psuhoffman

Actually the cfs still gets the pattern to a good place, and with a fairly realistic progression, but it’s only a 2 week window before going to crap again. We better not waste any chances. Assuming it happens at all. ETA: this is kind of what I expect the weeklies to show tonight. It’s how the pattern would evolve if “epic” blocking develops right after the 15 day window we see on guidance so I’m sure the weeklies will do that. Problem is will the blocking ever really happen.

@C.A.P.E. we lost the CFS again lol

In fairness when people were making that comparison a few days ago the CFS looked like that 1950 map...I guess the last few runs have backed off on blocking and so the pattern degraded again.

You are right... but that has been more of a DC area localized thing. It certainly hasn't "found a way" in Philly or NYC or Boston. And while I have had some snow...and got 3" the other day, I am mostly into that Philly north snow hole, especially wrt climo, so maybe my view on "finding a way" with a continuation of the same pattern is not as rosy and optimistic as you. If my current pace of snowfall continues I will end up at only about 60% of climo for the year. But that difference of opinion is totally understandable given our different back yard results. And things like exact cutoffs on snowstorms is so flukey that the next "find a way" storm could dump on me and even the score, I am aware of that. Still emotions bleed into things sometimes and sitting on a god awful result so far its hard to be "ok" with muddling along in the same pattern that got me to this awful result so far.

1958 had a LOT more nao blocking in January than we have this year. At times the Pac was hostile so that much is similar. I used 1958 as an example of a Feb/March period with a predominantly -PNA that was still cold and snowy in the east because of an NAO block. That winter did not follow a similar script to this one in terms of the H5 up until that point though.

First of all people are over-reacting to one not so good run last night. I tried to be careful in how I presented it but I guess it doesn't matter...yea it was a bad run overnight, but NOT awful, there were still a LOT of good members in both the GEFS and EPS. But yea we lost a few members to the warm side and that is troubling but we need a few more runs of that before its panic time. But regarding what you said above, unfortunately I kind of think that is what we need. I have seen almost nothing since early December that had a good pattern without a stout -nao. Even weak NAO looks end up having too much WAR and or SE ridge. That has been like 90% across all guidance, op runs, ensembles, weeklies...whatever. Runs that establish major serious nao blocking get the trough axis into the east. Runs that do not...or periods within a run that does not...the trough axis is too far west. The universal across all guidance is a pac ridge that is too far west to help us without blocking. That could change. Anything is possible, no one has the crystal ball, but that seems really unlikely IMHO. We have seen no sign of it changing. Its been a pretty universal rule that no block no eastern trough across everything. Yea the guidance has failed in their NAO look time and again but they have not been wrong about the pacific, its been pretty close to what guidance has said it would be all winter long. So I have less faith in the pac suddenly shifting into a +PNA pattern, the base state seems pretty locked in. That doesn't mean we couldn't get a transient PNA ridge and a really short window and get lucky. If the NAO fails that is what we will have to hope for, but that isnt something we will see at range and its not the primary thing I want to root for, that will become the fall back last hope for a fluke snow if the best way to get er done fails. I think if we want a seriously good 10+ days pattern we are going to need a real honest to goodness west based NAO block to develop. I have been skeptical of that since the last attempt at that failed. But one run last night doesn't mean jump ship and abandon all hope. Oddly, looking at the individual members of both the GEFS and EPS...it seems there is very little room for in between. I can see the h5 on the GEFS members...I can only guess at the EPS members but using the temperature and pressure patterns I can make a pretty good educated guess what the h5 looks like, and there is a 50/50 mix of great looking patterns and god awful HUGE eastern ridge ones across all guidance at range right now. And the key seems to be the 50/50 space. On the GEFS members its the NAO that determines that. Members that have a big time block cut something under it and into the 50/50 space and day 10-16 is a parade of storms across south of us. Members that do not establish a big time block fail to do that and have storms cutting north of Chicago. There isn't much in between. Same on the EPS but I can only guess about the H5 but it looks the same, members that have a low around the 50/50 have a parade of southern track storms while members that do not have storms way west of us. Just looking at the snow maps tells a general idea too...half the members get no big time snow anywhere near us...where the members with blocking either hit us with a big storm or miss us to the south even or we get some snow and the big big totals just miss to the north but either way there is a lot of snow around our area on those members. The members without a block the snow is 500 miles away. So I am not so sure there is much of an in between option here. We either get blocking to establish and suppress the west to east storm track under our latitude or there will be a huge eastern ridge and storms cutting west of us. I am 50/50 on where this goes. A lot of really smart people are still saying its coming...but they were also saying that mid January and it didn't and there seems to be a pattern here that makes me hesitant to trust the guidance and blocking right now. Either way one model run with a conflicted signal in the long range is a bad reason to get too upset. We need more runs to get a better idea before deciding its going the wrong way again.

I think what is going on is conflicting wave signals messing with those plots that have to fix a location to something that in reality is more fluid. There is some convection out in the pacific but also a wave near Australia and those give off two different phase signals 8/6 and so depending on which area of convection is stronger at a given moment will skew or pull the fixed location on that chart around. But if the wave in the pac dies and the one near Australia doesn't that will be bad regardless of what any chart says. But some of the mjo experts seem to thing the wave progressing into 8 is more likely than a recycle through 6 so that is good enough for me right now.

This would explain why the gefs looks like garbage

Lol. I don’t want to be too negative. They didn’t lose it completely. And there are a lot of snow solutions in the members. But there is a lot more disagreement on whether we get enough blocking to get the trough to cut under into the easy than there was yesterday. So it was a step back imo. Hopefully just a hiccup. Curious what the mjo output looks like when it updates. Might shows a loop through 6 which would explain the step back last night.

