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January/February Mid/Long Range Disco IV: A New Hope


stormtracker
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5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Today's guidance took a step back towards a problem that to me is the biggest limiting factor in this setup and has been a repetitive issue recently.   Lack of interaction between moisture associated with the southern stream and the cold associated with the northern stream.  

I've been mentioning this for years...it was a HUGE problem in 2021 when we had blocking and storm after storm took a perfect track.  I think it gets less attention when we are in periods with a bad storm track because so much else is wrong that we don't pay attention...but this has been a theme for a while now and its a big problem.  Last night we saw some improvement with this but today the guidance seems back to not having any interaction between streams.  

That is what leads to this..

Wave 1 Where is the snow??? look at the pathetic "win" zone

Wave1.thumb.png.df56f84ce9d348fffb3935795038f2ed.png

Wave 2Wave2.thumb.png.0d1e50ce0a5b03ea757d25cebfe32cf1.png

Again where is the win there?  

Wave 3 

wave3.thumb.png.73d6be69de6909b9cf8a2e632134907c.png

And its not just a here problem...the next wave isn't even close for us but it wouldn't matter what the track was because look...

wave5.thumb.png.398e73fde0a250fe5a185cf27ee18d01.png

There is really very little to no snowfall with most of the waves, and this has been a theme a lot of the time recently.  

The GFS shows a bit more snow but if you look closer its probably a faulty artifact of its faulty cold bias in the thermals and a liberal precip type algorithm.

Temps.thumb.png.5d55efe0c6e8f34b13aba4aca44ef9ee.png

  Because look at the surface temps on the GFS when that 2-4" of snow is supposed to be falling to our south.  It's 34-38 degrees and that is on a model with a cold bias.  The CMC precip type output is likely closer to reality if that is the actual track and interaction between streams.  

Not enough attention is being pain, IMO, to this.  It's a big part of our struggles in recent years.  We should not see wave after wave in January and February with virtually no snow on the northern side of the track at the mid latitudes.  When there is almost no snow until you get north of 40* with any wave...well...thats kinda a problem for us given our latitude!  

They actually corrected the cold bias with the last "upgrade". From what i've heard that since that upgrade it has somewhat of a warm bias; they overcorrected.

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Just now, Daniel Boone said:

They actually corrected the cold bias with the last "upgrade". From what i've heard that since that upgrade it has somewhat of a warm bias; they overcorrected.

Hope so, the snow it shows falls at ~35*.  But the larger issue remains. Even when there is snow with these waves it’s a relatively small geographic area with marginal temps. 

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1 minute ago, brooklynwx99 said:

it's more of a lack of amplification for the third wave. a stronger wave would bring in more of the cold air due to the stronger northerly flow while a weak wave only skirts it and keeps the airmass marginal. it's not an airmass issue 

My “hopium” take is that the models may not be showing this now, but as a wave (in actual reality, not modeled reality) approaches the east coast with all those record warm waters, it’ll get more amped and draw the cold air in on the backwside.

Again, a dose of hopium. Maybe just because I’m in a good mood as we’re about to head to the mountains soon. 

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6 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

it's more of a lack of amplification for the third wave. a stronger wave would bring in more of the cold air due to the stronger northerly flow while a weak wave only skirts it and keeps the airmass marginal. it's not an airmass issue 

I’m not necessarily saying this is related to anything else. Two things can be true. But it’s been a repetitive issue in recent years. I’ve pointed out over the last several years often there is very little frozen precip associated with mid latitude waves. 

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5 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

My “hopium” take is that the models may not be showing this now, but as a wave (in actual reality, not modeled reality) approaches the east coast with all those record warm waters, it’ll get more amped and draw the cold air in on the backwside.

Again, a dose of hopium. Maybe just because I’m in a good mood as we’re about to head to the mountains soon. 

Seemingly everything has trended amped closer in this season, so it would fit the trend, imo

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5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Hope so, the snow it shows falls at ~35*.  But the larger issue remains. Even when there is snow with these waves it’s a relatively small geographic area with marginal temps. 

Yeah, agree on those issues. This is pretty much the most disappointing Winter in my life and I'm an Antique.

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8 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

My “hopium” take is that the models may not be showing this now, but as a wave (in actual reality, not modeled reality) approaches the east coast with all those record warm waters, it’ll get more amped and draw the cold air in on the backwside.

Again, a dose of hopium. Maybe just because I’m in a good mood as we’re about to head to the mountains soon. 

Hope ur right. If not, and this keeps up the rest of the season, we'll need plenty Opium. 

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2 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Not too much though, or they’ll cut like all the others. 

Indeed--As psu and others have alluded to, the upside scenario is gonna be a bit of a tight balance. Models probably aren't gonna figure out the exact timing of the confluence and such from Day 6/7. Interesting enough window nonetheless (low bar to meet, lol)

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2 minutes ago, Ji said:

i would take a cutter that guarantees me a period of heavy snow than a slider that gets me a dusting to an inch.

 

as i said--we need a cutter!

Cmc showed a cutter yesterday that took us from single digits lows to 50s and rain in a matter of hours lol.

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In reviewing the comments of the last 3 hours I see quite a few comments about the winter Enso condition and snow.

My general opinion about La Nina has been that my area is more likely to be dry winter or summer. I have liked El Nino in the winter because of an encouraged robust STJ and Virginia often being on the north cold side of systems.

Looking back at snow drought years the past couple of days has surprised me. Two out of 4 significant snow drought years from the past 50 years have been El Nino's. A week ago I would have bet that all 4 snow droughts would have been Nina's or neutral.

1972-73 DJF  +1.8  Nino   5 inches of snow,  1991 - 92  DJF +1.7 Nino  3.05 inches of snow

Last winter was a  DJF -1.0 Nina, yet I received above normal snowfall at 28.50 inches.

These stats throw some cold water on the idea of always better with El Nino, at least for the Central Shenandoah.    

 

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21 minutes ago, stormy said:

In reviewing the comments of the last 3 hours I see quite a few comments about the winter Enso condition and snow.

My general opinion about La Nina has been that my area is more likely to be dry winter or summer. I have liked El Nino in the winter because of an encouraged robust STJ and Virginia often being on the north cold side of systems.

Looking back at snow drought years the past couple of days has surprised me. Two out of 4 significant snow drought years from the past 50 years have been El Nino's. A week ago I would have bet that all 4 snow droughts would have been Nina's or neutral.

1972-73 DJF  +1.8  Nino   5 inches of snow,  1991 - 92  DJF +1.7 Nino  3.05 inches of snow

Last winter was a  DJF -1.0 Nina, yet I received above normal snowfall at 28.50 inches.

These stats throw some cold water on the idea of always better with El Nino, at least for the Central Shenandoah.    

It's actually been a wet Winter so far

compday.omgem16mDf.gif.71954fb1028c6aa19c48b0346401a161.gif

If we get cold, I think we can get some snow (PNA-NAO have been correlated and when the Pacific is good, I fear NAO could be positive). 

Also 2/13 -NAO in December have all time been wetter than average, like we have seen this year. If you use counter-analogs (+NAO/dry December) we get a large composite that has a stronger +NAO February signal than -NAO strength in December (which I picked and chose analogs from!) Pretty incredible correlation there. 

No one would probably guess that this has been a shutout (-AO/NAO) v

compday.TAWFRNwcz_.gif.e8424b5b04ee6eb95140fd0a7c9fcaa0.gif

(reminds me a lot of 97-98)

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