January 2026 Medium/Long Range Discussion

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, ravensrule said:

I have heard that you are a master debater.

Feel better? 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

36 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

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

Well -NAO's are happening much more frequently during, or after, Solar Min's than Solar Maxes. We had a Solar Max until Summer 2025, so there is actually a 0 to +4 year lag after Solar Max for cold season +NAO (0.25 correlation, or 62.5% of the time), and a 0 to +4 year lag after Solar Min for cold season -NAO (0.25 correlation, or 62.5% of the time). The lag after Solar Cycle has us in +NAO probability until Summer 2029. 

[ravensrule]

11 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Feel better? 

Why would i feel better, you can’t beat a master debater. 

[Huffwx]

21 minutes ago, ravensrule said:

Why would i feel better, you can’t beat a master debater. 

He could be a cunning linguistic.. 

[high risk]

8 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

Magic. I think it heavily weights meso models? @high risk? So maybe the SREFs pummel us?

     

           The deterministic NBM snow product does indeed weight the meso models more, but that's too far out to include them.   Even the SREF wasn't in range.   I looked at the forecast in question, and the amount of forecasted snow was only around 1.5", but it was largely driven by some very snowy GEFS members.    Of note, the winter products in the NBM update at 01, 07, 13, and 19Z.    The 19Z products will include the 12Z GFS but NOT the 12Z ECMWF (which hasn't yet arrived by the time that the NBM winter suite is run). 

 

[SnowenOutThere]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

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. 

Never forget Jan 6th (2024) and an inch of rain from a juiced up southern disturbance that was just a bit too warm. Just didn’t have any good cold air. 

[Maestrobjwa]

2 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Never forget Jan 6th (2024) and an inch of rain from a juiced up southern disturbance that was just a bit too warm. Just didn’t have any good cold air. 

I was just trying to remember what made that winter fail, smh Ah that was the "cold air trapped on the other side of the globe" winter...

[cbmclean]

52 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Well -NAO's are happening much more frequently during, or after, Solar Min's than Solar Maxes. We had a Solar Max until Summer 2025, so there is actually a 0 to +4 year lag after Solar Max for cold season +NAO (0.25 correlation, or 62.5% of the time), and a 0 to +4 year lag after Solar Min for cold season -NAO (0.25 correlation, or 62.5% of the time). The lag after Solar Cycle has us in +NAO probability until Summer 2029. 

Do you believe that the AMO is a real thing?

[Eskimo Joe]

7 minutes ago, high risk said:

The deterministic NBM snow product does indeed weight the meso models more, but that's too far out to include them.   Even the SREF wasn't in range.   I looked at the forecast in question, and the amount of forecasted snow was only around 1.5", but it was largely driven by some very snowy GEFS members.    Of note, the winter products in the NBM update at 01, 07, 13, and 19Z.    The 19Z products will include the 12Z GFS but NOT the 12Z ECMWF (which hasn't yet arrived by the time that the NBM winter suite is run). 

Interesting - is the Euro always late for NBM?

[Maestrobjwa]

1 hour 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. 

Speaking of that -PDO (which is getting on my dang nerves, lol), man I just flipped through the PDO cycles...and never has any other time in recent history have there been so many -2s and 3s (and an all-time record -4!) in any other -PDO cycles than we have in this one. I mean goodness gracious is the elephant driving this too? And I'm wondering when we'll know it's finally easing up instead of just the natural fluctuations within the cycle.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

9 minutes ago, cbmclean said:

Do you believe that the AMO is a real thing?

It's kind of hard to explain the 1980s cold phase otherwise. We have seen, on record, 5 swings between positive and negative, each spanning about the same amount of time. I think recent +AMO in comparison to global SSTA does look about even though. In 2023 and 2024 the Atlantic was warmest on record, and that fit a typical std a the peak of an AMO cycle. Would I say that the 2030s and 2040s will probably be -AMO, or cold Atlantic SSTA? lol, probably not. But I do think it could come down to near average for a few decades, or at least stop breaking records. That's one thing I honestly have to read more up on. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Speaking of that -PDO (which is getting on my dang nerves, lol), man I just flipped through the PDO cycles...and never has any other time in recent history have there been so many -2s and 3s (and an all-time record -4!) in any other -PDO cycles than we have in this one. I mean goodness gracious is the elephant driving this too? And I'm wondering when we'll know it's finally easing up instead of just the natural fluctuations within the cycle.

Believe it or not though, the 3 lowest PDO's on record for the preceding Summer or Fall were all cold following Dec-Jan's in the Northeast (1955-6, 2024-5, 2025-6). 

[high risk]

 

 I know that there is a lot of frustration in this thread, and I completely get it, but the "the models suck way more than they used to crowd" (and it's only a few people) really needs to go take a deep breath.   Attached are two 500mb GFS forecasts for the same valid time, made 12 hours apart.   On the hemispheric scale, they're pretty freaking similar.    Unfortunately, there are some minor differences with the handling of the eastern trough, at least partially driven the trailing wave over the upper Midwest.    And UGH - those differences are enough to change the track of the east coast low by about 150 miles, and the resulting impact on the band of significant weather is the difference between us having 4" of snow or a partly cloudy day.    

