Bob Chill

Technically this one isn't a clipper. It a northern stream shortwave from the Pac. We had some of these in 2014 and 2015 when the tpv acted as a block. They can carry much more juice than a clipper diving from the polar regions. Stripes are narrow but pretty juicy. Should be a fun storm

I 100% agree we wasted a historically good/great winter setup. It just never got going anywhere in the conus. Except for plenty of rain in the south (and us). Winter has been mostly absent in the entire country outside of big mountains in the west. The whole country wasted this Nino if you think about it. It will most certainly happen again just like some form of 96 will happen again. Or 2013-14. This winter didn't pick on us like some others. This one never showed up imho. It never once looked like a normal Nino even back in Dec. Wolf Creek violently agrees lol. One thing I generally bank on every single year is some part of our winter that's well thought out in advance will basically throw eggs and laugh at us. We generally do a post mortem and figure it out in the rear view. Thing is, it's usually not something repeatable. Just a prominent out of place feature throwing things off. It works both ways like what the epo did for us recently. But (imo only) these features have no predictability in advance. Cycles in cycles in cycles. The layers of complexity get pretty thick pretty quick. I'll leave that for others to wrangle with. Lol Eta: for all the great long range looks we had all year, analogs never picked up any of those good Nino years. They flashed at best but week in week out they were full of duds. Especially the top 5. I got so sick of seeing 1980 I wanted to punch people. Dec had lots of early 70s awful analogs. Even our 10 day winter in Jan was weak in the analog dept. 2004 was most common iirc and it was similar with a quick hitting cold window with a couple chances. If we're being honest, the only thing that ever looked good this year was h5 mean plots. No analogs or even ensembles under the hood showed a snowy winter in the 15 day range or less start to finish. I personally hated that part. I knew something was pretty wrong but had no thoughts as to what

I like spring here. Yea, it can get dreary with easterlies at time but on the balance I find the weather near perfect most of the time. We get a lot of low humidity 60s-70s mixed in with foggy 50s. Warm humidity doesn't hit too hard until May. My only complaint with my CO years was spring/mud season. Lasted 6-8 weeks. Spring in the rockies was so bad I used to leave the state during May.

Yea, staying out of mean lr pattern chasing is making the little setups on the horizon fun for me. I like the op gfs showing a wobbling tpv with ns energy zipping around it. Proximity to the tpv means plenty cold with any kind of organized circulation and south passing wave. Nothing to slow them down or juice them up unless a southern piece phases but it's a good way to get snow here even if quick hitting. Nickles dimes and quarters but no one dolla hollas lol

To my eyes, it's pretty simple. This covers it in one image. Snowed when neg and failed all else. Look at the size of the + peaks and how bad 14 day guidance missed the moves. All our good long range looks had nice blocking that looked stable. Ground truth was anything but. It fought us start to finish and tossed some bones. Matches our emotions perfectly. Lol. How could we have seen this in advance? Well, you can't. AO/NAO domain space is inherently volatile in the winter. 2 week forecasts are often terrible. 2 months? Idk, is that a model fail or consensus analysis being to confident in what "should happen"?. Blocking set up in early Dec and the northern tier got snow then it literally collapsed in epic proportions. Going from -3std to +3std in 10 days is not a sign of a blocky winter. It's the opposite. Hitting +3 is December alone is often ominous. I held out hope because it was way early and stable blocking is a 30-45 day thing and not 90+. Dec AO finished with a mean -.2. January did the same. That data goes against all snowy/blocky winters in any enso. The repeat -ao collapse in Jan was my personal dagger and that's why i went quiet. By that point i figured no matter how good things look down the line, ground truth will end up "un-sync'd" and disappointing from a big storm perspective. I felt strongly that we would get more snow and that a big storm is always possible, I just could no longer engage in big storm talk unless the signal was strong inside of 10 days. I also didn't want people jumping on me for canceling winter. Adjusting thoughts lower is far from canceling but is often synonymous lol. A typical blocky/snowy Nino will have at least month with an AO below -1.0 and another not far behind. Had that transpired (IMHO only), this winter would have had a different personality and vibe. I'm not denying climate evolving in any way and I don't want to have that talk. I just don't agree with how this winter in a vacuum signals a change to future ninos. The problem in my eyes is one that plagues us often. If we can't get the AO to cooperate, something else has to overwhelm. Like the epo in 2013-15. But at the end of the day, we need the AO to work for us or it's always a big struggle. This year highlights that well.

