ORH_wxman

Probably any solid warning event would. But not counting on anything for that threat. It would be a bonus if we got something though. If it’s gonna happen though we prob want to see some improvements on the 00z or 12z guidance here soon. 12z tomorrow puts us inside of 6 days and the key pieces will already be inside of 5 days.

Yeah climo at 850 starts going toward like -6 to -8 in this area so moderately AN temps in that layer aren’t a death knell for snow. Euro guidance is also warmer than the others. If we can go split flow, then you end up with something more like +2 departures at 850 with a favorable storm track and that is doable.

Ok yeah I agree the double digit positive departures aren’t going to sustain. They usually don’t. It looks like a lot of those airmasses where the high is 37-43 but cold enough for snow when a storm system approaches. We kind of had a pattern with temps like that in Jan 2021 but we whiffed on most of the storm threats. However, that pattern was mostly a stale NAO block while this one does have western ridging which is more conductive to storm threats.

While noreaster27 always predicts warmth regardless of the pattern shown, I don’t totally disagree this time. It doesn’t look cold. Just colder than the blowtorch we get in the next week but prob still above normal. But it’s a better looking pattern to try and get winter storms in here since we get more western ridging and there’s a lot of split flow showing up. We may get a little more actual cold after the 2nd week of Jan but that is a lot more speculative. A lot of guidance keeps retrograding the Canada ridge which then re-establishes a cross-polar look and more cold. But that would likely happen around or after 1/15ish.

I’d love to see some of the upper air maps from the 1870s/1880s…historically I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a volatile 10-15 year period. You had some epic cold in the early 1870s and some epic warmth in late 1870s (I think 1877-78 is still the warmest winter in record for a large swath of upper plains to western Midwest…it’s like 5F warmer than 2nd place I think at MSP, lol)….then you oscillated between some epic warmth and cold in the 1880s…and we have March 1888 to top it off.

Check against 1/6/07 too. I think that day cracked 70F across a lot of eastern MA. Or check New Years Day 1876….mud up to thy knickers as sleighing was not favorable that day.

Crushed the daily record by 6F so far. I’m still always amazed at the 70F on 12/29/84 when I look at record highs around this time. Then I see an 8/-3 day on the same date in 2017. Late Dec seems to have the highest variance of temps than any other time of year…anecdotally anyway. I’d have to run the numbers.

Going on a hike this afternoon once the youngest wakes up from nap. Gotta take advantage of these days. Beats the useless cold we just had with bare cracked ground.

Still a lot of uncertainty beyond 1/5. GFS suite has been more aggressive on the cold…esp post 1/10. Euro suite not as much…it’s been more of a stale polar airmass look which is kind of what we had for a while in Jan 2021 before the pattern flipped to colder/snowier in the Jan 25-Feb 15 timeframe.

Forecasting a pattern and forecasting specific storms threats, etc are definitely two different things. The Dec 9-25 period is a good illustration. The general pattern was forecasted quite well. I’ve posted the composite. The individual storm threats were a total nightmare to forecast during that period.

Dissenting points of view are definitely welcome. But they will be mocked mercilessly if they don’t have much substance or science to it.

It can be. No guarantees though. It’s a good way to “reshuffle” the hemispheric pattern though. It will help make coastals a little more favorable than a classic base state La Niña pattern.

Yep if you wanted a break from La Niña, the upcoming pattern has granted that wish. Both N PAC and the North America pattern look like El Niño boilerplate.

It’s basically split flow with above normal heights over most of Canada but BN over the south in the LR. Very El Niño-ish. It can work as long as you keep the flow split…Jan ‘83 was like that and so was Jan 2016….but I like how in this case, the STJ wouldn’t be as raging.

Retro that mean ridge a bit back toward Rockies like weeklies and GEFS have and it would prob start getting a lot colder. Not Jan 2003 cold…that is one of the colder Januarys in the pst few decades…but still colder than we’ve been. Kind of weird seeing very low gradient in the height field in a Niña though. Might give us some chances in a meh pattern coming up here in the next 7-10 days.

No, midweek system is like 1/3. We’re talking end of week.

That man high has been showing up a bit more on various runs. Even some of the EPS members had it. It’s watchable at least. Better than nothing to track. Also, getting an event on 1/5 would be a bit of a bonus when we were mostly writing off until at least 1/8-1/9

Low confidence forecasts. I mentioned this yesterday but the long range guidance is not confident on the look past the first week of Jan. This isn’t high confidence like we saw with the monster December NAO block and -EPO block. Ensembles were very confident with not a ton of spread.

Actually impressive how close the match is on the pattern over much of North America…except we got the PV trapped under the Baffin block in Dec ‘55 which actually just gave us suppression depression and frigid temps.

Meteorological winter is just a designated date on the calendar. It doesn’t mean anything in terms of sensible wx. Early March is a lot more wintry than early December. If you asked me what our coldest/snowiest 3 month period is from a climo standpoint, I’d prob say something like 12/10-3/10…maybe even 12/15-3/15.

I love when people at 1200 feet in ORH county try and credibly claim winter is over on Feb 28.

Yeah it’s possible there’s a connection. Those were both brutal stretches here too. That ‘32-44 stretch was nearly as bad as the ‘79-‘92 stretch here.

There were some good mid-Atlantic winters that decade. Esp southern and coastal mid-Atlantic. Like jersey shore area down to Delmarva. But they were brutal up here. There were basically 3 solid winters that decade but no true blockbuster winters. ‘86-87 was close I guess. And there were some awful rats. Just god-awful snow totals in spots multiple years.

We’re just worried about him. Sometimes we have to whip him back into winter mode, even if it means dragging him there while kicking and screaming.