2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I guess, hardly.

 But obviously even if it hadn’t barely dipped below the 0 line, we know that that’s academic. Even if it had dipped only to, say +1 or +2, do we really think that that would have made a difference? After all that likely would still have been the weakest that early since 1968 and would have still been a a very impressive whopping 30 below avg. So, 30 below vs 31 or 32 below.

 But anyway, I pointed out that it officially barely reversed per the Euro to keep the record straight. Thus, I feel 11/28/25 will likely be added to the list of official major SSWs.

48 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

The reason I missed that is because I made the mistake of ignoring the lag just because it wasn't an official zonal wind reversal. My bad on that...

Ray,

 You may need a magnifying glass to see it, but it was just barely an official zonal wind reversal at 10 mb….but only barely (at ~-0.5 m/s per Euro on 11/28/25) after the 11/24/25 initial dip barely failed:

 I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that today’s Euro Weeklies colder changes in the aggregate for the E US are at least near the largest I can recall this entire season with 4 of the 5 weeks notably colder and only the other (Jan 5th-11th) staying about the same (pretty mild). 

 If you want to look specifically at the big changes in the ecmwf in-house maps, themselves, vs yesterday, you can go here to the main ENSO thread:

 I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that today’s Euro Weeklies colder changes in the aggregate for the E US are at least near the largest I can recall this entire season with 4 of the 5 weeks notably colder and only the other (Jan 5th-11th) staying about the same (pretty mild). 
 

 I’ll leave it to @Carvers Gapto post more about them as he normally is thorough communicating about them here. But if you want to look specifically at the big changes in the ecmwf in-house maps, themselves, vs yesterday, you can go here to the main ENSO thread:

 I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that today’s Euro Weeklies colder changes in the aggregate for the E US are at least near the largest I can recall this entire season with 4 of the 5 weeks notably colder and only the other (Jan 5th-11th) staying about the same (pretty mild):

1. Week 1: Dec 29-Jan 4

Old:

New: colder although already expected 

2. Jan 12-18:

Old:

New:

3. Jan 19-25:

Old:

New:

4. Jan 26-Feb 1:

Old:

New:

38 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Yeah everything bought into the warm pattern real quick as NG was forecasting the pattern to basically last all Winter. It's not a wall-to-wall torch pattern this Winter, imo. 

Hey Chuck,

 Ignoring end of month highest volume contract changes, contract expirations and other misleading daily changes at investing.com, it appears to me when looking at investing.com daily data that today’s ~11% legit rise of natural gas may be the single highest legit rise in a day in all of 2025! 
 
 What do you think?

 Natural gas is now up 10% due to the models’ much colder late Dec and now early Jan vs what last week’s models showed! If this holds, it would easily be the strongest single day since at least August. Keep in mind that NG’s strongest days are usually when the E US two week forecast is looking colder than the prior day:

46 minutes ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

It looks like we go warm by the 2nd week of January, which makes sense, considering we haven't had a December and January go all the way cold since 2010-11:

 It has almost always looked like the E US will go warm in the 11-15+ day as illustrated well by the @bluewavepost showing the persistent E US warm bias on the 3 major ensembles in the 11-15 day period, even including the normally cold biased CMC ens (averaged out over the last 90 days).

Good news. Eric Webb, who recently had been pessimistic about January due largely to the Pacific warm pool not moving eastward enough, sounds like he’s likely about to come around to being bullish instead: 

I just asked Eric this on another public BB:

Eric,
“Are you having second thoughts about your recent pessimistic warmth for January? I’m sensing a tone change in your most recent posts.”

 His answer is very nice to see:

I'd definitely say so, especially early on. Taking a gigantic L on the big warm-up late December, thanks to this huge -NAO trend in the medium range. Some of those takes I've had are aging as badly as the egg nog you accidentally left in the back of your fridge from last Christmas.

@snowman19since you’ve been posting his pessimistic posts

34 minutes ago, BlizzardWx said:

Definitely some large and important trends. On the first trough I think its the more SW -NAO high that helps the trough dig into the Plains more effectively. The forecast is trending colder quickly here for next next week. Moving towards +PNA near days 8-10 as well. If that west coast ridge can merge with the WPO high I bet a lot of cold air dumps south in a hurry. Obviously trends can reverse, but it looks more promising than I've seen in a while. 

It’s still very early but: Could this end up still another +PNA Jan following a -PNA Dec during -ENSO, which has pretty much been the case since 1983-4? Bet the streak? 2021-2 analog FTW perhaps?

@40/70 Benchmark

This last post by @bluewaveabout strong warm E US biases in the E US in the 11-15 the last 90 days is very significant!

Natural gas is up 4% today, which I assume is due to the model consensus again correcting colder continually due to not seeing E US cold well that’s over one week out.

 The MJO’s 3rd phase 8 period of the month ended on 12/20, when it went into phase 7.

So far this month there have been three phase 8 periods:

- Dec 3-7
- Dec 15
- Dec 17-19

Will there be more?

17 minutes ago, Jersey Andrew said:

Stunning changes to say the least. What is causing such large discrepancies?

I don’t know why the NAO and its influence has been underdone on the models, but these kinds of things make forecasting discussions so interesting. Just think if the models were all knowing. The discussion would be pretty boring.

