January 2026 Medium/Long Range Discussion

[87storms]

1 minute ago, Terpeast said:

Ensemble support, too. 

Slightly different than Sunday's fish storm: https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs&region=us&pkg=mslpa&runtime=2026011518&fh=72

[psuhoffman]

7 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

If/when we get shut out with this upcoming pattern, would you chalk it up to bad luck, or something more serious like a fundamental shift in the base state?

You trying to get me in trouble?  
 

Honest answer I don’t think this winter has much to do with the elephant in the room. Cold dry winters happened in the past. I still really doubt we manage to avoid snow completely but if we do it’s bad luck imo.  
 

However, when “the elephant” is making other winters worse. Winters where we might have lucked into 12” or 17” for the season in the past from some lucky perfect track just cold enough snowstorms in an otherwise mediocre pattern but now those are rain and so we end up with a winter with 3” or 6” total and so when we waste a cold one it feels even worse. 

1997 was an example. The one good snowstorm I remember that winter (like 8” in northern VA) was from some perfect track wave in an otherwise warm period when temps where like 33 degrees during the storm and it was in the 50s on either side of it.  Fast forward to 2023  There were a couple waves that took a perfect track that winger but it was just a little too warm. 36 degree rain. Was that a repeat or a 1997 type winter but now…maybe that one snowstorm is rain and that winter is almost totally snowless which adds to the frustration and then makes a cold dry winter even worse. 

[Eskimo Joe]

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

You trying to get me in trouble?  
 

Honest answer I don’t think this winter has much to do with the elephant in the room. Cold dry winters happened in the past. I still really doubt we manage to avoid snow completely but if we do it’s bad luck imo.  

However, when “the elephant” is making other winters worse. Winters where we might have lucked into 12” or 17” for the season in the past from some lucky perfect track just cold enough snowstorms in an otherwise mediocre pattern but now those are rain and so we end up with a winter with 3” or 6” total and so when we waste a cold one it feels even worse. 

1997 was an example. The one good snowstorm I remember that winter (like 8” in northern VA) was from some perfect track wave in an otherwise warm period when temps where like 33 degrees during the storm and it was in the 50s on either side of it.  Fast forward to 2023  There were a couple waves that took a perfect track that winger but it was just a little too warm. 36 degree rain. Was that a repeat or a 1997 type winter but now…maybe that one snowstorm is rain and that winter is almost totally snowless which adds to the frustration and then makes a cold dry winter even worse. 

Appreciate the response. I'm in the same mindset as you.

[Terpeast]

24 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

You trying to get me in trouble?  
 

Honest answer I don’t think this winter has much to do with the elephant in the room. Cold dry winters happened in the past. I still really doubt we manage to avoid snow completely but if we do it’s bad luck imo.  
 

However, when “the elephant” is making other winters worse. Winters where we might have lucked into 12” or 17” for the season in the past from some lucky perfect track just cold enough snowstorms in an otherwise mediocre pattern but now those are rain and so we end up with a winter with 3” or 6” total and so when we waste a cold one it feels even worse. 

1997 was an example. The one good snowstorm I remember that winter (like 8” in northern VA) was from some perfect track wave in an otherwise warm period when temps where like 33 degrees during the storm and it was in the 50s on either side of it.  Fast forward to 2023  There were a couple waves that took a perfect track that winger but it was just a little too warm. 36 degree rain. Was that a repeat or a 1997 type winter but now…maybe that one snowstorm is rain and that winter is almost totally snowless which adds to the frustration and then makes a cold dry winter even worse. 

Not sure which storm you were talking about specifically, but there was one coastal storm in feb 2023 that dropped 1.3” qpf imby and more in other places. Temps were 37-40. I’ve wondered if we copied and pasted that storm onto the 60s-80s winters, it would have been 13”+

I’ll add that after last winter and this December, I feel a lot better about future winter prospects compared to how I felt through 22-23 and 23-24. Those two winters were just plain ugly temp wise, but we’ve been getting colder temps so that hasn’t been the issue as much as dryness and the lack of STJ moisture.

[WEATHER53]

34 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

They still do!  They both ski now. We go sledding and play in the snow every storm. Unfortunately, I’m not still with their mom. 

