40/70 Benchmark

It will be tough to keep up with my blog given all of the winter activity and the post bumping that I'll need to do over the next several weeks.

Yup. Apples and oranges to compare that forecast and mine...different animals. Not at all meant to impugn their work...it is what it is. That forecast has more utility for the energy market, etc imo.

Extremely high confidence...and yes, I hope. This is a slam dunk call imo.

I think the issue is that for forecasting purposes, probability forecasting just isn't that useful. It doesn't tell you a great deal about the evolution of winter.

Great start, terrible last 6 weeks. Great second half.

I'm pretty sure they missed the huge ending, though. Also begs the question...how do we know from a temp and precip forecast that they have forecaste "wall to wall pacific jet"?

Still drinking?

Happy New Year, bro.....and Great Snow 1717..same to you. We'll see what happens. How much did you get in Wilmington, Greg? .5" in Methuen...

I'll answer this in a month. It will be clearer then. I'm not derailing the futility thread.

They aren't idiots...but they factored it in incorrectly. Just like they did the la nina last season...I explained why their thoughts were flawed in November, and reiterated why they were in March. I'll do it again this season.

Over on all four.

Zero changes for January, or the balance of winter for that matter, as previously referenced SSW is underway....still looks to finish slightly above average temps in the aggregate, as laid out in November. Everything remains on track for the window of opportunity for severe winter weather to begin on January 20th through approximately February 20, as originally laid out on November 12th. Absolutely zero has/will be altered or "pushed back". It is in fact guidance that had been trying rush said changes adjusting to better fit the the original date of 1/20, as anticipated. Other forecasters who had been predicting a severely cold month of January in the mean are also scrambling to adjust expectations, which has also clouded the perception of the general populous and is creating unwarranted consternstion amongst winter weather aficionados. It is most unfortunate that this concept is lost on some posters. Will update with a more precise comparison of December evolution relative to expectation, but the forecast was a success, in contrast to some other outlooks arguing for a harsher onset to boreal winter 2018-2019.

1968-1969 was one of my main analogs and the best ENSO match imo. It was a relatively late blooming modoki that peaked near the cusp of weak-moderate, but had a similarly meager MEI...more representative of a marginally weak modoki, nearly ENSO neutral. Reflective of the struggle of the atmosphere and ocean to couple early on in the season. It also provided the impetus behind my decision to hold off the PNA early on in the season. Main difference being less NAO and more PNA in the JM aggregate this year relative to 1969, which was extreme.

Hi was 38.5* at 3:05pm today. Currently 35.1/34.8 and fog

38.1/37.8 on my station at home.

The fact that we did not get a significant snowstorm in early December was bad luck. The favorable pattern materialized, but there was simply too much confluence. Things like that can not be predicted from a seasonal standpoint.....entirely stochastic in nature.

Should be the best gtg in many years.

The body of your work is second to none, but I have a bit of a qualm with implying that the relaxation during the second half of December was unpredictable.....especially with regard to the struggles to maintain a PNA. There was a signal if you utilized the analogs correctly. This is why I didn't go hung-ho on December...in fact, were it not for the emergence of that Scandinavian ridging at the 11th hour, I would have gone for a torch December, rather than the simply unremarkable month that was predicated and verified quite well. But that riding caused me to back off because it I interpreted it as hint that the stratosphere and troposphere were going couple quite early and proficiently this season. I will grant you that I would not have been able to identify the "smoking gun", or mechanism for the relaxation, so to speak....as I am not as skilled as you are in that regard. However sometime the cruder methodology of exhaustively pouring over the analog set pays dividends.

27.1/18.3 Hopefully it warms up quickly...all set with nuisance crap for the commute.

I can get there at 1pm.

No worries....I just tossed a time out. Maybe 3?

It says 1pm

I think the force is with this one.

It was meant to evolve as both, and I think that it ultimately well. Not a HECS in 1/19, but rather tracking at that point. Should be a very fun gtg....like the gtgs of yore.

You in?