olafminesaw

I feel like one of these systems is bound to feature front end wintry mix eventually, even if relatively minor

GSO has historically had a 32% chance of .1"+ of snow in that 10 day period, so not far off. Also of note, daily snow climo sharply increases from about 3% per day in the next week to about 6% per day the week after. This means between the 29th of Dec and the 4th of Jan there is a 18% chance of at least .1", and a 35% chance between the 5th and 11th. This of course disregards enso state, I assume that many of the snowfalls in the first week of January occured during El nino.

A decent signal, especially for the mountains for 6th/7th

Oof. Torches at the surface verbatim, with insufficient cold air, despite the perfect track and being timed well with the cold air. Probably would be snow in this scenario, but might not really even accumulate. Of course, this is still pretty far out, but we keep seeing this system too warm at the surface. Hopefully we see that change towards mid-month.

GSO MTD rainfall is now 7.01", which moves it into second highest of all time behind 1914 at 9.05" and just ahead of 2018 at 6.99"

An uptick on the GEFS mean as well. Haven't dug into the members at all In case you didn't know, weather.us has about the best free model data out there internationally. Hopefully you get to track something this winter over there!

Worth noting that unlike the past couple years, models will probably key into any moderate to major snow threats pretty early on. Good to see the GFS and Canadian also trying to put the pieces together in that timeframe

Some potential here for some flakes to fly with the ULL

That's my biggest concern is all the pieces flying around. I'd much rather a weak southern stream system running along a ridge.

Gravity waves?

Ice ice baby?

We're due for a "kitchen sink" type storm that eventually gets washed away by cold rain. Lock it in.

Yeah honestly I'm a little surprised models are only forecasting 40-50 mph gusts considering their tendency to be overdone, particularly on the stronger Euro. It is really hard to get more than 45 mph winds in the Piedmont from baraclonic winds apart from some kind of jet enhancement/sting jet, which does not seem to be present in this case. We'll have to see what the mesoscale models show closer to the event, although they always need to be reduced by 30-50%.

Brings the higher gusts all the way to the upslope region of the blue ridge, which also where flooding rain in that scenario would occur

The Euro has a low 980s mb low going right through central NC. This would smash previous pressure records for the month of December. Kinda has the look of a subtropical storm coming up along the Gulf with a fairly tight pressure gradient

Good to see the PNA trend more positive. Would at least get some cold air to this side of the continent

This next storm could be quite potent. If the GFS is to be believed it drops into the 1980s mb and brings some hefty winds to the area

FWIW after delaying the transition to phase 8 of the MJO the past couple days, the most recent GEFS run sped up and gets us to phase 8 around Christmas. It would be hard to imagine that if this plays out we wouldn't see a marked improvement to the pattern.

Unfortunately if the pattern change does occur it still doesn't necessarily look particularly cold and snowy for us. But it does seem likely we'll get out of the current pattern where Maine to Spokane are getting warm rain. Highly anomalous patterns don't last forever and El Nino tends to shuffle things up at some point

Pretty strong indications that the gears will start to turn on the pattern change in about 10 days. The cold air would begin to move across the CONUS around christmas and settle over the East Coast by the first week in January

Going back 50 years at GSO, 62% of the time there is no measurable snow in the month of December. Of course when factoring in the December totals, years with snowfall in December have a higher average snowfall at 9.8" vs 6.5" in years without snow in December. However, when looking at January through April snowfall in isolation, there is no meaningful correlation to whether snow accumulates in the month of December (6.9" in years with snow in December vs 6.4 in years without). So going forward we shouldn't be pessimistic about our chances in the new Year, knowing that confidence in modeling more than 10 days out is near zero.

Let's not forget, last year around this time we were hoping for a massive Christmas blizzard and a solid pattern afterwards. We know how that turned out. All that to say, I'd rather be hoping for a pattern change now, considering El Ninos are typically more back-loaded.

might be a T-shirt kind of Christmas.