Mid to long range discussion- 2025

[BooneWX]

2 minutes ago, wncsnow said:

I just hope we start seeing legit signs of something better in January before January turns into February

Yep. Not panicking yet, but if we haven’t moved that Aleutian Ridge by week 2 in Jan, I’ll get really bearish. 

[BooneWX]

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[wncsnow]

5 minutes ago, BooneWX said:

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It will be quite the spectacle to see what wins out. The raging Pacific or growing -AO/-NAO

[NorthHillsWx]

54 minutes ago, BooneWX said:

Selfishly, I spend most of my time here and would love to get our former forum stalwarts back to posting on AmericanWx. We’ve segmented more the last few years by region since many have dropped off and I think that’s only enhanced discussions. 

Southern is an OK forum, I post occasionally, but I cannot stand the look and feel of the site. It’s brutal to me. There are good posters there and a lot of folks who post in both but I too wish we could get some back who’ve left here. It’s quite the spectacle to go over there if Raleigh is getting screwed by a storm. If you think the Raleigh folks here are bad it’s even worse there. They have a lot of Charlotte posters too which I appreciate as someone who lived there for a long time after college 

[eyewall]

25 minutes ago, NorthHillsWx said:

Southern is an OK forum, I post occasionally, but I cannot stand the look and feel of the site. It’s brutal to me. There are good posters there and a lot of folks who post in both but I too wish we could get some back who’ve left here. It’s quite the spectacle to go over there if Raleigh is getting screwed by a storm. If you think the Raleigh folks here are bad it’s even worse there. They have a lot of Charlotte posters too which I appreciate as someone who lived there for a long time after college 

I realize I used to be real awful at times. Somehow after the 3 years of zeroing out I have chilled out a lot more lol. As for he upcoming pattern I know it sucks to warm up during Christmas but we know the cold can't hang on around here for the entire winter. If we can flip back for January that would be fine with me to get back in the game and hopefully real one in south of Virginia for once.

[calculus1]

9 hours ago, Tullioz said:

 

9 hours ago, Tullioz said:

Those maps are a bit more generous than the IEM maps shown below; regardless, most of NC has seen measurable snow. 

 

 

Both sets of maps are horribly wrong for Hickory and Catawba County. Definitely no measurable snow has accumulated in our county, not even a single trace, much less multiple instances. I don’t know where those numbers are coming from.

Regardless, I remember when we used to measure snowfall in inches, not traces. How many traces make an inch? Three? Twelve? 5280?

[Coach McGuirk]

GFS is looking better in the long term. 

[strongwxnc]

Southern is an OK forum, I post occasionally, but I cannot stand the look and feel of the site. It’s brutal to me. There are good posters there and a lot of folks who post in both but I too wish we could get some back who’ve left here. It’s quite the spectacle to go over there if Raleigh is getting screwed by a storm. If you think the Raleigh folks here are bad it’s even worse there. They have a lot of Charlotte posters too which I appreciate as someone who lived there for a long time after college 

The have more pbp on all models. Of course lots of posts get passed over by me. But lots of good folks at Swx for sure!
But this place is my home base. Has been for years.


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[NorthHillsWx]

Some pretty positive changes on ensembles overnight regarding NAO tanking after Christmas just before new years. 

[NorthHillsWx]

Unfortunately the Aleutian ridge doesn’t really disappear it just retrogrades west moving the MW high axis just west enough for our -NAO, a fickle look with raging -PNA but at least some positivity. Given base state with pacific id be worried this would remain a progressive pattern and any cold shot/winter weather opportunity would be limited in duration and thus somewhat unlikely even if we end up cold around new years. 

[Tullioz]

9 hours ago, calculus1 said:

Both sets of maps are horribly wrong for Hickory and Catawba County. Definitely no measurable snow has accumulated in our county, not even a single trace, much less multiple instances. I don’t know where those numbers are coming from.

There was definitely a trace of snow that fell in the Hickory/Catawba County area on November 10th, December 8th, and December 12th. There were multiple reports on social media of snow falling on those dates. 

[WestCentrlVA]

How has the long range euro AI been performing? I know it's long range but one can dream. 

[strongwxnc]

41 minutes ago, WestCentrlVA said:

How has the long range euro AI been performing? I know it's long range but one can dream. 

 

Need some local data on new year eve snowfall. I don't ever recall any round here. 

I say bank on it

[wncsnow]

4 minutes ago, strongwxnc said:

Need some local data on new year eve snowfall. I don't ever recall any round here. 

I say bank on it

Glad you asked.

The period between December 26-January 1 is historically one of the least snowy periods for our area from December to March. 

I will back up with maps later (busy day at work) 

[BooneWX]

51 minutes ago, WestCentrlVA said:

How has the long range euro AI been performing? I know it's long range but one can dream. 

I’ve seen Mets saying it has a cold bias and its ensembles as well. I wish we had someone on here with access to Google deep mind, because it’s been very accurate since summer. 

[wncsnow]

2 hours ago, wncsnow said:

Glad you asked.

