psuhoffman

By bar is somewhere between 12” and some random flakes. Also I’m way more willing to be interested in a minor snowfall within 48 hours. But investing time tracking a clipper or some snow showers no.

Some pity flakes maybe. A real snowstorm...ehh. You should talk to losetoe6

@CAPE the eps actually fully caved to the GEFS pattern progression in the long range. But both have now picked up on something that mutes our opportunity before that. It makes sense in hindsight. After the poleward pac ridge goes up and the initial dump of true cold goes into the west...a ridge will pop as response in the east. At that time there isn’t enough cold in the east yet for that see saw equation to end well. It also doesn’t help that the NAO ridge still is just an extension of the WAR at that time and hasn’t retrogrades and cut off enough yet to fully resist the SE ridge. But with the blocking that cold starts to bleed east and eventually we get a pattern that can work. The only problem there is that’s a more typical Nina pac and the STJ will be totally cut off. So the fear is if the NS doesn’t gain enough depth it’s a dry NW flow pattern and we watch New England get late developing Miller Bs. It has worked before though. March 2018 was a poleward pac ridge -NAO pattern. But remember that was frustrating at times with 2 miller b miss big New England storms before we finally got our snowstorm. January 2011 had a poleward PAC ridge buy it stayed centered just off the west coast and never fully pulled back too far. Feb 2006 kinda worked...we got one big snow but we waited around most of the month with a great block waiting for that one southern wave to come along. That general pattern has lead to snowstorms but it can be really frustrating if the NS is dominant and nothing amplifies.

Yes or if the block is really flexing crazy transfers from the Midwest to the coast.

It degraded significantly since then. The trough doesn’t have enough depth and it’s all NS now

Never seen a full Rex block on a day 10+ ensemble mean like the 6z GEFS. That’s crazy. The Atlantic looks as perfect as we could hope for. Unfortunately the pac goes to hell and the central pac ridge goes ape which will try to force a western trough eastern ridge. The Atlantic does resist and the pac ridge is more poleward which will inject more cold and press the boundary more SE then typical with that pac ridge trough alignment. That combo has worked in the past but it requires getting enough cold into the pattern to press east under the block. Lately that last part has been a problem.

Loop day 10-16. A NS SW that tracks through the lakes gets to Maine then loops north and west to Hudson Bay then dives back to the lakes. That’s pretty blocked. The flow is very blocked. But a block can’t make all those SWs in the NS disappear. That’s a result of the hopped up pac jet. But it’s all NS and the NS is flying too many SWs around for anything to dig and amplify. This is one reason our better hecs look with blocking is the split flow with a trough off the west coast. That way systems come in across the south and the NS is out of the way up in Canada. But that wasn’t working this year because there was no cold in the pattern at all. Losing the split flow will get the NS into the US and inject cold but we just saw what the danger with that could be.

Ggem went to the euro NS dominant progression too.

Yea except our avg snow in a -AO Nina winter is close to median which isn’t a lot but it’s not this crap either.

All NS like euro. Icon went that way too.

For the 19th threat...more amplified deeper trough and a 50/50.

Usually I agree. But then we’re back to the split flow idea and that hadn’t been working wrt cold lol. Double bind.

Yes the main pv displacement went to their side. We still benefit from a weakened PV in general and as the pac pattern retrogrades and we get some cold into our side maybe that finally pays off.

The gefs is going bonkers with the Greenland block. this... leads to this look as it starts to relax which leads to that spike in snowfall... if the gefs is right about that the period as the blocking relaxes is commonly when we do score so the progression fits.

Like CAPE I’m mostly just bored with this pattern chasing. Also frustrated we can’t seem to link into just some snow in what shouldn’t be a shutout look. But we look to keep the extremely -AO/NAO for the next 15 days if not longer. I still will be shocked if we get a strongly -AO/NAO for a solid month in mid winter and get shut out. That’s kinda crazy. I’ll bet that somewhere we get lucky.

Naw another Nina coming. 2012 repeat.

I was actually saying that was a pretty good setup. It’s not perfect. More wave separation and a 50/50 would be ideal. But a displaced TPV lobe diving in and phasing just to our west is a way we have scored before. It can cut inland if the trough amplifies too far west so it’s not this sure thing can’t fail look. Get more spacing and a 50/50 and it becomes that. But I was saying that tpv there makes getting higher heights in the lakes impossible. But so long as the low is behind the southern wave and not in front it’s ok. The way that works is the cold is locked in long enough in front then by the time the lakes low would screw us the coastal takes over and the mid levels close off and the lakes low becomes irrelevant. That only works if the NS isn’t dominant like the gfs and ggem showed. The euro was all NS and that won’t work. To make my point look at the 12z gfs run. The mid levels stay cold enough. We’re rain because it is just too warm at the surface despite a closed circulation and saturation. The lakes low wasn’t really a huge issue it was just too warm at the surface. That’s sad for Jan 19 with a bombing low off the coast!

Right where we...ahh forget it

Agree with all this but I think the enhanced pac jet isn’t totally Nina related. Some of the better analogs I mentioned that also featured a similar N PAC pattern were Nina’s. They didn’t produce huge years but decent snowfall and that was always my high end goal.

Much larger landmass at higher latitude and they aren’t downwind of the largest heat source on the planet. It is MUCH easier for deep cold air masses to develop in Asia then North America.

This is subjective. You aren’t wrong. When I say pattern I’m referring more to the broader longwave pattern. And at several times so far this year the pattern analogs have spit out very nice dates of snowstorms. But it failed to produce this time the same as those past similar patterns. I do think I underestimated the harm the enhanced pac jet would do. Maybe some was bad luck. You know who didn’t...isotherm. He nailed this. He predicted favorable indexes for Dec and January yet said we wouldn’t get much snow. He predicted the pacific jet would destructively interfere. Im going to be totally honest here I might have a blind spot there because frankly I want to be an optimist...and I fear the enhanced pac jet might be a more permanent problem if as I suspect it’s partly due to the warmer base state of the pac. And if the effect of that pac jet is that some of our best snow patterns are no longer viable...and we need cross polar flow which is pretty rare to offset it...and that is pac jet feature is a new somewhat permanent feature...well you get where this is going and it’s somewhere I don’t want to go!

Imo the same thing that has been...we just don’t get lucky in a decent to good longwave pattern. This year the problem hadn’t been a failure of guidance to see the pattern. It’s been the failure of mostly a decent to at times good pattern to produce anything. Imo the pathetic lack of cold for the pattern is the culprit. Yea it’s snowed in TX and TN and NC but they were all isolated upper level dynamically driven events with a really narrow expanse. If you were to look at a snowfall mean map so far more places are struggling then doing well. There have been scattered local hits because the track of SWs has been pretty good (good longwave pattern) but without cold and a lack of good baroclinic boundary due to that systems are pathetic at the surface and lack a big expense of snow that makes it more likely for us to cash in.

There is good and bad compared to 0z. It has a bit too much SE ridge. Get a little less trough out west though and that becomes a good pattern with a very minor adjustment. It’s no good for the 19th threat though. Doesn’t dig the trough nearly enough. It’s all NS then because it doesn’t amplify it doesn’t really have the second threat either since everything pulls back without that first wave amplifying east. But even there a fairly minor adjustment makes it better. It doesn’t fully support the garbage op look. It’s kinda in between the GEFS CMC look and the euro op.

You make it hard to miss you

Btw after looking like a wreck the other day the GEPS has trended to the GEFS and has a very nice look days 7-16