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December Med/Long Range Discussion Part 2


WinterWxLuvr

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24 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

I don't know exactly why in light of all the reasons stated so eloquently by Bob and Psu, but I think we will have some surprises and Dec will end with above normal snow at BWI and IAD.  DCA? Only if they fire the crew that's been measuring snow for the past 10 years! 

It's possible.  My comments are mostly directed at the coming pattern that doesn't really settle in until after xmas.  Between now and then we are kind of in a transitional phase as things reconfigure and those can be volatile and sometimes hold a pleasant surprise.  We basically have 3 chances left before the "aint gonna happen" pattern takes hold.  I was about to post on my thoughts on the more near term in a minute but if we strike out on these next 3 chances were looking at maybe going into mid January with nothing.  One other thing that kind of has my faith in a decent winter shaken is how from a few weeks ago this patter we have been in looked stable.  It never looked perfect but it looked like it would lock in and be a stable pattern with a combo of alaska ridging and some NAO help combining to give us an extended window.  In reality the NAO never cooperated and just about nothing in the Pacific other then that ridge did either and so the cold never really got in here other then one short intrusion last weekend and one later this week.  In reality this pattern has been just transitional from the crappy one before back into the new crappy one.  That kind of has me worried that the crap is the status quo for this winter. 

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4 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Wonder how Cohen will spin it?

His last blog entry did not sound confident. Basically said that if the AO doesn't start shifting negative by the end of Dec then the SAI forecast is in trouble. Of course he said he expects the AO to trend downward through the end of the month. 

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3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

His last blog entry did not sound confident. Basically said that if the AO doesn't start shifting negative by the end of Dec then the SAI forecast is in trouble. Of course he said he expects the AO to trend downward through the end of the month. 

The people who went cold/snowy for winter sound really worried or defeated in their tone lately, and that is just one more piece of evidence to add to the mountain of reasons to be a little nervous right now about our prospects for the winter as a whole.  I don't get weatherbell for JB, he is next to worthless IMHO, but from time to time I will watch a video just to see what he has to say and if you know how to read him you can get clues to what he really thinks.  He will NEVER say "I was wrong" or "Its going to be warm" until its basically so late he has no choice, so when he starts saying things like "I am nervous" or "This has me shaken" or "I didn't expect this at all" or "Ill admit this looks really ugly"  you know its bad and he basically thinks he is going to bust but just isnt willing to say that yet because he would rather hold on just in case some miracle happens and things flip he can say "I told you so" and he has some stupid complex about flip flopping and would rather ride a bad forecast to hell then edit and adapt his forecasts.  To be clear I am NOT cancelling winter or saying winters over, things could flip tomorrow.  But all we can do is operate with the evidence we have right now and none of that is any good so reasons for optimism basically lie with "hopefully things look better tomorrow". 

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My thoughts on the next 10 days...were down to 3 at bats.  The first is this weekend.  We are still in the game, overnight runs kept the best WAA lift just north of us but its still close enough we can hope for a better trend the last 72 hours.  If things shift any further north today we are in trouble though.  If they hold or start to trend back south we could still salvage an event.  We have discussed this threat to death so not wasting more time on it now, we all know what the deal is. 

The next threat window is Sunday into Monday.  This is by far our best chance right now, although that's not saying much.  about 50% of the GEFS members are a hit to some degree and about 1/3 of the EPS.  It is what it is, a wave that develops along the old boundary.  Those are really difficult to pin down for models so going into that too much while they are still resolving the friday/saturday system is likely to lead to frustration. 

The final threat is a hail mary later in the week.  Most guidance suggests the storm cuts well west, but a few runs of the ops the last few days and a handful of hopeful ensemble members show a fluke hit so its there, if on life support.  How the first two systems go will have a lot to do with the prospects for that.  Some of the runs that really bomb out the storm early in the week create enough confluence behind it to give us a shot later in the week.

After that things get UGLY for a while so we might have a vacation from tracking for an extended period.  Hopefully we get a hit first. 

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GFS op trend for monday was pretty awful.  Not because it was a miss but because it has no wave at all.  That little pulse as the front comes through was NOT what gave us significant snow on about half the ensemble runs.  It was another wave that develops behind that one along the front and comes up the coast.  On past gfs op runs the wave was at least there even if it missed us to the east most of the time.  On this run its non existent, it puts all the energy into the vort up into new england and pulls the front through behind it and thats it.  Game over. 

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15 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

GFS op trend for monday was pretty awful.  Not because it was a miss but because it has no wave at all.  That little pulse as the front comes through was NOT what gave us significant snow on about half the ensemble runs.  It was another wave that develops behind that one along the front and comes up the coast.  On past gfs op runs the wave was at least there even if it missed us to the east most of the time.  On this run its non existent, it puts all the energy into the vort up into new england and pulls the front through behind it and thats it.  Game over. 

The small shortwave isn't there this run and the alignment of the front shifted more N-S and lost some of the W-E component. There needs to be HP over the top of us like 6z showed otherwise any wave will be rain and ride east of the boundary. It's still a period to watch for the next couple of days though. These things can sneak right up even at the 72 hour mark. 

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My point about the pattern in the LR was that yes, it is poo but that looking at run to run it gets to a poo pattern in subtle different ways at least in the Pac.  Atl has been consistently poo for some time and I have zero confidence that any sort of -AO/NAO shown late in every run will come to fruition.

