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January Med/Long Range Disco Part 2


WinterWxLuvr

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2 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

Looks like a decent precip event is pretty well locked in at this point. As much as it can be at this lead anyways. The encouraging part is the ens are trending towards more snowy outcomes than rainy ones. I highly doubt the ops will hold snowy solutions run in run out but if the ensembles keep the trend over the next 3-4 days then we can probably start getting at least a little excited. Hopefully another event on the heels is in focus in the coming days so we're not stuck with a 1 and done chance. 

Much better to do line dancing than to have to will things west from the ocean (if anything it sounds like for next month, we'd be willing east if things don't trend right, lol)

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4 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

GEFS and EPS are mixed on timing. Cluster pushing through early and then another cluster pushing through on the 3rd-4th. Luckily the mix of solutions is the same with the chance of snow seeming to be increasing. Around 60% of the EPS members drop at least some snow during the 2nd-4th period and that # keeps growing every run. 

Bob, do you feel that tonight's Euro weeklies are very important based on last night's run that shows maybe the coldest air does not come until later in the month of Feb. ?

I mean pure speculation,  but browsing the Southeast forum I read the Euro control was warmish in the Southeast, and I felt a bit uneasy reading Isotherm's brief post about how the PV may get stronger later in Feb., which was opposite the thoughts of many. Granted, who knows what will happen, but like you said,  soon it will not matter anyway, as any effect takes a while to be felt in oour weather here. Maybe yet another winter without a SSW event, this makes 4 or 5 years in a row.  now.     

On the flip side,  seems like the MJO will indeed get to the colder phases later in Feb.,  so I am still hopeful. 

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3 minutes ago, frd said:

Bob, do you feel that tonight's Euro weeklies are very important based on last night's run that shows maybe the coldest air does not come until later in the month of Feb. ?

I mean pure speculation,  but browsing the Southeast forum I read the Euro control was warmish in the Southeast, and I felt a bit uneasy reading Isotherm's brief post about how the PV may get stronger later in Feb., which was opposite the thoughts of many. Granted, who knows what will happen, but like you said,  soon it will not matter anyway, as any effect takes a while to be felt in oour weather here. Maybe yet another winter without a SSW event, this makes 4 or 5 years in a row.  now.     

On the flip side,  seems like the MJO will indeed get to the colder phases later in Feb.,  so I am still hopeful. 

Today's off-the chart mjo ensemble does look promising for phase 8 in the long range.

image.png.69d7405748818d206ce45c7e4ba05bdb.png

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1 minute ago, BTRWx's Thanks Giving said:

What sucks is phase 8 tends to be dry here generally.  Phase 1-2 late winter maybe?

combined_image.png

My thoughts exactly....8 is going to be when when the arctic dumps into the east.  A path through 1/2/3 would be ideal imo for late season winter storms.  Cold should relax during those phases but still be close by.

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12 minutes ago, frd said:

Bob, do you feel that tonight's Euro weeklies are very important based on last night's run that shows maybe the coldest air does not come until later in the month of Feb. ?

I mean pure speculation,  but browsing the Southeast forum I read the Euro control was warmish in the Southeast, and I felt a bit uneasy reading Isotherm's brief post about how the PV may get stronger later in Feb., which was opposite the thoughts of many. Granted, who knows what will happen, but like you said,  soon it will not matter anyway, as any effect takes a while to be felt in oour weather here. Maybe yet another winter without a SSW event, this makes 4 or 5 years in a row.  now.     

On the flip side,  seems like the MJO will indeed get to the colder phases later in Feb.,  so I am still hopeful. 

I don't think the weeklies will be any more important than other runs. I suppose their value will increase once we flip back to the -EPO in real time. I don't expect any surprises tonight with the weeklies. Should be pretty similar to previous ones. Euro ens/weeklies follow MJO climo weeks 3-4 will probably look really good. Just a guess of course. 

With a -EPO driven pattern we can expect a temp roller coaster because there is no block to lock anything in. OTOH- as long as we have a -EPO and progressive pattern we can expect fronts to clear and cold continental air to move through on a regular basis. Even if temps average above normal over several weeks of time, there should be opportunity for winter wx to be embedded in the flow. 13/14 and 14/15 had a lot of ups and downs with temps. I don't expect the upcoming couple weeks to be any different. 

