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Winter 2011-2012


ORH_wxman

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Looks pretty nice. The configuration of ENSO, and the Atlantic SSTs. Honestly though, I think we'll ultimately see more warming in Nino4 and 3.4 than currently forecast. I think this winter will favor February much more than recent years

post-128-0-93176600-1309981659.gif

CFS has been trending toward a moderate La Nina for next winter, but its probably too aggressive as you hinted at. I think a weak Nina or neutral is more likely. I'd probably go cold neutral or weak Nina as the most likely options at this point. I'm not sure if it will make much of a difference anyway whether we are neutral or weak Nina-ish since we'll likely still have a Nina hangover effect unless we warm a lot more.

The Atlantic tripole continues to look good for a -NAO but its hard to say if a lot of that is the result of what we saw the last two years...though we thought that last summer too and we got another big -NAO winter. The quiet geo-mag flux from the sun may be contributing.

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Looks pretty nice. The configuration of ENSO, and the Atlantic SSTs. Honestly though, I think we'll ultimately see more warming in Nino4 and 3.4 than currently forecast. I think this winter will favor February much more than recent years

post-128-0-93176600-1309981659.gif

I would love a good February into March. Since I don't have much of a snowpack too often....I'd sacrifice a little snow in December and January, to keep winter going through March. I might be all alone in this, but I'm done with winter ending 2/2. Lets prolong it.

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CFS has been trending toward a moderate La Nina for next winter, but its probably too aggressive as you hinted at. I think a weak Nina or neutral is more likely. I'd probably go cold neutral or weak Nina as the most likely options at this point. I'm not sure if it will make much of a difference anyway whether we are neutral or weak Nina-ish since we'll likely still have a Nina hangover effect unless we warm a lot more.

The Atlantic tripole continues to look good for a -NAO but its hard to say if a lot of that is the result of what we saw the last two years...though we thought that last summer too and we got another big -NAO winter. The quiet geo-mag flux from the sun may be contributing.

It seems like most models are hinting at a weak Nina/cold neutral. It looks like we may follow 2008 (to a point) right now, and that cooled off in the fall.

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It seems like most models are hinting at a weak Nina/cold neutral. It looks like we may follow 2008 (to a point) right now, and that cooled off in the fall.

Yeah 2008 saw the warming int he summer but then re-cooling in the fall. That is actually pretty typical. Subsurface has been cooling the last month or so eroding the positive anomalies down there, so I think that is another sign that we aren't going to warm a whole lot more before we cool again. We'll still have to watch it closely though because these things can surprise us.

A weak El Nino would actually be the best for us, but I don't see that happening. Still, if we can keep the -NAO streak going, then a cold neutral or weak Nina should be just fine.

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Yeah 2008 saw the warming int he summer but then re-cooling in the fall. That is actually pretty typical. Subsurface has been cooling the last month or so eroding the positive anomalies down there, so I think that is another sign that we aren't going to warm a whole lot more before we cool again. We'll still have to watch it closely though because these things can surprise us.

A weak El Nino would actually be the best for us, but I don't see that happening. Still, if we can keep the -NAO streak going, then a cold neutral or weak Nina should be just fine.

I guess overall you have to feel good about the next winter (I use that term loosely because it is far away), but I hate that feeling that the hammer will drop sooner or later. Things look ok in the broad sense, but that feeling is there. Of course we have to go through it sooner or later...nobody wants it, but I also have that slight worry about this year.

Who knows at this point...maybe we are just in a great stretch, but just as easily as everyone saying last winter was in jeopardy with a strong Nina, +QBO, etc...we could easily have the reverse happen with seemingly favorable conditions at this point.

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I guess overall you have to feel good about the next winter (I use that term loosely because it is far away), but I hate that feeling that the hammer will drop sooner or later. Things look ok in the broad sense, but that feeling is there. Of course we have to go through it sooner or later...nobody wants it, but I also have that slight worry about this year.

Who knows at this point...maybe we are just in a great stretch, but just as easily as everyone saying last winter was in jeopardy with a strong Nina, +QBO, etc...we could easily have the reverse happen with seemingly favorable conditions at this point.

'05-'06 could be a bit of a worry...it had that putrid vortex in the Bering straight region and W AK. That was a negative neutral and -QBO winter with pretty low solar activity too as it was the near the beginning of the current min. It did have a -NAO but not a classic one and in tandem with the bad PAC pattern, we torched. Europe had a freezing winter though. We still did have 12/9/05 that winter though. :guitar:

Its hard to say what makes the vortex setup in that bad spot, so its hard to predict. But I think as long as we avoid it, we should be in good shape.

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'05-'06 could be a bit of a worry...it had that putrid vortex in the Bering straight region and W AK. That was a negative neutral and -QBO winter with pretty low solar activity too as it was the near the beginning of the current min. It did have a -NAO but not a classic one and in tandem with the bad PAC pattern, we torched. Europe had a freezing winter though. We still did have 12/9/05 that winter though. :guitar:

Its hard to say what makes the vortex setup in that bad spot, so its hard to predict. But I think as long as we avoid it, we should be in good shape.

Yeah fingers crossed.

Despite it not being horrible, '05/'06 was sort of a tease. 12/9/05 was incredible, but the dryslot in the Feb '06 blizzard killed me..lol. I know I shouldn't complain with getting over a foot...but man, I still have that horrible memory of watching the dryslot fly north during the predawn hours.

