Typhoon Tip

There’s likely to be an exitus out of California at some point in the next 20 to 40 years.

It's important...

I realize it's extended circumstance ...and I'd certainly not wish to award myself a 'bun', but that event that could host ice/mix has been very persistent among the operational GFS out there between Jan5-8th. Noticing more than 1/2 of the GEF's individual members flagging some sort of trough eject up underneath and tendency for polar/+PP N of Maine ( regardless of whatever that means outside one's window). Meanwhile.... we maintain a modest +PNA hemisphere ( even though the PNAP aspect is apparently absent )... It just means it could break differently if that weight is leaning on the pattern... It will moderate this week, no question. 'How much so'. Folks need to remember how gossamer warmth and the patterns that support can be at this time of year. They are intrinsically fragile. And it's interesting, with chance for excessiveness in 'swing' potential. 60s could replace with 37 and grits with the ambient boundary suppression under poorly modeled if unseen modestly confluent flow over SE Canada ... I see the D4-6 warm up pulse as in jeopardy down to the Mass/NH border for BD... BUT, okay 'if' that avoids. We'll bake, relative to seasonality/climo. The 2-meter T in the guidance are whack and clearly not seeing the mixing potential where ever the evolving dome is allowed proxy over the surface - at the end of the week/weekend. Bust potential? rather high. Synoptic recognition combined with +11C at 850 mb outside of any said correction hooking around the Whites' cordillera would be in the mid to upper 60s.

26 people died from this event ... How does that happen - gotta wonder what their back story was that necessitated either not heeding warnings, or just not paying attention, because it must have been some fantastically compelling reasons.

One good aspect about the pattern ahead is that theses models are bringing several chances for hefty QPF into California. It’s not likely to offset 30 years of desiccation … but for a region that may not be able to sustain population within mere decades anything helps.

I bet we don't get past the 4th before we bury a big oh +PP 400 mile N of Prescott

Greater winter enthusiasm rests their hopes on 'model magnification' parlaying to just shit, as opposed to actually making them eat it. There's a fair chance that something like amplitude bias could be in play. But, we just are coming through a fairly robust spike in the PNA index, and wound up a big signal too far west. I don't know if it applies to this PNA in general? Maybe it does, and so perhaps this subtle relaxation (gosh forbid it goes negative!) could certainly flag a disproportionately warm signal over eastern N/A in the same vein. That seems to be where the operational GFS ( and the ensemble mean from 00z through 12z runs weren't far behind, frankly) appears to be heading. A west biased +PNA --> -PNAP = ? How much so, remains to be seen. The other aspect I'm seeing is a tendency for 'buckled' flow up in Canada... I'm not convinced the hemisphere on our side is in the 'AA' phase... That means we could end up with over top high pressure at times. 'Be looking for that. Pattern post mortem: I'm personally a bit surprised that we just traversed a 2.5 week steady rise in the PNA, culminating in a total d(index) of nearly +3 SDs, and this is all we really have to show for it. We did something similar to this PNA modality back in the run up to the October 2011 event, and ended up with a historic snow storm before Halloween. Nevertheless... I have 1.5" of crud and/or dust for that journey around this typically snowy part of N-central Mass, 1.5 months later relative to time of year. The real troubling aspect is not the snow ... We saw the big bucket totals. But that we witnessed a minimum of 3 complete -EPO cycles amid the favorable domain region, with a robust -NAO interim, and will finish the month above normal at SNE's 4 majors. f---ed I was musing to self that perhaps this recent 'hemispheric event' ( which it really was regardless of myopic snow requirement which really means nothing to that veracious assessment), was so powerful that it in a way 'made up' for it all. But to do that in one dose meant too much power - again, symbolically. I would have taken half this beast and parsed it out a couple of times under the -NAO block we had last week, and we'd 'ave done just fine. But we get this 'red spot' on Earth thing so anomalous is violates wave spacing climatology. Impressive.