 Look at how much Dec 29-Jan 4 has cooled vs 2 days ago on the EPS thanks to the stronger -NAO pushing back from the NE despite the strong Aleutian ridge remaining.

Two days ago:

Today:

Just now, wncsnow said:

It reminds me a little of January 2022 

Jan 2022 is an analog.

18 minutes ago, Carvers Gap said:

Just tagging on to @Matthew70's post...Here is the Euro Weeklies (ensemble) make from a week ago and compared to todays run for December 30th.  There is a PNA ridge which is likely just temporary.  There is a -NAO whose duration is TBD.  The Rex block relaxes.  This could easily flip back, but that is big change.  

Want to guess what caught the trend?  The Euro control of all things.  The extended version of the deterministic run possibly sniffed out out this cold front at full range(360 hours).

 

This is one of the biggest and most widespread changes toward colder on the EPS mean when going from 2 weeks out to one week out. In reality, most of the colder change has been just since the Friday runs! It’s all because the -NAO got much stronger and pushed back from the NE despite the strong Aleutian ridge remaining!

 Would snowman and MJO mind taking their constant arguing to PM? It’s cluttering up the thread with useless BS.

18 minutes ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

lol, January isn't coming close to 21 inches of snow. The snowiest January since the 2016 storm was 2022, and that was 15.3 inches, and 2018 is the only other year since then that has even topped 10 inches.

I'd be willing to bet that January ends up with less than 10 inches of snow and an above average temperature departure.

17 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Another bold statement.  Some people haven't learned and its only December. 

 PhiEagles, please read my post again. I said 21” minimum for Jan+, alone. I didn’t say Jan, alone. In other words, I was not including Dec in my 21”+ prediction.

2 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Is is possible that these charts also have an algorithmic issue? Here's the GEFS from NCEP's site:

Even though I posted the WxBell charts, I admit that there are often discrepancies in their tele charts vs NOAA. For example, check out the initializations:

NOAA is -1.8 today (which is what’s actually listed for today) and it’s forecasted to rise to -1.5 tomorrow.

But WxBell has -2.5 today and with it headed down to -2.9 tomorrow!

 It seems like WxBell often has wider variations up and down among other things.

52 minutes ago, bncho said:

Central Park may hit 4+" for December with 12/23 and 12/26. That's a great signal for the rest of the winter over there.

It sure is. I already posted after the first storm a prediction of 21” minimum for Jan+, alone, on top of whatever Dec ends up with.

Look at how much the US population weighted HDD rose on the EPS mean from the 12/17 12Z run to the 12/22 0Z run for 12/28-31: 25 HDD (from 74 to 99)! This is from a way BN 74 to a NN 99. Normal is 100 HDD.

12/17 12Z HDD run in purple on left

12/22 0Z HDD run in purple on left

4 hours ago, Carvers Gap said:

Amplified patterns with an NAO and cold…definitely worth watching.  

Look at how much the EPS has cooled for the lows of Dec 30th in just 6 runs thanks to the pushback from the strengthening -NAO despite the Aleutian ridge not budging!
It has cooled this much from the Friday 12Z run, an amazing amount for an ensemble mean over such a short period:

- Roxboro, NC 12F from 38 to 26
- Charlotte 14F from 40 to 26
- CAE 14F from 43 to 29
- SAV 15F from 48 to 33
- ATL 18F from 45 to 27
- Chattanooga 19F from 41 to 22
- Nashville 19F from 42 to 23
- Birmingham 20F from 47 to 27
- Tupelo 19F from 48 to 29
- Chicago 13F from 30 to 17
- Tulsa 11F from 43 to 32

12Z 12/19 EPS:

0Z 12/22 EPS:

52 minutes ago, NorthHillsWx said:

The December 28 system has trended from the Canadian maritimes to the mid Atlantic due to blocking on the GFS over the last 4 runs. Definitely some volatility with unresolved strength of blocking over eastern Canada 

 Look at how much the EPS has cooled for the lows of Dec 30th in just 6 runs thanks to the pushback from the strengthening -NAO despite the Aleutian ridge not budging!
It has cooled this much from the Friday 12Z run, an amazing amount for an ensemble mean over such a short period:

- Roxboro, NC 12F from 38 to 26
- Charlotte 14F from 40 to 26
- CAE 14F from 43 to 29
- SAV 15F from 48 to 33
- ATL 18F from 45 to 27
- Chattanooga 19F from 41 to 22
- Nashville 19F from 42 to 23
- Birmingham 20F from 47 to 27
- Tupelo 19F from 48 to 29
- Chicago 13F from 30 to 17
- Tulsa 11F from 43 to 32

12Z 12/19 EPS:

0Z 12/22 EPS:

1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

Eps is now correcting with the blocking. Its hard to take these models seriously in the long range.

Courtesy of another forum

This is a great GIF! Note that this major evolution of the EPS over this one week period of runs has occurred with the Aleutian ridge not budging but at the same time the -NAO gets stronger and forces the rise of the PNA/big colder E US change from the NE!

EPS NAO for late month as of one week ago: ~-1

EPS NAO for late month as of today: ~-2.5

37 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Eps is now correcting with the blocking. Its hard to take these models seriously in the long range.

Courtesy of another forum

Look at how much the PNA has risen for a week from now:

From ~-2 as of 2 weeks out

GEFS:

EPS:

To ~0 one week out:

GEFS:

EPS: