ORH_wxman

Fwiw, weeklies still showing a very favorable look for late Dec through the end of the run to mid-January.

Trolls can and should be banned...people who aren't here in good faith will be banned/5-posted/suspended....whatever. Differing opinions are great....but keep the discourse cordial and scientific.

Yeah 2-3 weeks out should always be treated with some skepticism....at least there's very good agreement right now though and that type of prog does match El Nino climo on some level.

If we have a low frequency standing wave near dateline by later this month, into January, then we want to root for MJO to be weak as we head later into winter....we'd prefer as little as possible disturbing the standing wave.

Yep. if the guidance was unanimous for warmth late month, you'd see hundreds of posts locking it in as definitely going to happen.....good sign that you've lost objectivity when that happens. It's fine to be skeptical, but it should be done both directions and using solid evidence. The reason for the milder outcome in mid-December versus a week or two ago on guidance is the MJO wave strongly progressing into phases 5/6 whereas previously it was dying back into the COD by phase 4. But the flip side of that coin is that we're likely to see phase 8 by 12/20ish, so better outcomes won't be too long after that. The bigger question going forward is how static is the forcing in the 8/1/2 region after that? Do we sort of get a standing wave there for a while to really rack up chances? Or does it cycle through within a couple weeks and we get another thaw mid-January....both are possibilities.

Yeah the cutter is very likely happening around Dec 10....beyond that is somewhat uncertain. Not a good pattern but not a total hopeless one either. Still looking good on extended guidance for late month....we'll see how that pans out, but it's kind of remarkable how consistent the weeklies and other longer range guidance have been about flipping to a much more favorable pattern in late Dec and then as we head into January. IT is likely due to very good agreement on all that guidance of the MJO heading into phase 8 by roughly 12/20-12/22.

Good lift in DGZ in the IVT. May have to watch for a sneaky low end advisory potential for E MA…esp just off the immediate water. Wouldn’t forecast anything yet but def keep it in the back of our minds.

It’s def kind of an ugly setup but for your area it’s going to be fine because it looks like the hangback IVT stuff is going to be optimal for the mountains. You’ll get plenty of leftovers even if the synoptic lift underwhelms.

Decent shortwave. That would prob produce snow for someone if it tracked like that on 12/6. Not expecting it though until other guidance gets more amped. I still think there’s a chance for something in the several days after that too.

Kevin always prematurely starts winter around Halloween. I pretty much saw unanimous meh Decembers in all the outlooks. But I’m actually thinking we might get an event or two this month. Late month looks good and I wouldnt quite sleep yet in that Dec 7-10 period either.

Little bit of split flow trying to show up over the center of the country on some of these runs so we may need to watch. Otherwise, yeah, might be a boring period in that 12/10-12/17 range…

Nothing yet in the Kp…I guess it’s supposed to spike quite a bit though.

But the rest of the run is pretty interesting. Lol

Yeah doesn’t even give NNE much except for some upslope farts on the back side. Too warm for most of the synoptic precip until well north into Maine.

Yes. Really good look for last 10 days of Dec and first 10 of Jan.

The thing that the euro used to be great at was being the first to sniff out a distinct trend. But it no longer has that superiority. It’s still the best model, but now we often get headfakes from the euro because unlike 10 years ago, when it shows a big change from other model guidance, it’s not always correct because other model guidance isn’t as inferior to the euro than it used to be. Years ago, if models were showing an exciting solution and all of the sudden, the euro shows a big trend at 108 hours, other guidance would almost certainly cave to that way more often than not because the euro was such a better model. Nowadays, if the euro shows a unique trend that other guidance isn’t showing, we stop and say “is euro out to lunch or is it trying to score a coup like the old days?”….and the reason we say that is models like the GFS aren’t pathetically inferior to it any longer. Only modestly so.

Yeah I think that’s part of it. We also have more model runs than ever. Everything seems to run 4x per day now…so that gives a better chance of seeing model guidance change. Or we bother to scrutinize every shift and pretend it’s not noise when sometimes it is. Like dendrite said earlier, we used to wait until 7-8pm for the 12z euro to come out and that was the only euro run…it didn’t even run at 00z until like 2003 or 2004 maybe?

Yep…first week of Dec is pretty hostile still…esp outside of interior elevations. Climo rapidly gets better though as we move beyond that. Hopefully after the mid-month warmup, we can start cashing in during the 3rd and 4th weeks of the month…would be nice to have a snowy holiday period.

Yeah the relative performance of the euro has declined but not the absolute performance. Maybe it will reclaim some mojo in El Niño where it seems to have a strength with a bunch of interacting shortwaves. Despite all the handwringing, this threat is starting to evolve kind of close to expectations…best chance of snow is NNE….CNE is precarious but has a legit shot…SNE is a longer shot. 12/6 doesn’t seem to have enough room but too early to totally write it off. This all seems pretty consistent with our original thoughts…we just have a bit more confidence that 12/4 is the main show now and not 12/5-6.

The models were a lot worse back then. I forecasted with them for years…we knew some of the biases better, but their skill in every single metric was worse. I think many forget that we used to weenietag people for getting too excited about a 144 hour storm threat…now people actually take them seriously. And there’s a good reason for that….models actually sniff out storms at 144 hours way better than they did in 2008 or 2009. Hell, I remember we tracked the 12/17/20 storm from like 200+ hours out, lol…it was consistently there on guidance. That type of stuff almost never happened back then.

Euro was trying for 12/6 too but it just doesn’t have enough space. We need 12/4 to lift out quicker.

Hey there’s a reason it was called “Dr No”….lol

Their skill is definitely superior to what it was during the glory days of the euro…the problem is the Euro isn’t like 2 tiers above the closest competitors anymore so now we actually have to try and figure out which model is most correct. Prior, we could just sort of hug the euro inside of 108 hours and cruise to success. There were certain times I did not trust the euro back then…it wasn’t as good with CAD back then as it became later on (I tossed it in the trash prior to the Dec 2008 ice storm when it showed rain up to NH border in ORH county) and once in a while it wasnt great with rapidly deepening storms (ala 12/9/05 where it shat the bed)

I don’t think 12/6 is going to have enough room. Other guidance doesn’t like it. The 12/4 system doesn’t look very good either outside of far NNE unless we can get some trends toward the Euro today (which we haven’t…we’ve actually gotten worse trends so far for 12/4) Theres still some time to change things, but so far my best guess is we likely are stuck in the least optimal scenario…12/4 ends up way too warm and 12/6 gets suppressed. To be fair, this was also the most likely solution over the past couple of days.

I’d just refer to it as the 12/6 wave. Seems to be on its own with that idea for the most part since yesterday. Though there’s been a very small number of EPS members that try to show it too.