cbmclean

Well, I am waving the flag (with regards to a dreamt-of epic pattern). The advertised +PNA/-NAO (in some cases of epic magnitudes) which was universal across the major guidance has evaporated. Poof. Anybody who wants to say "I told you so", the mic is open. That being said, starting this weekend, it does look nice and cold for a week to 10 days. After that nobody knows. There are some ominous rumblings from the MJO.

According to MA big dogs the STJ isn't drying up, but just getting squashed way down by the TPV. Same effect while it is happening , but easier to recover from I would think.

I'm a little better off for this pattern, since I am one of those who can enjoy plain cold. Of course I would rather my cold come with snow.

Hopefully. Next 10 days will be frustrating for the "give me snow or give me 60s" crew. Gonna warm up and rain, then get cold. Then warm up and rain, then get cold.

Right now there is no HL blocking so warm/wet and cold/dry is the favored outcome. It is still possible (in NC at least) to get them to both match up, as we saw in 2013-14 and 2014-15 where we had no Atlantic support but were kept from torching by the EPO, and eventually a lot of us moderately scored. But that is a low probability occurance. For sure, if we want serious chances of scoring a significant snowfall, we are going to need the Atlantic to cooperate. There are encouraging signs that it might start to do just that the last week of January and into February, but we all know how that can go. I like cold for its own sake so for the present, I am going to sit back, enjoy the cold shots, and hope the long-range guidance comes to fruition.

Congrats to the DC bunch from your SE forum friends. Here's hoping the whole east coast can cash in on multiple big ones over the next month.

They really needed it. I have been hanging around in their forum a lot lately since ours kind of fell asleep in the afterglow of the early December storm and the subsequent boring pattern. It was getting ugly in there. Still great analysis, though.

I would call it an epic pattern, but we have to remember, in the non-mountain SE, "epic" means 30% chance of significant winter weather, as opposed to the usual 1%.

Ops runs at range. You know how that goes. That being said, things aren't looking good for snow in the SE next weekend. There's a good chance for some serious cold, and there will be moisture, just not the right kind of blocking to get them to be in the same time at the same place. On the bright side, there is serious support for significant high latitude blocking the last week of January and into February. It would be nice if it was happening now though.

Their opinions are mixed. I don't think I have seen anyone say it was actually worse. Some have shown pointed to correlation plots showing little to no improvement. There is at least one poster (psuhoffman) who really seems to know what he is talking about, who believes that it has shown notable improvement in some aspects, but astill lags the euro.

From official RDU records, 28.1 inches for 2000 calendar year: 25.8 in January, 2.2 in November, and 0.1 in December. If you meant for the 1999 - 2000 winter, it was just 25.8, since there was nothing in December 1999 or February 2000. Interestingly, 1999 was a complete shut-out: 0.0 inches.

Ignore that last post. Having technical difficulties with phone.

Well I come from Fayetteville so we get even less snow there, but I know it must be painful to be near that Wake County gradient. Looking at snow maps at times it seems that if you looked up the street you can see more snow.

Where exactly are you in Raleigh? I am guessing somewhere in the south.

How so?

I think that's at least at least the third time you've used the phrase "unicorn SSW". This puzzles me because we had a SSW which impacted the sensible weather earlier this year, in March 2018. Unfortunately, it was too late to help us in February when it really could have made some difference, but March featured notable NAO blocking which lead to a cool stormy month. It looks like the fact of the SSW is high probability. The real question is whether or not it will be "downward propagating". There is significant discussion about that point in the MA forum. There is a poster named Isotherm, whom other appear to respect, who believes that it will. Others are less confident.

Yes they did have that storm pegged early, but from reading others post it seemed like that was unexpectedly good performance.

I was under the impression that you shouldn't really trust the operational models past 5 days in general.

Wow an I85 transition line. Who'd have thunk it?

Well the 2010s have definitely been noted for some impressive winter torches, but to be fair the historic cold last year set in right after Christmas.

Uh oh, did it cave to the NAM?

Awfully quiet in here now.

I would love the HRRR to be right, but is there any reason to trust it over the NAM? I have heard it mentioned over and over that the NAM is killer with dealing with the warm nose.

Actually Calgary is prone to snow-eating Chinook winds. Might want to try the Michgan UP.