winters" I am loving every second of this cold snap.

Tracking snow in the SE will drive you mad.

24 minutes ago, jburns said:

Good advice.

Who is this other board, and why are we apparently the enemies?

In some of the other threads I see continual references to some mysterious "other board" that is apparently our archnemesis.  What is the story behind that?