38 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

They still do!  They both ski now. We go sledding and play in the snow every storm. Unfortunately, I’m not still with their mom. 

 

From 5 to 15 in a heartbeat.  
Marriage can be tough.  50/50 

[Chris78]

Most of this snow mean is from next Friday through Monday. About 3". 

I don't have the individual members but the mean continues to have a nice slug of moisture through the Tennessee Valley. 

Definitely a reason to be cautiously optimistic for next weekend.

[Terpeast]

3 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

Most of this snow mean is from next Friday through Monday. About 3". 

I don't have the individual members but the mean continues to have a nice slug of moisture through the Tennessee Valley. 

Definitely a reason to be cautiously optimistic for next weekend.

EPS has a mean of 6-8” for the dmv, at least double that of gefs

[TSSN+]

Can someone ask Webb when the euro will shift NW?

[psuhoffman]

16 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Not sure which storm you were talking about specifically, but there was one coastal storm in feb 2023 that dropped 1.3” qpf imby and more in other places. Temps were 37-40. I’ve wondered if we copied and pasted that storm onto the 60s-80s winters, it would have been 13”+

That’s the one I’m thinking about. And I had that exact same thought. There was one other that wouldn’t have been as big but might have been a 2-4” type snow had it been a little colder. But it was just so warm all winter that even when a perfect track wave came along it didn’t matter. 

[Chris78]

7 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

EPS has a mean of 6-8” for the dmv, at least double that of gefs

Thats awesome. I'd rather have the EPS show that rather than the GEFS

[Stormchaserchuck1]

I'm a little scared that if we do an El Nino next year it will be warm. These last 2 cold Winters, 24-25 and 25-26, are not because of a -NAO decadal, or +PDO decadal. They are negative AAM tendency propagating toward the Pole. Sometimes that happens in La Nina's, especially well into a decadal state of many events. Recent El Nino's have shown a tendency to warm SE Canada, as 7/8 (after this year 7/9) recent +WPO Winter's comes into effect. If we were well into the cold-phase NAO I would feel better, but we are not, and there is a +0-4 year lag after a Solar Max for more +NAO conditions. -PDO, if that holds, -PDO and El Nino is also a warm composite. 

[psuhoffman]

44 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Dude. Always doing the Eeyore thing. Give it a rest lol. Why ask that shit? We need positivity in this thread.

We’re not going to get shut out. I was probably too optimistic. I leaned into the “we’re due” index too much. Apparently we’re still cursed. But we’re not going a whole winter without at least one decent snowstorm with the predominant winter pattern being this good. Not perfect but this years underlying features look nothing like the really bad snowless winters. 

[TSSN+]

1 minute ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

I'm a little scared that if we do an El Nino next year it will be warm. These last 2 cold Winters, 24-25 and 25-26, are not because of a -NAO decadal, or +PDO decadal. They are negative AAM tendency propagating toward the Pole. Sometimes that happens in La Nina's, especially well into a decadal state of many events. Recent El Nino's have shown a tendency to warm SE Canada, as 7/8 (after this year 7/9) recent +WPO Winter's comes into effect. If we were well into the cold-phase NAO I would feel better, but we are not, and there is a +0-4 year lag after a Solar Max for more +NAO conditions. 

There’s the chuck we love 

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

I'm a little scared that if we do an El Nino next year it will be warm. These last 2 cold Winters, 24-25 and 25-26, are not because of a -NAO decadal, or +PDO decadal. They are negative AAM tendency propagating toward the Pole. Sometimes that happens in La Nina's, especially well into a decadal state of many events. Recent El Nino's have shown a tendency to warm SE Canada, as 7/8 (after this year 7/9) recent +WPO Winter's comes into effect. If we were well into the cold-phase NAO I would feel better, but we are not, and there is a +0-4 year lag after a Solar Max for more +NAO conditions. -PDO, if that holds, -PDO and El Nino is also a warm composite. 

Ok dude don’t take this the wrong way because everything you said is a very valid concern. I’m not necessarily disagreeing. But if a cold enso is dry. And a warm enso is too warm. WTF do you think we should be rooting for to get an actual snowy winter next year. And by snowy I don’t mean we fight and eek and some lucky locations end up 3” above average. I mean an actually snowy fucking winter where the whole area ends up 125%+
snowfall. You know like used to happen once in a while. 
 

