Mountain West Discussion

[raindancewx]

Did you all do well for snow in 2007-08? Lot of similarities to that year here so far this Fall. No frosts til Nov 22 that year (record latest) - looks similar this year. Very warm Nov after a fairly normal October. But it rained/snowed a fair amount in December. Historically, we don't get big snow seasons (>9.6") in Albuquerque if November is 61F (+4F) or higher (0 for 10). I had 59F for Nov, and thought that was pretty safe, but looks like 60-61 now.

[mayjawintastawm]

18 hours ago, Chinook said:

While things are boring around here, I will post an old picture from 2012. This is the Medicine Bow Range in the distance, as seen from Crown Point. Crown Point is an 11463 ft rocky outcropping in the Comanche Peaks wilderness, but it doesn't look like much. You can't really see it from any particular city or town. The Medicine Bow Range is at the edge of Larimer County, north of the pass. So you might consider the Medicine Bow Range as the Front Range. I think I see a little bit of the effects of moving clouds, messing with my panorama computer program.

Looks awful dry there. 2012 was pretty insane. We may get that dry again if things keep up this way. The snowstorm on 10/9 was our last substantial moisture.

[Chinook]

There was one 60mph wind report about 20 mi from Seattle. Maybe a few breezes for Andyhb in Vancouver

[raindancewx]

http://www.weather.gov/media/abq/Briefings/201718WinterOutlook.pdf

Local NWS winter outlook. Worth noting: none of the climate models I've seen really have NM / CO  that dry - its kind of near normal trending to -20% precipitation toward Mexico, but that's not bad for a La Nina. Some people seem to like 2005-06 as an analog (I have it weighted weakly) - we had a staggering 0.14" precipitation (-90%+) in the city for all of Dec-Feb that winter. Tried to blend in dry/wet winters for my outlook.

Dry: 1932, 1996, 2005, 2008, 2012 v. Wet: 1943, 1944, 2007

For the eight analogs I like for winter, 1932, 1943, 1944, 1996, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2012, in the June-October period, 2012 is the closest match to observed precipitation, followed by 2007. Worst match is easily 2008. For mean highs, in June-October, 2012 is also the closest match (may win Nov too), with 2008/2007 close behind. 1932 is worst.

[Mercurial]

18z gfs op and ens are looking putrid for the next 2+ weeks lol

[Mercurial]

If being a western wx weenie has taught me anything, it's that I want the east to blowtorch.  Lol.  

[Mercurial]

Hmm nice.

[Chinook]

I am planning to post this snow-water-equivalent map about once a month. Things are looking very snowy for the north, with much more variety of snowpack conditions in the southern areas. Snowpack in Colorado should be on the increase this week, perhaps getting the San Juan range up to 50%.

[raindancewx]

I'm not really expecting any big storms here until at least the last week of November, but do expect a relatively big dip south in the polar jet sometime around Dec 1. The warmth north of Nino 1.2/3 is really impressive. Last year, it developed about three weeks earlier and then we had near record precipitation in November.

^^ Would be nice to see our mountains catch up toward normal precip/snow this winter, since the reservoirs actually did pretty well last Nov-Apr, when we had near record precipitation statewide in November and January, not to mention average to wet months in Dec, Feb, Apr. Mountains had a couple blizzards in March too.

Year over year, Elephant Butte lake is up 21.5 feet, and that's the biggest reservoir in the state. Easiest way to get the reservoirs up here seems to be to get anomalously heavy precip during the low-evaporation months. Five inches of rain in July has nothing on two inches of precip in January.

[Chinook]

This might get interesting tomorrow-- perhaps a drop in temperatures of 10 degrees F or more near Denver at about 5:00PM.

[Chinook]

The edge of a big lenticular cloud deck. I tried to get this picture with maximum orange-ness. It might have worked. It's my first panoramic shot in a long time.

[WxUSAF]

I'm in Laramie, WY, for work right now and snow is mixing in with the rain. 

[raindancewx]

https://riskpulse.com/blog/2017-18-winter-weather-outlook/

This outlook is the closest I've seen to what I expect/forecast in October. They're outlooks have done pretty well the past two years, pleased to see it.

[Chinook]

This is actually pretty bad for the Rockies and Midwest and Sierra Nevada

[raindancewx]

Can't speak for other locations, but 2007 & 2012 have been very close to high temperatures and precipitation out here for months. If it wasn't for the wet end to September, 2012 would be within 0.1" each month for June-Oct, probably November too. 2007 had its first frost on Nov 22 in the city (latest ever) and then 95 or so frosts from Nov to May. The valley here gets inversions and has had several frosts already, but most of the city had its first frost this morning (29F at the official station).

GFS in the fantasy range is hinting at a storm digging fairly far into the SW. My analogs were split on the Dec 16-Jan 15 period - five were incredibly cold, three were very warm. But obviously, if the cold analogs win out for that period some kind of transition needs to begin, almost immediately. Dec 16 2012 to Jan 15 2013 is in there, when highs were ~5.4F below normal here.

