Typhoon Tip

1882 ? ... Yeah, agree with Scott ... barring 'getting lucky' between now and then with one of these flat wave deal ...looks like the large scale tries to get more interesting nearing the first of the year. I rather like the PNA attempting to rise smartly through there...though as far as the GEFs nightly indices, that's pretty new ...also, talking nearing the end of week two so biding time. As far as the SSW... still prevalent in the modeling but keep in mind, two important distinctions need to be made of that: is it down-welling ... two weeks to twenty days for the average -AO correlation.. also as Will hinted ( I think it was..) we still also have to determine where the cold conveyors decide to align. I think of that as like a weeble wobble ... if the mid latitudes are in such a phase, it may weeble instead of wobble in our favor on this side of the hemisphere. However, even if it weeb's Europe-Eurasia first... as 2007 demoed when that epid -AO upended the warmer than normal January, the waves realigned and eventually established sloppy seconds over here and we got some corrective activity going. Lots and lots of moving parts with that.

This excerpt from the Washington Post had me grinning... "...Winter got off to a fast start in the Lower 48 even before it was technically winter. Waves of cold gripped the eastern two-thirds of the United States and several winter storms tracked across the region. Conditions have since eased relaxed some, but the heart of winter lies ahead. Will cold and snowy conditions return and turn more harsh? .... " Gee -

Lot of comparing the hemispheric appeal as being either Nina or Nino ...but doing so in the context of blaming a less than desirable December on the former. Which is it ...? I ask that because we can't have it both ways. In a "better semblance" Nino year, the statistics are signaling less cold and snow in December anyway...with winters tending to be back-end. So are we to infer that Nina's also have poor Decembers? That may be. I don't honestly get that intimate with this stuff.. I don't pour over tedious decimal intervals of ENSO anomalies and compare them to hundreds of Decembers. Sufficed it is to say, we are neutral-positive in the ENSO with a prediction to more coherently warming as the winter progresses... Here's the rub (for me..) in a global atmospheric environment that is warm already, and therefor ... no triggering (via established gradient) an ENSO forcing has likely thresheld in the first place. In other words, it's nadda - neither Nina or Nino "caused" - it may look like Nina, okay... but just in case, I think any confusion might be allayed by the notion that there prooobably shouldn't be any blaming/mentioning of it in the first place. We could just as easily have ended upo with more -EPO ... and then we'd-a had what? A cold shot and and a storm or two in a month that warm ENSO was supposed to be a bad performer. In the antithesis to present performing month...it is not hard to visualize that getting a by-line in a post but by and large most people just ignoring that little incongruity in lieu of their spoils. And around and around we go in the reel of simply not facing the fact that it's just not realistically going to be boreal every December every year. Eat it in other words... good to have other hobbies when things are frustrating you. In the end ... it may just turn out that the 'Nino's tend to have bad December' part of this is just simply getting satisfied.

The EPS did mean out to a SE ridge presentation toward D7-10 fwiw -... I don't know if that reflects in any of their index derivatives .. .but, perhaps backing us into an assumption, they likely agree with the GEFs in this case. Weeklies ... mm, I don't have much experience with those. I've just sort of learned by proximity to others bandying their looks over the years that like every thing else, they are better before they are bad looking from near to far... etc. But Week three and four is beyond this months so, taken for what it is.

interesting... I keep coming back to a notion; maybe the present era is warm saturated ( ... not GW per se..) in such away that the 'normal' gradient trigger points are sort of moved up the dial. Regardless of that hypothetical ... I don't think we are seeing the standard forcing that we typically do, by this time in an average winter, for this sort of stage in the ENSO game. I wonder if odd features like 135 E are what happens in voids. Ha, it's like so horribly not anything, we're exposing the canvas.

