frostfern

Depends on what side of the cutoff you are on. Cutoff pattern can definitely be dry if you are in the wrong location. Cutoff just to the east in spring usually means cool and an occasional shower that doesn't amount to more than a couple hundredths of an inch... if that. It also delays the return to a zonal pattern, which has much better potential for Gulf moisture overrunning a front and/or convection. That's the only pattern that brings real moisture this time of year here.

It's more like a Port Angeles Washington style "drought" here. Gets rain-shadowed by the Olympic Mountains, but is still next to the Puget Sound so it gets the annoying stratus gloom and mist, despite being "dry" in terms of what accumulates in the bucket. Below normal precip, but only due to lack of any HEAVY rain. Worst of all possible boring worlds.

Summer 2018 was notable for being incredibly warm on average. Yet there were no real heatwaves, just long stretches with temps 3-4 degrees above average.

Part of the problem is the sirens go off for the entire county while a 40 yard wide EF0 makes a 0.5 mile long path that knocks a few trees over and damages one barn. People start thinking every warning is a false alarm because their house didn't get hit when the sirens went off. You hope if there ever is a warning for a 1/2 mile wide EF4 people will not assume it's a false alarm just because previous EF0 tornadoes affected only a tiny area. The big ones affect significantly more area, but they just haven't happened in a long time here.

It's written for California normies who confuse hurricanes and tornadoes. Normies who live anywhere near tornado ally at least know tornadoes aren't things that can be predicted like that. They only tend to believe things like their town is protected because "they always go north... follow the river... stop by the hills... etc". I don't necessarily blame people for wanting to believe they are safe for unscientific reasons, but they'd be closer to reality just saying God protected them... as that works as a more believable fill-in for a phenomena that's fundamentally pretty damn random.

Screws thunderstorm season for me though. June and July are usually dry lake shadow months recently, while April and May have enough wind flow to get elevated storms over the lake... if there is a good warm sector. Honestly tired of these troughs all the time. They're not as cold as they used to be due to AGW, but they seem to be more persistent.

It seems like they always trend the gridded forecast towards climatology. To be honest the Accuweather thing where the forecast is “heavy snow” 8 days out is worse. Would prefer a middle ground. Good thing I read the weather discussions as they will almost always mention a lower-confidence significant event before they’ve committed it to the grids.

Typical GFS. Was bothered because the Euro had some nasty cold runs too. It will still take time to push the Hudson Bay cold vortex out, but the Pacific looks better with the jet undercutting instead of building a PNA ridge into Alaska like before.

I think it's because models don't handle the processes driving MJO well. I recall studying the MJO ten years ago and the global circulation models would just damp out the MJO over time... unless you tweaked the convective parameterization just right to make it appear (which unfortunately often screwed up other things, so you didn't know if it was appearing for the wrong reasons). Maybe the operational models are better now, but they also used to just crash the MJO into the origin in the long range. That would explain why if the MJO is going into a phase that suppresses the pacific jet and the model just crashes it into the origin, well the pattern is probably going to persist longer than forecast. Back then it seemed like all the models trended to their own biased climatology after 15 days or so... and the MJO is an irregular 20-80 day "cycle". Maybe they have gotten better and can actually forecast the MJO now, but I kind of doubt it.

Yea. It's a major eruption for St. Vincent, but it's not even close to a global-scale event like Pinatubo. An eruption of that scale isn't predicted. There are a few other volcanoes around the world that could do some climate alteration if they decided to wake up, but none of those are active right now.

This pattern is actually good for flowers. Blooms will not be over in an instant like they would if it stayed as torchy as last week.

The fact that the winter minimum temperatures haven't warmed all that much compared to summer maximums is the opposite of what you would assume. My wild guess is it has something to do with changes in lake breeze behavior.

It's the "bad for thunderstorms" most of us are complaining about, not the cold. If it's going to be in the low 40s again at some point I'd rather have a snowstorm. Stat padding wet snow is better than total nothingburger weather. I suspect the ridge will lean in from the northwest eventually and early May will turn very warm. Still not a very interesting pattern as moisture return will be slow as typical after such a troughy pattern.

Massive 960 mb Aleutian bomb gradually spinning itself out south of Alaska is the problem with the GFS OP. Maybe not all the ensemble members / other models are as bad. Please tell.

The ridge will eventually translate east. The problem is that's the most boring transition possible if you are interested in active weather. Warm air advection from the northwest is a drought pattern.