November Mid/Long Range Discussion

[Itryatgolf70]

38 minutes ago, Ji said:

man EPS looks good around the Christmas Holidays. Too bad its 6 weeks out

What happened to Wes junker, aka usedtobe? Didn't he work for capital weather gang? He used to post here alot back in the day and was pretty good also

[psuhoffman]

19 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

^gotta fix the NAO problem. Those low heights over Greenland are no bueno.

Obviously we want both but early season I’ll take the pacific over the Atlantic. 

[Ji]

14 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Obviously we want both but early season I’ll take the pacific over the Atlantic. 

we had a great atlantic last year in December and look how great that turned out for us lo

[brooklynwx99]

blocking probably won't make an appearance in earnest until mid-Jan. the ECMWF has a pretty weak SPV into Dec which is nice, though

[mattie g]

20 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Obviously we want both but early season I’ll take the pacific over the Atlantic. 

Yup. I don't need big blocking. Just get me some cold air delivery and I'll be happy with a fast-moving system that throws precip over that cold.

I think I see a hint of split flow on that EPS image, as well.

[CAPE]

2 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Yup. I don't need big blocking. Just get me some cold air delivery and I'll be happy with a fast-moving system that throws precip over that cold.

I think I see a hint of split flow on that EPS image, as well.

That's 40 days away. Not a chance in hell these extended products have a clue what the NAO domain will actually look like. More likely the Pacific will be somewhat close to reality- looks Nino-ish. That said, I agree with you. NA blocking hasn't produced much here lately. Cross polar flow with advancing cold and a well timed wave along the thermal boundary has.

[WxUSAF]

15 minutes ago, CAPE said:

That's 40 days away. Not a chance in hell these extended products have a clue what the NAO domain will actually look like. More likely the Pacific will be somewhat close to reality- looks Nino-ish. That said, I agree with you. NA blocking hasn't produced much here lately. Cross polar flow with advancing cold and a well timed wave along the thermal boundary has.

Models won’t pick up on the Chicago cutter that gets our Christmas torch until 7-10 days out.

[stormy]

The CPC finally hints at more moisture getting into our drought stricken area as we approach Thanksgiving.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

The NAO actually has a high correlation to precip. 0.4 in December, and near 0.5 for the Winter as a whole. 

This is why it was so disappointing that last years -NAO didn't deliver: It happened with a wetter than average pattern. I found that there were 2/11 -NAO December's that had a wet pattern (one being last year). 

I would take a favorable Pacific/+NAO for snow chances 20-30% greater than even.. (of course, you know that when -NAO lifts out we usually get a storm.)

[Stormchaserchuck1]

18z GFS is now developing a -NAO in the MR/LR where it used to have +NAO. Way Above average model run changes since the Spring. 

[CAPE]

3 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

18z GFS is now developing a -NAO in the MR/LR where it used to have +NAO 

It's bootleg and couples with an amplifying anomalous eastern US upper ridge, as a deep trough digs out west. Same thing we saw multiple times last winter. Just another random GFS op run though.

[stormy]

1 minute ago, CAPE said:

It's bootleg and couples with an amplifying anomalous eastern US upper ridge, as a deep trough digs out west. Same thing we saw multiple times last winter. Just another random GFS op run though.

We need that deep trough well to the west with ridging over Nevada and troughing over the east with the axis over Nashville.

[Ji]

2 hours ago, Itryatgolf70 said:

What happened to Wes junker, aka usedtobe? Didn't he work for capital weather gang? He used to post here alot back in the day and was pretty good also

he gets work when it snows in the DC area. He has been" unemployed"now for years. he will be back this winter 

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, Ji said:

he gets work when it snows in the DC area. He has been" unemployed"now for years. he will be back this winter 

Thought he was more semi-retired. He is a legend in local forecasting. There surely is work for him if/when he wants it. His contributions are always value adding.

[wxdude64]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

I used to do that nonsense.  At one point I had 3 pairs.  For the last 14 seasons I was riding on a pair of Atomic Access.  Just got a pair of Rustler 10s and can't wait to get out there.  So far the only game in town is Killington with 2 measly intermediate trails open that require hike to, mostly for publicity and to artificially inflate their season length stats.  Not worth an 8 hour drive.  As soon as someone opens even just a few legit runs I will go.  

