Countdown to Winter 2017-2018 Thread

[Typhoon Tip]

Meh... I think one important lesson these last several year's worth of cycling through these SST/Oceanic thermal concerns and biases have taught us is that any 1::1 dependency on them is stupid - period. Up front, I don't see how those mean "uh oh" anything.

The mega hot ENSO event not too long ago ... it really didn't reflect that greatly on forcing much around the Globe beyond "normal extremes" - a funky oxymoron that actually kinda of works for scientific parlance.  What it means is that the results did not match the expected (histrionics) hyperbole for such a historic El Nino event. 

What gave...?    

One can concoct a lot of science fiction that is well-enough informed, and well-enough articulated ...buuuut, heh, it's still just science fiction.  It's just that some fiction is more saddled with half-truths I suppose, and is thus less like purer fantasy.  That said, my own brand of any sci-fi that attempts to integrate more truths ... goes something like:

I think with Global Warming ...  a circumstance spread out everywhere in a physical/ubiquitous way, that is changing the complexion of the "atmospheric reflexes" that decades to even hundreds of prior years before could be more obviously attributable to the global oceanic-atmospheric coupling.  The reason for that is that when you heat the atmosphere unilaterally, both horizontal and vertical in dimension (meaning the whole slab of the thing...), the gradients do not necessarily increase. 

Back to basics ... gradient drives everything.  It doesn't matter if the atmosphere is 100 F or not.  ...If it is 100 F everywhere and every latitude, there is no atmospheric balancing of PV=NRT ...And thus, you just have a big fat slab of hot motionless air.  As it is, we have Polar (in theory) cold regions, gradated against warm to hot Equitorial regions. Then, adding in oceanic topography, land mass topographical differences, all over a rotating spherical surface, and the restoring (balancing) that takes place between those extremes is forced along circuitously wended courses in order to do so - which we call, the wind.  Weee

That part is not fiction. The part that is fiction is the 'supposition' that we are heating the whole planet up (method for doing so aside...) here, and that is changing the gradation scheme as it is outlined above. 

Once we've changed the gradients everywhere ...the statistical models that tell us how the atmosphere should react/behave... based upon historical inference ..those models get perturbed. The simplest way to put all this?   The system is not stable enough to rely upon those signals that are historically based ... The last mega Nino's 'apparent' failure to register the enormous Global impact that CNN stole so much mouse click economics over ... might have just been absorbed into a warmer world anyway, such that it's gradient was dimmed..

One aspect that stuck out to me through that warm phase, the focus was entirely on the warmth its self?  It was based upon hundreds of years of antecedent sort of stabler oceanic periodicity of warming and cooling phases, and their respective standard deviations...blah blah, all well vetted and so forth.  But, never over the course was the warm anomaly compared to the rest of the world it was situated within; certainly not at a necessary mathematically discrete level. It was a "monkey-see, monkey do" knee jerk reaction from both the scientific, and the easily aroused media circuitry everywhere - that's not a criticism per se, it's just my observation of that Nino handling.

Anyway, bringing this discussion full circle... One take away for me is that 'intuitively,' the 'thresholds' for getting the atmosphere to respond to these perceived anomalies may be moving targets. What those are, not sure... But it almost seems to me that the SSTs have more band-width of change allowed now before the atmosphere may actually more obviously respond to it as a forcing - 

I just ... I dunno. I get the feeling that those observed Pacific changes are really more "noise" than anything else.  

[Ginx snewx]

We winter 

[SnowHole413]

54 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

We winter 

we block

[CoastalWx]

I haven't seen the euro seasonal, but what's so bad about it? Oh noes...a Nina!!  Maybe because of Kevin's latitude? 18 and +PL for Kevin and 33F +SN for Phil on the Cape?

[dendrite]

27 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I haven't seen the euro seasonal, but what's so bad about it? Oh noes...a Nina!!  Maybe because of Kevin's latitude? 18 and +PL for Kevin and 33F +SN for Phil on the Cape?

The only things that scare me are very strong ninos and ninas. Anything moderate and in-between we can work with. There's a lot of ways to get snow in New England.

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, dendrite said:

The only things that scare me are very strong ninos and ninas. Anything moderate and in-between we can work with. There's a lot of ways to get snow in New England.

Keep the black hole away from AK/Bering straight and we're usually pretty good to go. Every winter that we've avoided it in the past decade has been decent or better with perhaps the exception of the exotic blocking disaster in Feb/Mar 2010.

[JC-CT]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

I haven't seen the euro seasonal, but what's so bad about it? Oh noes...a Nina!!  Maybe because of Kevin's latitude? 18 and +PL for Kevin and 33F +SN for Phil on the Cape?

Latitude? You mean longitude?

[CoastalWx]

16 minutes ago, JC-CT said:

Latitude? You mean longitude?

Both actually. Sometimes in our SWFE, the thermal profile aloft is aligned so that the cold can help stay in place further east too, as high pressure anchors near Maine and parent low pressure rides into NY state.