The period between December 26-January 1 is historically one of the least snowy periods for our area from December to March. 

I will back up with maps later (busy day at work) 

Some more quick data-

The last widespread winter storm in between Christmas and New Years was the Christmas storm in 2010. 

Before that, only Eastern NC got any appreciable snow in the 2000s during that time frame (Dec 2004)

In the 90s there was also only 1 widespread winter storm the entire decade for this time period as well (1997). 

 In the 80s there was a mountain Christmas day snow (1981) for higher elevations for no other storms that decade. 

In the 70s, there were a couple smaller storms during that time but no major storms.

 

Overall, each decade has only seen 1 usually small storm during that time frame which is typically less than other weeks in December, January, February and early March. 

For example, the time frame between December 4-10 has seen 2 major winter storms in the past decade alone. 

 

 

[olafminesaw]

NOAA is rolling out new AI models, including a hybrid model combining the GEFS and the AI GEFS

https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-deploys-new-generation-of-ai-driven-global-weather-models

[NorthHillsWx]

10 hours ago, Tullioz said:

There was definitely a trace of snow that fell in the Hickory/Catawba County area on November 10th, December 8th, and December 12th. There were multiple reports on social media of snow falling on those dates. 

A trace means essentially at least one snowflake or sleet pellet was observed. That’s it, not measurable. You could have 100 TR events and it wouldn’t equate to measurable snow. So if those maps show 3 TR events for your backyard you still haven’t seen measurable. That being said, looking at those maps I’d say 50% of the state has seen 0.10” which technically is measurable. Someone can correct me, but I don’t think snow is considered measurable unless you have 0.10”, but that’s still a low bar. By no means is anyone thrilled with 0.10” but seeing 50% of the state with “measurable” snow by Christmas hasn’t happened since 2018 and with the BN temps it’s at least has been wintry. 

[NorthHillsWx]

18z GFS is a SER nightmare 

[wncsnow]

47 minutes ago, NorthHillsWx said:

18z GFS is a SER nightmare 

We're in this pattern for a while I'm afraid. I think after New Years. Maybe middle of January. 

[BooneWX]

18z GFS is a SER nightmare 

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[Coach McGuirk]

1 hour ago, wncsnow said:

We're in this pattern for a while I'm afraid. I think after New Years. Maybe middle of January. 

Oh No!

[gtg947h]

1 hour ago, wncsnow said:

We're in this pattern for a while I'm afraid. I think after New Years. Maybe middle of January. 

 

Gimme!  I have the week after Christmas off and hope to do some flying and biking,and then we're moving to a new house in early January.  Warm and sunny would be appreciated; I see little enough daylight (esp. on work days) as it is. Snow later in Jan is fine...

[CheoahBald1]

We're in this pattern for a while I'm afraid. I think after New Years. Maybe middle of January. 

If you think any weather model in the world can predict any sort of pattern in the middle of January (4 weeks away by the way) you’ve lost your mind


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[wncsnow]

14 minutes ago, CheoahBald1 said:

If you think any weather model in the world can predict any sort of pattern in the middle of January (4 weeks away by the way) you’ve lost your mind


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Look another hater! My track record has been pretty good lately. I called the clipper pattern we saw the last week or so and this upcoming mild period over 2 weeks ago. I hope I'm wrong but unless we see major changes soon it will be at least 15-20 days before this pattern starts breaking down and that gets us to 2026. Some of you have short memories because the main reason the past 5 winters have mostly sucked is because the raging Pacific jet. We were looking for pattern changes almost every winter since 2019. Its as strong now as any of the past 5 years. Look at the record breaking, catastrophic flooding in Washington state. 

 

This should be a lesson that with even a super frigid Canada, a favorable MJO and a decent NAO, the PNA and Pacific jet extension is hard to overcome. 

[calculus1]

There was definitely a trace of snow that fell in the Hickory/Catawba County area on November 10th, December 8th, and December 12th. There were multiple reports on social media of snow falling on those dates. 

I grant that a few flakes may have been seen in the air on these dates, but nothing was measurable. If that counts as a trace, so be it. I need a skiff, or a dash, or a dusting, or a coating, or some other such word before I would call it even remotely measurable.


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[calculus1]

A trace means essentially at least one snowflake or sleet pellet was observed. That’s it, not measurable. You could have 100 TR events and it wouldn’t equate to measurable snow. So if those maps show 3 TR events for your backyard you still haven’t seen measurable. That being said, looking at those maps I’d say 50% of the state has seen 0.10” which technically is measurable. Someone can correct me, but I don’t think snow is considered measurable unless you have 0.10”, but that’s still a low bar. By no means is anyone thrilled with 0.10” but seeing 50% of the state with “measurable” snow by Christmas hasn’t happened since 2018 and with the BN temps it’s at least has been wintry. 

This is most helpful. Thanks for the clarification on what is considered a trace. It also confirms my suspected conversion factor was pretty much spot on: 5280 T = 1 in.


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[WestCentrlVA]

Not saying it's right but the 0z euro run would make many happy if it actually happened. Long duration event for sure.