LakePaste25

You can still get an Aleutian ridge with a -WPO. That’s exactly what the weeklies show starting right after MLK weekend.

The change is still well over 300 hours away. It is too far out to really discern what the trough axis will be and where the frozen precip. will be most favored.

I guess I should clarify - I am not saying it will be a snowy pattern for I-95 the first half of January. My call is that it will be cold. I’m not really able to discern whether it will be snowy, partly because I don’t live there and also, some of these events are tough to predict at medium range timescale. That said, I do think there is a risk of -PNA mid to late month. I’ve been saying that for a few days now. Whether that is a -PNA that digs to San Diego and we see a full SE ridge torch or it is more mellow, that remains to be seen at this point. I will cross that bridge when we get closer in time.

To me, that looks like a storm system from the GOA low breaks off as the block tries to retrograde westward. With blocking over the top, I don’t see cutting with that look verbatim as it traverses through the plains. Now, if that look changes and energy gets buried in the southwest, then no block will stop that from cutting. We did this see frequently in 22-23.

While it does delay the cold and prolong the jet extension against other guidance, it isn’t really showing any canonical -PNA Nina pattern.

No indication that we are returning to a -PNA prior to mid-January. Everything looks on track to turn colder to start the New Year.

Part of this is due to a combination of bad luck and lack of prolonged cold. If we get a cold shot that only lasts 1 week, one needs to get lucky on the coast. If we get cold that lasts 3-4 weeks, the coast is more likely to score simply by probability laws. Take January 2022, for example. The 1 week cold shots work better here near the lakes because we don’t need the atlantic or the gulf, we just need a northern stream trough over warm lake waters.

A trough axis centered more west isn’t terrible for I-95 snow threats. The late november to early december pattern of clippers dropping into Michigan and the ridge axis over BC produced plenty of lake snow here, but it was too far east to produce anything appreciable for the I-95 corridor.

January looks on track to start cold, at least shortly after the New Year due to a pacific jet retraction to a more favorable wave breaking/exit position. The question then becomes, how long does this last? Some guidance retracts the jet further to the more traditional -PNA/SE ridge by mid-January, while others hold off until the end of the month. I am going with a blend, with the cold lasting until the 4th week of january. By early February the latest, we will see a return to the full SE ridge Nina pattern.

The models have certainly trended towards a pre-christmas cold shot, on average lasting about 5 days. The only thing I will point out is that we shouldn’t verify a forecast with a forecast. Before jumping the gun on calling certain outlooks wrong, we should wait and see how this actually plays out.

The Christmas pattern change idea floating around social media is likely rushed (when hasn’t it?). Most of us enjoy cold weather during the Christmas holiday, so the usual wishcasting ensues. We are likely dealing with phase 6 before the pattern potentially becomes more favorable after the New Year.

Most of Canada stays cold through the entire run. While we will get warmer, it is a far cry from last December when we had the pacific jet extended all the way to the west coast, and it was just torching our cold source region with mild pacific air. Our source region for cold will get some nice chilling hours, which means any favorable pattern shift will easily bring cold air south later in the month.

House cam update. Down in NoVA visiting family, but I’ll be back up there tomorrow.

I’m about 6 miles southeast of Erie, PA.

The long-term climate models expected us to be in more frequent el niño episodes as SSTs and overall background state warmed. Recently we have seen the opposite - more frequent la niña events. It could be that we will eventually see the expected increase of el niño events, while this recent streak of la niña was just a temporary state.