There's (haha) a tendency for a type of ... codependency on weather and climate. I mean, it's a not a disparaging sentiment to coin that turn of phrase, considering that from archeologists to anthropologist and back ... it is abundantly clear that a substantial amount of human evolution, from cultures to the physical make-up of the beings that gave rise to those cultures... are all heavily influenced if not guided by climate - mind you ... "climate" in this context is more than average highs and lows... but deals with dry, wet, cold, hot, sun angle, tides... and the interaction of these with land under foot and the seas. More like pan-systemic - In any case, in the smaller dimension of single life times ... it is entirely intuitively sound that individuals ... perhaps because of all that, "instinctively" place a certain sort of aura of necessity in the type of climate they are experiencing. We know this to be true another way, S.A.D. - ...the lengthening dimming oblique sun and shorter days often makes people depressed. I wonder if Inuit natives experience solar attributed S.A.D. There's an interesting thought. So in here... the flavor of all that is just winter storms and blue tinted dawns... the crunch and squeal of snow in syrupy cold. I even like long duration mix events... where the air always smells like wood smoke mixed with latent heat of accretion ... err, so long as I don't lose power. Anyway, none of that is intrinsically guided by rationalism.

Know what would actually be interesting ... is if the SE ridge confirms but idiosyncratic D. Straight gunk helps keep cold locked and lurking ... midriff Lakes to NE. Ice?

Thanks Jerry Perhaps, re the latter? I really don't mean to 'compare' the two ensemble systems. to re-iterate, the point I was really after is that the GEFs are okay if one knows how to work with them.

Well.. just about every pattern we've been through in the past five some odd years actually bore resemblance to the type of visualization I had from just using the GEFs... Sometimes, not - sure.. .but, like I said, you have to know the GEFs bias to use it. I'm preeety sure despite my efforts to predict Steve's reply and nip it in the bud, it fails ahahahaha. J/k Steve... Yeah, no I don't argue the EPS may be 'better' ... my point was, the GEFs are serviceable. And right now, accounted for stuff ... it doesn't change things. We'll see.. Call 'em how I see 'em, while fending off subjective antithetic agenda like the rest of us

thanks ..yeah... I have the week off from work so ... finally got around to throwing my hat into the fray... (though I am aware the consensus already). Like I said, even in down trodden mood times, ...things can sometimes break more favorably - if perhaps unexpectedly of course. I don't mean it to be a dooms day prediction or anything.

For those of us winter weather enthusiasts ... unfortunately, the news is not good through the end of December - but bear with me ...there's hope! The factors typically used to formulate a sense of what type of pattern is more than less likely, they are unilaterally hostile to your desires ... However, an immediate leading disclaimer: that does not mean it will not get cold for a time, or that there can be no drama in the models and/or chances here there for winter-profiled systems. Particularly at our latitude from ORD-BOS and points N ... as the veterans/experienced among us might attest ... even in the worst of times there can be offset anomalies. What the former means is that if/when offered any such circumstance in the models, one should be leery that for the next two to perhaps three weeks, the correction tendency is sloped against. That said, all air, sea, and air-sea coupled indexes are flagging a warmer than normal look when using the GEFs derivatives. Second disclaimer: there are those that are more EPS reliant - understood. Despite that organization's for-profit existence and thus (understandable given the enterprise) stingy product availability to non-paying customers, ... I don't feel their product suite is really inherently good enough to abide. Laziness is really their greatest marketing asset ... If one bothers to become familiar with the GEF's particular pallet of peccadilloes ... accounting for those at any given time, that source can provide just as proficiently. People don't want to think - that's particularly true as a side in today's e-zombie convenience addled world, but I digress... Presently: ... the AO is slated to raise positive as we peer out to the end of week-2. ... the PNA is sloping neutral-negative. ... the WPO-EPO/NP arc is in the AB phase at least through D10, and although they have at times (primarily in the EPO) tried to go AA (negative) ... the longer termed trend has shown difficulty since the November in getting that to actually happen. There are no intervening forces (that I can see...) that offer a way to disrupt the total, WPO-EPO and PNA Pacific circulation, which with reasonable coherence appears to be "stuck" at this point. From the Indian Ocean up through Asia, torque and wave space arguments don't lend to breaking things down ... which may also be related to why the MJO is strengthening in Phase 5 outlooks. The MJO ... a negative and/or positive interference factor (not necessarily a primary driver) appears to be positioned in space and time just perfectly to positively interfere with the above general Pacific overview... Because of all this ... I feel reasonably confident that the SE ridge should rear up here at some point over these next two weeks. I think we are seeing that in the dailies in these operational models, ...more so than less in recent cycles, too. I would almost venture that they are under-done with that ... If the ridge doesn't take on an exuberant flair (so to speak...) suspect strongly that a more zonal "Chinooky" look should set up S of 55 N at one point or the other through the end of the month. The potential Clipper to NJ Model system on the 23-24th, notwithstanding, but that may be a plausible offset. Things start to get more interesting later on as we age into January Anatomy of an embryonic Sudden Stratospheric Warming event: This is very primitive/prelimary just yet ...( courtesy: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/ ) ...but the top row, is the 10 hPa level; the bottom ... the 30 hPa. As we enter the mid range and peer out into the deeper extended range ( from left to right... ) we can clearly see an impressive and rather abrupt onset of intense warming in the upper stratosphere. As we look along the same time span in the 30's, we see that this warm region lags ... but surely begins to emerge nearing the latter days. This is a key suggestion; it argues for downward propagation ...or "downward welling", which is of very high correlation significance for eventual negative Arctic Oscillation. Below is another annotation that helps elucidate that correlation (prepared for another era in history...): What this bottom chart suggests at a deeper level ... is that there is a time lag requirement . I bring particular attention to that because even from well trained Mets out among the electronic archipelago of Internet islands... I'm constantly reading tweets and/or discussions in the past that don't make it abundantly clear that is being taken into consideration. In every year since 1979 in the parenthetical source above... there are two primary variances in the monitoring history: one ... random warm nodes that come in and out of existence that do not demonstrate residence and/or propagation behavior, vs those that do. Those that do are the one's that are, despite the mere near 40 years of sample size, correlated to subsequent -AO. The lag averages two weeks to three weeks. What I find intriguing is that in the absence of a compensatory/offset polar index ... middle latitudes that are thus nakedly exposed to the ENSO forcing ...do tend to uninspired Decembers ...showing tendencies to get more active later in January. If there is some large causal relationship there ...it would be fascinating... In the meantime, the ENSO statistical suggestion my end up landing on top of a (again...preliminary) SSW --> -AO... It's almost funny but ...I'd-a almost pegged this February to be the 2015er

Nah, people don't 'take things as seriously' in a 150 pages where the ballast of content ranges from tedious adversary nit picking to generally vapid twaddle.

Does anyone give a holler if I start a new thread, "December Discussion II" ... I have some new information re the status of things/winter but ...heh, putting a bulletin into 150 pages of obscuring froth isn't really worth it.

Yeah that may be Bri' My assessments during the day were based mainly on the FRH grids ...which of course requires some coarse estimating if going that route. It looked like the rain/snow might squeeze closer to the coast by now, but perhaps that was too quick. Altho ... rad currently shows a sudden ptype change over western Mass and also just N of here on the border of NH so it may be collapsing now. we'll see

Mm... my immediate impression is that the models that upped the QPF will be right ... but this system is just got a warm layer (whether surface or intervening aloft) that was not as well handled by the colder ones. So,... cold rain wins for the larger chunk of the area.

sure ...whatever works... I was more at thinking this is a now-cast op event

I looked around ... I couldn't find a thread re this guy - if anyone wants to merge by all means. sorry

Probably a bit tedious for some to dissect the anatomy of this one buuut... The "main event" is overnight.. fwiw - The mid-level features are presently centered near PHL of NW Maryland ... As they trundle ENE and S of LI .. there may be some fill ins of reflectivity and if one of Scott's more important bands get going it will probably then, when those 500 and 700 mb surface are passing just to our S and concomitant cyclogen gets more cohesive.

Interesting thoughts ... delivered through amusing turns of phrase. To repeat my own hypothesis, I feel that as the Earth's atmosphere continues to warm, the correlations need to be adjusted. The reason is a very physical one. The entire ENSO discussion is too focused (perhaps) on the SST anomalies, and not enough on "weather" those anomalies should even matter. Example: The planet survived a mega warm event, historic actually, over the recent six years. It was documented ... there were comparatively fewer examples of Global anomalies and results, known to correlate with the warm phases of ENSO. Why? Well, as I've hammered in the past ... gradient is the whole ball game. Without it, wind doesn't blow. It's not complicated... 0 gradient = 0 wind. Big gradient = big wind. That very simple baser truism applies at all scales and dimensions of cause-and-effect in nature... including, duh duh dunnn... the effectiveness of the "warm" SST temperatures. There's perhaps too much focus on the SST's ... and not enough on the physical relationship between the anomalies and the atmosphere. If the atmosphere is not providing a heat sink, the heat source has no where to go... and that "no where" means, less resultant forcing. It think it's plausible that a modest Modoki ENSO is just simply beneath the atmospheric physical detection of its presence because it's not introducing as much gradients.

