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Winter 'Tis the Season Banter Thread 2018-2019


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2 hours ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

As soon as the cold air departs, we get a perfect shortwave track:

giphy.gif 

Yeah, the effects of the strat split are waning and we returned to the AN/wet regime of the prior warm state. PNA running mod neg for awhile, will help strengthen the SER. One thing I'm worried about is major flooding, PNA/SER combo is going to point a firehose at us or west TN one.

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3 minutes ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

I think here in the eastern part of the state we may be spared the worst of it in the short term (this week), but out west TN and OH Valley may get more. 

  Flooding concerns are definitely a possibility given how saturated the ground already is on the west side of the state.

 

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Still looks like a reshuffle with ENSO actually doing what it ought to soon. Maybe that will mitigate some of the rain. Maybe not. Actual SSTs look Ninoish now in ENSO regions, PDO still ain't great, but it does look like Maritime Continent convection may finally stop killing us. Still waiting on a response from NChailstorm on the coronal hole. 

I dug up a pretty RMM plot this morning!

giphy.gif 

 Some hints that the NAO may actually go negative.

giphy.gif

 

Like Tellico and John, I'm not a huge advocate for the NAO alone, but if you can get that with a decent EPO it might stop up the northern jet a bit and lead to some impacts out west as the flow slows over Canada. Yet like all I'm exceedingly skeptical given how this has played out so far this winter. 

May get something in the mid to late Feb period we've been talking about for sure, but starting to think the storm we're looking for is a transition one right before the final push into spring around the 2nd week of March. Maybe we end winter as we started it!  That's of course assuming a chain of assumptions I just made are right lol!

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2 hours ago, TellicoWx said:

The December QBO reading, plus how it is trending, coupled with the ENSO state has a good indication for a base value for the winter as a whole on US temp avg. With this December's QBO and ENSO state setup, only roughly 20% of the time produced a winter national avg of BN. If we had been in a La Nina with the same setup, that pct jumped to a more neutral state (50% of the time produced a BN avg). To me its why each Nino/Nina is a different animal, they react differently each time depending on the QBO combo. Once you have the base state as a nation, then a winter forecast can start adding in all the other indices based off that %. To override the warm state combo, we needed the other ones to be moderate values and working in unison (since weak values would only tend to get us to near normal with the QBO/ENSO combo). I completely agree with John, the Pacific is our driver, not just here but as a nation as a whole. My order of weight is QBO/ENSO, EPO, PNA, AO, MJO, NAO..from most weight to least (only caveat is the MJO, depends on amplification. Some data suggests its influence falls off if it in a low state closer to the COD and easier to overcome the warm phases). The whole setup is like a recipe, takes all the ingredients combined to get an outcome.

I would probably add the PDO/SOI/WPO in there somewhere.  I always forget about the PDO, and it always screws up my forecast when I forget about it.  LOL.  I do agree that the Pacific is a main driver, mainly because it is upstream of our weather.  That said, the -NAO has a pretty good correlation w strong coastal storms.  It places confluence in our region in E TN.  The QBO has been something that I have used more often lately.  It is one of the reasons that I went normal for regional winter temps...and that even appears to be still too cool at this stage of the game.  So far, this winter very much reminds me of the Nino winters of the 90s.  Most folks know that I didn't like those winters.  Maybe a big event(or two) and then plentiful amounts cool/rainy/cloudy days.  As for analogs, I think they have merit.  However, I just don't think we have a big enough sample for them to work properly.  I am increasingly in the camp of "each year is its own analog" in terms of specific details of a pattern.  Analogs can help us unlock predicting larger scale hemispheric features.  Lastly, the AMO is out of phase right now with big winters for our area which feature long bouts of cold and snow.  Until it flips back, I think we struggle to have decent winters.  It is probably my favorite index.  The negative phase of the AMO has a high correlation IMHO to some great periods of winter weather. The positive AMO does coincide with a stretch of lousy winter here(not all winters were lousy...some great snowstorms along the coast still occurred) on a decadal type scale.  Even on a yearly scale, the -AMO corresponds to some decent winters recently.  Both scales for the AMO have been included below.  As for when it will flip, that is tough to predict.  It appears that we are leaving the peak of the +AMO event.  Probably have several more years before we see a true flip.  It is a potential reason for why the Pacific has been the lone driver for a couple of decades.  Blocking in the northern Atlantic is a big card....just haven't had it at the right time for very long during recent decades.