(Merry Christmas to those that recognize.) The amounts blew me away ... not the p-type. I was interning at the time and I recall e-mailing my mentor that the forecast 'tone' from everyone was too warm. I based that on ( admittedly...) just a 'feeling,' but in retrospect, one aspect the stuck out to me the day before was the ( then) ETA FOUS numbers. The vertical temperature sigma values were something like +4, 0, -4C, which corresponds to 980, 900, and 800 mb respectively. Meanwhile, ...the forecast was wet snow, 1-3" in the Worcester spine...and something like cat paws on the coast. Ahhh...no. The other aspect that gave pause was the UVM in VVV column was like +15. Meanwhile, over my shoulder on the Lab obs monitor the temp was like 39 over a DP of 19. That DPs was interesting...because the overnight RH values in the ceiling levels leading ( cloud level RH...) was < 50% ... in other words, clear overnight. The whole thing struck me as forecast' too warm. I'm sort of painting the picture like it was obvious here? But ...you know... 'in the weeds' at the time, things can be more obscuring, I guess. So as it were, we bottomed out at 19 ( interestingly enough) that night. Then, the clouds came in heavy like chalk board density right at dawn, over calm winds with ( if all this wasn't enough ...), even a modest high pressure N of Maine nosing damming SSW through the region. Case closed! What caught me completely dumb struck was 15 to 24" of it... wow! We've had fun talking about this event a hundred times at this point ( haha) but you know, some legends can be revisited I guess. The snow type was uniform small flakes falling so dense that you could not see across the street, in zero wind. Straight down mid 20s choking fall rates. We ended up 16" in Acton...but just up toward N. Middlesex county had closer to 2' ... all of which fell in like 5 hours. Crazy....

It was in the NAM last night. I mentioned it fwiw

the flash of lightning probably was the transformer ?

We actually haven't had much of a SE ridge that is discernible above the footprint - either La Nina, CC related HC expansion, or probably some of both. The heights between N Mexico and Bermuda have just been sort of 3.2 dm higher than the 1950 - 1996 mean as a foundation over which our early winter has so for been gliding. If folks want to see an inhibitory SE ridge... go to 1999 through 2002 ... Even when we had coastals in the era, there was some observable interference...and as soon as the storm went passed, the height down there were always above normal. That's when I formulated the 'Miami rule,' which has saves me to this day from falling into the Euro D9 trough trap along the EC, more times than I can count. Prior to a S/W descending down the +PNAP ridge, if heights over MIA are > 582, and the balanced geostrophic wind is ambiently above 35 knots, there is negative interference in the SE and the trough will invariably lose the southern aspect as it dives down ...sometimes sloping positive, other times disappearing altogether. D9 Euro, gone.

I kinda see his/her point though. Both sides are right - The cause is because the +PNA caused a west biased +PNAP response... true! That sent the wave mechanics on a butt bang destiny... But when looking at it from orbit, ...the end result looks like SE ridging 'connected,' albeit vaguely ...with the -NAO height field. I think one side is discussing the causality, the other is just making an end point observation? - at least that's the way it read to me.. In the end, the +PNAP biased over the western limb of N/A is why our butts are sore.

Yeah...that's been a subtlety in the runs over the last several days since this became an unavoidable cutter. There's been heavier doses of frozen QPF punching in just aft of 'bowing' aspect ...it's really has a 'quasi' ANA aspect to it when the lvl cold outruns the mid level support for the frontal boundary its self. It's outrunning the intense deepening rate of the western Quebec bomb ..which is causing 700 mb synoptic inflow to cross back over the leading edge of the undercutting cold.

00z NAM looks like it’s got an inch or two burst of snow and wind whipping matters around … perhaps flashing tomorrow evening, with the arctic front

It gets increasingly more difficult to see that happening, anyway. Just being candid - I mean, we get these incursions that jolt a cold dagger, ...but, 582 hgt to ALB less than a week later? 5 8 2 That's a whack anomaly for ending Decs. Seeing 588 creeping up the lower M/A on some ensembles, too, is really an "attributable" offense imho. That beauty of being completely irreverent to mores in the matter such that I am, I don't give a shit if offends people. We bake and go DISproportionately above climo, compared to however far this goes below. Anything to make sure the longer term continues to climb against climate, appears to be the return routine. I was talking to John today... this is the way. We don't roast to 108 around here in the summer. We do it with low temperatures at that time of year. What we do here, is we own the world at winter screwing warmth. 3 Februaries out of the last 6 years were 80+ at some point during, over SNE. I'm sure it's happened abroad ...but we've been +30 to +40F high temperatures in recent winters, three times. I'm like... really

Heh...looking at these recent GFS/Euro runs, this thing really does not produce that much synoptic snow in the united states. It's wrapping up really late/Ontario ...that's where it appears to establish those QPF machinery. It's a like a violent snow flurry out side of any LE

