so_whats_happening

Yes we would have a late bloomer of sorts if they did connect at some point but the strength is very apparent and would only look to sustain at best a touch to moderate but most likely weak scenario, again if that were to occur. This though could set us up for an event around 2026/27 winter again a lot up in the air right now. Should have a better idea into April when things start to settle down.

Impressive! I unfortunately have not had a lot of time to look at the strat recently. I still don't know how we can claim that this was the first decent stratospheric warming event this season. Of course the middle to end of January one was impactful but we have not had a pattern sustain this winter and since no reversal occurred of course the SPV was able to maintain with the benefitting factor of a WQBO still very prevalent. There was some brief connection over the Alaska/ NW Canada region for a bit this year again sustainability was the issue. I don't know how anyone could make the claim a near record fast/strong SPV could suddenly disintegrate like that and have a near 90m/s+ drop that is unheard of. I'm sure at some point in the past it may have happened but not within our records. It is typically common to have a solid attack weaken the structure and then have a second attack that finishes it. The thing is there is not always a second attack so that was always the question at hand. Maybe it was the faster pac jet that was able to cause the pattern to not be able to sustain this year? Will be interesting to look at over the summer.

This will be very interesting to see what happens. Subsurface would suggest as of now a potential rejected EL nino but that does not mean it doesn't try to spread some warmer regions rather than cool neutral. It does look to be building though and there is a possibility if we do get some sort of decent WWB event it could trigger a weak Nino.

Early guess but I would expect a warm neutral ENSO next year. Im not currently seeing signs the La Nina atmospheric pattern just dissolves even if the Ocean temps don't quite resemble a weak Nina in time. It is however really impressive to see the westerly anomalies in such scope and intensity for this time of year around 1+2/ eastern 3. I think when we cross the spring barrier we should slowly continue to wane the Nina like presence into summer then by early fall having neutral stance in all regions. I do think Nino 1+2 is a bit of an eye opener but nothing looks to sustain that warmth at present. Here is the subsurface look for the past 2 months. We are not really dislodging that cold pool in the subsurface and the warm pool in the WPAC is not gaining much steam just yet I know the time stamps between the two images is not perfect 1 to 1 but you can see differences in the setup in this potential ENSO for Summer into Winter. This alone would make me think we see a decent Nino event for '26-27.

DCA _ NYC _ BOS __ ORD _ ATL _ IAH __ DEN _ PHX _ SEA +4.5 +3.9 +2.2 +4.8 +4.2 +4.1 -.5 -2.8 -1.6

Impressive changes in the PDO state over the last 3 months of SSTA. Here was the associated 500mb pattern during this time, certainly was not expecting a look like this. It is interesting to watch the PDO state try to change still unsure myself what exactly kicked off this chain reaction from constant ridging in the WPAC. In my opinion there still seems to be a disconnect between tropics and mid latitude that we would have such a strong -PDO during the Nino last year (strong/super) and to have not quite flipped but weakened significantly the -PDO with a Nina state. I still don't think we see a tri monthly below -.5 and this Nina may just get one blue numbering for trimonthly (NDJ), even I thought around -1.0 was possible this go around. Lastly, it is interesting seeing the 500mb pattern across the Pacific with the more latitudinal shift just NW of Hawaii, I believe bluewave has touched on this several times. The waters across the Pacific must have just been far too warm a lot of it seemingly just shoved further east and south. It will be interesting to see if there are lagging effects of the Nina across the Atlantic this summer for the hurricane season.

Yea I went too warm for Boston in the February forecast, bummer. Also impressed by the overall snow amounts so far this year in the mid atlantic was expecting better than the last few years but being at average to possibly quickly going to above average is nice to see. Glad an overall wetter pattern whether it be rain or snow is taking place, still in a severe drought so any bit helps.

Didnt they just have a similar event like this 2 years ago?

Lol so if a snowstorm is shown at hour 240 that makes it a reality? This notion that because a model shows in this case a split is to be believed that far out (well over 240hrs) is wild. If you bought into that is on you, people really need to start thinking for themselves honestly and stop listening to folks on social media you only lead yourself down a path of nonsense with that. Edit: To add onto this I don't think there was a single person that mentioned a split would occur just that a stratospheric warming would occur. If there was quote em.

Sorry for the late response I will have to take a look at the paper when I get a free chance then.

I still do not understand why everyone is so hellbent on this being a SPV split or not.

My god im sorry I even posted that there would be warming event in the strat. The twitter campaign out in full force cant even have a sensible discussion anymore.

DCA _ NYC _ BOS __ ORD _ ATL _ IAH __ DEN _ PHX _ SEA +2.8 +2.6 +2.4 +2.9 +4.2 +4.8 +1.1 +1.7 -3.2 Whoops my bad

The last thing I will add the only 500mb tropospheric pattern that has seemingly locked so far this year has been the Pacific pattern. The European side has been extremely transient, unfortunately, so repeated attacks have been few and far between but luckily for us the EPO has managed to help us out quite a bit even with a non consistent +PNA pattern. We do not know yet whether the European side will help aid in this event yet or if it will once again be transient.

We have been able to propagate down here and there so far this year but with the SPV being so above average it would take a rather significant event to help with downward propagation and be meaningful other than another probably 1-2 week winter like pattern that evolves.

These have all been tropospheric driven events meaning the troposphere reacted first most likely due to tropical forcings that took place. The SPV reacted as such with a weakening the issue is the SPV is strong for this time year so it could not weaken significantly so the pattern was not able to lock in like one would typically hope so we had our cold spell and reverted quickly back. The warming and weakening of the SPV is a reaction to what is going on down below now if the events taking place below are quite strong the better it translates to the SPV weakening and creating potentially a longer lasting effect into the 500mb pattern. We can connect but it doesn't always mean it will last especially with how strong the SPV is right now. This event coming up will probably be no different where initially the pattern will be driven from what takes place at 500mb the subsequent warming will ensue in the lower to upper stratosphere and maybe this could significantly disrupt the SPV going forward considering in about a month we start to talks of final warmings. Now will this make the pattern last probably not but as of now there seems to be quite a shakeup showing up that should start around mid February and provide the last little bit of winter like pattern for many areas. Edit: Forecast right now for this eddy heat flux is rather impressive so something may actually try to come of this. vtn_50_2024_merra2.pdf

I really don't have the time to get into a back forth about something that can be read through many journals. You realize it takes time for it to translate vertically right? This was not an instantaneous event nor was it ever advertised to be. Yes there is always a possibility that the east doesn't get significantly colder never mentioned once in my post that it would get significantly colder because of the warming event, maybe you inferred it differently because I said winter-like pattern?

I think we need to stop expecting every single warming event to be a major SSW I don't know why everyone seems to think that a warming event must be a reversal for us to get a winter like pattern. These reversals happen on average 2-3 times a decade based on averages, sometimes more sometimes less. A weakening of the SPV was enough to bring us some impressive cold conditions without a reversal. A reversal just extends the amount of time one of these events lock the pattern but it doesn't need to reverse in order to cause a changeup.

I do like that we saw a large spike in the MJO phase 3 this is usually a precursor to these type of events to unfold. From the looks of it we have a weakening MJO wave as it pushes into 4/5/6 and eventually 7 by about mid February. The key will be how quickly all this moves through the phases, I have a feeling we may start to halt MJO progression as we get to phase 6 and eventually 7 but how quickly we move through 4/5 will how warm the east gets. The active storm track that looks to set up may create quite the boundary across the country with the SE to Texas rather warm and mid atlantic ohio valley battling it out. Lets see what happens, one more bout of winter could bring us awfully close to seasonal average (maybe above depending on quite a few factors).

Looks like on the horizon (to about hr 240) we have yet another solid warming event taking shape in the stratosphere. We can not seem to link up both the Atlantic and Pacific ridging patterns so gotta take what we can get. This may on the level of what we saw about a month ago placement is a little off compared to the last go about but have to see how it eventually translates to the surface. Usually this time of year these connections start to become quicker in the overall affect to the 500mb pattern, I believe Stormchaserchuck may have mentioned it once or twice before. You know something is up when surface temps on the Euro in all high latitude locations start to show +20 to +30 anomalies. It looks as though the Euro may actually be trying to do a bottom up split of the SPV one caveat here is it may not fully translate to about 10mb splitting which is fine because it can still disrupt the pattern at 500mb if such a response occurs. Lets see how it translates over the next week. This would lead to a second half of February into early March not being as canonical. Everything seems to be going according to plan though where we have averageish temps to finish out the last week of January and the first week of February average to above average. Depending on storm track some areas do look to have a 1 day spike in temps to well above average but to pinpoint when and where at this time is a tough call.

Such a shame to read this but this sounds like a training issue in measuring. As a weather observer, we go through training every season/ monthly (depending on what training is needed) to refresh what may come our way. Sounds to me like they did an end of system measurement versus an hourly which would offer a completely different outcome for totals. This is an SWO/Contractor issue that will be looked into because someone will be on the line for such erroneous measurements. This tends to be an issue that comes up in areas that don't experience certain weather conditions. Since the deep south typically does not experience a lot of wintry precip and if this happens to be a newer individual that would make sense. Just like further north around here we get thunderstorms but not often hail or tornadic systems so the training is important. Also as another aside the equipment being used is very old in most locations with no plans of upgrades anytime soon, if they upgrade it would be AI generated (whenever this comes about) unless it is absolutely necessary to upgrade. Hope it gets resolved properly. Edit: just saw the part it is unmanned that would mean either two things it would be a local EMS location that undertakes that role which is probably not properly trained to do procedures like this or it was a tower individual at that location doing the obs which they should know at least a little bit better but can't get on them as they are ATC not weather. This may be an issue that arises down the road if cuts do at some point come to airport weather programs (we will see what happens). If there was no auto during those times it was being monitored by someone which most likely would have been ATC then.

Yea with this snowfall yesterday we are sitting at about a foot so far this season which is a little less than half of our yearly climo snowfall and so far on the month to month we are right near average amounts.

It does look like we are finally getting poleward movement of the Scandi ridging pattern the one thing we have been missing. This is key in allowing a potential split SPV pattern down the road. Lets see what happens.

I feel like people see -PNA and instantly think it is all over. Not the case when you have the PV on this side of the globe, now if the PV was on the weaker side over here and more pronounced over into Russia/Siberia totally different story. This should help keep the SE Ridge/ WAR (whichever you like to call it) at bay. This would offer up a country wide cold outbreak with the deeper values into the mountains that spill east over time. I do still expect a brief time period of average temps maybe even slightly above average to occur into the first week of February as the pattern we have had relaxes a bit and sets up into this but not seeing a torch event right now. Im excited to get more precip thrown into the region and have the chances go up of potential snow then what we have been having. We need the precip as this is supposed to be one of the wetter times of the year even if it does fall as rain, unfortunately it may cause a lot of flooding if it is indeed rain since the ground would be a solid brick and most rivers and lakes are pretty frozen over at this time before the cold outbreak.