Sorry vent over. But ya. I see your valid concerns but what the hell are we even rooting for?  We used to get snowy winters in a -PDO once in a while. It’s not supposed to be impossible. 

[TSSN+]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

Ok dude don’t take this the wrong way because everything you said is a very valid concern. I’m not necessarily disagreeing. But if a cold enso is dry. And a warm enso is too warm. WTF do you think we should be rooting for to get an actual snowy winter next year. And by snowy I don’t mean we fight and eek and some lucky locations end up 3” above average. I mean an actually snowy fucking winter where the whole area ends up 125%+
snowfall. You know like used to happen once in a while. 
 

Sorry vent over. But ya. I see your valid concerns but what the hell are we even rooting for?  We used to get snowy winters in a -PDO once in a while. It’s not supposed to be impossible. 

Don’t need a cold winter to have a big storm. Just need the precip to line up when it is cold. Obviously look at 2016. Pretty much a crap winter but we got the blizzard so that was all that mattered. 

[Terpeast]

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Ok dude don’t take this the wrong way because everything you said is a very valid concern. I’m not necessarily disagreeing. But if a cold enso is dry. And a warm enso is too warm. WTF do you think we should be rooting for to get an actual snowy winter next year. And by snowy I don’t mean we fight and eek and some lucky locations end up 3” above average. I mean an actually snowy fucking winter where the whole area ends up 125%+
snowfall. You know like used to happen once in a while. 
 

Sorry vent over. But ya. I see your valid concerns but what the hell are we even rooting for?  We used to get snowy winters in a -PDO once in a while. It’s not supposed to be impossible. 

El nino during a solar min? Not trying to speak for Chuck…

[winter_warlock]

14 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

Thats awesome. I'd rather have the EPS show that rather than the GEFS

Yeah I agree.  I feel a lot better with the EPS on board!!

[bncho]

23 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

EPS has a mean of 6-8” for the dmv, at least double that of gefs

send maps, i don't see it anywhere

[psuhoffman]

Just now, TSSN+ said:

Don’t need a cold winter to have a big storm. Just need the precip to line up when it is cold. Obviously look at 2016. Pretty much a crap winter but we got the blizzard so that was all that mattered. 

There were cold weeks in 2016. We even had several storms suppressed. One 6-10” snow missed us to the south!  We had that clipper with temps in the teens. It’s just December and the warm weeks the rest of the winter wiped out the cold in the means.  But what Chuck is talking about is a pattern that would flood the US with pac puke and make it hard to get snow even if we did luck into a perspective coastal. That happened in 2024. The snow we got that winter ironically came during the 2 weeks that were acting like a Nina and we lucked into some weak ass boundary waves. The rest of the winter was warm and wet and the track and timing of storms didn’t matter because there was no cold anywhere. 

[Solution Man]

28 minutes ago, WEATHER53 said:

From 5 to 15 in a heartbeat.  
Marriage can be tough.  50/50 

Keep your head up man, I know. Remember it’s about the kids. In my prayers 

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

El nino during a solar min? Not trying to speak for Chuck…

Ok so basically once a decade if we get super lucky and time up a moderate modoki nino with a solar minimum it can still snow. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

20 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Ok dude don’t take this the wrong way because everything you said is a very valid concern. I’m not necessarily disagreeing. But if a cold enso is dry. And a warm enso is too warm. WTF do you think we should be rooting for to get an actual snowy winter next year. And by snowy I don’t mean we fight and eek and some lucky locations end up 3” above average. I mean an actually snowy fucking winter where the whole area ends up 125%+
snowfall. You know like used to happen once in a while. 
 

Sorry vent over. But ya. I see your valid concerns but what the hell are we even rooting for?  We used to get snowy winters in a -PDO once in a while. It’s not supposed to be impossible. 

In the Summer I was seeing that really cold 500mb 60-90N and negative SLP (large -8 anomaly over the whole arctic circle June to August) -- I was seeing that these things strongly preceded -AO Winter's. It was a really strong signal, like the plus and minus side has hit every time since 2012. So I was bullish on this Winter for thinking it would be mostly -AO. You know -AO is our best snow pattern. It is turning out to be more of a -AO Winter, but the STJ has been dry up to this point. It does look like after Jan 21/22, it will get wetter. I'm not ready to say this Winter one side of a fail coin, because I think there is high potential Jan 23 - Feb 10. We might even do average snowfall by then. 384hr long range ensembles are showing an east+PNA, which you know correlates with our greatest snowfalls. Let's see how that 3 week period mid-Winter does, even if models aren't showing much right now. 