Both the 0z gefs and eps seriously degraded the -NAO signal and so both fail to ever get the trough into the east and reestablish the eastern ridge. The snow mean on both also increased. Looking at the individual members as to why, there is a complete split within both ensembles. Looking at day 10-15 about half the members have blocking and an eastern trough and they are very snowy with coastals galore. The other half have no block and a huge eastern ridge and storms cutting to Green Bay and rain all the way to Canada. There is no in between. The glass half full view is that burried within a crappy mean is the fact that half still think this is going the right way. The glass half empty view is suddenly after majority support for blocking as it gets closer to being inside the realistic time period we start to see divergence not convergence on the blocking and this is exactly how it fell apart last time 2 weeks ago.

Day 10-15 ensembles score a bit higher than climo. So they do add “some” value. They hit the early December pattern. They hit the late December crap. And they got some parts of the current pattern right including the tpv displacement. They messed up the NAO. That has a big effect on our snow chances. But if your here to tell us that long range guidance is very low probability I think most are aware. And I think we would all rather be tracking some hecs that’s less than we week away but we’re not so we’re all here looking for signs of the next threat window. Even if those signs are low probability the ensembles are the best tools we have so what should we talk about in the long range pattern discussion thread?

I was looking sun but wind this pattern is pna with epo and Nina

@Bob Chill @[email protected].@Ji This is the same system the eps was keying on. It’s as strong a signal as I’ve ever seen at this range. Look at the signal for high pressure in front of it... Then day 16 there is the stj crashing into the Southwest with cold locked in so let’s just do it again.

I was agreeing with you. Normally that pac would be a disaster. With only some AO or NAO help it wouldn’t work. But with a true west based block suddenly it actually works. You get systems ejecting into the east that might try to cut but run unti the confluence and blocked flow and it works in a convoluted way. But a west based block can fix a lot of imperfections for us. Especially in February and March

Who said they believe it? This is about hope.

So the pattern can’t change unless it changes? Thanks

I am not so sure if we get a west based block that the pacific really is a problem. I went digging and found the analog I was thinking of. This is kind of what we are shooting for here imo. This period produced 3 snowfalls in our region, one minor, one moderate, and one warning to HECS level depending on elevation. Of course the period was in March so get this displaced a couple weeks earlier and results would be better imo. But this is kind of the inevitable end progression of that EPS look day 15 imo. No 2 years are the same but look at the EPO ridge location and PNA. This is what that pattern turns into if you get a west based NAO block.

Just to clear something up... I know there are ways to get snow without a -NAO. I am not saying we need a -NAO to get snow. But I am saying that with the current pattern in the pacific we need an NAO block to have a good chance at snow. Most of the ways we get snow without a -NAO don't involve a west centered EPO ridge. That is going to place the trough axis too far to our west without blocking. Now if the PAC were to change...that could change the equation, true. But I find that the less likely of the options and that is why I am so keyed in on the NAO blocking. With our luck we will get both to change and a huge PNA ridge with a massive NAO block and it will be the coldest dryest Feb 15 to March 10 ever and we will watch Atlanta get 3 feet of snow.

This is workable...but its also 48 hours away from a really good look as the trough out west undercuts into the east. No where else for it to go with that blocking. That is the key, keep watching the trend with the blocking...take that away and the rest of that pattern suddenly becomes crap and we end up with a HUGE SE ridge. Get a true NAO block and the trough out west will have to cut under and something will end up stuck under the block as a 50/50 and suddenly we have systems coming at us from the west with confluence and its game on.

NICE move on the EPS today wrt blocking also. No can kicking and more importantly a significant improvement in the anomalies in the NAO domain. Obviously more agreement with blocking on today's run. Not shockingly that made it a slight bit colder as well with a little less trough hanging back in the southwest. I suspect that IF the blocking turns out to be right we will see that trend continue across guidance.

There are other ways, but not if the EPO ridge is centered around AK, we need that centered in NW Canada if we are gonna roll without an NAO block in Feb. Its a bunch of moving parts, but unfortunately the other parts are not aligned for a good snow pattern without the NAO. The one thing that can change all that is the NAO, add a block to a west based EPO ridge and suddenly its a good pattern. Without it, its a cutter pattern. The one other way it COULD work would be a severely displaced PV to suppress the flow, but that is something that is very unstable and impossible to predict at range so better to just go with the NOA.

I agree. Doesn’t mean it hits but I think the second half of feb we get a good pattern for a storm. But the mjo meandering around in 6/7 might just mean it’s after February 15 not after February 10.

It wasn’t updated yet when I looked earlier. Sorry. Jeesh. Hopefully it’s right. That’s the look we want.

It's probably a case of the guidance rushing a bit...but the clock is ticking now. I do think we get a period where the blocking and the tropical forcing times up for a really good look...but it wont be some 4 week epic period or anything...its likely to be a 10-14 day window before the MJO goes back into the tank OR we simply run out of climo. So in that regard no matter what happens I was completely wrong wrt to winter, I really thought the mjo would either be a non factor or a positive one. In the end its been THE factor and a negative one. But a 10 day window could be all we need if we get 2 warning events and a major hit in that period. It has happened before. In 2000 we only had a 10 day good period the whole winter but hit 3 good storms during that period (for people NW of the cities). It can happen. Even just one more good solid hit gets DC above climo so...

Well the MJO definitely trended worse and is likely why the trough is getting stuck in the west even with the -NAO. Hopefully this is wrong or temporary... can't have the MJO cycling around in Phase 6/7 all February. But OBVIOUSLY at this point we have to admit there is something favoring forcing around the Maritime Continent that just doesn't want to quit this year.