We all want these perfect fat and wet southern stream systems that we can easily track for days with minimal stress, but the reality is that northern stream systems are dicey as hell.   They're small, and they're initialized in data sparse regions.   I looked at the two features that will drive the Sunday "event",  and the lead wave yesterday broke off of a vortex in central Canada, and I could barely trace the trailing wave back to the polar regions.   The small changes in the handling of those features unfortunately cause major changes in the outcome for us.    And it should be noted while not every modeling system has shown a good event here Sunday with that trough, they have all bounced around a lot with those two waves and the resulting impact on east coast low formation and associated precip stripe.    That speaks to the incredible challenges of complicated northern stream evolution.   There is where ensembles help a lot, but we really need to move away from using means (at least inside of Day 5) and focus more on exceedance probabilities, because a handful of snowy solutions among a large number of dry ones can really influence the mean value.

Let's hope that we get buried before Valentine's Day so that any further complicated Miller Bs don't cause the chaos in this forum that this one has.

 

[high risk]

12 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Interesting - is the Euro always late for NBM?

      Yes, especially for the Euro ensembles which arrive so much later than the GEFS and GEPS.

[87storms]

1 hour ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Well -NAO's are happening much more frequently during, or after, Solar Min's than Solar Maxes. We had a Solar Max until Summer 2025, so there is actually a 0 to +4 year lag after Solar Max for cold season +NAO (0.25 correlation, or 62.5% of the time), and a 0 to +4 year lag after Solar Min for cold season -NAO (0.25 correlation, or 62.5% of the time). The lag after Solar Cycle has us in +NAO probability until Summer 2029. 

That’s actually a pretty weak correlation with the relationship potentially caused by outliers. Not sure where you got the 62.5% from unless you were looking at a sample of data? I only say that because R^2 in that case is 6.25%. I think when looking at these indices, it’s easy to get caught in a chicken/egg loop unless there’s clearly pressure-level  signals for snowier winters like with nao/ao, etc.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

12 minutes ago, 87storms said:

That’s actually a pretty weak correlation with the relationship potentially caused by outliers. Not sure where you got the 62.5% from unless you were looking at a sample of data? I only say that because R^2 in that case is 6.25%. I think when looking at these indices, it’s easy to get caught in a chicken/egg loop unless there’s clearly pressure-level  signals for snowier winters like with nao/ao, etc.

+0.5 correlation is one side more than another, so 75/100 overall. 0.0 correlation is 50/100. I'm talking about % chance of an outcome. That makes +0.25 correlation 62.5/100 overall. -0.5 correlation would be 25/100. I use the CDC linear correlation maps as a base, and they use all data, positive and negative, 1948-2020. 

[LP08]

So the NAM has snow for Sunday FYI.

[bncho]

22 minutes ago, high risk said:

 

 I know that there is a lot of frustration in this thread, and I completely get it, but the "the models suck way more than they used to crowd" (and it's only a few people) really needs to go take a deep breath.   Attached are two 500mb GFS forecasts for the same valid time, made 12 hours apart.   On the hemispheric scale, they're pretty freaking similar.    Unfortunately, there are some minor differences with the handling of the eastern trough, at least partially driven the trailing wave over the upper Midwest.    And UGH - those differences are enough to change the track of the east coast low by about 150 miles, and the resulting impact on the band of significant weather is the difference between us having 4" of snow or a partly cloudy day.    

We all want these perfect fat and wet southern stream systems that we can easily track for days with minimal stress, but the reality is that northern stream systems are dicey as hell.   They're small, and they're initialized in data sparse regions.   I looked at the two features that will drive the Sunday "event",  and the lead wave yesterday broke off of a vortex in central Canada, and I could barely trace the trailing wave back to the polar regions.   The small changes in the handling of those features unfortunately cause major changes in the outcome for us.    And it should be noted while not every modeling system has shown a good event here Sunday with that trough, they have all bounced around a lot with those two waves and the resulting impact on east coast low formation and associated precip stripe.    That speaks to the incredible challenges of complicated northern stream evolution.   There is where ensembles help a lot, but we really need to move away from using means (at least inside of Day 5) and focus more on exceedance probabilities, because a handful of snowy solutions among a large number of dry ones can really influence the mean value.

Let's hope that we get buried before Valentine's Day so that any further complicated Miller Bs don't cause the chaos in this forum that this one has.

 

I would say that this idea that the models are worse than they are is largely stemmed from the fact that we've been in a more volatile Nina base state for the last 5+ years.

[Solution Man]

Nam @ 60 showing love

[WeatherGeek2025]

Just now, Solution Man said:

Nam @ 60 showing love

looks like AI GFS 18z same timeframes

[bncho]

NAM better than 18z

[bncho]

 but surface temps are kinda warm, yuck

[Amped]

Nam has more ridging offshore and it's keeping the troff axis further west over Indiana at 60hrs. 

EDIT: And it still gets booted offshore at 66hrs. Need that troff to stay intact longer.

[high risk]

3 minutes ago, bncho said:

I would say that this idea that the models are worse than they are is largely stemmed from the fact that we've been in a more volatile Nina base state for the last 5+ years.

          I agree.   Any pattern that generally prevents "clean" southern stream waves is going to have limited predictability in the medium range.

[Terpeast]

12 minutes ago, bncho said:

NAM better than 18z

Fringed