832542947_ScreenShot2019-02-03at11_41_42AM.png.8b579811b09a4c4e4990a9b26d65a479.png

528058345_ScreenShot2019-02-03at11_41_33AM.png.00b39379c1ba014e4b9aa8861e9d6533.png

https://weather.plus/amo-index.php

 

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2 hours ago, TellicoWx said:

Yeah, the effects of the strat split are waning and we returned to the AN/wet regime of the prior warm state. PNA running mod neg for awhile, will help strengthen the SER. One thing I'm worried about is major flooding, PNA/SER combo is going to point a firehose at us or west TN one.

Agree.  I about posted the same thought yesterday.  With an active STJ, it could get really soggy in a hurry.  It would likely be one rainy frontal passage after another.   We might get a bit more sun...but I can definitely see a path towards a continued period of wet weather.

edit:  You all are dropping some good stuff in banter.  

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Glad you brought up the AMO, hadn't heard of it before in all honesty. Isotherm posted in the MA forum that he thinks we may be on the cusp of more -NAOs based on some proprietary formula he has, so wonder if there is a correlation there. 

Meant my post to be more bantery but it ended up being more pattern related, lol. 

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AMO is a driver here. +AMO promotes SER. A -NAO is more friendly to winter weather here. 

PDO upstream is also important to set the table with upstream weather. Both were negative in the cold 60s and 70s. with more coast-to-coast cold. PDO alone + is cold here. However both -PDO and -AMO keeps the jet stream south coast to coast, preferred for snow here.

Finally the slope/trend of the QBO matters more than a snapshot. Rising correlates bearish (past fall). Sinking is more bullish.

Sports Banter: I can't wait for the Tennessee Kentucky games. Go Vols! I always respect UK ball, but I live in Tenn. Kansas might be back on track too!

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2 hours ago, nrgjeff said:

AMO is a driver here. +AMO promotes SER. A -NAO is more friendly to winter weather here. 

PDO upstream is also important to set the table with upstream weather. Both were negative in the cold 60s and 70s. with more coast-to-coast cold. PDO alone + is cold here. However both -PDO and -AMO keeps the jet stream south coast to coast, preferred for snow here.

Finally the slope/trend of the QBO matters more than a snapshot. Rising correlates bearish (past fall). Sinking is more bullish.

Sports Banter: I can't wait for the Tennessee Kentucky games. Go Vols! I always respect UK ball, but I live in Tenn. Kansas might be back on track too!

I was thinking the same thing.  Need more games like the last to know for sure, but they definitely righted the ship against top 25, TT.   I'm also ready for some TN/KY action.  Should be a couple of really good games.  Plus, playing Texas A&M over the weekend and only getting 4 FT's the entire game was a good tune up for what we normally see inside Rupp.  haha

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If the West trough verifies, the CFS will score another coup over the ECMWF. At the weekly and monthly scales, appears the CFS has done better then the ECMWF for almost a year now. Euro still has the best verification strictly by the numbers, including all those normal patterns. However the CFS has nailed the bigger value-added calls. 

Last spring the CFS beat the Euro on the strange pattern evolution. CFS beat the Euro on the endless summer. CFS beat the Euro on mid-winter warm spells. CFS is about to win the battle of the West trough in the face of Nino climo (though transition may already be under way). CFS might be right for the wrong reason; MJO is muddled. Still a win is a win.

State of NWP: American CFS has added more value than the ECMWF the last year. Thankfully the CFS agrees with the ECMWF for May (severe thread).

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Kind of hoping for a nice balance to my little camping trip this year. Last year it was a scorcher relative to normal, so all the cold/ wet weather gear I had the students buy proved useless and some of them were confused. Hopefully we get one good upper low over the four corners and that can give you a good plains chase. 

I do want some sunny weather though. Blue skies, and red rocks, and puffy little clouds:  

giphy.gif 

Sigh.

Already wishing it was May. 

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10 minutes ago, nrgjeff said:

Guess we all gave up on winter. 

I'm on my afternoon break, lol.

I've not thrown in the towel yet, but gots to get some other stuff done. I've been using this as a break to procrastinate recharge on another project a bit. 

Nothing looks too promising for the next few days anyway as far as I can tell. Even plain old storms look iffy, unless I'm misreading things.

Here's an interesting satellite gif though!

giphy.gif 

 

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21 minutes ago, nrgjeff said:

I wish it was already May too. Guess we all gave up on winter. 

Tennessee and Kansas play at the same time tonight. Both huge games. KU visits K-State's Octagon of Dumb. Tennessee needs to obliterate Mizzou.

Good luck against K-State.  I don't have a great feeling about Missouri, at least not in the obliterate department.  Won't surprise me to see a close game.  I think the boys are looking ahead to the weekend game against FL.

I also haven't given up on winter, but once we have the first warm spell in February I lose interest in looking at LR maps for winter prospects.  I am in the camp that says if we score it's likely to be something that sneaks up on us inside of 5 days.  

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