Yep, Catalooche used to make snow the first night it got close to 32 and they'd open ONE slope for a day or two to claim 'earliest opening on the east coast', son went there EVERY time they did that for about 7-8 years lol. That is a 5 hour drive from here. I looked and found the 13 season opener (it is on the side of the fridge, why I don't know, he has been gone since summer of '14), 11/14/13. I think one year they opened like October 5th!! 

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, Ji said:

we had a great atlantic last year in December and look how great that turned out for us lo

Yes. We have overcome a crappy pacific later in winter with a -NAO. But it’s becoming almost impossible early season given the current SST torch. Frankly it’s probably gonna be hard to overcome a crap pacific even later in winter given how warm the ssts are. Imo this is partly why the recent hostile PDO phase has been more of a disaster than the last few. In past hostile PDO cycles we had some snowy periods where the Atlantic canceled the pacific.  That equation hasn’t worked at all lately. 

49 minutes ago, CAPE said:

It's bootleg and couples with an amplifying anomalous eastern US upper ridge, as a deep trough digs out west. Same thing we saw multiple times last winter. Just another random GFS op run though.

This might be semantics and I’m about to talk a lot about an op solution at range which won’t happen and will look different in 6 hours but I think my point is valid.
 

While I’m not 100% sure how you mean “bootleg”  I’d refrain from that language because to me it implies the NAO isn’t legit or is in some way not canonical. But the -NAO on the 18z Gfs is a canonical -NAO coupled with a 50/50 vortex and even western Canada/EPO ridge!  The fact that it doesn’t impact the eastern CONUS mid lat pattern and links with a huge SER again isn’t due to any deficiency in the high latitude pattern.  
 

Just like what’s happened several times in the last 7 years, the SER simply wins. The western energy cuts under the high latitude flow out west then fails to progress and flatten the SER. Instead the SER pumps so much in response to that approaching wave it becomes a mid lat block and stalls the progression. We’ve seen this exact thing play out a lot and it’s why we’ve been in such a funk since the only way historically to really overcome a crappy pac cycle was with a -NAO. But recently it hasnt worked.  
 

But it’s not because all those NAOs were “bootleg” they simply aren’t having the same impact on the mid latitudes because the SER is winning the see saw tug of war battle in the flow. 

[psuhoffman]

10 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Thought he was more semi-retired. He is a legend in local forecasting. There surely is work for him if/when he wants it. His contributions are always value adding.

I think Ji was just being Ji 

[CAPE]

14 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

While I’m not 100% sure how you mean “bootleg” but I’d refrain from that language because to me it implies the NAO isn’t legit or is in some way not canonical. But the -NAO on the 18z Gfs is a canonical -NAO coupled with a 50/50 vortex and even western Canada/EPO ridge!  The fact that it doesn’t impact the eastern CONUS mid lat pattern and links with a huge SER again isn’t due to any deficiency in the high latitude pattern.  
 

Just like what’s happened several times in the last 7 years, the SER simply wins. The western energy cuts under the high latitude flow out west then fails to progress and flatten the SER. Instead the SER pumps so much in response to that approaching wave it becomes a mid lat block and stalls the progression. We’ve seen this exact thing play out a lot and it’s why we’ve been in such a funk since the only way historically to really overcome a crappy pac cycle was with a -NAO. But recently it hadn’t worked.  
 

But it’s hit because all those NAOs were “bootleg” they simply aren’t having the same impact on the mid latitudes because the SER is winning the see saw tug of war battle in the flow. 

To me, it means not useful/ not a sustained atmospheric blocking pattern. A transient -NAO is a crapshoot at best for our purposes. An actual(and more useful) sustained negative NAO is difficult to identify from a random op run or 2. A true NA blocking pattern is usually something that becomes evident over multiple ens runs.

[Itryatgolf70]

29 minutes ago, Ji said:

he gets work when it snows in the DC area. He has been" unemployed"now for years. he will be back this winter 

Maybe lol

[psuhoffman]

5 minutes ago, CAPE said:

To me, it means not useful/ not a sustained atmospheric blocking pattern. A transient -NAO is a crapshoot at best for our purposes. An actual(and more useful) sustained negative NAO is difficult to identify from a random op run or 2. A true NA blocking pattern is usually something that becomes evident over multiple ens runs.

