Typhoon Tip

No, I did not - ha ... Truth be told ...I spend a goodly amount of recent energy explaining to folks that there's no use in prediction beyond 5 days in this overall circumstance, so at risk of being a hypocrite. Trying to make a little chicken salad out of a chicken shit pattern is tough.

What - your post does not logically follow - I'm not 'pooh pooh' ing anything - the model could certainly be a weak outlier. I'm asking - and it matters quite analytically -

I'm wondering if the EPS carries it or at least some - The GEFs actually have several members with blizzards. Sort of imagine "PD1" but a further N. track compared to that one - Will would be the better one to reference but I'm pretty sure that first variation of the straight E Miller B boning on northern extent scenario had milk cirrus and flurries to the Pike with CCB blizzard conditions in PHL-DCA... Digress - Another aspect that's interesting is that 2/3rds of those members have a storm and of those, they're all snow really... Usually at this range, they are all rain - not sure if that means anything but. Anyway, point is ... I wonder if the operational Euro is a rare weaker outlier

mm... I dunno Kev I can distinctly recall 40 day stints of really not even seeing a flurry. I remember the weeks after that 1987 planetary alignment storm... that ended winter. Feb and March nothing... 1989 ? come on man - Thanks Giving was the whole winter that year pretty much. It's actually kind of a silly conversation point because we both know that every decade has ratters ... And even in 'partial ratters' that have a good event or two nested in dearths of events, those years will still put three week stints of ennui in the books pretty commonly. Realistically ? not, ..or should not be considered that uncommon

mm... that already empirically got torpedoed by December - sorry for the grousers ...

So, anyway, my take on the the 26th for anyone less guided by resentment and frustration: The 00z GEFs members clearly show the majority as carrying a significant system through the east between the 25th and 27th. In fact, ~ 2/3rd did so on the 12z suite, yesterday, 00z that improved to ~ 8/10. Question? to whom they avail, what is the EPS, PNA index right now ? If it were up to the GEF's PNA alone ( with no over-arching -AO/-NAO ) one might hunch we are heading for a whopper January thaw. ( Ha, did we ever truly freeze ). The teleconnector complex is burying any 26th signal though. Intense -PNA doesn't at first lend too well. I suspect this is a rareness that may materialize out of a rare hemisphere - frankly. It is rare to sustain blocking in a fast, velocity saturated circumstance. The blocking is real. The -AO is antecedent and trended heavily, and is getting that ancillary support from the SSW stuff ( tho I'm a bit about that for other reasons ). Technically, the NAO has not yet manifested on the charts, but is literally doing so today - as this thing is decaying in situ into a quasi 50/50 smear. The forces(ing) that is/has been driving the -AO along, is probably helping to ignite the NAO limb of the total NAO domain space. It's super complex - I'll try to make it brief. I really believe that the -AO from early December through last/this week, was an artifact of the hyper intense ( probably historically so ) +WPO, which by virtue of its depth more so than the polar region z-coordinate heights, caused the EOF calculations to consistently register a negative total AO index value. Math does not 'personalize' these values - it only deals with absolute values of D(z). If there's 150 dm of gradient, an index gets rather large. Doesn't matter 'how' it situates that gradient. In this case, we have a modestly high polar cap heights next to a super-massive, multi-nodal hole in the atmosphere between midriff eastern Asia and Japan! Then, the SSW takes place during; here we are the lag 3 weeks in time, and we see that the SSW is ?propagated? ( so it seems ) down to where it ?might? be coupling with the upper tropopause. This ( rather fascinatingly ) suggests two disparate forcing sources on the AO may describe the total. The former planetary wave mechanical variant ...effectively relays into an era that is SSW driven. Anyway, the -AO is real ...and it probably more so than not parlays a successful -NAO favorably. It's setting up a look that doesn't really lend to idealized structures. The 26th is a squeeze play because of all this. Those GEF members and off and on operational et al or injecting Pacific potency into the field, and then idiosyncratic handling of the western limb of the NAO domain will dictate whether that cuts or shears ... or even maintains enough mechanical presence along 40 N to pull off a narrow conduit Miller B. These are all on the table -

