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January Medium/Long Range Discussion


nj2va
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3 minutes ago, nj2va said:

You can start to see the flip to a favorable PAC by the 11th on the 12z GEFS.  By the 14th, we have this:

 

The red flag on the GEFS the last few runs is that even with a workable 500mb pattern it's still pretty warm at the surface and mids. I see that as a sign that a north or west track of any storm will continue indefinitely. 

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25 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

I cant remember a case where the MJO was solely responsible for shutting down winter lol. I mean, yes it has influence but it is only one pattern driver. I guess i'm missing something.

Hello El Nino... where are you?? I think that's half the problem- this Nino is really a Nada at this point. CPC/NCEP still has ENSO neutral with an El Nino 'watch' in effect.

It isn't solely responsible... if it was a weak wave it probably wouldn't be wrecking the pattern to this extent.  And there is a causality here we can't pin down.  Is the SSWE causing the MJO?  Some other factor?  Why is the MJO behaving in a way completely incongruous with the SST and analogs.  We just don't know for sure.  

But if there is SRONG tropical forcing either from a nino OR an MJO wave that is going to be the dominant influence on the Pacific pattern which in turn impacts our pattern downstream unless there is some pretty major dominant other factor to offset it.   If we had some 3std west based NAO block perhaps we could offset what's going on in the pacific, but with a pretty ambiguous progressive pattern elsewhere that kind of record tropical forcing is going to boss the pattern. 

There is some chicken/egg with the SOI and MJO since a strong MJO wave in phase 4-6 will cause the SOI to rise because convection in that location favors low pressure there which would be a positive SOI.  But that is also why we want the SOI negative.  Even getting the SOI negative though won't help us if the forcing in the nino space is too far east and pumps the ridge into central and eastern north america instead of the EPO/PNA domain.  Yea this gets complicated which is why its almost impossible to forecast it all at range.

But there is a reason by far the number one thing long range forecasters look at first is the tropical forcing.  Yea they look at other things like qbo and pdo and such but if the enso is an awful match usually even if the other factors are good they toss that year as an analog because the tropics drive the bus.  This year is going wrong because the tropical forcing has been all wrong compared to what we expected given the SST.  The forcing does NOT match a modoki or even an east based nino.  NCEP still expects the atmosphere to couple with the sst but it better happen soon.  

23 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

The real irony starts when it does re-emerge in the warm phases but we turn cold and snowy. A lot of long rangers are digging deep for reasons as to why winter is non-existent in the east. It would be pretty funny if the MJO cycle repeats but winter comes anyway. lol

IF...the soi goes negative into nino territory AND the MJO wave reduces in amplitude (likely since a -soi correlates with a weaker MJO) than another tour into the "warm" phases of the MJO might not have much impact.  Some of the warm phases aren't even "warm" in a nino.  
I am definitely still no expert with the MJO, and its really complicated with different significance correlations depending on the month and phase and other telleconnections, AND the lag times can change also with those variables...but what has been happen has been pretty much our worst nightmare...an SOI spike coinciding with a record strong MJO wave stalling in warm phases for record length of time.  Anything would be preferable to that.  But if we get a decent amplitude into 8 before the MJO amplitude wanes and then it goes into the COD before a weak wave emerges in warm phases...that might actually favor a cold pattern establishing and then the MJO being muted enough not to impact it.  MAG over in the central PA thread had some data on the MJO in the nino analogs we looked at where flips happened and some of the best winter weather happened with a weaker MJO wave in the warm phases AFTER a trip through the cold phases.  

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3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

The red flag on the GEFS the last few runs is that even with a workable 500mb pattern it's still pretty warm at the surface and mids. I see that as a sign that a north or west track of any storm will continue indefinitely. 

warm but peak climo so perhaps we will have a shot at something.   I was remotely excited about the op hr 264-288 with that 1046 high....and low in the SW....only to have it fall apart by 300 hr.  Op run for sure but not an unexpected progression from what we have seen so far.  Some years its just tough slog through the mud

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3 minutes ago, nj2va said:

What I don’t understand is that with a favorable PAC and GL blocking, its still warm.  It’s not like there’s a giant SE ridge.  Is it just completely off in the PAC or something?  

