psuhoffman

I think when we do get truly cold, then your hypothesis is correct and we’ve seen it. Problem for us is 2 fold. 1) that’s such a minority of the time what’s more likely is the ridge impact. 2) even when that happens we are seeing it result in very tightly wound bomb cyclones focused off the coast where the warmest SSTs are NOT tucked in where we need them to get a big snow into the 95 corridor. It's been a net L

I’ll probably be living in Colorado or northern New England for most of that next period.

But we’re not supposed to talk about that in here. We’re supposed to just endlessly chase fake day 15 patterns and pretend this is normal.

You just said what I was trying to say way better in way less words.

None of my point was specific to this pattern, although I am seeing some signs we may still end up with similar problems discussed above coming up. But we will see. I was just seeing a lot of "its not that bad" or "its this or that one thing" kinda posts...and neither really captures the reality imo. Maybe I am wrong and in the next 5 years we go on a 1960's level epic run...but that is what we're talking about here...its been so bad we dont just need like a few 20" seasons or one 40" season to pull out of this...we actually need some EPIC historically unprecedented makes the 60s look like 2020 5 year run just to avoid this being the WORST PERIOD EVER! Now back to analyzing what's in front of us for better or for worse. Just had to get that off my chest.

We don’t need to have the why debate in here. I was just trying to end the “it’s not really that bad” claims. It is that bad. The why debate can happen in another place.

If you go back over several days it’s slowly bleeding the wrong way wrt SE ridge and pna. Another mid latitude system during the coldest month of the year with absolutely no appreciable frozen WAA precipitation to the north of the track until you get north of 43*!

@Maestrobjwa please skip this post, seriously just don't read it, its not going to be good for your health. Before I respond to some specific things I've seen lately let me first lay out the case that THIS IS NOT NORMAL...its not just a normal cyclical thing. Remember it was back in 2019 to 2020 that I was on the other side of this. Because the people going overboard then were doing it prematurely. There was a LOT of precedence for a several year run of low snowfall following a generally good stretch from 2010 to 2016. But I know the data, I know the historical cycles, and we are way way past that now. I am not going to get into what is causing it...we don't need to bring THAT in here. Maybe its a confluence of several factors all coming together at once, and I do think there is SOME of that...and I will get to those things later in this post also but first simply the facts that indicate this is not just a typical funk as I continue to see some claim. I've gone into the trends and numbers at DCA but just a quick comp to previous bad cycles to show this is not normal. Lets look at that 1970's period people like to bring up. That was the previous next worst 6 and 7 year period other than this one. But it wasnt AS BAD. At BWI for instance this period has been 3 inches worse. That doesn't seem like much but lets look at some other factors also. IMO the pattern was actually WORSE then...yet they had better results. Compare H5, and keep in mind this is using current normals so you have to adjust for that. But look at the longwave pattern mean. The 1970's had a RAGING positive AO/NOA and extremely -PNA the entire time with pretty much no EPO help either. This is the worst possible M5 mean you could ever make. This is a classic awful look. If we got this today it would be a total no hope shit the blinds pattern all the damn time. Look at the current period to compare. Yea this is bad...the Pac ridge is west of where we want it...but on the means it actually is extending into the west coast more...the PNA isn't as awful, this is way more EPO help...and the AO is actually averaging slightly negative over the period with a neutral NAO. This is not good but its not as bad. But the results are worse. Imagine what our results would be in that 1970's look now. Would it be 80 degrees in January with that look up top and that pacific now considering what we have had in results with a less hostile overall mean pattern. Additionally 6 and 7 years isn't really long enough to get a full scope of a period. Lets use 18 years again since that is considered a minimum number to get a significant mean for most statistical analysis. If we look at past 18 year periods...take the 1970's one for example. It was bookended with a big snowfall period in the 60's and late 70's/early 80s. That makes this current situation a lot more dire because by comparison the snowier period that preceeded our current funk did not stand up to the snowy period on the front end of that 1970s drought. To put it numerically...for BWI to end the current 18 year period starting in 2011 with similar results to that referenced previous "WORSE PERIOD EVER" BWI would need to average 32" of snow the next 5 years. Think of that...just to equal the period everyone is citing as the "its been bad before" we need 32" every single winter the next 5 years... Now because some of those years before and after that 1970's period were so huge a better comp for a longer period might be 1938 to 1955. There was no 7 year stretch nearly this bad but there also was no 1960's and late 70s snowstravaganza. But even that period BWI would need to average 27" the next 5 years to match. Lets me honest that aint gonna happen, this 18 year period will be by far the worst in history at BWI. Using BWI since many feel it is way more representative of more of the region...but the results are the same just slightly higher overall. DCA would need to average 34" the next 5 years to be better than that 1970's 18 year period, but to be more fair again, DCA's worse 18 year period EVERY was 1942-1959. DC will need to average 25" over the next 5 years to equal that. How many of you want to make a bet with me that DC averages 25" of snow over the next 5 seasons? I'll take that bed. My kids need to go to college...so please let me know if you want in on that action. So can we please stop with the "this is just cyclical and its happened before" nonsense. No this has never happened before. Its never been close to this bad before if you really dig into the data. Even just looking at this year tells the story. We have had several different patterns now...each time I look at the analogs. They have never been great. But none were shutouts. We keep getting analogs to blah periods but ones that did produce SOME SNOW...not a total shutout. Yet here we are. @Ralph Wiggum man you were all over the place... Just last night you said It's solar, but 97-98, Nina, WAR, but the MJO... ok lets address all these Solar...ok but we have not had solar flares non stop for 7 years and there is a lag actually so I doubt the solar flare a few days ago is what is causing our problems right now. Certainly wasnt the problem in December. 97-98...fair enough but even if you want to say that's the comp to this...and to be fair it was the top analog for a while, THIS IS WAY WORSE. Yea you can cherry pick one location like DCA where its the same 0 and 0. But not far from DC there was snow. My area had a 3.5" snowfall late December. Several 2-3" snows during the early winter that year also. I was up over 10" by now. Here I sit at 0. This is not specific to my location. Places not far NW of DC had a bad but not awful amount of snow by now in 98. I was in east central PA that year and we had already had several pretty decent snowstorms by now...the same location has had almost nothing this year. This year is WORSE. Both were bad...this is worse. Nina...this is kinda revisionist history. 2017 was a cold neutral following a super nino. 2018 was a legit Nina. But 2019 was a nino and 2020 was a warm nuetral following a nino. 2021 to now was a nina but if we go back 5 years the mantra was...its the NAO, why can't we get NAO help anymore...when we had 2 seasons in a row with a positive NAO. Remember that...for years all anyone blamed this on was the AO/NAO. But then we started getting -NAO and -AO periods that did us no good and suddenly the new vogue thing to blame it all on was the MJO. Then we got some MJO phase 8/1/2 that did us no good and now its just the really lazy "its the pac" crap. We keep changing "what the problem is" but the one constant is a SE ridge that is more than our snow chances can survive regardless of whatever the du jour "problem" is at that moment. We've had a pac ridge, pac trough, positive AO, negative AO, whatever...doesn't matter the SE ridge remains a problem the vast majority of the time. MJO??? first of all phase 3 becomes a colder phase as we head into Feb...but what about Phase 1 and 2. You just skip right over the fact we are going to torch right through the cold phases then use the warm phase we head into 2 weeks from now as the excuse for the warmth? Sorry that doesn't fly for me. WAR... yea but the WAR is an effect not a cause. That's like saying your headache is causing your brain cancer. Maybe we should be discussing the AMO more. Now...I do think some of this might be a confluence of things all going wrong at the same time. This combo of the PDO and AMO is a really bad one. I am not denying that the general longwave pattern isn't really good. But its not the worse we've ever seen...yet its been the worst results we've ever seen. Past periods with this confluence of AMO/PDO weren't good but they weren't nearly this bad either. But my 2 main points are no this is not normal, this is by far the worst period ever in recorded history for our area and there is way more going on here than all these singular excuses we keep cycling through to try to explain it away.