I know ..it's hilarious - I wonder ... the last 20 years ( we've had this conversation before - I'll keep it comparatively brief ...) we have had not only more snow than any other 20 year period probably dating back 300 years of climo ( check that; it just seems so), more importantly: It was also 20 years of constant cinema. The excitement quotient was concomitantly ...exceptionally dosing! Perhaps we are just conditioned to expect more drama now, and that "euphoria" drug we joke about, when opening the models and seeing 8 to 10 isobars closed off over ACK becomes ...almost 'entitled' ? We're talking years bombs and over-achieving SWFE and Katrina's and Maria's and Sumatran subduction thrust events...my god. Hell hath no fury like entitlement "unjustly" unrealized. Lol. Like, the sin of god himself to impose normalcy. just sayn' Afterthought: I realize we may not have actually had more 20-year totals than other 20-year blocks of time in the past... I do know that when it's on, we over-achieved more frequently per features and season. Btw, folks,..that is/was modeled by climate change science - fwiw... A metric was proposed all along by guidance and science therein, that the atmosphere holds more WV in a warming world. Mechanisms that release that WV will increase proficiency ...

LOL but you know what I was thinking would be interesting ? what if that 00z Jan 26 12 hour 15"-20" scenario verifiied: all told, we would not exactly be terribly off average snow totals for the year. Get another doze like that later on Feb 20 and then again on March 25th, and we would be fine - in fact .. perhaps modestly above normal. No one 'sane' would have any room to complain - right? wah wah waaaaaah

There's something there... The GEFs individual members are 2/3rds nodding in favor, and we've seen it off and on for three days at this point depending on which cycle/model in question. So, not consistent but in this regime... as I've hammered ( and nothing's changed ) predictive skill at even D5 ( let alone 10!) is unusual poor. In fact I'd almost say it's N/S entirely by D10... The signal fights thru in a symbolic sense ...but there's something too that in terms of numerical presence in the circulation totality. Still, seeing that many members ... ( and the Euro has some semblance there too...), denies the weight of that assumption of N/S ( no skill)... blah blah.. The 12z GFS was subsume phasing. Phasing could take place, but at this range and inherent synoptic limitations/predictive faulting ( abv), probably means that the GFS would be right for the wrong reason in this case. Be that as it may, the Euro lacks an N/ stream ..and backside western NA/ ridge bulge like the 12z GFS. That ridge drove the N/ stream of the GFS solution S, to meet with the interloping S /stream and the love-making gets going. But, ... the Euro keeps the flow flow... as does this 18z run too... Meanwhile, hemispheric Pro is that we are in a blocking signal that will pervade through that era ..probably into the first week of February. I agree whomever said that the blocking tendencies may vanquish from extended ranges, but prove premature - these sort of large -scoped planetary drives tend to take geologic time spans to breakdown ( no really geo kidding) .. That said, retrograde along the 60th parallel ...even if just a tendency, means there is an implied cyclonic rotation wrt the 40N westerlies... that intrinsically favors phasing of subsume variety/or phasing in general. Con is the exceptionally fast hemisphere @ and astride the 40th parallel. It is possible that these intermediate and/or S/waves simply move too fast ... these features bi-pass. That's sort of what we are seeing as the predominate depiction out there in time.. What needs to happen is the ridge in the west to amp more ( 12z GFS ). Sometimes you can draw a N /stream wave down purely by lowering resistance ( 'torque attraction' ) as the S /wave lowers heights S of the SPV fragment in wait... and since overarching block exerts, and you don't need to force the N/ stream into action - these are enough the S /wave is 'harmonic' in the sense that it's not moving by too fast to allow the physics of wave energy synergy .. But now isn't that time ... when the flow is too fast, you almost can't do it that way.. The western ridge has slow the field down so that the union can take place.

Welp ... nice shot of bitter cold for the 22nd on this GFS pan dimensional winter expression is different and that different’s gotta be good

The hell are you two talking about talk about missing the point of that joke

After this weekend’s little rain east glop west diddy ... here’s what the next two weeks of oper GFS offers. 5 afternoons with exploded polar CU in a virga washed sky, and 1 windex plausible D13 I realize folks said the 2nd half of the month rock ‘n’ rolls but were they thinking Air Supply?

Chris or whomever else reading this that NWSes a living.... after careful consideration and ample evaluation period I’ve come to the objective conclusion that your new radar system sucks

well... folks - not you per se ... in general - probably need reminding that static patterns don't typically deliver bigger/satisfying events and 'cinema' therein. you need mass fields to be disrupted, and as the new signal passes through a domain, there's a correction events. Some times even subtle perturbations in the field will trigger, too - doesn't have to be a huge 4 SD jolt either. But unchanging patterns find equilibrium - that's just physics.