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Has anyone done any extensive research into what contributed to last winter being so amazingly awesome (to put it scientifically :lol:)

It looked like there was some strong influence from wave #3 in the stratosphere. That's really all I've looked into

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Yeah fingers crossed.

Despite it not being horrible, '05/'06 was sort of a tease. 12/9/05 was incredible, but the dryslot in the Feb '06 blizzard killed me..lol. I know I shouldn't complain with getting over a foot...but man, I still have that horrible memory of watching the dryslot fly north during the predawn hours.

I got an inch in Feb 06, so shut up lol

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Has anyone done any extensive research into what contributed to last winter being so amazingly awesome (to put it scientifically :lol:)

It looked like there was some strong influence from wave #3 in the stratosphere. That's really all I've looked into

I would think that nice MJO flare-up was a factor too, especially in January.

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I would think that nice MJO flare-up was a factor too, especially in January.

Yeah it kept the great pattern going another 3 weeks because the NAO flipped during the 1/12 event...that was an Archambault event. But we got a great +PNA to keep the snow threats coming right through 2/2. NAO did teeter back toward negative in late January for a time, but it was far from the big blocking we had in Dec and early January.

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I would think that nice MJO flare-up was a factor too, especially in January.

oh yeah, that was a big player in late January for sure. I guess I meant more along the lines of how last winter could have been forecast better. How the heck could we have anticipated one of the strongest NAOs on record lasting through Dec and into Jan

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oh yeah, that was a big player in late January for sure. I guess I meant more along the lines of how last winter could have been forecast better. How the heck could we have anticipated one of the strongest NAOs on record lasting through Dec and into Jan

We couldn't because we still don't really know what makes the NAO tick. We have a lot of theories and some of them seem to be working recently like the geo-mag flux from the sun...but nothing that we can hang our hats on and say "yes this is definitely going to have huge blocking periods". We can sort of make educated guesses on stuff like QBO and ENSO state...we know stronger Ninas hate -NAOs but the sample size wasn't large. We know that -QBOs are a bit more favorable for blocking...but we saw some good blocking in the last two +QBOs now ('08-'09 and esp last year).

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Yeah it kept the great pattern going another 3 weeks because the NAO flipped during the 1/12 event...that was an Archambault event. But we got a great +PNA to keep the snow threats coming right through 2/2. NAO did teeter back toward negative in late January for a time, but it was far from the big blocking we had in Dec and early January.

Jan 27 was also an Archambault storm during the final switch to a +NAO regime. The pattern change played a huge role in the storm for us.

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This stretch is starting to get me irritable....I'm sick of this....come onference time, I'm gonna have already eaten 3 babies.

And slaughtered about 5 golden retriever puppies.

It's summer and this looks to continue at least off and on through the next 2 weeks. Cool off in the swamps.

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We couldn't because we still don't really know what makes the NAO tick. We have a lot of theories and some of them seem to be working recently like the geo-mag flux from the sun...but nothing that we can hang our hats on and say "yes this is definitely going to have huge blocking periods". We can sort of make educated guesses on stuff like QBO and ENSO state...we know stronger Ninas hate -NAOs but the sample size wasn't large. We know that -QBOs are a bit more favorable for blocking...but we saw some good blocking in the last two +QBOs now ('08-'09 and esp last year).

Do you know any papers that explain the relationship to the solar geo-mag flux well? All I keep finding are statistical relationships, which I don't care about if I don't understand the underlying physical basis

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Do you know any papers that explain the relationship to the solar geo-mag flux well? All I keep finding are statistical relationships, which I don't care about if I don't understand the underlying physical basis

There are some papers that I've come across, but it's a lot of theory.

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There are some papers that I've come across, but it's a lot of theory.

Yeah, I guess I just would rather have a better understanding of processes within the Earth's atmosphere before I start putting much weight on solar geo-mag stuff. Though I know that's become the popular scapegoat for practically every weather phenomena recently.

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Yeah, I guess I just would rather have a better understanding of processes within the Earth's atmosphere before I start putting much weight on solar geo-mag stuff. Though I know that's become the popular scapegoat for practically every weather phenomena recently.

I would not discount the sun as not being the cause for a lot though, there is much unknown yet the knowns are very impressive. Much available research, do your homework!

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I would not discount the sun as not being the cause for a lot though, there is much unknown yet the knowns are very impressive. Much available research, do your homework!

I agree that the solar is pretty big. But damn....sometimes we rock wtih a strong sun and blow with a weak one. I think NAO (like most years) will tell the tale. GOA looks nice...wish it were 2-3 months down the road. If this holds I'll come over to the snowy side.

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I agree that the solar is pretty big. But damn....sometimes we rock wtih a strong sun and blow with a weak one. I think NAO (like most years) will tell the tale. GOA looks nice...wish it were 2-3 months down the road. If this holds I'll come over to the snowy side.

Would you be banging the GOA again?

Hope your dream works out

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I would not discount the sun as not being the cause for a lot though, there is much unknown yet the knowns are very impressive. Much available research, do your homework!

Alright dad! lol

I definitely can't deny that there is a significant influence from the sun, especially since I don't know anything about the subject. I just won't use it as long as I don't completely understand the underlying physical connections

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Would you be banging the GOA again?

Hope your dream works out

My wife is convinced it's a sign...and she's not particularly wishing for a snowy winter.........in fact away from me and secretly probably the opposite....more for the loss of companionship for months at a stretch than the actual wx....lol...

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