The storm has sped up over the last six days… Just some armchair obs morning … The that it doesn’t really stick around very long and it wraps up really quick and pulls up over the northern Ontario and actually more than less disappears completely off the face of the maps within short days I think it’s really conceding to the fact that it’s a progressive baseline that we’re sort of either heading towards, or maybe already in deceptively hidden. We didn’t know at the time … but it was never going to be a slow down stall or like the Cleveland super bomb and all that stuff. Nor is it going to establish those exceedingly low pressures and set records like it looked like it could either… Seems like we have been again victimized by neutering system as it gets into nearer terms. The system will still be hugely powerful… Such that shaving 20 or 30% still leaves a major impact - or can. I’m noticing the QPF in most guidance the great lakes for snow is dropped some over the last 48 hours … Chicago may not even get much snow from this after the initial arctic front, I wonder I mean it looks like it could almost be an ‘arctic sands’ storm perhaps enhanced by embedded or integrated lake affect. I’ve seen something like this when I used to live in Western Michigan where for a time, it gets really cold and a lot of winds and so much fracturing that you end up with just this cryo-miasma coming off the lake as opposed to organized bands. Not taking pot shots at a really impressive system and the execution of what was a great early detection for a North American storm signal… Its unfortunate it couldn’t work out better for us as winter enthusiast in our local region but sometimes you get the bear …sometimes the ‘bare’ gets you. The only thing I’m a little critical over is that we’ve all been assuming this tremendous result but the storm’s had a kind of disorganize or disjointed surface anchor point for quite a while -even at this late stage it seems like it’s still sort of stretching the surface low. I believe a lot of that is because there’s weaker baroclinic gradients out ahead of the Arctic front so without those ambient more concentrated frontal boundary- related mechanics …the actual cyclone model is a little bit disrupted. That might be why we’re not getting quite the real depth/focal point in the surface that those striking MLV would argue possible. But I think it’s also feeding back and why some of the QPF is starting to get vacated.

There's a 'model error' climate that suggests not being too liberal with wind. I admit to being somewhat weary of that and letting it influence my sense of 'urgency' leading this, and recognizing some of those factors you note - it's like given any reason to limit and we bust wind headlines.. However, Ryan's been posting some rather impressive material over the last couple of days - eventually...one of these times, we'll get a break through. We did have that over SE zones a couple three years ago.... folks may or may not recall that? I can't re the specific dates - but there was pig wind signal which turned out both true and false. It was false here in the interior, but simultaneously OVER performed if anything over the SE coastal plain..etc. I have this event in mind too - though it's not a analytic comparison... just to point out that break through can take place.

Mm there’s a signal here… It’s modest, but sometimes at this sort of range that’s all you need. If not gonna be a huge hemisphere signal like the one we’ve been following … those can start this way and show up like subtle. At least one reason to be open minded is because the numerical equivalent of the teleconnectors are still lit up through that time frame. Another reason is because George got thru a thread ownership without dropping a B bomb. … really deserves its own merit

These ENSO events have been having a tough time consistently coupling with the atmosphere. So it’s hard to imagine that that would be even more so when the ENSOs is weak. We’ve been in a coupled state the last three months but it’s not been the way it has been going last six or seven years. Just bear that recent decadal trend in mind.

Complexities in the failing cyclogenic feed-backs are causing this thing to 'wobble' considerably in very recent guidance cycles. There's too weak of ambient baroclinicity/vague frontal slopes in the OV and lower Lakes region, as this very deep (-4 SD ) 500 mb anomaly and very powerful associated jet/jetlett maxums are fisting their way around the under belly and outpacing the polar front. This thing is missing an anchor point/foot I'm noticing there is weaker gradient and mid level winds on the northern side of the 500 mb barrel, and that's a red flag for a sfc position too far NW of support when you see that - pick a heart ache that went out to sea on us if you need a memory refresher and odds are you'll look that up in library and see something similar... The 18z really pressed the mid level vortex so far E that at this point it's outrunning support for the previous sfc low location(s). It almost looks devoid of a real cyclostrophic axis and is blown open like a broad generalized area of deep PP anomaly. Very strang looking system... "as modeled" - wondering if this thing may change in future guidance. This strange abnormal look and abandoning primary aspect could be a sign of trying to change to a different scenario in future runs. No I'm not saying we're back on for snow per se- not even close.. .Just that this systems handling is in question. That is all...

I noticed this too…modeling illustrating much more of a deep low pressure potential wind bomb scenario for a lot of places, more so than a snow event as the main headline. Just the way it looks now of course… I was saying before it almost appears like the models are having some difficulty resolving a surface response to all that incredible mechanical power going on aloft. I’m not sure if there may be some flop over with handling the QPF types too. Maybe… But I’m also noticing that there’s a lack of cold air associated with the storm at the core? which is interesting ..so it’s almost like the deeper pressure is not really associated with the colder air so it’s not really crossing up those critical jet fields that you get where are big snow events … an interesting kind of genetics for this particular storm. So if a more cohesive surface center is chosen in future guidance I’m wondering if we might see some of this get a little bit more structured. On the flip side …in lacking some of that cold air that’s why we’re seeing the low pressure at the surface wrap all the way to Chicago while the ML’s over Ohio - that’s what we call ‘core wrapping’ or we used to back in the weather lab days. Storms that are more driven aloft will tend to look this way. So there are kind of multiple things going on here… It doesn’t have enough cold air in the low levels associated over where it has a surplus of mechanics going on aloft. There’s a disconnect there a little bit