Not to start an SSW rage again .. but, it's not even clear if this event the world has been tracking is even part of this suppression in the polarward indexes. I mean, the AO was negative big time all along...and looks to remain that way through week two. We should be a week away from the AO dropping like anchor from the SSW ... if going by climo inference on the causal/correlated lags ... but if it's already negative like this... Seems it's a wash? right - The other thing, this -AO is sort of inordinately constructed to me. Just looking/eye-balling the coarser layout at PSU for the D7-10 means... only until very recently did this AO appear more evenly distributed. Prior, the +WPO was so exotic it was like lying about the AO being negative by virtue of its own monstrosity in height chasm over the N. sea of Japan. weird

yeah...I recall events vividly, right down to the f'n dendrite counts ... when they happened? not so much lol... Oh I'm usually within like 2 years of nailing the dates! Yeah, but the November 1986 ...honestly, it may not have actually been a bust. Little critter perhaps - It was a flat wave. Man, up at college some year later I found that in the archives... had a 50 v-max, dude. Flat wave potency ftw! ... That wrought thunder snow to Cleveland with 6" of snow in like 20 minutes earlier that afternoon ( not really but you know..). I recall vividly watching Jim Cant'containhimself'glory all excited reporting that around 3:30 pm ... and he was saying that people from southern PA to southern New England should be watching as this potent fast moving disturbance moves through and literally, just then, 'ping ping p'ping-ping, ping ping p'ping-ping' the ticker space pops along the bottom of the screen and, "THE NATION WEATHER SERVICE IN TAUNTON MASSACHUSETTS HAS ISSUE A WINTER STORM WATCH ..." scrolls by I mean, kinda yeah...? it was very short notice like that... but they got the watch which should have been a warning really.. in under the wire. The day was actually 50 F with those macro mid level clouds... light or no wind. Pleasant. Didn't really lend to anything like that. But you turn on the TWC, back when it was a solid worthy diversion ( ha! ..although I think it's been better as of late with special programming...), and what the f ! Harv came on the air around 5pm with a winter storm watch and did a cut in for it. He was excited. You could tell. He had his hand splayed as he stepped in a little closer and said, "...But it appears just enough cold air will filter down from Northern New England to potentially flip this to snow overnight, and it may come down quite hard for several hours around or just prior to dawn..." I really remember that pretty close to verbatim. I guess anytime your swimming along in a current and suddenly the current changes...that's technically a bust - ... man that's tough one. lol ... although with only 12 hours to go, I guess that was "kind of" by the modeling standards of that era, ...hard to say. Not like Dec 23 1997 - not THAT is a bust. I mean, I think the official weather forecast accessible on the primitive ( by today's standards ..) web at NWS BOS web site even still read, "...A mix or rain and snow, acculations around an inch. High of 37" You look out the window 8" into it, it's 24 F and you cant see the curb of the road in front of your house! I wonder if that scale and degree of blind-siding is even still possible. Like the storm has to be over before they change the forecast

yeah yeah yeah... ha ha ha... 'Whack-a-mole' ...fudge, couldn't remember that when typing - but right. far as I'm concerned, it's the atmospheric modeled equivalent of the Whack-a-mole winter' nice

Nah... this Euro run typifies support for the talking point - there's very little/nill predictive skill right now. That flow might very well be the fastest I've seen in the last 10 years...right through those five days right there. Incredible 100+ kt base-line trajectory speeds over the top of a flat ridges... 120 in trough nadirs... ( as a separate matter, it's negative interference between that base-line state and S/W embedded in the flow, as there's nothing remaining/differentiating the S/W from that canvas = ...new hobby ) Beyond the capacity of the technology really - features in space and time, as depicted, not worth commenting on. There's equal probability the next cycle focuses on the 24th and brings the 20th back... as there is, nothing happens of any of those ... They are like one those pop-up games at an arcade center, where you have to hammer the one that pops up and get a prize if you nail one of them.