The AN heights in the east are a sign that deep cold never makes it here and we'll be on the warm side of any storm that tracks through. That's my take on it. EPS is much more obvious with the h5 looks its spitting out. 

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45 minutes ago, frd said:

 

Very deep and so true. Emotional attachment is deadly with this hobby. I am going to sit back and see what the afternoon EPS shows and take it from there. I am tired mentally, really.  

There is only so much to look at, and folks are frustrated. Time for fresh air and use the DD gift card.

Still feel in some form or fashion things will change, they always do in the weather.  

But, I keep thinking though about Don S post and psu's post too, about the lack of coupling with the Nino.

Very strange, maybe a warning signal....now I will always fear Decembers in weak Ninos that have a highly positive averaged SOI value. 

 

I am not about to make you feel any better...IF the atmosphere fails to couple and we remain in "neutral" conditions the rest of the winter, (and before the site shut down the MEI was in neutral territory also) then the best analogs to this year simply using enso would become 1985-6, 1989-90, 1996-7, 2001-2, and 2012-13.  Not an inspiring list at all...

So better hope the SOI tanks and the atmosphere couples soon....

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51 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

I am no MJO expert, but never have I ever heard anyone say the pattern is crap because of the MJO, or it cant be cold/snowy because an MJO pulse in in the warm phases. It used to be something we only ever heard about when the pattern sucked and we needed a reason. Oh. Like now.

IMO they talked about "it" but just not in the same way we do now.  Understanding of the MJO is a fairly recent thing.  But going back we knew and would talk about the longwave pattern in the Pacific and how we needed a trough or ridge here or there to change, or get the Jet to relax...things like that.  The issue was there wasn't as much understanding of the causality.  Saying the "MJO" is simply cutting to the causality behind those unfavorable longwave configurations that lead to a crap pattern downstream here.  Most of the heat added to the atmosphere in the mid latitudes that drive the patterns are coming from the tropical oceans.   We are starting to get some understanding of the correlations and how adding heat/energy in a specific location translates to impacting the longwave pattern at the mid latitudes.  But its tricky and other factors still can influence and tweak the pattern in ways that matter to us and the amount of heat added determines how dominant that one factor is... and we can't really predict the MJO past a few days very well anyways...so I am not saying the MJO is some cure all for weather forecasting... but where the tropical forcing is and how strong definitely is one of the most significant impacts on our weather.  

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57 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

If we had a legit Nino, I doubt the MJO would be "overwhelming" the pattern.

Hate to be repetitive but you are right because in a nino the MJO is typically muted... and the two are linked...a nino places warm waters (which usually translates to convection and heat release) in places that do not favor strong MJO waves through phases 3-6.  That is why this mjo event was a record for a month with a nino sst.  

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One thing that I ignored back in Oct/Nov was the PDO. Nino's generally have a +PDO. Back in Nov the PDO looked terrible with very warm waters around and off the coast of Japan. That was probably a decent hint that the Pac wouldn't be friendly but I ignored it. Looking back, ignoring the PDO was a mistake on my park. 

anomnight.11.15.2018.gif

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50 minutes ago, Kevin Reilly said:

Now I know we are all looking for -EPO, -NAO -AO +PNA MJO SSWE etc. but what about the possibility that the warming ocean temps world wide is overwhelming the cooling produced by the melting polar ice caps.  Yes, I am trying to link the possibility that whatever you want to call it global warming or climate change is at work here in regards to our weather patterns.  

It would appear to me that the overall warmth of the ocean especially the Pacific and the Atlantic is overwhelming the whole system with warmth and the lag time to get winter is increasing over time relative to normal.  

In North America for instance the continental arctic air is overwhelmed by the warming of the pacific for instance causing a storm track that just favors more regularly warmth flooding in from the Pacific.

I mean 15" snowstorms along the East Coast Richmond to NYC are becoming like tracking hurricanes up the east coast in August to October.

 

Kevin

Not dismissing your theory that the current increase in warmth could cause additional lag times in winter...(fits the pattern the last few years) BUT those storms you mention were historically rare anyways...only a recent glut of them spoiled and skewed our perspective of HECS type storms.  