[tamarack]

Back to basics ... gradient drives everything

Is not GW possibly reducing gradient, due to greater warming at the poles than in lower latitudes?  Of course, the overall warming adds energy to the system, potentially intensifying storms.  Whether the two effects balance each other, or are 10x (or 100x) different in impact, I've no idea.

[mitchnick]

5 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

We winter 

I guess I'm missing something here. It correlates DEC-FEB 5H to AUG-OCT ACE Index.....it's only 9/11, so how did they come up with an AUG-OCT ACE Index?

[ORH_wxman]

Just now, mitchnick said:

I guess I'm missing something here. It correlates DEC-FEB 5H to AUG-OCT ACE Index.....it's only 9/11, so how did they come up with an AUG-OCT ACE Index?

That's the long term correlation...the 2017 ACE index isn't calc'd yet, but we already know it's going to be very high because of Erma.

 

Anyway, I would put fairly little stock into it anyway...the correlation is almost 0 here. Though it does perhaps bode well for more ridging in the N ATL.

[Ginx snewx]

25 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That's the long term correlation...the 2017 ACE index isn't calc'd yet, but we already know it's going to be very high because of Erma.

 

Anyway, I would put fairly little stock into it anyway...the correlation is almost 0 here. Though it does perhaps bode well for more ridging in the N ATL.

I would say the Map points to a more likely blocking -NAO but that is just me

[ORH_wxman]

35 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

I would say the Map points to a more likely blocking -NAO but that is just me

Maybe...I was hesitant to say NAO blocking because the highest correlation is in the north ATL south of the classic NAO blocking region. But you could argue a small enhancement perhaps based on that map.

[Ginx snewx]

10 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Maybe...I was hesitant to say NAO blocking because the highest correlation is in the north ATL south of the classic NAO blocking region. But you could argue a small enhancement perhaps based on that map.

Anecdotally more active hurricane seasons tend to be stormier falls, winters up here

[CoastalWx]

3 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Anecdotally more active hurricane seasons tend to be stormier falls, winters up here

Meh on winter 05-06 though.

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

Meh on winter 05-06 though.

Yeah it wasn't very active...we were actually lucky to get as much snow as we did that winter. But 2010, 2004, 2000, 1995 and 1969 were all pretty active the following winters. 

[Ginx snewx]

2 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Meh on winter 05-06 though.

Pretty stormy just warm

[dendrite]

7 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Pretty stormy just warm

Was it "stormier" than normal? It didn't feel like it to me at the time. Not until Spring anyway.

[Ginx snewx]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

Was it "stormier" than normal? It didn't feel like it to me at the time. Not until Spring anyway.

I just remember how wet that 6 week period from Jan to the start of Feb was, think I had about 7 inches of water in that period and of course the foot plus storm on the 12-13th? in Feb, but like I said anecdotally.

[Ginx snewx]

1 minute ago, Ginx snewx said:

I just remember how wet that 6 week period from Jan to the start of Feb was, think I had about 7 inches of water in that period and of course the foot plus storm on the 12-13th? in Feb, but like I said anecdotally.

looked it up, it was what I remember with lots of water and the 2, foot plus storms, one to start Jan and one in Feb, so yea I would say stormier than normal as foot storms are pretty rare

[CoastalWx]

13 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

looked it up, it was what I remember with lots of water and the 2, foot plus storms, one to start Jan and one in Feb, so yea I would say stormier than normal as foot storms are pretty rare

I think in NNE is was pretty dry. I know they had a big dearth of snow.

[Ginx snewx]

14 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I think in NNE is was pretty dry. I know they had a big dearth of snow.

Oh yea glad we didn't live there in 06

[dendrite]

12 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Oh yea glad we didn't live there in 06

I don't remember SNE being that much better outside of the Feb death band.

[CoastalWx]

14 minutes ago, dendrite said:

I don't remember SNE being that much better outside of the Feb death band.

Dec 05 was good and the interior had a few decent storms in Jan.  It wasn't terrible, but forgettable outside of 12/9/05

[Ginx snewx]

29 minutes ago, dendrite said:

I don't remember SNE being that much better outside of the Feb death band.

Dec 9,05 first week of Jan and Feb 12th were pretty special, cant ask for much more than 3 biggies down here

[Ginx snewx]

14 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Dec 05 was good and the interior had a few decent storms in Jan.  It wasn't terrible, but forgettable outside of 12/9/05

pretty sure Ryan will never forget Feb 06, SNE exists outside the 128 belt

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, Ginx snewx said:

pretty sure Ryan will never forget Feb 06, SNE exists outside the 128 belt

And the people in that band commented how the snow went poof a few days later. You'll remember the storm, but not the winter.

[dendrite]

18 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Dec 05 was good and the interior had a few decent storms in Jan.  It wasn't terrible, but forgettable outside of 12/9/05

Forgot my 12/9/05.

[Ginx snewx]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

And the people in that band commented how the snow went poof a few days later. You'll remember the storm, but not the winter.

not the subject of the convo but ok

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

I think in NNE is was pretty dry. I know they had a big dearth of snow.

 

48 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Oh yea glad we didn't live there in 06

It was fu**ing horrendous up here.