January 2026 regional war/obs/disco thread

[Sey-Mour Snow]

31 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

True whiteout conditions.

Just had thunder and lightning at the mountain.  2.5” in 30 minutes.  That was a legit squall.

That's epic! Wow, on my bucket list to catch something like that.. 

[ariof]

8 minutes ago, Sey-Mour Snow said:

That's epic! Wow, on my bucket list to catch something like that.. 

Not driving at night on I-89 you don't

[Torch Tiger]

1 hour ago, Prismshine Productions said:

Holy fuck it is SNOWING SIDEWAYS

Sent from my SM-S166V using Tapatalk
 

it's a snow shower

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, Go Kart Mozart said:

It seems odd that all of these are in the "modern" era.

That's mainly because it's based on my personal obs and averages, and my records only go back to 1976.  Some older 40(+) cold runs:

Fort Kent (my obs):  Dec 11-31, 1981 thru Jan 18, 1981:  -11.5

NYC (Central Park) data, working backwards:
Dec 30, 1976 thru Feb 7, 1977:   -11.6
Feb 1 thru Mar 12, 1934:  -12.6    (Add Jan 29-31, and it's -12.9.  Mid-Jan was too warm to include Dec 29-31, 1933 in a '40'.)
Dec 29, 1917 thru Feb 6, 1918:  -15.0

Farmington, Maine co-op:
Dec 11, 1980 thru Jan 19, 1981:  -15.7
Nov 21 thru Dec 30, 1989:  -14.7

[Prismshine Productions]

it's a snow shower

Nah, it was a legit hard squall

Sent from my SM-S166V using Tapatalk

[tamarack]

4 hours ago, ariof said:

I could watch this all day.

964 mb bomb in Boothbay Harbor might be a bit too close for all snow in the foothills.  

[Torch Tiger]

hopefully the 1/31- 2/1 system works out, need an exciting, worthwhile/trackable event before Spring kicks in

[das]

4 hours ago, Sey-Mour Snow said:

since we are in storm mode and this is pretty much the banter thread til next week.. Both storms here  

CPC is not buying it.  They are going dry, dry, dry eastern half after this storm and have nothing in their experimental heavy snow risk probability map for 30 Jan thru 05 Feb.

[alex]

7 minutes ago, Torch Tiger said:

hopefully the 1/31- 2/1 system works out, need an exciting, worthwhile/trackable event before Spring kicks in

Sadly, that’s a LONG time away for us. But yeah would be nice to have some good storms. Even nicer to have days and days of upslope

 

[mahk_webstah]

18 minutes ago, das said:

CPC is not buying it.  They are going dry, dry, dry eastern half after this storm and have nothing in their experimental heavy snow risk probability map for 30 Jan thru 05 Feb.

That’s not a good sign

[alex]

Squalls are here. Yikes 

[SouthCoastMA]

The day 6 look on the GFS op seems prime to deliver late month

[ORH_wxman]

5 minutes ago, SouthCoastMA said:

The day 6 look on the GFS op seems prime to deliver late month

That’s the storm the GGEM was trying to crank but ended up as just a scraper. GFS is robust this time around. 

[Heisy]

GFS about to go off with the next weeks wave. It’s crazy, this shortwave actually originates from the front that’s clearing next 1-2 days. It rotates back around the TPV and is forced back south because of the block. Wild


.

[George001]

yeah, that’s worth keeping an eye on. What really caught my attention is it is a miller B, not a miller A. 

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, George001 said:

yeah, that’s worth keeping an eye on. What really caught my attention is it is a miller B, not a miller A. 

Textbook Miller B

[MJO812]

Weeklies show an epic pattern for February 

[Go Kart Mozart]

21 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That’s the storm the GGEM was trying to crank but ended up as just a scraper. GFS is robust this time around. 

A little bit 78ish in evolution?

And I tossed my snow rake this summer....

[Heisy]

Textbook Miller B

Need the ridge out west to hold as long as possible.


.

[ma blizzard]

kinda resembles the storm after march 01 at 500 anyway 

[Torch Tiger]

1 hour ago, alex said:

Sadly, that’s a LONG time away for us. But yeah would be nice to have some good storms. Even nicer to have days and days of upslope

 

Yeah, you won't be melted out until May!