Besides that, the lowest Baltimore's average high goes to is 38F on Jan 27, and DC has an average high at the lowest point of 40F. average x average is still not good enough. So we can fail on both sides, if more extremes aren't being met. Our last -PDO was with -NAO, this one is very +NAO. Kind of a big difference for coastal SLP. I would like to see a west-based El Nino like 02-03 or a El Nino/-QBO like 09-10.. now 23-24 was El Nino/-QBO but it was very -PDO and an east based event. east-based El Nino's and -PDO are actually the warmest Winters for the CONUS since 1950. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Ok so basically once a decade if we get super lucky and time up a moderate modoki nino with a solar minimum it can still snow. 

Lowest Winter DJFM NAO since 10-11 was -0.24 mean. 13/14 years positive. 19/19 months of >1.11 all positive. We just need to break that. I think it's somewhat decadal. 

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

In the Summer I was seeing that really cold 500mb 60-90N and negative SLP (large -8 anomaly over the whole arctic circle June to August) -- I was seeing that these things strongly preceded -AO Winter's. It was a really strong signal, like the plus and minus side of the equation has hit every time since 2012. So I was bullish on this Winter for thinking it would be mostly -AO. You know -AO is our best snow pattern. It is turning out to be more of a -AO Winter, but the STJ has been dry up to this point. It does look like after Jan 21/22, it will get wetter. I'm not ready to say this Winter one side of a fail coin, because I think there is high potential Jan 23 - Feb 10. We might even do average snowfall by then. 384hr long range ensembles are showing an east+PNA, which you know correlates with our greatest snowfalls. Let's see how that 3 week period mid-Winter does, even if models aren't showing much right now. 

Besides that, the lowest Baltimore's average high goes to is 38F on Jan 27, and DC has an average high at the lowest point of 40F. average x average is still not good enough. So we can fail on both sides, if more extremes aren't being met. Our last -PDO was with -NAO, this one is very +NAO. Kind of a big difference for coastal SLP. I would like to see a west-based El Nino like 02-03 or a El Nino/-QBO like 09-10.. now 23-24 was El Nino/-QBO but it was very -PDO and an east based event. 

Damn man. Hats off to you. I can’t argue with a single thing in this post. And I’m a debate coach. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

8 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

There were cold weeks in 2016. We even had several storms suppressed. One 6-10” snow missed us to the south!  We had that clipper with temps in the teens. It’s just December and the warm weeks the rest of the winter wiped out the cold in the means.  But what Chuck is talking about is a pattern that would flood the US with pac puke and make it hard to get snow even if we did luck into a perspective coastal. That happened in 2024. The snow we got that winter ironically came during the 2 weeks that were acting like a Nina and we lucked into some weak ass boundary waves. The rest of the winter was warm and wet and the track and timing of storms didn’t matter because there was no cold anywhere. 

In January 2024 we got some snow events when the NAO went negative. In stronger El Nino's with a big low pressure in the N. Pacific, a -NAO could be the difference between nothing and a big one. I just don't think we are there with the NAO yet at least consistently, maybe in 5-10 years.. 

[Terpeast]

10 minutes ago, bncho said:

send maps, i don't see it anywhere

Some maps I look at are for commercial use  and can’t share publicly

[bncho]

3 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Some maps I look at are for commercial use  and can’t share publicly

There's an 18z EPS that goes out to 360? Lucky bastard.

[Terpeast]

Just now, bncho said:

There's an 18z EPS that goes out to 360? Lucky bastard.

No there isn’t. I was looking at 12z

[bncho]

1 minute ago, Terpeast said:

No there isn’t. I was looking at 12z

Ah really? Why the discrepancy in snowfall totals? EPS on WxBELL has a mean of 4" going out to 360 hrs. 

[ravensrule]

23 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Damn man. Hats off to you. I can’t argue with a single thing in this post. And I’m a debate coach. 

I have heard that you are a master debater.