January 2026 OBS and Discussion

[Stormlover74]

4 minutes ago, NEG NAO said:

Will be interesting to see if Upton and Mt. Holly believe their favorite model the GFS later today.

Doubtful. They're going 30% Thursday night which even that is generous

[Jersey_Snowhole]

3 minutes ago, Krs4Lfe said:

We're getting closer to go time, only 5 days away, so models should be coalescing around a scenario. Whether that's a large storm offshore like the GFS or no storm like ICON, or something in between. Very interesting to see all the dry air though even on the GFS during the storm. 

I’ve counted about 10 of your post. They say the same things just written different ways. you and snowman19 are definitely the same account.

[MJO812]

Gefs look good

[NEG NAO]

1 minute ago, MJO812 said:

Gefs look good

so you are a believer ?

 

[MJO812]

Just now, NEG NAO said:

so you are a believer ?

 

50/50

[eduggs]

It's not great to have the key shortwave missing or in an unfavorable location on the ICON and GDPS... and also the short range NAM and RDPS. Even by 72 hours it's clearly missing... that's approaching short term modeling range.

[psv88]

0.67 from the rainstorm. Low of 40 last night. Toasty for mid January 

[eduggs]

We're down to the GFS & GEFS. We'll see how the ECM and UK look. This sort of has the feel of a glimpse of a chance slipping away.

[steve392]

What snow showers are expected later today that nj dot has all the electronic message boards lit up with that? 

[MJO812]

9 minutes ago, eduggs said:

We're down to the GFS & GEFS. We'll see how the ECM and UK look. This sort of has the feel of a glimpse of a chance slipping away.

Euro

[psv88]

This thaw has changed the feeling of winter. Feels like it’s going to be seen as a front loaded winter where most of the cold was in December. January seems to be pretty warm until the last week. La Nina’s suck in February so we may just scrape ourselves to an average season. More than that I don’t see

[MJO812]

6 minutes ago, psv88 said:

This thaw has changed the feeling of winter. Feels like it’s going to be seen as a front loaded winter where most of the cold was in December. January seems to be pretty warm until the last week. La Nina’s suck in February so we may just scrape ourselves to an average season. More than that I don’t see

Its not going to be a La Nina come February.

[Stormlover74]

13 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Euro

I'd take that. 2 to 4

[Stormlover74]

15 minutes ago, steve392 said:

What snow showers are expected later today that nj dot has all the electronic message boards lit up with that? 

Possible squall later with high winds 

[Jt17]

I'd take that. 2 to 4

GFS and Euro are still close to something big, but starting to run out of time


.

[mob1]

[NEG NAO]

1 minute ago, mob1 said:

Strange snow totals - BUT its GFS and Euro OP against the Canadian and Icon - on to the ensembles....

[snowman19]

The GFS is a pure, unadulterated garbage model. By far, the worst of the worst. NWS should stop running it until it gets fixed. Complete and utter embarrassment of a model

[NEG NAO]

3 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

The GFS is a pure, unadulterated garbage model. By far, the worst of the worst. NWS should stop running it until it gets fixed. Complete and utter embarrassment of a model

You should know all about that. Also explain the Euro more or less siding with it for the late week storm.

[psv88]

11 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Its not going to be a La Nina come February.

Sorry pal. We had a great December. We’ll probably sneak in a nice event late January and then face a more hostile pattern the rest of winter.

i think the park ends with around 24” of snow. I don’t see it going much more than that 

[snowman19]

Just now, NEG NAO said:

You should know all about that. -Also explain the Euro more or less siding with it for the late week storm.

The GFS “blizzard” yesterday was a real leg slapper lol Go with the EPS :-)

[Tatamy]

7 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

The GFS is a pure, unadulterated garbage model. By far, the worst of the worst. NWS should stop running it until it gets fixed. Complete and utter embarrassment of a model

Strongly agree.  The model has been a consistent outlier with its fantasy snowstorms and blizzards.  What’s worse is that people are misappropriating it to social media to drum up hits on their pages and sites.  

[Stormlover74]

5 minutes ago, psv88 said:

Sorry pal. We had a great December. We’ll probably sneak in a nice event late January and then face a more hostile pattern the rest of winter.

i think the park ends with around 24” of snow. I don’t see it going much more than that 

They still need quite a bit to get to 24

[donsutherland1]

Barring some big changes in the guidance, it continues to appear that the Thursday-Friday period will see some precipitation, but probably < 0.50".  A series of waves should move along a slow-moving front, but the consolidated low will likely develop too far offshore for a more significant impact. Larger impacts remain more likely across southeastern and eastern New England.

Currently, fewer than 20% of EPS ensemble members show 0.50" or more QPF for the New York City area. The  1/11 0z EPS ensemble mean QPF was pretty close to the 16z NBM output. Overall, there remains little evidence that a pattern conducive to large snowstorms coupled with the ingredients necessary will be in place by the January 15-16 timeframe. Nevertheless, rain showers could transition to snow showers or even some periods snow around the New York City area and its immediate suburbs. A light accumulation of snow is plausible. 

More immediately, a line of rain and/or snow showers accompanying a frontal passage appears likely to cross the region late this afternoon or early this evening coupled with gusty winds. No accumulation is likely in and around NYC, but temperatures should fall from the middle 40s into the upper 30s or lower 40s during the frontal passage.

 

[donsutherland1]

12 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

The GFS is a pure, unadulterated garbage model. By far, the worst of the worst. NWS should stop running it until it gets fixed. Complete and utter embarrassment of a model

The model should use the 4dVAR initialization scheme used by the leading models (ECMWF, GGEM, UKMET). It's difficult to justify not using the best-in-field initialization at this point in time. The inferior initialization puts the model at a disadvantage right from the start. Once the GGEM moved to the 4dVAR initialization, along with other changes that were made, it rocketed to the #2 model in terms of key verification metrics.

[sussexcountyobs]

35 minutes ago, steve392 said:

What snow showers are expected later today that nj dot has all the electronic message boards lit up with that? 

Snow showers with cold front late afternoon. My NWS forecast is for snow showers and falling temps this afternoon. Snow showers in the evening. Snow could be heavy at times. I guess they're expecting a couple of snow squalls.

[Krs4Lfe]

I must say, even though I usually post horrible takes, the Euro is quite cold in the long range and the latest model suite doesn't dump a trough in the west after the 3rd week of january. Stays very cold, with waves riding along the arctic boundary. That depiction looks similar to 2014 and 2015 winters. Obviously I don't think the overall outcome will be the same, but hard to deny that it looks like very cold air is coming and several chances for precip. 

[Krs4Lfe]

10 minutes ago, Stormlover74 said:

They still need quite a bit to get to 24

We would need 16" more to get to that and about 21" more to reach average. A few moderate systems or one big one can get us there 

[WeatherGeek2025]

I made the thread

 

[BoulderWX]

Just now, WeatherGeek2025 said:

I made the thread

 

Way too early, just going to make people have to switch back and forth between threads since there is so much uncertainty all next week.