 

[Chinook]

I got another picture of lenticular clouds near sunset last night. I just didn't get a very beautiful backdrop-- it was a just in my neighborhood. I had seen some pictures of orange-colored lenticular clouds seen from the Broncos game last night, on social media. 

[ValpoVike]

12 hours ago, Chinook said:

I got another picture of lenticular clouds near sunset last night. I just didn't get a very beautiful backdrop-- it was a just in my neighborhood. I had seen some pictures of orange-colored lenticular clouds seen from the Broncos game last night, on social media. 

I wish I had pictures, but it was a crazy beautiful formation up here.  With the sunset and all of the eddies highlighted in orange, it was almost like the sky was on fire.  Amazing.

[Chinook]

If you want to see some pics (retweets) of some of those clouds, go to Cory Reppenhagen's twitter (storm chaser for a tv station here) https://twitter.com/creppwx

[raindancewx]

I'm in FL for Turkey Day...ridiculously warm and muggy.

[ConiferMtnMan]

Here’s a pic from in Conifer Sunday evening. Not the best quality, but the sky was beautiful.

[raindancewx]

Blend of 1996, 2007, 2012, 2014 seems like a strong match for observed conditions over the June-November period, although not great for the East in August. 

65%?

70%?

35%?

55%?

65%?

70%?

~75% match? (Indian and NE Pacific are tough)

[Chinook]

The models are now showing two small shortwaves that will cause fairly weak snowstorms for Colorado.

[Chinook]

My area was 71-72 degrees before a bit of a rain shower at the cold front today.

[raindancewx]

Fingers crossed - coming up on two months without precipitation here.

[mayjawintastawm]

Something tells me we'll find a way to hit the 55-60% probability of not above normal precip. Did 3 hours of yard cleanup in t-shirt and shorts today, which is supposed to be the coolest of the next 3 days. Then again, last time I remember a Thanksgiving weekend this warm (Piedmont of NC in 1988) it ended with a major nighttime tornado outbreak, one of the scariest evenings I can remember. Which is unlikely too.

[Chinook]

It has been so warm recently that fort Collins is up to +4.5 F for the month. Sometimes it is hard for the atmosphere to so quickly change from a warm, dry spell into a wet (snowy) 8-14 day period, as the CPC might indicate.  I have taken some more very good pictures of lenticular clouds in the past few days. Clouds and sunsets have been great.

[Chinook]

By my best estimation, this is Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the lower cloud, and a lenticular above it. It could be just wishful thinking, though.

[raindancewx]

I'm not expecting a full transition from warm/dry to cold/wet, but I do think we go warm/dry, warm/wet, and then either warm/dry, cold/wet afterwards. My analogs had Nov 16-Dec 15 pretty warm (although not this warm), but the period from Dec 16-Jan 15 had major disagreement - either very cold or very warm. When we're this dry near the winter, a lot of times the lows start cratering and it kind of caps the highs. The (relative) warm up of Nino 1.2 in the last week will probably portend (more?) fairly large, temporary PDO/GOA changes too. 

Also think the (seemingly pending?) full eruption of Agung is going to change the pattern sometime in late winter from what it would otherwise do, tried to account for that in my outlook by blending in 1932 which had a VEI6 volcano in the tropics and a very similar hurricane season. Supposedly these long dormant volcanoes that have had similar behavior to Agung (lots of earthquakes, then phreatic eruption, then big eruption?) erupt within two weeks once they have a Phreatic explosion. The lava is supposed to be near the surface of the volcano now too, needed a way up since it lacked a path before. People are starting to detect SO2 (an aerosol) coming out of Agung, which is a big deal if it grows in magnitude. Agung started to erupt in March 1963, and it continued doing so for ages - but February 1964 is ridiculous for how anomalously cold it was.

...In the eruptions they studied, in stage 1, low-frequency tremors occurred deep beneath the volcano, representing magma intruding into a shallower reservoir. This stage often started weeks to months before an eruption, and would tend to be missed at unmonitored volcanoes. Stage 2 represents the first outward signs that a long-quiet volcano may erupt, including earthquakes up to magnitude 3 and steam-driven phreatic explosions. Most of the volcanoes they studied — up to 97 percent — began stage 2 about two weeks prior to the main eruption. https://www.earthmagazine.org/node/21527

In stage 3, earthquakes increased in frequency and magnitude, with the quakes originating from a shallower source as magma moved higher through a volcano’s plumbing system. In stage 4, repetitive earthquakes, increasingly sustained tremors and dome-building — sometimes visible with the naked eye — occurred. McCausland and White reported their findings for the 24 volcanoes at a meeting of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior in August in Portland, Ore. 

[Chinook]

By the way, Pivotalweather.com main web page now has some WPC precipitation maps and NWS-digital forecast max temperatures and two other categories of maps.

[Chinook]

We may have to watch that December 4-5 period for a big storm. The GFS runs had nothing yesterday, but the more recent ones have a big storm for Denver.  This has some ensemble support, but I won't try to over-analyze this.