Bob Chill

Considering enso, climo, and recent pac jet history... oh boy is it easy to jump to doomclusions lol. I never really felt that this fall. Just gut stuff but I've watched enough unfold over the last 20 years to trust my intuition algorithm. Now that we're deep into fall, my conscious mind likes what it sees. Like I said some weeks back, my gut is yelling that this winter will have its highlights that will put it ahead of the last couple years. Warm periods will almost certainly include some form of an annoying SER. But i really doubt it will be a statue. HL blocking has been flexing on and off quite a bit last few months. No reason to think that goes poof.... yet.... lol

Past week has been pretty epic. Best fall for me in some years. Weather is off the chain. One for the books

Beats me but ninos do it in their own way too. Remember this, Nina's are a math calculation based on SSTAs in a specific (small but impactful) region of the Pacific. That's all they are. Sensible wx in various regions of the hemisphere are influenced by many other things. Second year "Nina's" are often just plain strange when you compare it to classic Nina weather. Ninos have hangovers no matter what enso does the second year. So it's not just Nina's. We simply don't live in an area that gets back to back good snow years with few exceptions. Enso can't save us from that. Too much other stuff works against us by default (latitude). Nowadays, weather has been so volatile that old school thinking is no longer working. That's a big reason I don't engage during the fall much anymore. All that conventional thinking has been getting tossed by mid Dec as "real winter" shows up lol. Our snow climo has always kinda stunk. 70s and 80s werent really that different than today with weenie suicides. Us old timers like to memory compress the 70/80s. There were a few epic periods of snow and some epic cold but I wore no jacket to middle and high school quite often every winter. Early 80s were terrible except for Feb 83. Lots of warm. Lots of mixed or no frozen. Some epic cold with not a drop of precip and plenty of failed hopes and dreams. Big storms were really rare too. 79 was the first big storm I experienced in MD and my parents moved here in 72. After 1979, the next one was 83. I lived in MD for 11 years and only experienced 2 big storms. 95-96 and 02-03 individually destroyed the entire 11 year period lol. Now we expect big storms on the regular. Which isn't unreasonable because storms are clearly more energetic than 20+ years ago. On the flip side, while we occasionally enjoy more energetic storms, there seems to be a shift away from old school 1-5" storms. Especially early season. Some of it is temp related but not all. Energetic NS shortwaves like clippers were a staple in MD for as long as I can remember but something shut off after 2015 and hasn't come back. Starting to think it's permanent and sure hope I'm wrong.... Winters in the dmv (for snowlovers) have been annoying as heck for the 40 years I lived through them and they will continue to be annoying long after I'm gone lol

The marine heatwave near Japan is wild. Mt Fuji is still brown (or was recently) breaking a 100+ year record. The way we've looked at things for many years, the pdo in its current state is a pretty easy winter cancel feature. I don't disagree much. But the extent and departure from normal is so great, my gut is telling me that it will cause an anomalous surprise downstream (somewhere). Conventional LR forecasting of the winter hemispheric LW pattern hasn't been working well with man or machine over the last handful of years. Things just aren't lining up and unexpected things keep overwhelming. So what's it going to be this year? Classic warm east/snow dud nina or something nobody can predict that surprises people? Time will tell. I'm feeling a positive surprise and I'll go down with the ship at this point. That said, positive surprise doesn't mean 13-14 walking in the door imo lol. More like active enough and cold enough at times to satisfy those who expect a classic dud. Something like that.

October is actually pretty late. If we're staring down a Nina with a possible back to backer, he'll cancel 12+ months in advance.

Things are kickin in good down here now. Wife caught these early AM shots headin to our land.

Still some work to do at lake level but i dig lake reflection pics. Approx 620' at the lake and around 800' in my driveway pic.

Spent time working on our property in Sandy Level. Young hardwoods under the mature canopy are peaking nicely. Always love the contrast with the pines. There are a lot of native mixed pine forests down here so fall has a lot of deep contrasts. Love it.

