Typhoon Tip

It's ironic that we just had a discussion sequence last week regarding the effectiveness of NAO blocking on modulating temperatures in May. -Right, no effect eh? It's hard to imagine how that presently, hugely agreed upon monster block retrograding across the north Atlantic Basin toward Davis straight, and the subtended negative anomalies that are more than merely figuratively targeted right on top of the Northeast and SE Canada (I'd almost go so far as to say 'targeting SNE its self'), are not physically and directly caused by that whole synoptic evolution with that block - particularly when it perfectly satisfies L/W construct arguments. This is like that whole debate about having reality in one hand ...then, choosing fake news in the other (if you think those are not connected). Yet, we go to the re-analysis pages and they keep churning out no or vague correlations ...depending on the parameters used (that may be part of it). There could be other reasons why those products don't seem to reflect this sort of actually happening events Again, those products provide very course/linear A--> B correlations that quite proficiently mask circumstance. Like, ...as we later discussed, a -4 SD NAO is probably sufficient in magnitude to alter/force anomaly distribution around our ~ latitude and longitude (west -vs- east based NAO, notwithstanding). However, in May, it may just be a function of changing waves lengths, and say ... -2 SD events not being sufficiently massive for the same forcing a -2 SD would have in January. blah blah ...no need to re-iterate the whole course... It's just that it is amazing how we had that discussion and then literally the next week an exact super-position of those facets over actual synoptic evolution is modeled to occur in real space and time. I don't see much evidence that the PNA is handling the expected cool month alone. It'll be interesting to see how negative we can get. I had a tinge of frost at my place this morning when I left for the office at around 6:30 ... Yesterday I speculated that the temp may hold up around 40 with green-up underway but...heh, it may have frosted and held up anyway - an atonement to how planetary physics are just hell-bent on thefting one of our warm months away entirely... Which is hyperbole for the reading impaired... Still, I was musing on the way to work how we try to fit March into the winter months in our local social media vernacular.. If we are being fair (which lets face it, we're not - ) we should adopt the same principle and call May a warm month ...It's just that like March, some years these months are no shows. This May in the guidance/tenors et al is like knowing the Bernie Madoff of climate is coming and being powerless to stop it.

? .. wow. if this is almost - what IS the nightmare scenario? ...I guess a comet impact ending it all might be worse, sure.

green ups pretty far along S of roughly RUT-CON ... I'm interested in if temperatures slam to a halt at 40 .. . It's not like dry top soil and brown grass ..circa the end of March anymore. The air smells of plant life now. hm

mm to be honest I was kind of hoping for some snow and a historic job- I admit. As much as I have my druthers for spring and summer to go the other way, I'm also not numb - that would be pretty f amazing.

Well ...certainly fun discussion about possibilities but... I guess there's a trend to ever so slowly normalize the extent of the anomalies, though, as we pass through the time frames in question (day 5 to 9 ish). There seems to be a 1.1 back off then .9 back on type of trend over consecutive cycles ... painfully slowly.

well... it's a very tentative trend... I'd still count on extra dose of ZANAX for now - we'll see...

This 12z GFS looks similar to the 00z EPS ...it actually manages to progress the trough enough E of us to give us some fragmented improvement by day 6.5

definitely game of inches this time of year... well, KMs for the purposes of Meteorology.. The EPS has that rough axis too far E and implies we could even be fair conditions albeit chilly during the duration the operational version has us flirting with history. the other thing is that it cold rains around the edges of these sorts of things in the spring, and particularly that will be true in late spring at that. Greens on rad ptypes with like two or three blue blobs that blink on and off amid the core of the shield ... where the valleys are smearing cat paws while 1,000 feet up is losing power. point being despite the look things have to align pretty elegantly to server -

For me it comes down to the air mass a region is working with, as the lion's share of forcing physical outcomes? The sun is certainly important. Duh. However, a cold thickness drizzly rain with the sun dimly visible in late April is probably light flurries snow in the same air mass in January (for example). But, given sufficiently dense overcast and UVM on-going, that fact that it is proven possible to snow in May ( a mere month before the hottest, highest sun angle of the year...) means that the same conditions (relative to solar calendar) "could' happen at the end of July. The sun intensity per se is no different to an exceptionally close approximation, whether 30 days before or aft the Solstice. The difference is sourcing ... By the time May flips to page into June, we are integrating the higher latitudes (they are catching up) to the warming on a hemispheric scope - and such that any cold source by then has just been warmed too much for exotic returns. As perhaps a 'fuzzy logic' way to think of it, it snowed in the year without a summer because of dimming insolation on the planetary scale from volcanism; that's another way of saying the source regions of cold were not able to warm so it snowed at weird times of the year. Yet another way ... we are far enough N in latitude that the circumstantial fragility of summer is exposed from rare time to rare time.

