psuhoffman

I’m sure Chuck would be glad to explain it to you.

He is a clown. Don’t over think it.

Is there a rule that there always has to be at least one resident clown occupying our long range discussions?

Are you sure about those exact calculations? Maybe you should show your work. I’m gonna need verification on this data.

In fairness I said you would be right 80%. This winter might be one of the 20%. I’d probably go above normal snow right now if I had to predict…which I don’t.

Just predict “warmer than normal with below normal snow” and you will be right 80% of the time.

Careful someone will be along soon to say how this is an exaggeration Have to thread that needle don't we... Right on schedule...do we really have to do this again? Your arguments don't even have internal logical consistency...

The warm and cold anomalies are all in the right places...and I am cautiously optimistic...but the whole background state is much warmer and we just don't know what impact that might have...but unfortunately it likely won't be good. ETA: When I say it likely won't be good I mean compared to what happened in 2009/10. It's very likely to still be better than the utter crap we've been used to lately.

Funny you dropped the “figuratively” which implies it’s a generalization and exaggeration. And you do realize the United States is a rather insignificant portion of the Earth! Let me know if you need more lessons in linguistics and geography

Are you making a macro or micro point? In the micro it’s possible the nino could position what little cold there is over us. That could favor a short term short lived win. In the macro the fact that it’s warmer than normal over a vast majority of the planet is a huge problem for snow prospects.

One reason is that some of the longer term changes happening (expanded Hadley cell, tightening pac jet, Indo pac warm pool) are causing a Nina like base state pattern response to begin with. They all have a similar impact as a Nina. The other is specific to my gradient comment. If you have a warm enso region surrounded by warmer waters it muted the gradient. But if you have colder enso waters surrounded by the same warmer waters elsewhere is enhances the gradient. Everything is stacked against us right now. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get snow. It’s just harder. It’s happening less often. But the good news is if we’re ever going to break out of this things look about as good as we could hope for (within the larger awful reality that the whole world is on fire figuratively).

Not sure how much impact a Nino has when there is very little gradient. On the other hand Nina’s are being enhanced. Not good.

I am very interested in the results. But I know how difficult it is to get at that in a statistically significant way so I appreciate the work.

This "would" (because we don't know yet if its even real) be a perfect test of a running conversation we've had recently. That pattern is literally our snowiest look historically. But look at the actual temp anomalies... It's seasonably chilly...but that is not an arctic cold look. As is typical with most nino blocking regimes our source regions are relatively torched and true arctic air is cut off from the CONUS. But there would be a very favorable storm track and we would need to rely on domestic cold. Will that work in 2023/24 like it did numerous times in the past? I have my popcorn ready! As said above its not actually a cold look...it is a "snowy" look...at least historically. Of course given how warm our winters have been lately a "near normal" one might feel frigid. But I am not a fan of cold really...just need enough cold for snow and I am happy. I do suspect we do at the least OK in that pattern. Even if we no longer get 1987, 1996 or 2010 type results from something like that...I doubt the climate has degraded to the extent we get no snow from it either. And if it is "just cold enough" we could get hypothetically even get MORE snow from some juiced up monster storms. Imagine getting multiple 2016 type storms in a season! You called...

A lot more of the Nino's during the last significant -PDO featured a -PNA. We overcame that in many of them with blocking. I have my doubts how that would work now.

I've noticed several times over the years its a misty cloudy in Baltimore in Spring but partly sunny with just cumulus clouds out by my house once you get further away from the Bay/Ocean maritime airmass. Kinda opposite the winter when its way more often nice in Baltimore and cloudy out where I am.

I think due to increased mid latitude ridging it is probably true that a SW displaced NAO block runs increased risk of linking up. But I "think" (hard to tell sometimes) that Chuck is alluding to a change from previous norms and he is right that the -NAO as a whole is not reacting the way it used too. I did a numerical comparison a few months ago (even before the most recent NAO fail late winter) that showed our "win" rate in terms of a -NAO producing cold and or snow is significantly decreased over the last 10 years compared to previous. I do think some of that has been many of those -NAO's were SW biased, but some of them were also centered exactly where previous -NAO's that did produce were. So I think both are true...we probably can still do better if the -NAO is centered more towards Greenland but that is kinda sad because some of our biggest storms ever came from retrograding blocks that ended up centered over Canada.

I am cautiously optimistic. But I am guarded for two possible issues. If the nino is too weak does it fail to alter the pacific base state enough. Remember in 2019 long range guidance continued to "tease" that look above all fall and winter and it just never materialized. The pattern wasn't "awful" but it just could never fully overcome the bad pacific base state to initiate the canonical nino look guidance was expecting. On the other hand if the nino is strong...does the subtropical warmth that typically gets injected into that kind of pattern overwhelm everything given the recent temperature trends...and we end up with a 1998 type winter only even warmer. 98 wasn't totally awful once you got into the northwest 1/3 of this forum. And there were some epic snowstorms along skyline drive and out in the Snowshoe and Deep Creek area. And a few of those storms were actually really close even for the cities...a repeat of 98 in the 1998 climate could have produced a decent outcome with a little more luck. There were even a couple of those coastal storms where it was cold enough and then we got unlucky that those were the ones that got suppressed or cut due to an early phase. If the temperatures were still in the 1998 base state I might say lets take a repeat and roll the dice. All it takes is 1 or 2 of those massive coastal storms that were coming every week to be just cold enough and suddenly its a good year. But in this current temperature base state...I kinda doubt we would ever get that pattern to work no matter how many times we rolled that dice. We seem to need true polar airmasses to snow now...we could probably get 10 juiced up perfect track coastals in a row now with a maritime or even modified airmass and it would be rain every time. We really need that epo to help out or the subtropical airmass will likely dominate.

In the winter if the mid latitude storm track is to our north/west we will be "dry". But it wouldn't matter if it was "wet" since most of the time we are also too warm.

For me 2016 was the start of the phenomenon of getting mid winter perfect track rainstorms. We didn’t think much of it because it was a super Nino and that’s actually common in strong ninos. The great storm track can come with too much warmth. But it’s been happening regularly since then also.

I am somewhere in the middle on the 2016 debate. That storm was awesome. I also had another decent 8" event up here in Feb which made a big difference. But at the same time most of the snow in our area did come from one storm...places just north and south of where that storm hit ended up with one of their least snowy seasons every that winter! That is playing with fire putting all your eggs in one basket like that. I don't want our winters to become basically rooting for one fluke like we are NC or something! I would prefer a real winter where its actually legit cold for long stretches and we get multiple events. 2014 and 2015 are the last 2 "real" winters IMO. That doesn't mean I would kick 2016 out of bed...I am not hating on it like some do...but I do acknowledge its not necessarily what I want to root for either.

Don’t mind it now. My classroom has no AC and I have a lot of work to do on the yard, pool deck, and garden the next month and I much prefer 60ish over 90ish

yea but a large number of our forum residents HATED 2016 because other than one storm it was a torch non winter. Not everyone here is happy if our winter is just rooting to get lucky once or twice with a big storm...some actually like it to, you know...BE COLD in winter and actually have snow on the ground more than 5 minutes!

CFS has our el nino! LOL