All i want for Xmas is some greenland ridging.  Santa?  i've been good.

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Well...GEFS is in and thats pretty much us hitting rock bottom.  If you subtract the saturday nonsense the DC snowfall mean for the Sunday night to Tuesday night period just went from 4.5" down to 1.5" and that 1.5 is skewed by one big hit.  We went from 13/20 members showing at least a few inches from that wave at 6z to 6/20.  The signal for that period is just about dead and now in line with the hail mary kinda odds we were looking at (and still are) for the later in the week storm.  I really do wish I had something to say was the good news but honestly everything this morning has pretty much been crap so lets just hope the euro or tonights runs turn things around. 

ETA:  Ok I found something to end on a positive note.  The very end of the GEFS offers some hope in that there is enough ridging showing up into greenland to hint that some cluster is trying to extend the ridging from europe and the north atlantic into the NAO domain.  That is our path to victory here.  Get that ridging to retrograde into the NAO and center there and it will reshufle everything, and quickly.  That cold in western Canada would collapse down into the CONUS and the blocking would hold it in, and were in business pretty fast.  This time the cold would be close enough it wouldnt take a 2 week transition to get into a better place.  Were talking baby steps here but its something. 

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17 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Well...GEFS is in and thats pretty much us hitting rock bottom.  If you subtract the saturday nonsense the DC snowfall mean for the Sunday night to Tuesday night period just went from 4.5" down to 1.5" and that 1.5 is skewed by one big hit.  We went from 13/20 members showing at least a few inches from that wave at 6z to 6/20.  The signal for that period is just about dead and now in line with the hail mary kinda odds we were looking at (and still are) for the later in the week storm.  I really do wish I had something to say was the good news but honestly everything this morning has pretty much been crap so lets just hope the euro or tonights runs turn things around. 

ETA:  Ok I found something to end on a positive note.  The very end of the GEFS offers some hope in that there is enough ridging showing up into greenland to hint that some cluster is trying to extend the ridging from europe and the north atlantic into the NAO domain.  That is our path to victory here.  Get that ridging to retrograde into the NAO and center there and it will reshufle everything, and quickly.  That cold in western Canada would collapse down into the CONUS and the blocking would hold it in, and were in business pretty fast.  This time the cold would be close enough it wouldnt take a 2 week transition to get into a better place.  Were talking baby steps here but its something. 

there has been some lower heights around the Davis Straight for what feels like forever.  Anything to move that over would help with better chances to lock cold air in place instead of retreating polar air every event.

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2 minutes ago, H2O said:

there has been some lower heights around the Davis Straight for what feels like forever.  Anything to move that over would help with better chances to lock cold air in place instead of retreating polar air every event.

That is the only way I really see this improving.  The pacific might be a lost cause, I could see the atlantic getting its act together and helping us out.

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2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

That is the only way I really see this improving.  The pacific might be a lost cause, I could see the atlantic getting its act together and helping us out.

Fwiw towards the end of the latest eps weeklies the Pac does improve with what looks like a -epo.

Also some hints of higher heights near GL mixed in. Its a unicorn though until proven otherwise. 

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Dec 27-29 pattern is likely to begin shifting in your favor. Expect to see height building in the Greenland-Baffin region.

GFS already showing hints of snowfall event around this time. Comes and goes on last few runs, need to unify the jet a little more to dampen down the subarctic jet further north and phase it into this disturbance. Then could see 10-15 incher.

Astronomical winter FTW. 

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5 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

GEFS has consistently busted too high with any AN heights near GL for the last 3 weeks in the d11-16 range. If that looks holds inside of 10 days then I might bite. I'm expecting the worst at this point. 

Thats what i was referring to with pattern volatility wrt the models.  TBH, I'm surprised at how we've even been able to get some cold air in here lately.  Things have been sucky but just not bad enough across the board to totally torch.  Now we see that because all the indicies are not where we want them

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Wow.  I just looped through the h5 heights from the latest 12Z GEFS mean, and they hardly budge from 240 to the end of the run.  Persistent trough near the West Coast, persistent ridge in the eastern half of the U.S.  I do kind of see an attempt at higher heights trying to nudge into the Greenland area that a couple of others had mentioned, right near the end of the run.

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7 minutes ago, Always in Zugzwang said:

Wow.  I just looped through the h5 heights from the latest 12Z GEFS mean, and they hardly budge from 240 to the end of the run.  Persistent trough near the West Coast, persistent ridge in the eastern half of the U.S.  I do kind of see an attempt at higher heights trying to nudge into the Greenland area that a couple of others had mentioned, right near the end of the run.

Yeah I did the same thing with the 0z run, and it was depressing lol.

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1 hour ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Our path to victory might have to start with weakening this monster. 

 

gfs_z10a_nh_47.png

 

If true we're screwed.  The pv is getting stronger. Any strat warm or pv collapse is a ways away and then there is usually a lag time before it has any affect on us. Honestly if we're waiting on that might as well check back Presidents' Day. 

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EPS flipped us a bone. Not a big one or anything but backed down on the ridge look by a noticeable amount a few days after christmas and holds through the end of the run. Poking a bit of a ridge into the bering sea too so the blue hole of winter death doesn't look as impressive either...if I wasn't so bitter right now I could extrapolate a -epo beyond d15. lol

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