You had 50 inches 2 years ago and Texas froze to death. Winter can still be fierce thankfully Of course it can but we’re talking degrees. The AMO point is valid and we’ve struggled in previous AMO periods but not to this extent! In 2021 I was the southern edge of snow when past comps said it should have been snowing into VA. Look at the analogs this winter. Everytime I check they’ve been bad but not shutout bad. Most of the years that have been spit out at various times were low snowfall pwriods. Not no snowfall!

But if speculation the WAR is a result of warming SSTs and if those are permanent umm…

The se ridge is just a response to when a trough dives into Los Angeles. His question is why is that happening no matter how the pac looks. I'd say the last 5 winters...the blue is on the west coast 80% of the time lol There could be something too that though. Think about the flow. As the flow goes up just off the west coast and into western Canada the wave in the west SHOULD be forced east. If there is nothing causing a kink in the flow. But if there is resistance to the flow east (think of putting a stick in the water and watching the flow back up around it) that would cause what we’re seeing. Something on the Atlantic side is resisting troughs professing east.

Nina’s cause a -pna because a canonical Nina causes a central pac ridge which naturally favors a pna trough. That doesn’t explain why when we get rare favorable pac forcing to press that ridge east the trough still doesn’t progress but just cuts off under it. That has to be resistance downstream. Troughs either lift or cut off out west even when the longwave pattern upstream suggests otherwise. Something on the Atlantic side is a problem also imo.

