psuhoffman

To me they look washed out and imply the eps has no clue.

18z eps

Surprised no one posted the ukmet earlier. It was probably the best 12z run.

He is fully something

Tanks it by 150 this period looks somewhat interesting. the very end it looks to me to be cutting the western trough underneath the blocking and rolling forward would be a decent pattern. Imo

I don’t mind where the EPS is going day 15 either.

The ensembles support the general idea. There is potential in this look. and I know the guidance is favoring a ridge now but I could see something cut under later next week with this look up top also. After that things go to crap but by then we are in the “not very reliable” range for guidance this year.

HRDPS is the 12z run to hug for us. Still sticking to what I said, such small variations in several discreet factors will make such a huge impact on this (marginal event as you said) that I won't feel confident in any solution until almost nowcast time. For now the consensus of a minor event favoring the typical climo areas seems reasonable to me.

It does, but I was looking at the trends alone. Everything has been trending more sheared with the wave. The rgem was most amped and it still is but it did trend weaker with everything else. But it’s not over. Long way to go.

Looks like the RGEM is trending significantly weaker with the wave. The temps won't matter if we end up with a strung out mess and not an organized wave.

@frd @C.A.P.E. @Bob Chill I have no doubts we will suffer a mild period somewhere, and we should be able to discuss that. But I am skeptical that it is more than a temporary period. There have been several "panics" already when a warm look showed up in the long range only to realize it was transient by the time it got to the medium range. Already the GEFS and GEPS are backing down and we can see the "other side" by the end of the run. The EPS has been trying to dump a trough into the west several times and it's never locked in. I am not convinced yet that we will suffer a really long term crap pattern. Transient warm periods though are a sure thing.

It's impossible at our latitude to run the table December to March cold. That just isn't going to happen. Even our blockbuster winters have mild periods and people crying about our lost snowcover. People need to get that out of their head.

He must be seeing the same things I am...

Ahh we need those rgem ensembles now! It’s fun to be tracking in the short range again. And in the middle of this torch December too!

I hope this doesn’t come off as disrespectful to you or Tom because I have the utmost respect for you both, but I think you are letting one person effect your outlook too much. And I’m not saying I love everything I see right now. My expectations aren’t sky high. Im still where I was a month ago, hesitantly expecting near avg snowfall but with low confidence. But I also don’t see the doom and gloom either. First of all wrt Toms seasonal forecast, I respect the hell out of him and he has an exceptional track record, but some years aren’t easy to nail. This year is complicated. I would have low confidence in anyone’s forecast. I also question some things that are the foundations of the contingent calling for a mild winter. 1. A lot of the December torch calls were based on an mjo tour of warm phases. But that hasn’t happened and instead we enter the middle of the month still cold and an mjo looking to cycle through the COD and maybe head towards cold phases by New Years 2. The AO was supposed to become hostile and it did, but now it’s quickly tanking again and then who knows. But it hasn’t locked in positive. 3. The AAM state was used as a basis for a lot of the warm calls. But for starters the AAM has improved significantly since earlier in the fall. And additionally if we did deeper into the AAM im not sure history supports the notion that a low AAM is necessarily a death sentence to cold and snow. Yes overall there is a correlation but that’s because most low AAM years were Nina’s and cold neutrals following a Nina and those do suck. If we were in either of those conditions I would be saying this is gonna hurt! But if we only look at enso neutral years following warm or neutral years almost all of them were cold and snowy. So how does that compute? 4. The slow qbo progression was cited. But even if the qbo takes until February to flip negative winter months during a descending qbo between 5-0 were mostly ok. There is evidence the qbo doesn’t need to get negative to become favorable. it’s already getting into favorable territory barring a reversal. People are saying “this should lead to that” but when I look at actual examples it didn’t play out that way. Granted I’m simply looking at things from 30,000 feet trying to pick out correlations but I see plenty of evidence to refute typical low AAM expectations.

I’ll hug that for now. Again I won’t really start to feel confident until we’re inside 24 hours and even then only somewhat. I’m not saying I don’t think this is a legit threat, just the hit zone is so narrow with these progressive waves and slight changes in the amplified of the wave, baroclinicity, or the location of the boundary can have huge impacts and none of those are easily modeled. That said things look about as good as they can right now so I’ll stay cautiously optimistic we get our first widespread event. It would be nice to get everyone on the board before Christmas for a change.

I’m sure you will get through to him this time!

Can we extrapolate the HRRRRRRR yet?

I haven’t seen the 12z but even the last run at the end the Aleutian low was reforming which would be the end of the pac puke shortly after. So far the pac has been progressive but with a definite trend and bias towards a reformation of the Aleutian low/epo ridge and no prolonged deviations from that. That pattern is supported by the sst look there right now as well. I expect that base state to continue.

Interesting developments wrt the high latitudes on tonight’s ops and not forever out in time either. Definitely need to watch this for a possible phase change in the AO NAO which would seriously change the calculation for snow in the current pattern in our favor.

People question these frontal wave setups all the time but they can work. Problem is because they are discreet waves in a progressive pattern they are incredibly finicky and hard for guidance to pin down with any accuracy at range. So when they are on guidance at day 7 or 10 there is very little chance they will be right. Either there is no wave or the boundary isn’t located exactly right at that lead so it’s somewhere else. We’re getting close enough to start taking it seriously but there will be adjustments and shifts even within 48 hours with these. Anyone who says they know what is going to happen is full of it. Slight adjustments in the timing, press of cold, and amplification are the difference between rain, snow, and a squashed wave. I feel like we’re in the game but I won’t feel confident about a setup like this until very short range. That’s why people “think” they never work. When they do we usually didn’t see them coming. When we see them from range they often don’t.

I ventured into the nyc sub before the last storm and it was a bunch of “hey look at this model that shows what I want and that’s what we should expect and ignore everything else” each run and he was leading the weenie charge.

Most of us want snow but let’s not turn this sub thread into the same wishcast weenie fest the NYC forum was with the last storm. Please and thank you.

Check out the gfs and euro.