When the parking lot is full, the only option is to back into a jacked up diagonal spot on the edges. It gon snow man

Course or fine? Important detail

I don't think it's a fluke honestly. I think ninos can do this randomly in any year just as a Nina can behave very strangely some times too. If it was just our region having big issues this year I would think differently. This winter has not wanted to set up for snowfall in the east half of the country nearly start to finish. That's out of synch to me. It started weird too. The ski resorts in SW CO had an awful start to this year. I mean terrible.... in a Nino? That's quite rare (ive never seen it) but it's not temps there. The early season pattern was way out of synch for them too. I don't have a reasons thought through. Just observations. It's been an off Nino everywhere except for a mild winter. That's normal.

We can and probably will back into more stuff. I 100% agree there. That's been our savior lol and a local personality for sure. I'm watching snow as I type after 50 degree rain and no arctic (or cold) air around lol. Weather is a trip. As with all tripping, some people can't handle it and shouldn't take 2 Nino tabs on Dec 1st

When the big Dec -ao/nao flipped like a rocket to big +, it was a warning sign. I didn't want to talk about it. I was still biased that blocking would reestablish and stabilize. Then it did basically the same thing in Jan. I kinda gave up on a big winter right then but kept it quiet. Blocking was still on the menu everywhere down the line. And it's happening again. That's my towel throw for tracking anything beyond med/short unless something real shows up at long leads. I've learned over the years not to fight winter personality with expectations no matter what data was used to make predictions leading in. I call it a lot of things. Train tracks, personality, repeating patterns, but it's all the same. When I observe anything repetitive during met winter, I take it seriously no matter what. Especially if it bucks consensus analysis. I don't have any answers irt "why" personalities do what they do because they are usually a monkey wrench confusing people (like me). You don't need the answer to adjust thoughts though. We can still get big snow or go on a heater but that clock is ticking. I'm not expecting it buy I will most def party if it happens

Jacked up setups is all we get this year it seems. Analogs have beaten that drum start to finish so far. I really don't see much to talk about other than med-short range jacked up stuff. Analogs continue to show mixy messy lucky stuff but nothing organized, General personality of winter has been unwavering east of the MS. Personally, imho only, I think the lion's share of the problems are simply being out of sync when it matters. Too much real estate being affected to call it a midatl warmer earth problem or a new normal. Sometimes things just break bad. It happens. I also strongly believe that given the same parameters leading into to another winter can easily yield different results. The one analog that has shown up over and over is 1980. Just unrelenting and near the top of the list for all of Jan and still there now. The other common ones just reinforced the idea of a boring as hell winter. And here we are lol. Anyone bored?

White slush missiles in rockville. Got a nice 40 degree rain base to accumulate on. 15(mm):1?

This just my gut talking and it's too far away to think much about, but I keep thinking the first 10 days of March will be the ripest period for the MA. Maybe active instead of big dog stuff. We'll see how it goes. March wavelengths are volatile. We generally don't go into March with a mid winter storm pattern. Good blocking years have shot their load by March. I can't think of many (or any) Marches with a mean pattern that's showing on weekly/monthly guidance. I'm curious

Lol. I didn't even know there was a thread for this. I posted in the main thread but late to the party and nothing to add

Analogs capturing the blocking aren't really showing much for us here in the big dept. Blizzard of 78 time period showing up but that was a dream crusher event here. But just bad breaks. Track was great it just didn't rip in time. Other than that, everything remains mixy/messy/pasty. Feb 05 and 07 storms have been showing at times. No classics though. Been that way all year for most of the east nearly all the time.

