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With a last gasp effort, winter 20-21 refuses to give up the ghost


moneypitmike
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Not trying to rub it in and/or toot horns ( I swear ..) but this was cautioned through both serious content ( and trolling snark - ha...)  Seriously tho, it was ....ever since the get go.  I won't lie tho - it is/was difficult at times to be aggressively against the models.  For one, duh... But, if it were ever so obvious, I probably just wouldn't post - it's hard enough to assess whether people are even reading, if -necessarily- one's contribution happens to be contrarian, conserved if (unfortunately ...) circumstantially uninspired ... to put it nicely. Often that effort appears ignored ...

One can get into distinctions .... like whether this is shutting off faster, vs not really shunting south ... but those two are causally interconnected frankly.

The problem with this is the term "shunting" - it's really maybe not the best adjective to describe what is taking place.  What is really happening is negative or destructive wave interference between the S/stream and the N/stream... This was/had been evidence in the guidance for days actually.  I - personally - am not sure why the runs were fighting so hard to overcome those larger synoptic scaffolding problems in trying to build an event that was weakly going to be riveted together ..because of that stream interference scheme; it was there all along, and these latter couple of model cycles - to me - are kind of like 'no shit' to the models.

I think it's a bad model performance as the real focus here - by all.. Euro...NAM ... GFS frankly gets a subtle nod because it was flatter - maybe - but I also think that's not because it's physics are superior; it is by ongoing bias convention "too fast" in a fast flow...which sometimes defaults it to looking right - it's very confusing with that thing.

As a result, you take the 12z position and cyclone systemic structure, of all guidance 00z run, and then look at it at 30 hours ...then by 48...60 ...across that expanse of time starts out as a classic Norwegian Model low at the front... and at the end, it is a cold front. 

As was once stated in "Plains, Trains, and Automobiles,"   ... "You're going the wrong direction!" 

The whole system response to the negative interference was decay the system to an open baroclinic field, from a closed one... Which is kind of interesting because that is the exact antithesis of the typical behavior for systems approaching and leaving our longitude... 

Anyway, one can call that 'shunting' but what it really is more precisely is 'deconstructing' cyclonic kinematics ... and so the storm decays into an open wave and then ultimately a residual front. I see these recent model runs that are moving the precip off/ narrowing, faster, as just getting in closer to the limitations in space and time and the storm is seen as weaker, period.

But keep in mind... we're talking within the virtual universe created by these guidance tools - these are all distinctions that are relative to that framework.  There is still a reality that needs to cooperate -I mean, aspects rear from the unknown and cause 'out of the blue' things to happen from time to time... There's no way to hold the models or interpretation in the best of deterministic/objective approaches very accountable in those weird scenarios.  

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Yeah ...there's that too, Scott -

add that to the till of bad model handling. 

All though, convective "robbing" as the euphemism goes, isn't really quite yet in the model skill - I wouldn't think?  I mean, talk to us when they know precisely what cumulus cloud will become a cumulonimbus ... maybe at that level of godly prescience ...the models will "see" WV choking and desiccation ...

Perhaps the models had a chance to save some face with a 2.4" er ...say, but then their being blind to the 'where' convection and therefore not having any remote clue on how that would in turn modulate matters ... ooph It seems this might be the straw the broke the modeling back -

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34° F and rain, and the models have shaved off both QPF and backside snow. Just awful!

This March has been worse than watching paint dry. I always come into March with high expectations and visions of slow moving cutoff nor'easters that dump feet of snow in the elevated interior, and this one has been one of the biggest let downs ever. I've had an inch of snow in what can be an extremely snowy month, and is typically at least moderately snowy. What a total let down after what has been a decent winter that performed better than I had anticipated. :axe:

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6 minutes ago, wxmanmitch said:

34° F and rain, and the models have shaved off both QPF and backside snow. Just awful!

This March has been worse than watching paint dry. I always come into March with high expectations and visions of slow moving cutoff nor'easters that dump feet of snow in the elevated interior, and this one has been one of the biggest let downs ever. I've had an inch of snow in what can be an extremely snowy month, and is typically at least moderately snowy. What a total let down after what has been a decent winter that performed better than I had anticipated. :axe:

This would have been an awful winter if we didn't get an active February.  Missed out in January and now it looks like we will in March.

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4 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

That's not true. The moisture departing is the bigger issue.

Yeah it's out of here by like midnight on a lot of guidance now. It was supposed to be an event that lasted into Friday morning originally. Then it was mostly 06z to 09z for the heavy snow. Now all that moisture is gone. The cold air wasn't delayed at all...if anything, the press is too strong and it's shoving the moisture SE.

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It's funny ... I like the use of the word 'synergistic' ... things are sometimes 'favored' to happen -

It's like you have a separate 'emergence vector' - it doesn't exist until aspects are put into motion.  ...Like we've all been through times where it just seems to always snow; contrasting, it never can.  And these will take place despite ongoing indicators, too.

Snows with bad teleconnectors ...it just finds a way.   Or, like the antithesis... We have been in a +AO mode now for two weeks, with an NAO that is neutral positive, in a flat PNA... in a La Nina spring, and we can't warm up no matter what?   Maybe next week will change some of that... "maybe it won't"

Anyway, we have been suffering a kind of 'de-evolutionary' tendency in system integrity for the entire cold season... Routinely, features and phenomenon of the D8s and on ... invariably come into mid range as a less impressive system... sometimes then failing to even get to short range before it seems the passage of time itself caused it to minor out - like the models just had a cool idea but got bored and abandoned it... haha.

Obviously that's joking but ... this system seems to have done that to us again. Even though it sort of did it later.  Check this...I might be wrong, but wanna say back when this system was D7 it wasn't really much of anything then... This did that song and dance of minoring out in shallower time it seems - the NAM lied with its NW bias as usual, and then the Euro thought it would be funny to deliberately f with heads by putting up a couple of agreeing cycles - it was a perfect storm of misdirection LOL.  

Either way...here we are again, and it seems to parlay negatively - there's some sort of negative synergy going on to 'cancel' these things.   Almost like a count-down decay rate going on with all systems:  d(cyclone)/dt exceeds actual time, system becomes null before it gets to reality.  If that rate is slower than time... use the decay rate to determine what it will be when the time arrives - less.

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11 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah it's out of here by like midnight on a lot of guidance now. It was supposed to be an event that lasted into Friday morning originally. Then it was mostly 06z to 09z for the heavy snow. Now all that moisture is gone. The cold air wasn't delayed at all...if anything, the press is too strong and it's shoving the moisture SE.

Yeah exactly. Kind of a bummer...I didn't think the moisture issue would be a factor in terms of how quick it leaves. Changed overnight.

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41 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

This would have been an awful winter if we didn't get an active February.  Missed out in January and now it looks like we will in March.

I'm a solid 10" below normal with a skunked Jan and now March.  I believe I only hit 0F twice.   Probably won't be able to grade better than C- here.   

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