[Sey-Mour Snow]

1 hour ago, das said:

CPC is not buying it.  They are going dry, dry, dry eastern half after this storm and have nothing in their experimental heavy snow risk probability map for 30 Jan thru 05 Feb.

Things can change, CPC had Sundays storm as a Mid Atlantic only storm just a few days ago. 

[das]

2 minutes ago, Sey-Mour Snow said:

Things can change, CPC had Sundays storm as a Mid Atlantic only storm just a few days ago. 

Yep, I get it. I am actually excited about the ingredients for a significant storm rolling up the coast late next week.

[Typhoon Tip]

2 hours ago, das said:

CPC is not buying it.  They are going dry, dry, dry eastern half after this storm and have nothing in their experimental heavy snow risk probability map for 30 Jan thru 05 Feb.

It’s interesting… there’s been a very bright index signal for many days, actually going back a couple of weeks. Very persistent with the whole wholesale index swap of the PNA. In fact, it’s on the order of four whole standard deviations from negative phase to positive in less than a week

That’s almost impossible to do without a restoring system  

Yet we have some operational model runs that are putting out solutions here and there, admittedly, lacking continuity as they seem to evaporate a run later. But when they show up, they’re hyper bombs I mean down into the 960s and stuff at a latitude that seldom realizes pressures that deep

My take on it is that there’s a huge huge non-linear signal there and we’re just waiting on the linearity of the daily wave transport in the models to actually come into phase with it. Anything that does just gets that gigantic kickback and that’s why we’re getting these inconsistencies between nothing and extreme. 

Regardless of what’s really going on there I don’t really agree that there’s no signal and that it shouldn’t be watched - not saying you are. It’s just my two cents.

[Heisy]

Euro doesn’t look far off at the end of the run, maybe a late development, but it’s close


.

[George001]

On 1/20/2026 at 5:15 PM, George001 said:

It is looking increasingly likely that this upcoming blizzard will be the biggest region wide event since Jan 29th 2022.

Looks like I nailed it besides the blizzard thing (good chance the winds aren’t strong enough). Regardless, since this post the storm has trended hundreds of miles north on the models. This is going to be a burial, and I don’t think we are done. February is the snowiest month of the year for my area in terms of average monthly snowfall. If we do get a polar vortex split like @40/70 Benchmark has been talking about, March could be interesting too. 

[Baroclinic Zone]

That was a  18z GFS run. The mini miller b for se areas, dropping 24-36” 

[SouthCoastMA]

17 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

That was a  18z GFS run. The mini miller b for se areas, dropping 24-36” 

believe it or not, actually cut back nearly half from 12z. Was showing 40"+ in the prior run. Nice to see an active pattern being modeled. 

[Go Kart Mozart]

Saturday record low maxes possible.  Can you imagine NYC with a high of 6f?  I wonder what it was in SLK that day.

Record Low Maximum Temperatures:

January 24:
KEWR: 15/1936
KBDR: 20/2014
KNYC: 6/1882
KLGA: 18/1987
KJFK: 19/1987
KISP: 19/2014

 

[das]

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

It’s interesting… there’s been a very bright index signal for many days, actually going back a couple of weeks. Very persistent with the whole wholesale index swap of the PNA. In fact, it’s on the order of four whole standard deviations from negative phase to positive in less than a week

That’s almost impossible to do without a restoring system  

Yet we have some operational model runs that are putting out solutions here and there, admittedly, lacking continuity as they seem to evaporate a run later. But when they show up, they’re hyper bombs I mean down into the 960s and stuff at a latitude that seldom realizes pressures that deep

My take on it is that there’s a huge huge non-linear signal there and we’re just waiting on the linearity of the daily wave transport in the models to actually come into phase with it. Anything that does just gets that gigantic kickback and that’s why we’re getting these inconsistencies between nothing and extreme. 

Regardless of what’s really going on there I don’t really agree that there’s no signal and that it shouldn’t be watched - not saying you are. It’s just my two cents.

Yep. Like I said in the post just above, I like the ingredients at play here.  You look at the model output on those runs that show nothing and the somewhat obvious question is; where is the storm that should be right there?

I like your phrase, “restoring system”. I am going to steal that.