It's funny the '80's vibe came up back there... Firstly, that image posted looks more 1977 to me... but I get it with the mullet hair-do. But then again, the cultural variance between 1972 and 1988 ( say...) is less than 2002 and 2018, just do to the fact that society's et al evolve much faster in recent modernity, because of high tech modulation is a powerful force/feedback. Interesting... Anyway, I was just thinking about that 'big' event in January 1986. It was dubbed, 'The SYZYGY' storm ... done so for landing near or on the calendar date of the planetary alignment that goes by that name. I recall there was bus-stop speculation, even heard it on TWC by someone in passing, about the tides in that thing possibly being exaggerated because of Jupiter ... hahaha - soooo 1980s. Right. But two nights before that storm, I was planning to trip to Rockport, Mass... I had a handful of snow storm desire in one hand, versus tide carnage in the other - hmm... Which do I choose? My family ( I was but a boy then...) had moved from Rockport to Acton, MA ... two years prior, a time in which I barely held up against the gale force exaggeration by these inland yokes .. exultations over the so-called, 'snow belt' of Middlesex and Worcester MA ... Meanwhile, I was looking left and right down the street for two years running; we had received pretty much no winter 1983 - 1985. I think that was the deciding factor; I had even given up. I decided to go back to Rockport for that storm for some hyper geek-out tide and wave drama, Seemed the better gamble. It was everything billed, but not quite the same as February 1978 as Frank Johnson, childhood chum who ended up with an amazing life as an camera Met for a NC station ...amazing family ...seems idelic .. At least one of us found heaven. Me? still waiting for SYZYGY I suppose - I walked outdoors that same night ... 38 F on the typical suburban kitchen window side thermometer that always read 111 F on sunny May days around 11:35 AMs. The air did not actually smelled like snow, rather rain. Just like the aroma on a humid day in June surrounding a thunderstorm's B.O. The air today ...January 15 2021 feels that way. It doesn't smell of it... but you know how that does that? Temperature and smell, they take you to setting in the past - like that favorite song. I came back home and wonder if anyone had happened upon any salacious 12z material to offset the noir emptiness of the forlorning winter .. but instead that was some dork in a mullet - I'm like, that is weird. Rockport was amazing that storm. 30 hours and four or so tide cycle's-worth. Boulders upwards of 100 lb herald onto shore roads. The cacophony of olive green walls curled and it was as though you could feel the Earth move seismically if not by the sound of their power alone. Their white wash tsunamis' easily overtook the higher beach... where in the summer towels, blankets and lawn chairs festooned laisse-faire folk clad in that which bares. This? This stuff would steal their souls for the cold alone. And as the leading edge of the tumulted torrents smashed into the granite slabs beneath the roads, towering explosions like mini thunder clouds rose above and just like anvils ripping asunder, their canopies laid down wind ..sometimes enveloping over nearby neighborhood rooftops. One physical aspect that was interesting ... the rain was white - this was before the vernacular had denoted that sort of phenomenon as cat paws, but I'm sure those were. But every once in a while ...one giant, single, solitary gulf ball sided aggregate would go by nearly parallel to the ground. You had to look for them, they were so fare ...' but there's one - just there' While that was happening, back home in Acton piled on 18" That event, to me .. was the crowning achievement of the 1980s. For I don't - for some reason - recall 1984 April. Otherwise, in 2nd place was that positive bust in late January or early February of 1987. That one was similar to December 1997, in that it was forecast 1-3 of glop ending as light rain. We ended up with 10" crusted over with sleet and ZDZ ... have received 7 inches of it with lightning and thunder. The whole decade of the 1980s to me had that one, singular crowning achievement. Since 2010.. I think I can count eight storms that exceeded 16", and countless over a foot.

I don't think this is a good pattern frankly - It may help our collective 'consternation'/frustration factor if we stopped dressing it up that way. That instills an expectation? And it may just be one that ... quite frankly appears to be faux if trend has any objective usefulness to anyone. Eventually, it's hard to refute consistency - lol. Seriously though.. Gee wiz. For every passing day and week of culminating bad model performance and unrealized verification, we keep bangin' a great pattern drum. It starts to look like its nothing more than tranced visions in medicine paint dancing around a tribal fire - I, and probably NCEP ... heh, have been noting that running a blocky 55th+ hemisphere over top of raging HC/compression ... is a modeling nightmare. Well, maybe ...just maybe that also means the pattern is a nightmare ?