This appears more historic at 500 mb than the surface ... either that, or the models are having a tough time working out the sfc response to all that obscene mechanical power going on aloft. I compared the Cleveland Super Bomb with this one, as modeled. The 'Bomb was down to 953 just before it left the U.S. for southern Ontario. This one, blending the operational version ( which for all intents and purposes are in agreement with one another) it appears 978, roughly as much as 25 mb shallower. Here's the difference. The sfc +PP are impressive over far NW Plains as modeled, with a node there near 1050 mb! And it is spatially large and sprawling ... there's arming to a second node that's 1040 N of Maine. So the ambient or environmental base state is above normal pressure. That means at a 980 mb low is deeper than we may think relative to that elevated state. The 'Bomb did not drill to hell and back amid that same ambient sfc pressure. In fact, the 12z sfc chart on January 26, 1978 featured a modest 1032 mb high node, situated quite far away west of James Bay. Feb 1978 did that, with a well dug down to 974 mb at max depth, against a much higher ambient pressure domain... arm reaching across Ontario. Not that either 980 or 974 are shallow lows, either.. But the actual situation gradient is vastly more important in assessing aspects such as wind - in particular. As an old school quick metric, 1mb ~= 1kt, such that d(p) ~= max wind. In the case of the Cleveland Super Bomb, 1032 -953 ( and one could argue that since the 1032 node was so far away that it may be a bit of a stretch to use that as the high end) = 79 kts. In the case of February 1978, this works out to 76kts. Close enough to what actually was reported in max gusts in either storm of lore to satisfy the approximate metric of 1mb to 1kt. As modeled/said mean above, this event looks like ~ 1050 mb against 975-ish. So 75kts. That's not here, though. The low level PGF is what it is in our sector of the cyclone. Plus, with that +PP situation N-NE of New England, we may end up elevating some of the wind over a boundary that proves a little more retarded ...hard to say. I would be worried about ORD-IND and Michigan, as the low really bottoms out in that vicinity, and there's not a lot of wind restoring mass into that core, prior to the low then moving away... That's setting up a very exceptional allobaric circumstance... It's like an eye-wall look there --> explosive isallobaric wind potential. I lived in southern lower Michigan for a little over a decade many ...many moons ago. I have seen some of these backside wind bombs take place, where the low slips past and then there is 60 mph wind gusts that rose out of no where. This looks like an opportunity for something like that. It's different than that 2005, December "sting jet" ... it's more purely a wind acceleration do to restoring extreme short range d(p). But we can have drama here ...unrelated to that type of phenom. There's likely to be a hefty WCB jet feeding this beast... That leading edge of the cold air/front is outpacing enough to flip some decent QPF to a W -E flash transition ... but that also means that there's going to be some pretty chaotic instability/omega trying to move parcels vertically through those elevated wind wind layers. You know...momentum transfer...

This is a curious statement that I'm often encountering in the denier narrative(s). Because it is true, yet ... at the same time, it says nothing about whether the climate is changing because of the actions of humanity, now. Using its truth to imply humans don't cause CC now, is a falsity. The comprehension of what I wrote: clearly discusses how the climate change is oversold - but it muses further that it has to be, because of human limitation of perceived causality when in the absence of a direct experience. It says nothing in support or against whether human's are a factor in climate change. Which they are There is, however, in attempting to attribute CC ...that's being done too liberally. Humanity is causing a lot of CC, because of the 500 years of recent advancing combustion power generation ...etc..etc... But the amount that has changed doesn't cancel the usefulness of analogs.

The GFS has gone back west, whole scale, with the circulation medium from off the west coast to off the coast, across the last two cycle. It's a disappointment for winter enthusiasts locally, after seeing some east jogs during yesterday. This appears more likely now, based upon these recent trends, as unlikely to overall come east. Looping the hemispheric view of the EPS and GEFs ... it appears the typical gestation of -EPO, into a +PNA, with the EPO's decaying toward neutral, is underway through the week, but the timing of this impressive embedded wave is just too soon. If it waits another two days and lets the +PNA --> PNAP forcing mature before getting injected over the continent, it would have ( likelier...) descended through Manitoba/MN en route to a more E position at max amplitude..etc... If we want to get into the SPV helping out by blocking it from turn polar ward east of ORD, ...salvaging/delaying lead cold erosion, that's certainly true but we just don't seem to be modulating in that direction. I do think that if there is a 1040-ish mb high pressure N of Maine, there is a standard delay and assumption of too fast penetration N-E of NYC ... I wouldn't care to case if that means snow or not.