GaWx

Today’s Euro Weeklies mean has an even weaker SPV centered on ~2/13. @40/70 Benchmark Yesterday’s run: Today’s run: Also, look at how much colder the week of 1/26-2/1 has gotten over the last 12 days: 1/10 run: 1/22 run:

Thanks for posting these. I’m really hoping the Euro freezing rain amounts will end up closer than the much wetter Icon and especially GFS. I’m extra concerned for loved ones in ATL and FAY. I’ve been giving them advice regarding preps for the worst case scenario just in case, but I’d of course love for nothing close to the worst case to happen. At 18Z ZR for ATL: GFS 1.6” (that’s actually down some but still would be worst since ‘73) Icon ~1.5” (also actually down some) Euro 0.6” (partially due to less qpf) UKMET nothing (not realistic unfortunately) So, even with GFS/Icon down some from 12Z, that’s still 2.5+ times as much as the Euro!

Pivotal UK clown maps count all wintry precip including ZR as snow for those who don’t know (10:1 for all wintry qpf).

The last 1+” of that in ATL area on the 18Z GFS is plain cold rain. If that verifies, it would accelerate the melting after a very bad ZR hit.

Are most of y’all also having major issues with accessing certain wx sites thanks to the extreme wx? I’m not just talking about NOAA sites, which I haven’t been able get to at all all day.

Of course they can be overdone as that’s pretty much always the case along with the chance they can be underdone.

Thanks, Don. 1. I think it’s a combo of that and some in here who post more frequently about E US warmth because they only enjoy posting about it. I’m not against posting about warmth as I do it frequently, myself. I post whatever I see, warm or cold. That includes when I post warm Euro Weeklies that cold lovers don’t like to see. I just think it’s best if there’s a better balance regardless of warm, cold or between. 2. I’m feeling good about the 40” NYC seasonal snow total prediction I made in Dec. based off of the snowy Dec in combo with the La Niña analogs Chris and you have talked about many times.

Yes, Chuck, I’ve been following NG make this historically sharp upward move this entire week. For those who don’t follow NG closely, why is this happening? It’s 100% related to something we closely follow ITT: E US temps. Look no further than this absolutely insane comparison of GEFS US pop weighted HDD for Jan 22-29th on the Jan 14th 12Z run vs the 0Z Jan 22nd run. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything more extreme than this amazing colder change over just a 7.5 day elapsed period: Jan 14th 12Z run (purple) 1/22-29 US pop wted HDD: 26+23+24+27+26+25+25+23=199 or 25/day (near the green line, which straddles the normal of 25/day): Jan 22nd 0Z run (purple) 1/22-29 US pop wted HDD: 24+31+37+37+39+37+34+36=275 or 34/day (MA normal)!

I’m talking about the medium range pattern prediction into early Feb (out 2 weeks). I’m not talking about any particular storm. I’m mainly talking about the extreme widespread cold in much of the US more than precip. It’s like a library in here. If it were warm for the same period, I bet this thread would be hopping like New Years Eve in Times Square.

It’s pretty amazing how quiet it is ITT with one of the most extreme cold and wintry E US progs as a whole per model consensus starting this weekend and lasting into early Feb.

On 1/18/2026, the EPO dropped way down to -3.81. That was the lowest daily EPO in January since way back on 1/26/1991, when it was -3.99. Before 1991, you had to go back to 1974 and 1963 to have an EPO<-3.81 in January. The combo of this extreme -EPO helping to produce extremely cold Arctic highs and a strong +PNA to steer them down in our direction with the aid of a strong -AO is why there is that 1050ish Arctic high with mega-cold coming down later this week that is a key factor resulting in this weekend’s big SE winter storm threat. https://downloads.psl.noaa.gov/Public/map/teleconnections/epo.reanalysis.t10trunc.1948-present.txt

The Euro weeklies are now mainly cold for the E US for most of Feb, even colder than yesterday! Any hopes for a mild E US are fading away, which is fine with me. And that’s only after the very cold late Jan! Natgas closed a pretty historic 26% above its Fri price!! In particular, the week 2/16-22 has a snowy signal: @40/70 Benchmark

Either scenario could be an escape path due largely to 500 mb/track changes. Or qpf could drop substantially due to track change and/or moisture content dropping. Always so many variables this far out. I think the most likely help would be from sleet replacing a lot of the ZR.