Lastly, I wrote off a -AO/NAO a couple weeks ago. It's just not happening for us. Maybe later in Feb or early march it comes around but who knows. I'm pretty happy with where guidance is taking us over the mid to long term. It's not a shutout pattern, cold will be lurking or overhead, and it sure seems like we're headed towards a pretty decent period of tightly spaced precip chances. On a scale of 1-10 I'd give the next 2 weeks a 6 for winter wx. The current +EPO/-PNA pattern is around a 2 or 3 at best. 

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3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I don't think the weeklies will be any more important than other runs. I suppose their value will increase once we flip back to the -EPO in real time. I don't expect any surprises tonight with the weeklies. Should be pretty similar to previous ones. Euro ens/weeklies follow MJO climo weeks 3-4 will probably look really good. Just a guess of course. 

With a -EPO driven pattern we can expect a temp roller coaster because there is no block to lock anything in. OTOH- as long as we have a -EPO and progressive pattern we can expect fronts to clear and cold continental air to move through on a regular basis. Even if temps average above normal over several weeks of time, there should be opportunity for winter wx to be embedded in the flow. 13/14 and 14/15 had a lot of ups and downs with temps. I don't expect the upcoming couple weeks to be any different. 

Lastly, I wrote off a -AO/NAO a couple weeks ago. It's just not happening for us. Maybe later in Feb or early march it comes around but who knows. I'm pretty happy with where guidance is taking us over the mid to long term. It's not a shutout pattern, cold will be lurking or overhead, and it sure seems like we're headed towards a pretty decent period of tightly spaced precip chances. On a scale of 1-10 I'd give the next 2 weeks a 6 for winter wx. The current +EPO/-PNA pattern is around a 2 or 3 at best. 

Makes sense. IIRC just 6 days after the Feb 12-14 storm we were in the 60s, and before the presidents day arctic blast/snow in 2015, it was in the 70s. 

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5 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I don't think the weeklies will be any more important than other runs. I suppose their value will increase once we flip back to the -EPO in real time. I don't expect any surprises tonight with the weeklies. Should be pretty similar to previous ones. Euro ens/weeklies follow MJO climo weeks 3-4 will probably look really good. Just a guess of course. 

With a -EPO driven pattern we can expect a temp roller coaster because there is no block to lock anything in. OTOH- as long as we have a -EPO and progressive pattern we can expect fronts to clear and cold continental air to move through on a regular basis. Even if temps average above normal over several weeks of time, there should be opportunity for winter wx to be embedded in the flow. 13/14 and 14/15 had a lot of ups and downs with temps. I don't expect the upcoming couple weeks to be any different. 

Lastly, I wrote off a -AO/NAO a couple weeks ago. It's just not happening for us. Maybe later in Feb or early march it comes around but who knows. I'm pretty happy with where guidance is taking us over the mid to long term. It's not a shutout pattern, cold will be lurking or overhead, and it sure seems like we're headed towards a pretty decent period of tightly spaced precip chances. On a scale of 1-10 I'd give the next 2 weeks a 6 for winter wx. The current +EPO/-PNA pattern is around a 2 or 3 at best. 

Thanks as always Bob. I am ready to track and eager to see how things progress over the next few weeks. 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, frd said:

Thanks as always Bob. I am ready to track and eager to see how things progress over the next few weeks. 

 

 

I think it's often overlooked that the VAST majority of our snow events happen in a flawed pattern. Usually not the big dogs of course but our bread and butter small/medium sized and/or mixed events can happen with pretty much any MJO phase or combination of numerical indices. Certain combos are better than others but sometimes it feels like people get too stuck on the numbers and not looking at the big picture.

Chasing a perfect pattern can prove to be frustrating and fruitless but it snows anyways even when the #s don't look so good. And pretty often too over time. I think the MJO and strat are over hyped. Yes, they both play a role in the long wave hemispheric pattern but they are both far from the end all be all. There isn't any one thing that drives the entire bus. Even a perfect -AO/NAO can be rendered completely useless with a +EPO/-PNA and you only have to look back to 2012-13 to see that. On paper with the numerical indices that winter looks half decent but the ground truth tells a much uglier story. lol

 

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4 minutes ago, Climate175 said:

Now if only the GFS can keep showing this solution for Feb 1/2 until early next week.

Unfortunately in a progressive pattern that will never happen...I could easily see it going poof for a couple days and then storming back inside of 5 days. EPS still very supportive of some snow during the 2nd-4th window

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