May 2005 was never 62 for any reason or sensibility of relief for a solid two weeks, though. I get what you mean, however, in concept ...where 'refitting' and pulling the close low back retrograde in a cyclic horror story, sure - that specific behavior noted. (just talking about 06z GFS comparison to 2005... etc) But May 2005 was a uniquely satan rectal plague scenario. I think that was so unique, dark humor aside... that the return rate on that is probably rarer? That's my opinion, granted, by fair description for that 2005 ordeal really was a minimum of about 12 days spend in the mid 40s with lows around 39, and when it was not misting heavily with a harsh biting wind, it was gales with thrashing Nor'easter rains. There were not 6 hour reach-around mercies of 60 during that stretch ...and probably not for that third week either.

But I mean seriously ...tell me that doesn't look similar - It's certainly not a huge leap from what we're seeing out there. That D9 for example ...wait, what's the analogs say? I bet that example is on the list here

I keep wondering this ... If we could take the present day modeling technology et al, and transport it back to a week before the 1977 snow event ... would we be seeing something similar? I think it would be a neat project to parameterize the models for each specific event in history and sort of iteratively run them until you produced the exact repro of the event in question. THEN, start fiddling with the inputs to force different outcomes - ho ho man ... that would be obsessively consuming .. probably keel over from dehydration and malnourishment like those Korean gamers ... I could whip us up an 1888er in July if I got my hands on those crays - just need a solid volcano and some imagination and we can cancel a summer proper - If it's gonna snow ...snow... otherwise, don't dink around with the worst - getting us close and just having misery to show for it. Which is unfortunately still the more likely outcome. I did see the D8 Euro though and it's ... bringing back to that question: if we could see the present day modeled output for a week before that '77 event I wonder if it would show up like what we are seeing. Uber -NAO dip and a continental conduit of cold entangled into an instability trough ftw -

NAO aside... Since the "nadir runs" of yesterday, the 00z and now 12z Euro cluster has incrementally lessened the severity ...if not in the hard numbers, the "complexion" of the handling between Ds 4 and 10. In fact, more observably the trough's structure is slightly more opened up and spends a couple of days actually with its axis slightly east of our latitude. It's also perhaps 3 to 6 decameters shallower in the deepest intervals. I mean these are not a huge improvements for spring enthusiasts but they do cut down on the direct schit implications a little. About six more cycles in this trend (haha) we might limit this assault to tolerable negatives... Unfortunately, though the GEFs tele's (as others have noted) are pretty stridently adamant about hiatus of spring until perhaps the 15th or 20th so...

Yeah agreed - Will and i discussed this last week about "thresholds" too. We surmised that say ...-1 or even -2 SD events may get absorbed into the noise of the atmosphere because of the discontinuity in wave numbers that takes place as the winter patterns break toward summer...etc. However, given a sufficiently powerful block ...say -4 and particularly details in its position (west vs east) and we'd see forcing/modulation of the anomaly distribution. Trick is... how often is even a -3 SD anomaly in the NAO domains space? The bell-curve mass of them all are probably between -.5 and -2.5... So you'd have to actually do a more advanced vetting process than just saying -NAO or +NAO...and condition it around real-time scenarios to find the "hidden" correlations - the ones that really matter.

The "panache" for that faded some on this cycle ...unfortunately. The look was better and closer to recouping some entertainment value out of this dreaded ensuing pattern, from the runs during the day yesterday. But, we know that this is/was probably more likely anyway. It could come back.. Some part of me wonders if we should have suspected a blocking May was on the way... I mean, we butt-sored above normals DJF, then went negative about the time people want things to go the other direction in March... That creepy persistence and success of the weather in delivering us the least desired result, relative to all tastes at all times, seemingly required the pattern during May tune up butts too - Heh. Truth be told it's been an acceptable spring by NE standards/climo. We had three days of surreal perfection over Easter, and enough 60 F type mostly sunny afternoons sprinkled through the weeks to challenge justification for complaints. It's just also a fact of climate that every so many years ...we cut off a seemingly interminable cold gyres like that. I've seen these modeled and fail too, though... I mean I'm commiserating as though it's already happened. Either way, it seems there's a consensus: either go historic and snow so we can be in awe, or... be at least menially acceptable... but don't do what it is doing right now as we type, with 46 F mist. I think out of all tastes, that is an absolute bottom turn-out fan club there. That's what 2005 was ... and it wasn't a week - it was three weeks folks. So far what we are seeing in the models is beat red-headed step child worthy - no doubt. But it pales in comparison to 2005.

Ha! yeah...i was "stinkin" that too - more likely that the models are overdoing things at this sort of time range. At least, that's the course of least regret. Having said that, that complexion from the GEFs teleconnector prognostics is eye-popping. It may not help determinism per se, buuut ... if one wanted to get a rare snow in may, THAT would be the layout of choice.

I tell one thing about the Euro run that falters just shy of astounding... The lowest heights anywhere over our quatra-hemispheric scope are between the Delmarva and Cape Cod. The only reason why that is not at the level of astounding is because it's day 10. But jesus I'm willing to cram it on my own hatred for this putrescent f-up weather if that really sets up that way. You'd have to be brain dead not to appreciate that look. wow. The model is flat out trying to engineer a blue bomb in May and it's not the only model doing this either. GGEM gets us there by D7 (almost) and the GFS just needs to cool the column 2 or 3 ...

yup, about one tick away from history there - all fields and considerations

At some point I'm forced to wonder if this doesn't all turn around and really nail eastern N/A with heat. The last 15 consecutive years of this incredible rise in Global temperatures as reported by NASA, has been retarded specifically centered on the region from roughly DC to Labrador compared to most over regions of the planet. In that time span...we've had above normal months.. That's not what we're saying. However, relative to the rates and amounts of change in the warming environment/climate of the planet overall, we've been among a select few other regions that keep getting hammered by off-setting cool values. It's time spans like this, in coming, that's doing it... (so it seems anyway). Truth be told its a noisy subject. Just about every point on the surface of the Earth has had both above and below normal months across the last 180 worth, but it's akin to saying we've had just that many more negatives than anywhere else. That's probably the simplest way to say it. I think Siberia and one or two additional regions also shared in that odd semi-permanent sink.

Yeah, ...12z operational GFS is almost a 2005 redux really. Just need that axis to average closer to WV rather than right over head and we'd be there almost identically. As is though, it's close enough to almost be considered the same thing. This is pretty much how destroying a half month or more in the worst plausible weather there can be on the face of the planet is prescribed. It'll be interesting to see if Kevin is in straight-jacket at the end of D12 Let's hope it is wrong... but, this has been hammered for days in the teleconnectors, and although we can argue those get less correlative at this time of year, you have also take that case by case; there's enough gradient and coherent wave structures lingering around the hemisphere (still) to count 'em, so this may all have merit. GGEM brings snow to the Capital District D7 ...certainly to the elevations -

Ah ...yeeeah, impetus on "mentioned" it ... You were asked, 'who is calling for ...' Answering that question by using anyone's name, together with mentioned it, risks conflating those two ideas and pinning it on someone; when in perspicacity those clearly and obviously don't mean the same thing - but ... we know you do this all the time, ...either deliberately or unwittingly ... and throwing others under the bus ... We're supposed to just laugh it off - okay. Not sure what was said weeks ago ... but at some point over the last week I 'mentioned' the ensuing pattern was symbolic of super-imposing winter under a May sun. Yeah, I suppose taking the synoptic charts as is...there's 850 mb pockets down to -3 C entangled in this trough amplitude, while perhaps episodic spin ups fiddle with f-ing up the weather for everyone that likes spring over the next 10 days... Somewhere in all that the elevations could certainly see grapple and snow.. But it is just as likely that marginal conditions get trumped by the sun and the models are over-doing amplitude, and a host of other things that may and probably will go wrong.

ha! right - you know, i never took the sucker out last autumn - the bedroom one. It just wasn't that cold this lasts winter, and the b-room's on the 2nd floor so the regular home heating trapped enough upstairs. Plus, the unit sits in the window reasonably enough shored up/air tight that a mild winter is fine. Oh it got cold here and there this year, but nothing enough to bother. So long of the short, the debate doesn't count for me. Fwiw, I have used it three times now. Each time it surpassed 80 F so far this year I have needed it at least initially because that same trapping heat phenomenon means that even pedestrian warmth makes that 2nd floor above sleep -