12z NAM/grid numbers even more impressive... BOS//754439 -2119 220716 48059904 LGA//968032 09204 170518 49030004 06000787318 05714 170720 47050101 06031978736 06401 120518 47020004 12030989353 12913 130619 47029802 12028989336 11206 090117 44010000 18101978347 -7409 050227 45000100 18022967436 01611 073416 44010098 24015978547 -6012 033418 43000099 That's approching 1.5" of QPF now for Logan... The temperature profile looks colder overall during the VV/QPF intervals... but the first .3" appears to be noodles and sleet mixed... That 2nd interval though...up over an inch in what essentially amounts to an isothermal 0C profile from 980 to 800 mbs ...(and I checked and there's no elevated warm layer) ... the only thing stopping that from being a significant snow storm ...other than it being the NAM that is... (ha!) would have to come down to nuances in the growth region of the soundings... but I don't believe that would be the case with the structural evolution of this thing. It's even got LGA with a half inch in an isothermal snow profile there on the right. Could all be the NAM being the NAM but again...the 00z Euro looked NAM like so we'll see...

The 06z NAM may be a little pricey with QPF but it does bring up over 1.0" liq equiv to Logan ending Monday morning. I haven't looked at any specific sounding products that are based on the NAM inputs, but just examining the triangulum between BOS-LGA-ALB suggests that there is a snow profile ~ mid latitude of said region going N ... and observing p-type rad products that seems to be more or less setting up with early event behavior. I was impressed ...as far as one could be for this "disrespected system" in the 00z Euro. It shows a quintessential 500 mb track ... taking a quasi-closed surface from just east of the Del Marva passing E of Cape Cod early tomorrow. That is actually a climo -favored track for frontogen/banding along the N/NW arc, and given to the "TROWAL" like look ... these free open-ware web products sort of give at least a conceptual nod to the NAM having a .6"+ single interval on the FRH grid (Logan). Both the NAM and the Euro suggest marginal atmosphere is modulating down, not up ...while that is occurring. Putting an accurate reputation together with an inaccurate reputation may be a risky blend (or not...) but, these subtleties/relationships are not altogether intuitively unsound. That's the models... Presently, Wunder' layout has 31 to 34 T over DPs averaging 28 F along Rt 2 .. and there is on average a bit of a drain component to the zephyrs being indicated. Temps and DPs in central NE are only colder. Not sure of the NAM's totals but if even 3/4's of that falls west of the city out through the Worcester Hills through these conditions that's ~ 6" of snow. Not sure what the Euro QPF is/was... Worth of discussion in my mind.

3-5" of 7 or 8:1 interior

If we can translate these 18z NAM grid QPF numbers for LGA ... up here over our interior zones, ...we'd be putting down a major snow: 18032977712 01803 160523 50020305 24037976626 04002 110619 48020003 30018979031 06804 080219 44020102 36022968835 -0109 073517 42010000 ...I think the reason why I like the NAM so much is because it's a lot like me: Lof of what could happen without ever telling anyone what's going to happen. Seriously, that's a lot of QPF for a marginal surface to 800 mb temperature profile as it is for them. ...Well, not so much the first interval there... but the last three... ALB is up near 1/2" and Logan too in this 18z run... But only ALB looks clad for 9:1 or so snow. Boston looks like pellets and paws in mocking cold rain.

Right...was just gonna snark about that 10 Day Euro's attempt to blue-ball the hopefuls on Xmass Eve... Question is, how gullible. So, it's mid way thru the month... nearing 150 pages. If there's usefulness to this thread it's probably lost irrecoverably buried beneath reams of torment at this point. Maybe December Discussion part II is in order?

And if the last three week's worth of trends can be used as an inference technique... more likely just another in a growing registry of faux pattern leads .... Amazing how many "sucker" punches.