I think all the ridging in the 50 50 region is helping force the trough to the sw That’s my point. There is resistance somewhere else also. Im not saying we haven’t had a hostile pac much of the time. But the times we didn’t the SE ridge has still been winning. look at this. Aleutian trough. Trough east of Hawaii. Fill latitude epo ridge centered into Canada, east of AK even! The pac isn’t causing whatever went wrong on the Gfs. Just from the pac longwave pattern you would think the whole US is being overrun by cold not a trough digging to San Diego and a torch east of the Rockies. Our issues run way deeper than just the past. The pac is amazing here and we still torch!

My point about troughs digging into the SW regardless of how far east we get the pac ridge…there have been times it was well into Canada and the trough just cut off under it, was not made because of the Gfs. It’s just ironic the Gfs does exactly what I said.

What tropical forcing there is should be favorable to the trough shifting more east. The pac ridge extends all the way into western Canada. But the trough just cuts off into the west instead of pressing east. This has happened each time we’ve had a -epo recently.

The biggest reason I remain skeptical is in recent years when we did get a poleward epo ridge, even an eastward one banked up into western Canada, instead of dumping cold into the central US it digs a trough Into the southwest and pumps the SE ridge. This has happened several times. Frankly the reason I’m tired of the “it’s the pac” excuse it that’s lazy. We’ve had different pac longwave patterns that all end the same for us. Flat central pac ridge…raging pos AO western trough we torch. Pacific trough, floods pac puke, we torch. Epo ridge, digs trough deep down the west we torch. No matter what the pac longwave pattern we can’t get a pna ridge for long. And I suspect there is more effect than cause there. It seems to me there is resistance to a trough progressing east so even when we do get a pac that should work, and yea that’s been a minority, it still doesn’t it just digs a -pna even more instead, even when the pac ridge is far enough east it should press the trough east more. The Atlantic is just as big a problem Imo. There has to be a reason other than just the pac why troughs want to dig to Mexico out west no matter where the pac ridge is centered.

Ok I’m full tilt right now too but this is silly. Think about what you’re doing. In most waves like we’re discussing the distance between nothing, all snow, mix, all rain isn’t nearly enough to be worrying where that will be 15 days away.

The fact it’s even an option is worth noting. That’s all.

Not recently. Seems the last 7 years the “weird” only goes one way. But on a longer timescale you’re correct.

maybe, probably, but we would have to endure at least one more rainstorm before that likely as the next wave is already amplifying and the boundary is to our NW. After that maybe we're in business but my point is at that moment its still disturbing when I see a near record -AO/NAO/EPO combo and the SE ridge is still bullying the pattern. That is a BIG PROBLEM if you are south of 40.

Dunno...that's close for you..but awful for us. Unless what you are doing is "editing" the run to what you think would happen and that's fine but its also not what it actually shows. That would be a decent pattern from NYC northward but just rain down here. WAY too much ridging. I agree that upper level look SHOULD be a good pattern...but the model is saying it won't be. Normally...had I not lived through the last 7 years I would say its BS and it will be colder...but I have experienced the last 7 years and time again we have been warmer than I thought we should be given historical precedence in a similar pattern. So I have stopped doubting when I see what I would think is a "ridiculous warm" outcome from a pattern.

Yea it was the 6z for some reason. Ill edit my post. 12z actually shows how the pattern COULD fail... everything is too amplified and keeps cutting west and never pulling the boundary far enough east. But this look at the end is just infuriating. HOW is the SE ridge bullying this longwave pattern???? LOOK AT THAT. TPV trapped south of Hudson bay, huge 50/50 low, extremely -NAO/AO, HUGE EPO ridge. And a ridge to kingdom come up the east coast! Yea I see the STJ wave in southern CA and before someone yells "but the PNA" yea BUT the EPO AO NAO 50/50! There was a huge negative exactly there while we were snowing again and again in 2010! Like I've said there is an "equation" to all this...and we shouldnt need EVERY SINGLE FACTOR to be totally perfect. If we do we are FOOKED. Each thing is an independent variable and if we need 7 or 8 to all line up at some point you reach a point where the math is almost impossible. This look is going in my notes which are becoming a War and Peace length novel at this point.

6z OP GFS was relatively good for showing the details of how such a pattern could work in reality. It takes several waves to slowly establish a colder profile into our area. But eventually we get a snow to ice event and are set up for possibly another frozen event right after the run ends. But the key to that frozen event day 14 was the wave spacing. Any more space between waves and that would have been rain also. But overall a constant wave train like that and it would be unlikely we miss out on EVERYTHING, if we are looking at an extended period in such a pattern. Todays 12z op was a positive IMO and showed what the details COULD look like. Not that we want to put much stock in those details but its interesting when an OP does actually match up in general with the pattern the ensembles are showing to get an idea what the details could be in such a look.

Agree. But considering we’ve had no snow at all, if we just get a coating between now and April it’s a back loaded winter.

My guess is it ends up exactly what it looked like days ago from the type of system it is, an eastern New England event possibly. If I was in Boston I would keep an eye on this. Could we get some snow showers sure but that’s a pretty low bar.