mm... If it were all just about 'snow' ? Of course it wouldn't be complicated. It's more than that - it's missing an endorphin fix - sorry. Absolutely it is.. Similar to that psychotropic e-addiction expose' 60 minutes did earlier last year, where there's a smoldering epidemic in how modernity/technology's influenced humanity. And it was done deliberately by the earlier Internet sciences.. Fascinating story and how you can see evidences it everywhere ... 'blue light' pop and art drives reaction, which is satisfactorily addictive. The flavor of all that, in this social media, is the 'rush' from a big storm depiction in the models, and the cinema of it therein - Snow is hoped? absolutely...of course dude. That evades what is probably more "problematic" - although there are worse concerns facing the world, true LOL - about this yo-yoing psycho-babble bs that goes on based on a single output cycles like that which is undeniable for those of us who have long years of experience. I mean of course winter and the underpinning interests therein are certainly integral in that... But it's patently obvious, there's more than just 'snow' about the whole 'drug' when exposure to guidance when things are parlaying more dystopic - beating a dead horse. Forget all that ... even if one's sole and singular intent for this is snow snow snow...? It doesn't invalidate the point: there's no reason to = consternation over model runs and allowing a single positive return guide elation, vs a negative cycle output guiding one to despair. That is not a healthy preoccupation - I don't care what anyone says.

And it baffles the mind for me - It is coherent and obvious that there is an utter lack of deterministic/forecast verification value inherent in this chaotic and weird pattern anomaly ( an anomaly that is really Hemispheric/planetary in scale frankly - ) ... Yet, the new run comes out = consternation ? Y'allz be persecutin' yo asses

Mm not likely very factorable - never zero, of course... but just not weighted heavily enough to be substantial in the integration of all forces guiding the outcomes .. Like, the last 2,000 years of isolated fossil fuel profligate consumption in combustion and the conversion of it's exhaust into atmospheric gaseous and aerosol fluxing - now THAT is a major player ...

Not the GFS ..heh Euro ... GGEM ... UKMET in that order of relative egregiousness, sure ..but the GFS? It takes anything physically conceived in the fluid medium of space and time, and immediately moves it along a 1.1C ... violating the General Theory of Relativity by 10% the speed of light -

Yeah ...I recall that week pretty clearly ... that's what I call "wave masking" ? It's not a formal nothing so don't the average user now go beady eyed flipping through the AMS catalogue. But, I remember there was a SW trough injection through Texas ... not appreciably deep, but, the flow was temporarily split around the Dakotas ... circa the 20-23rd... That TX S/ stream wave "looked" like the headliner show for the week. It moved to roughly the longitude of the TV, whence the N /stream threatened to dump in/phase. But when the N /stream aligned neutral with the S/stream, the whole structure had already made WV's longitude ...so it was getting a bit late to get it done. Plus, the flow was overall still a bit progressive, too, which didn't lend to slowing things down and giving the phase time to evolve/maximize. Nevertheless, a wave does develop on the MA and deepens moderate relative to EC cyclone climo ...and rockets by for a moderate impact .. so not a total loss, done deal - right. Wrong. While all that was playing out... upstream over the E. Pac/west ... there was already a follow-up wave injected into the mid stream latitudes. Typically, when the models handling two waves in spacing contention - they'll start focusing on the lead wave ... (the sojourn is for the general reader - ) Those of us trial-and-true for years of hardened experience know this to be true... Though, perhaps with recent tech advancing ...parsing while maintaining coherent structure and amplitude identities is actually getting better. Who knows? Anyway, right behind the 24th result astride the East Coast, there was a +PNAP spike bulging in the ridge out west, and between ... comes said potent mid-stream wave. That sucker stole the show for the week really. It got a huge mangus structural boost ( super position kinematics...blah blah) as it was coming together ...sort of "blind" to the models... They seemed to just simply not recover the wave spacing, nor the nearby EC baroclinic gradients behind the moderate Nor'easter's departure. SO, in so far as that handling that week, the models were NOT very good at parsing out coherent structure and amplitude identities ... no. So...I've seen that before...? Really going all the way back to the 1990s modeling standards. I remember back in the day, when there were two waves in the stream... that lead wave sometimes does 'steal' the show,... but, there were times when the models did that, but it seemed to hide the system behind - 1996 December did this... Those back to back relative bombs were like this. The models had them interfering all week and the tussle kept them flat... but while the models were arguing in that fight, reality had other plans.