1” of ZR at ATL (or anywhere) would be bad enough. That hasn’t happened at ATL since 2/12/2014 and that much was only from Hartsfield S and mainly E. (That’s the one that killed the Eisenhower tree at Augusta National). Other than the terrible 1/1973 icestorm, which had temps only barely below 32, the last I could find giving ATL 2”+ was the devastating ~2” icestorm of 12/28-29/1935. Temps did drop into the 20s for part of that and probably as cold as mid 20s for the coldest, similar to the 12Z Euro. I read ATL news articles on this 30 years ago at the downtown library. It was horrible. So, essentially the 12Z Euro is calling for the worst combo of heaviest/very cold ZR at ATL in 90 years! Thus, of course it would be correct to bet on it not being as bad as modeled based on history. But unfortunately there’s a small chance it could actually happen like 90 years ago. Let’s hope not! Link to ATL day by day historical data: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=ffc @suzook@dsaur

Unfortunately for the ATL area, the atmosphere on the 12Z Euro has warmed notably vs the prior 2 runs, especially at/near 850 mb. Thus, the WxBell Euro’s ptype, which is clearly almost all ZR even without looking at soundings, isn’t debatable. The 12Z Euro has ~2.3” qpf of wintry precip, with the vast majority being ZR, falling over a 36 hour period from hour 99 (10 AM Sat 1/24) til hour 135 (10 PM Sun 1/25). The coldest is from Sat evening through the entire night with mid 20s. Fortunately it’s still out 4-5.5 days and obviously a lot can change. This as well as recent runs are in the ballpark of worst case scenarios for there, a colder version of Jan 1973 (which was only barely <32). So, keep hope alive as just about any change would be better than what this run shows. As ominous as this is, it still being out 4-5.5 days leaves notable opportunity for improvement from the worst case. @dsaur

Wow, that 12Z GFS Tue modeled historic snowstorm came out of nowhere! But of course that’s just great entertainment so far out.Well before that period and thus much more significantly as of now, KCHS has since yesterday afternoon been warning about a significant ZR threat for this weekend even way down into much of the just inland and even possibly coastal SE SC/upper GA that could linger til as late as Mon AM. As I posted last night, the last few GEFS runs of individual members have been strongly advertising a ZR threat in the KCHS forecast region:KEY MESSAGE 2: WIDESPREAD PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR THIS WEEKEND, BRINGING INCREASING POTENTIAL FOR A WINTER WEATHER EVENT TO IMPACT THE REGION. MODELS CONTINUE TO SUPPORT POTENTIAL FOR A WINTER WEATHER EVENT IMPACTING AT LEAST PORTIONS OF SOUTHEAST SOUTH CAROLINA AND SOUTHEAST GEORGIA THIS WEEKEND. THE SYNOPTIC PATTERN WILL FEATURE STRONG, COLD HIGH PRESSURE WEDGING DOWN THE EASTERN SEABOARD THROUGH THE WEEKEND, WITH AN AREA OF LOW PRESSURE FAVORED TO DEVELOP OFF THE SOUTHEAST COAST. BROAD MID LEVEL TROUGHING WILL LARGELY BE IN PLACE TO START, WITH A STRONGER WAVE DIVING INTO THE REGION LATER IN THE WEEKEND. FURTHER ALOFT, WE CAN FIND AN IMPRESSIVE UPPER LEVEL JET POSSIBLY ON THE ORDER OF 160+ KNOTS. THE CONDITIONS WILL CERTAINLY BE IN PLACE TO SUPPORT PRECIPITATION SPREADING ACROSS THE AREA, WITH INCREASING CONFIDENCE OF SOME OVERLAP WITH COLDER TEMPERATURES. ATTENTION THEN TURNS TO PRECIPITATION TYPE AS COLD AIR SETTLES INTO THE REGION. WHILE FORECAST DETAILS ON TIMING, AMOUNTS, AND P-TYPES WILL CONTINUE TO BE REFINED IN THE COMING DAYS, A PERUSAL OF MODEL SOUNDINGS INDICATE A NOTABLE WARM NOSE CENTERED AROUND 850 MB WITH SURFACE TEMPS DROPPING TO NEAR OR BELOW FREEZING SATURDAY NIGHT INTO SUNDAY MORNING. THIS WOULD SUGGEST FREEZING RAIN AS A PRIMARY THREAT, WHICH ALSO JIVES WITH THE LATEST NBM PRECIP PROBABILITIES. THE PROBABILISTIC WINTER STORM SEVERITY INDEX (WSSI-P) SHOWS CHANCES OF MINOR WINTER STORM IMPACTS ACROSS THE ENTIRE AREA, WITH EVEN A 20- 40% CHANCE OF MODERATE IMPACTS ESPECIALLY NORTH OF I-16.THE COLUMN BEGINS TO DRY OUT LATER SUNDAY INTO MONDAY, BUT IF PRECIPITATION LINGERS, THE THREAT FOR WINTER WEATHER COULD CONTINUE INTO EARLY MONDAY AS ENSEMBLE GUIDANCE SHOWS HIGH LIKELIHOOD FOR SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES AGAIN SUNDAY NIGHT. WE WILL ALSO NEED TO BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR TEMPS/WIND CHILLS APPROACHING COLD WEATHER ADVISORY CRITERIA SUNDAY NIGHT AND BEYOND. @Awesomesauce81