There's putting a cart before the horse and then there's Ralph. Worrying about a storm destroying future storm chances in a disastrous winter does not compute anywhere in my head. Might need a crtl/alt/delete or something

Just don't include that with "the socks" album cover

Found a good use for snow maps lol. Good visual here of last 7 gfs runs for vday period. Scattershot/unresolved at first but last 4 runs show a clear trend and it's caused by upper air patten trying to find any way to press down into this wave. Yea, temps are disastrous I get that but we're in a state of massive flux in the high latitudes. There is still a real opportunity. Until that vanishes it's hard for me to look beyond. This isn't a setup you can just dismiss yet imo only

With the longwave flow in major flux above us, and acknowledging that the last 2 times this happened (both directions) models all jumped to new conclusions inside of 10 days, it's worth keeping a completely open mind to the VD period. The ingredients are there but dicey (as always). But the path to victory is perfectly logical and has happened b4. @Jiyou mentioned 2015 type storms. Yea, I remember a few in more detail now. One in particular. Wave running into a cold press. Temps went from not great leading in to actually too much cold arctic air pressing down and it pacman'd the northern edge really bad. It surprised us a little. Those "press" type of setup do happen here. The VD period is a longshot but if it sets up it's not complicated

The 80s has some good storms like this iirc. 2015 had weird blocking but we definitely got striped like a train track. I was thinking yesterday how how terrible the 14 day AO forecasts have been this winter. The big moves were missed badly beyond 10 days. Outside of normal bad range too. AO is tanking faster than predicted now. GFS could be right but it's messy with temps no matter.

I like these setups. Shortwave isn't crazy strong and confluence is backing down into it. Everything has to smash into each other just right but there's wiggle room. Just need the confluence to set up right. It can happen before or during the approach. We have some good history with this stuff.

Hmm

Idk. We can barely figure out next week. Maybe somebody knows something but I'll wait until late Nov before discussing it.

I'm 100% stoked on the AO/NAO. Mid Jan was a gut punch with the hit and run. That was unusual. So much so I don't remember seeing a rapid flip from dep neg to deep positive. Oscillations are normal/expected. That wasn't an oscillation. It was a bowling ball on a trampoline. Considering length of lead and laser focus throughout, this current potential blocking event looks much more classic and stable. If that's the case, we can probably expect a decent -AO/NAO on the means for 45 days. Maybe longer but 45 gets us thru March. Maybe coincidence (again) but met winter sure seems to have moved forward 2 weeks last 8 years or so. Maybe this winter is progressing as previous just not following the calendar. Beats me but Mar 24 will likely be another memorable and recent March. How long was the big block in place b4 the first Feb storm in 2010? We were cold and dry for a while before the late Jan storm. I remember the big relax after Dec 19th but when it came back it never left until late Feb.

I'm leaning towards the front half of March to be the most active. Ens guidance did an incredible job seeing the blocking pattern. One thing I never liked seeing is the corresponding precip anomaly panels. Second half of Feb has looked pretty dry with unanimous agreement. Now that it's getting closer it's looking more likely. We can still get a big storm as the pattern itself is ripe but idk. BN precip anomaly in the TN valley across all weekly/monthly guidance is bugging me. Pretty strong clue of suppressed storm track and/or quiet northern stream. That narrows our path to true Miller A's that have to turn the corner. NW shield would be tight and track more on the vertical side. I can't think of many pure Miller As without a primary in the tn vly. Jan 2000? Lol Eta: I graphed a bunch of nao data leading into our bigger storms. This was back in like 2012 so there is new data but the basic premise was obvious. We don't get big snow with a real -NAO descending into anomalous territory. We generally dont even get moderate snow with a tanked-NAO. There are a few but vast majority are on the relax. Most know this. This is a massive blocking event. That's not our forte on the front side.