Carvers Gap

Both the 12z GFS and CMC look decently December-ish. They at least have my passing interest.

I claim to be no sun wx expert, but this can't be great. @Holston_River_Rambler, are we getting some aurora tonight or too cloudy? https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/g3-strong-geomagnetic-storm-observed-01-dec

@John1122, I hope you don't mind me making a new obs thread. Grayson Co, VA, had a decent amount of ZR this morning as cold got trapped in the mountains. Just looking at social media it was a mess. Anyway, it is raining here at TRI w/ a temp of 43F. This is about completely the opposite of our fall weather patter which was dry and hot. Let's hope this continues.

Just looking at what I like to think are the final seasonal model runs for winter. The CFSv2 run today is really good, and the CANSIPS is really not. Both do feature varying degrees of beneficial HL blocking. The low in the eastern Pacific is just shredding modeling right now(and the placement thereof). LC mentions this in a post on social media today.

The 12z GFS and CMC both have the northern stream energy now. I think that would be good for the northern Plateau. Both are colder than earlier ensembles.

He used to post in the SE forum. Great poster and site.

Sometimes I read JB, and wonder...did we just talk about that on our sub-forum? And yes, yes we did this time. He has a nice post about the MJO this morning, and....how it is driving the pattern. @Daniel Boone, you called front seat on this one! Anyway, I take a slightly different tangent than JB(I think) and use the GEFS ext(weeklies) as the GEFS has simply been kicking butt and taking names of late, and it usually does this during shoulder season. Then, after shoulder season, the ECMWF suite returns the favor most years. The first slide is the MJO centered on NDJ. Of note, if centered on OND, the southeast ridge presents itself in phases 8, 1, and 2. The lesson? The deeper that we get into December the more that regions 8 and 1 verify as colder. The next three slides are the CPC indices re: NAO, AO, and PNA. The NAO in my opinion is just not overly important at this time of year. It matters more during mid/later winter and spring. And note to self, an -NAO during fall means scorching hot temps in the southeast(same for summer usually). The AO and PNA are going to drive the bus this winter IMHO. With the NAO going negative early, it probably will have a say later this winter as that often repeats. However, when the PNA/AO are in tandem it gets cold here. Just look at the last couple of days for evidence. Now, onto the MJO....take a look at the GEFS ext. This plot came out yesterday. It rotates into phase 8 around the 17th. Many weeklies model runs have been fairly stubborn in the regime changing around mid-month. This has been true since the beginning of November. And even more interesting, the pushing back of the pattern changes has been almost non-existent. Maybe during the past month it has been pushed back 24-72 hours. I think I had a post a couple of weeks ago about modeling switching up around the 14th. It might be the 17th now. But overall, the week of Christmas looks like a transition timeframe with decent potential afterwards. And how do we know the MJO is in crap phases right now...well, because we are having to talk about it(Flash's rule #1). The good news is that we should see it rotate on around instead of camping out inf 4-5-6. Lastly, source regions matter. Beware during El Nino years....

The 0z and 6z GFS with some interesting solutions overnight....

I expect the warmup to be longer than expected. The MJO will work against us until mid Jan I think, and then it flips in our favor. I still think mid-Jan through Feb is our best shot. Anything prior is just bonus for me. Pretty active pattern though with poor temp source regions feeding it. Good to see the pattern being modeled as an active one.

This is funny stuff right here...

18 degrees this morning here at TRI. It was a dry cold though...so not as miserable as the wind chill driven stuff yesterday.

Nah, this is a pretty good sub-forum for not having emotional roller coasters. Or maybe we all have just ridden this roller coaster enough...that we know that fluctuations in extended LR are just normal. Yes, the MJO almost always has a say. I think it was Flash who noted that when we are talking about the MJO...the weather pattern is usually not conducive for snow. LOL. So, I don't talk about it as much. Truly, I don't think winter has shown its hand quite yet. We are kind of in that transitional timeframe for a few weeks. I do like how the Weeklies look, but we will see if it is legit.

Interesting overnight developments in regards to Weeklies output. The transition week looks to be the week of Christmas. That could leave us with a seasonal or warm Christmas. It is after that that the longwave pattern is quite cold. Now, I must caution...modeling has (likely) already erroneously signaled that cold transition this winter for the Dec 14th time frame - technically, it could end up being correct. But that was shoulder season modeling, and maybe even it was an example of the cart getting in front of the horse - meaning sometimes modeling flips too quickly by a week or two. So, the expected turn to colder was pushed back. However, the transition begins about 7-10 days after LR extended modeling originally had it. Is it right? I am very cautiously optimistic. The actual pattern transition to an eastern trough sits in the 21-28 day range(with hints of the transition even prior to that as rains are now returning it appears - reference LC). So, there is some skill there, but models will often bust in that range. What is the biggest concern? The cold dumps West and holds and/or a strat warm is just creating havoc in LR modeling. I don't think that happens but the residual PDO (does anyone have the current, daily output?) and Nino climatology could do exactly that. I just don't think it holds in the West this time. The MJO would likely kick it out as it is primed for decent phases by mid winter. So we might be looking at our first cold shot of the winter. It might work something like this: Weeks 1-2 of December: warm Week 3: transitional phase Week 4: seasonably cold Weeks 1-2 of January: cold But all of that said, it would absolutely not surprise me to see all of that shifted back two weeks. I seems like it really wants to be warm IMBY during the New Year, and the second or third week of Jan is when the colder part of Nino winters hit. But the above is what modeling is generally showing right now. Is it right? I don't know, but I think it is a bit quick and maybe a bit extreme. And it is odd to see modeling so cold at this range. Time will tell. My recent experience w/ 10mb strat warms is that models will erroneously dump cold into the East, but revert to the West(that could be Nina climatology doing that during the past three years). But the general defaults of strat warming cold displacement are: 1. Eurasia 2. western US 3. EC in that order. New CANSIPS out in a couple of days....

The 938 SLP at 378 on the 18z GFS is worth your time. LOL!!!

The weeklies which run daily.