Looks like peak down here is happening above 1500'. Still some work to do below that. This is the west side of smith mtn in penhook today. Top of ridge is 1800-2k'. Weather has been insane last 10 days. Reminds of of early fall in CO. Blue skies and dry for days

For overall winter flavor, my top analogs are 83-84, 03-04, 05-06. Gun to head, Dec will be in play this year but being in play and actually snowing are separate discussions lol. Like I alluded to last week with my wag, warm periods will be warm+ and overwhelm any chance at a BN DJF but the cold periods will be sharp. Maybe one month ends BN. My gut says Jan is the best chance at that but recent (persistant) trend is late cold so March is probably more logical. Just spitballin' there. If the Nino hangover guess works out then a stj storm in Jan or Feb could make the winter memorable by itself. I like Terp's forecast in general but I can't stop thinking the Npac LW pattern won't be classic Nina. A tendency for Aleutian ridging poleward and further east than classic is my against the grain thought. Downstream it would bully the classic SE ridge placement further east. SE ridge delaying and shunting aggressive cold shots has been a real thorn last handful of years. Models have been terrible in mid/long range with that. My guess is that will still be a problem but just less of one than recent years. At times it won't be a problem at all due to my upstream guess. Lots of guessin out of me this year lol

Predicting nina climo with a warmish background is a pretty safe and easy guess this year. My problem with that is over the last 5-10 years there has been an against the grain longwave feature more often than not and few if any point it out in advance. Mega epos, ninos strangely behaving like Nina's and vice versa producing confusing periods of met winter, pac jets on meth, and all that jazz. So what's it going to be this year? What's the key unusual feature(s) that will rear its head? I'm not a big fan of right for the wrong reasons with snowfall. Personally, I'd much rather see a long ranger blow the snow side of forecast but nail the red headed stepchild in the upper levels. That's a show of deeper skills and ability to think critically no matter what books and other people say (IMHO only ofc). Far easier said than done but we're in a string of winters with unexpected dominent LW features. There seems to be a propensity to buck climo. Chaos or more volatile climate? Beats me but things going as planned seems to be no longer part of the plan. Hahaha lol I'll take a crack at it.... No deep analysis here. Just intuition and observation. In a nutshell, I think the -epo is coming back. That doesn't mean easy snow without precise alignment. If anything it favors cold enough for snow but it doesn't want to snow lol. Below normal temps for DJF are never coming easy again for large swaths of the NH I don't think. Oceans are fighting that. But cold outbreaks in the east are always possible. I expect some in each month of DJF. Storm track is always a problem so it will be again but my intuition says there will be some setups that look more like a nino than a nina. A hangover of sorts. I don't expect an active or hibernating STJ but i do believe it will be present at times and briefly remind us of a nino. Lastly, I have a hunch we get some blocking and it will include Dec. Doesn't mean cold and snow. Just means tracking won't be boring or hopeless. On the balance I believe this winter will continue being weird and make people scratch heads but in the end it will be acceptable. That's all I got.

The WORST fookin invention was cheap motion detection floods. Walking the dog at night last 5 years in Rockville was a game of cat and mouse with floods. When we bought our Rockville house in 02, our rear neighbors had 2 floods on 24/7 in the back yard. Omg annoyed the hell out of me but I was new to the hood so didn't want to be a jerk and complain so I did the next smartest thing.... Drank about 6 beers on my patio and wandered up the yard and tresspassed into theirs with a 5 gal bucket to stand on around 1am. Then gently unscrewed bulbs till they went out. That was it. They never screwed them back in for 20 years lol. Same bulbs were in the fixtures when we sold. So why did they even have them on in the first place? Well, they clearly had no f'n idea either hahahaha

The May one was more intense and vivid but you guys in the dmv got hosed by clouds. Last night was pretty epic tho but that may deal down here in swva was astounding and I've seen NLs in Canada back in 96. Those were a pure 2 tab acid trip. May was a modest shroom trip but the location made it kinda mind boggling

Reminds me of a night in college

Wow. What a night. We went down to the lake and it was stunning. Naked eye no problem but long exposure pics kill it lol.