On the 18zgfs the NAO goes neg around Nov 17 and stays strongly neg through the end of the run on the 25. Imo that’s legit.  It’s failure to assist our snow chances on that run was a product of the mid latitude pattern and the pacific not anything to do with the NAO in my opinion. But we might be arguing apples and oranges here. 

[Itryatgolf70]

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

On the 18zgfs the NAO goes neg around Nov 17 and stays strongly neg through the end of the run on the 25. Imo that’s legit.  It’s failure to assist our snow chances on that run was a product of the mid latitude pattern and the pacific not anything to do with the NAO in my opinion. But we might be arguing apples and oranges here. 

Last December we wasn't cold due to trough in sw even with -nao. Most people at first were excited but as the "hookup" with se ridge, it quickly became apparent we wasn't going to be cold. Can you imagine how warm it could have been with a +nao?

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

On the 18zgfs the NAO goes neg around Nov 17 and stays strongly neg through the end of the run on the 25. Imo that’s legit.  It’s failure to assist our snow chances on that run was a product of the mid latitude pattern and the pacific not anything to do with the NAO in my opinion. But we might be arguing apples and oranges here. 

Probably. While the upper ridge in the NAO space is there on that run, it's impotent as advertised, and it will probably be completely gone at 0z. Let me see it persist over multiple runs and on the means.  Sometimes we see heights rise in the NAO domain briefly, but need perfect timing with a wave. What I like to see- and is most useful esp in a Nino- is a sustained blocking pattern(dipole) where we just wait for a legit wave to track underneath. Also snow chances suck regardless because it is November.

[CAPE]

This would be a pretty good look at range (a month later) if it persisted over multiple ens runs.

[Itryatgolf70]

5 minutes ago, CAPE said:

This would be a pretty good look at range (a month later) if it persisted over multiple ens runs.

If a look shows up consistently on the eps, then it's alot more believable imo

[psuhoffman]

13 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Probably. While the upper ridge in the NAO space is there on that run, it's impotent as advertised, and it will probably be completely gone at 0z. Let me see it persist over multiple runs and on the means.  Sometimes we see heights rise in the NAO domain briefly, but need perfect timing with a wave. What I like to see- and is most useful esp in a Nino- is a sustained blocking pattern(dipole) where we just wait for a legit wave to track underneath. Also snow chances suck regardless because it is November.

It’s impotent because there is a huge SER that’s winning the airmass war. I see that as an unrelated problem. I’m not sure there is anything about the blocking that’s part of that. Same as the last few. We had a near record block last year and we torched because of the SER. 

[psuhoffman]

I’ve been to busy between coaching soccer and a new job I took to work on a winter outlook much until recently. I’m putting it together now.  But I’ll say this, I’m about as conflicted as I’ve ever been. There are a lot of conflicting signals, even more than typical for a seasonal forecast.  I could see this being  anything from another dreg year to a blockbuster and in hindsight I’d feel like the warnings or signals were there. But I have little confidence which signals will win out. 

[CAPE]

8 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

It’s impotent because there is a huge SER that’s winning the airmass war. I see that as an unrelated problem. I’m not sure there is anything about the blocking that’s part of that. Same as the last few. We had a near record block last year and we torched because of the SER. 

Upstream is clearly important regardless of the strength/persistence of any NA blocking. More so these days. We torched last year during that blocking episode because of a SER induced by a deep US western trough, itself induced by an impressive Aleutian ridge, courtesy of La Nina.

[psuhoffman]

1 minute ago, CAPE said:

Upstream is clearly important regardless of the strength/persistence of any NA blocking. More so these days. We torched last year during that blocking episode because of a SER induced by a deep US western tough, itself induced by an impressive Aleutian ridge, courtesy of La Nina.

With the recent pacific thermal profile the way it is I doubt blocking can overcome a bad pacific longwave pattern anymore. The equation has tilted against us in that regard. 

[Eskimo Joe]

9 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

With the recent pacific thermal profile the way it is I doubt blocking can overcome a bad pacific longwave pattern anymore. The equation has tilted against us in that regard. 

I wholeheartedly agree with this. If we get a stinko Pacific it's game over.

[stormy]

Latest CPC analysis says 3.4 is now 1.80 with the DYN AVG now 2.0 thru Jan.