psuhoffman

He seems to spend a lot of time trying to find patterns to explain the chaos. The best we can do with seasonal is perhaps pick out some drivers that can perhaps increase the odds slightly towards certain characteristics. Besides that you have to surrender to the chaos and roll with it. Or you will go crazy Imo.

Yes but not that bad. We’ve had some ambiguity at times. A decent enough enso in 2019. At times a decent pdo sst. That projection was all wrong everywhere. But Imo the current issues with the pac aren’t being driven by local or regional sst anomalies. One problem with this. Since 1950 we’ve only had 7 moderate ninos. That’s less than 1 per decade. And they weren’t all good. 4/7 were. 1964, 1987, 2003, 2010. 1 of the other 3 was mediocre and the other 2 garbage. So…using those statistics if your theory is right DC can only get a snowy winter about 4 times in 72 years. Lol. If that’s true who gives a crap. Those are about the same odds Raleigh used to have as a snowy winter. Time to move.

That Pac sst is hot poo

I was thinking somewhere in Alaska.

Ya picked up on that

It’s definitely going to snow on December 5th. 100% chance.

Elevation elevation elevation. Once you get west of the ridge just west of Frostburg, where you increase to about 2000’+ you will do pretty good in terms of snowfall. Northern Garrett county along 68 from that ridge west of Frostburg west sees about 80” averages. But you will still notice a difference between the towns like Grantsville and the ridges. If you really want to max out once you get to deep creek and south to Thomas/Davis along 219, you will notice a significant increase is snowfall over northern Garrett. This is due to higher base plateau elevation. That plateau maxes out down near Canaan WV where the valley floor is near 3,000’ with ridges just under 5,000’. The trade off though is distance. The further away from 68 you go the more travel time you’re adding if you are coming across MD. Lastly a lot of the snow out there is actually from lake enhanced upslope and clippers. If we’re in a cold pattern they can get a foot of snow from a clipper and the ensuing upslope flow behind it. But it’s not the same as a coastal. Many coastals only clip that area and the heavy precipitation stays further east. That doesn’t mean they cannot get coastals. They sometimes do and when we do get a east coast storm that takes an inside track they can get dumped. But those aren’t storms we typically think of as coastals since their big rain storms here and those don’t account for the majority of their snow. If you really just want to increase your chances of seeing a big nor’easter snowstorm getting a place in the eastern poconos PA or near highland lakes NJ might be better. Those places don’t get as much snow overall as Garrett (about 65” avg) but they get a lot more from pure coastals and can get crushed by nor’easters. You just have to decide what you’re looking for and what’s right for you. I don’t mind giving you some advice regarding likely climo as a specific location if you PM me.

It’s simple…if the angular vector of the tropospheric velocity is in conjunction with the stratospheric vertical thickness values than the QBO is likely to synchronize with the PDO and the hemispheric energies are low because the solar flux is unstable. It snows in winter.

Thank god blueberries go dormant by winter!!!

I ate some blueberries and it gave me the sh!ts

I saw Bruce Springsteen there several years ago. I remember it took a while to get out but I didn’t think it was any worse then trying to leave a lot at an Eagles game or any other highly attended event. But I tend to be pretty patient so maybe it was bad.

It’s never that simple. There are so many brilliant minds in this field and yet long range seasonal forecasting has extremely low predictive success rates. Because there are so many moving parts and conflicting signals to factor. It’s possible we wasted our solar cycle shot last winter. That wouldn’t surprise me. But it’s also possible last winter was just the start of an overdue longer period of high latitude blocking. The winter of 2009 had some decent blocking that did us no good. So did 2011. From 2009-2013 actually featured a pretty favorable high lat much of the time but it really only paid off much in 2010. Going further back 1977-1980 featured quite a bit of blocking following a period before of relatively little help up top. And it didn’t always work out wrt snowfall for various reasons but we certainly did cash in at times during that longer window. We can only hope that last winter the trend up top flipped and we have more luck with future -AO periods. For the record the blocking in 2009 was muted by the pac in much the same way as last winter.

Unfortunately the dumb angle is always a problem.

Sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself.

The mean looks like 1.75

Been crazy busy. I’m helping manage 162 summer programs sites across Baltimore. It’s been non stop 80 hours a week since March. I have to survive 4 more weeks then I have a life again.

I missed all the fun.

The last few years the pac ridge has been dominant. Longer term that will likely continue to be more and more common given the effects of climate change. But what we don’t know is if the last few years was also a shorter term cyclical thing and there will be some reversion to the previous mean.

Imo the expansion of the Hadley Cell in the PAC which subsequently leads to the PAC ridge and tight gradient in the north Pac (in other words the pac puke jet effect) is the dominant winter pattern driver v enso. What’s depressing is we got the best possible high lat pattern to try to offset that last year and it really didn’t do much good south of 40 unless you had elevation.

They have a pill for that.

I just hope there is no dysfunction in my message and he considers all possible replies so as to avoid being premature.

I’m trying to erect a plethora of desirable response options. Just want to make sure there is enough meat on the bone for him to pick at.

Nope. Ton where I work in Baltimore. Not a one up here.

Yea I kinda lol at this thread in general every time it gets bumped as if a few weeks of no precip or a few months of below mean = some crazy freak thing!

He better...I mean I couldn’t toss him a fatter pitch!!!