Anthony’s not exaggerating. He’s absolutely right in terms of temperatures. Every week cooled in the latest run! It’s amazing how much the EW have cooled for Feb vs not too long ago looking mild every week! The chances of a mild Feb in the E US are now on life support after I earlier agreed with @snowman19thinking Feb was going to be mild per analogs.

But that wouldn’t be as strong as the biggest worry of all for many, a potential massive highly damaging and long lasting power outage causing icestorm. If the only alternative to nonwintry is a massive icestorm, who other than cray cray wx weenies would want that? Give them mainly 33F+ rain instead, please. Hope to the big guy for their sake that much of it would be sleet, my favorite wintry precip these days! I may consider a trip to ATL for this weekend IFF the odds of a massive icestorm are low and instead odds of a big sleetstorm with possibly a bonus of some snow along with only a fairly limited amount of ZR are high.

Great question. I haven’t investigated Euro AI ensemble precip/temp maps closely, but a “quick and dirty” check doesn’t reveal to me any obvious algo issues with those. So, my focus on these posts remains fully with the snow maps.

Hey Carvers and others, WxBell definitely didn’t fix the Euro AI ensemble snow maps algos. These two members (#10 and #22) with multiple inches of snow way out in the Gulf are from the hour 84 6Z Euro AIFS, when temps are near normal (70s):

Due to much colder 2 week forecasts vs how it looked on Friday, natural gas is now up an incredible 19%!! If anywhere near this rise were to hold til the close, this would likely be the largest % daily rise in years:

Forecasted indices for 1/24-6: 1. PNA rises from neutral to moderate + 2. AO strong - 3. NAO moderate - 4. EPO rises from a very strong - to moderate -; despite the moderation, the lagging from the prior very strong -EPO in combo with a rising PNA and with the help of a -AO/-NAO is why extreme cold will be dropping into the C/E US. 5. WPO pretty strong - 6. MJO: GEFS has 7 while EPS has mainly 8 So, overall the indices are just about as good as it gets for cold and thus storm potential. —— Edit: Due to the huge amount of blocking, this time there may not be the typical NW trend as we get closer. In other words, the models a few days out may already be closer to reality assuming there actually is a storm.

The #s are out. We just had the 3rd largest 2 day drop in winter of the EPO into negative territory on record back to 1948: 2026 01 14 88.01 2026 01 15 -92.49 2026 01 16 -254.34 So, it dropped 342 from 1/14 to 1/16. The only two larger 2 day winter drops are not much higher: the 367 of 2/9-11/1996 and the 364 of 1/16-18/1961. As I said, this isn’t a measure of the strongest EPO ridges. Rather, it is a measure of the speed in establishing a new strong EPO ridge.

I do need to emphasize that I’m only talking about the algos that produce the WxBell EPS AI snow maps having a major issue. Regarding the qpf and other maps, I have no evidence to suggest these are off. So, I’m saying that it’s possible that it’s only the snow maps that have a major problem with regard to EPS AI.

Carver and others, The WxBell Euro AIFS ens snow maps have a flaw so major that the 12Z run (just for one example) had one member (#38) 300 miles offshore in the Gulf getting a foot of snow within a 6 hour period while the temp was 65F+! You read that right, a 2”/hour snowstorm with temps in the 60s. These maps are so flawed than even Joe Bastardi, himself, noticed the same problem a few weeks ago! If even Joe noted this, well….use these at your own risk. The regular EPS snow maps are otoh legit: