Stormchaserchuck1

0z EPS at 360hr is continuing to show a favorable N. Hemisphere pattern for cold, and possibly snow the last few days of January. I like this +PNA in the N. Pacific (which is something we have not seen much of in the last 10 years) And -AO all the way up north.

4 days is still a long ways to go. I'm more worried about this being mostly rain or slop than anything else.

It's the NAM, but

0z NAM is pushing the energy further west at 57hr vs 18z NAM at 63hr fwiw

It's all about the N. Hemisphere 500mb pattern. There are strong patterns in certain places in the hemisphere when DC/Baltimore gets >7" snowstorms. When the pattern is cold, with room to spare, long range threats/patterns are worth following. We have -AO tendency this Winter, December was colder than average in the Northeast and we are probably colder than average in the 2nd half of January. I've been pretty bullish on the Winter pattern general, although the STJ is really dry. The last few days of January has potential, imo. And maybe early February. ENSO subsurface Kelvin wave is occurring, and that historically correlates with more +PNA in the north pacific. Give us -AO running south into a ridge over Greenland, with a 50/50 low under it, and the pattern looks suddenly favorable. Unfortunately it's 15 days out, but it does have support with things actually occurring, like in ENSO, and Winter -AO tendency from -SLP 60-90N this past warm season (correlation good since 2012).

I am liking how the extended range is looking on current modeling. ~Jan 27th timeframe. Not real strong anomalies, but the placement of things looks good

6z NAM at 84hr is much flatter than the 0z GFS at 90hr

Some signs of a 50/50 low getting organized on the 384hr GEFS

Geez -- do we have to worry about more rain??

I just don't think the larger scale features are in place.. temps are too warm/borderline. I would go with mostly rain, 1-3" snow upside. +EPOs in the medium range Ive seen so many times are underestimated, the surface warm air. The trend goes more cutoff, probably mid 30s or a degree or two above freezing. Without more northern stream interaction the low doesn't bomb as much.

Yikes 41F in DC. The problem is we are just coming out of +epo which keeps the northern stream cutoff somewhat.

Well at least we are going into a cold pattern again. PNA is changing to positive (it still hasn't been positive a single day this Winter - since Dec 1) Which is supported by the ENSO subsurface - I have found when warm water makes it east of the dateline, +PNA is more likely to occur. Kelvin waves impact the N. Pacific pattern, my theory. I think we'll have some good shots at snowstorm when the new pattern sets in, this early stuff is the thread the needle, trough is still progressive and it's unlikely that we'll get 18 hours of rain, then a blizzard on the backend with how dry the pattern has been. I think later on - last week of January and maybe going into Feb we will have some high probability snowstorm chances

@GaWx Jan 9th-on looks like a +PNA pattern in the N. Pacific/N. America. It's interesting that this has been more of a model trend, as they didn't really show this much +pna in the medium/long range. Donsutherland has done research showing a strong -PNA switch to +PNA, too. Also, see how the warm central-ENSO-subsurface is correlating with more +PNA conditions as the warm water makes it east of the the dateline? We are going back to a cold pattern.

CPC has above average precip in the Mid Atlantic too, which would definitely translate to snow chances in the coldest 2 weeks of the year. We will have to do cold with -EPO/-WPO though, because the long range models are building a +NAO pattern in the Atlantic. We have ridging possibly at 90N, and then a south-based +NAO underneath of it. We saw the same pattern last February.

Very interesting crash in Natural Gas over the last 4 weeks This is now one of the lowest prices on record for January vs inflation. This is showing probability for a very +NAO for the rest of this Winter, and imo some sign for +NAO next Winter too. CPC continues to predict cold for the Northeast.. will the price rise from $2.63 by Feb 6th? stay tuned... So far the price has not moved up after a cold January forecast call for the Northeast. I went back and analoged it and found a weak East coast, US signal for January vs a very strong Europe signal.. central Europe was like +8F in the mean... it's very NAO-weighted.