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40 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

The red flag on the GEFS the last few runs is that even with a workable 500mb pattern it's still pretty warm at the surface and mids. I see that as a sign that a north or west track of any storm will continue indefinitely. 

 

32 minutes ago, nj2va said:

What I don’t understand is that with a favorable PAC and GL blocking, its still warm.  It’s not like there’s a giant SE ridge.  Is it just completely off in the PAC or something?  

There is warmth everywhere though...the whole northern Hemisphere is like 70% higher heights at times.  And our area specifically has been just wrecked.  I think it will take a while.  In examples where we were coming from a totally wrecked NAM temperature pattern and a favorable longwave pattern develops it takes a week or so to transition.  If that look were to lock in the flow into the CONUS from the pole would slowly build cold and eventually we would be ok.  But it's not going to happen all of a sudden and history suggests the pattern change helps north and midwest first before us so we need the changes soon because even if the pattern flips around Jan 20 it will likely be Feb before we see the benefits.   

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4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

 

 

There is warmth everywhere though...the whole northern Hemisphere is like 70% higher heights at times.  And our area specifically has been just wrecked.  I think it will take a while.  In examples where we were coming from a totally wrecked NAM temperature pattern and a favorable longwave pattern develops it takes a week or so to transition.  If that look were to lock in the flow into the CONUS from the pole would slowly build cold and eventually we would be ok.  But it's not going to happen all of a sudden and history suggests the pattern change helps north and midwest first before us so we need the changes soon because even if the pattern flips around Jan 20 it will likely be Feb before we see the benefits.   

and THIS is why the voodo option/wildcard  is what I was hoping for.  I think Kevin is onto something that as we are no doubt warming, and couple that with an arctic that is struggling to manufacture enough cold, we are stuck in the middle and too far south to be in play in ANY less than stellar setup.  I'm looking for some way to get it cold up north.  Understand that this is not me hammering at SSW, it is me trying to go full weenie and find the lacking cold we need to get some winter going.  

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Just need to get through ANOTHER bad week (next week).  Looking at GEFS 500 at 216 you can see the blue poleward blob start its progression south into central canada. 

And even thought i'm not letting myself by into anything beyond 240, I liked what i saw while peeking out beyond through the crack in the window.  

Looking at the GEFS, it appears that all you 1/15-1/20 flippers may have a shot at being correct. Keep the SOI in neg territory and even if the MJO is dying in 8, like PSU suggested, it may be enough of a correction for us to be in the game.

 

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4 minutes ago, pasnownut said:

Just need to get through ANOTHER bad week (next week).  Looking at GEFS 500 at 216 you can see the blue poleward blob start its progression south into central canada. 

And even thought i'm not letting myself by into anything beyond 240, I liked what i saw while peeking out beyond through the crack in the window.  

Looking at the GEFS, it appears that all you 1/15-1/20 flippers may have a shot at being correct. Keep the SOI in neg territory and even if the MJO is dying in 8, like PSU suggested, it may be enough of a correction for us to be in the game.

 

We have had so much bad news I feel we are due for something positive.  But even seemingly positive moves by the indices are often thwarted by follow up dumpster fires so cant be too enthused just yet.  EPS today is important 

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1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

The real irony starts when it does re-emerge in the warm phases but we turn cold and snowy. A lot of long rangers are digging deep for reasons as to why winter is non-existent in the east. It would be pretty funny if the MJO cycle repeats but winter comes anyway. lol

That’s entirely possible if it’s weak magnitude.  A weak 4-5-6 run through in February if the SOI has been persistently negative for several weeks probably wouldn’t result in a pattern this bad 

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2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Geps agrees with gefs in Pacific pattern flip to -epo day 10 but also agrees on torching the eastern US days 10-15 anyways. 

well that gets us close to 20 Jan.  maybe MLK wont feature a thaw since we are entirely melted by that point

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At least it's not out of the realm of possibility for the euro d9-10 shortwave to work out in some fashion. The northern low near the lakes crushes the mids but there's cold around and a half decent shortwave to work with. You have to get really creative with the maps to see potential but it's a sliver of hope in a raging hopeless pattern. 

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