psuhoffman

It's the mjo. Not only is it in nearly unprecedented territory for a nino but it's taking forever to cycle through the warm phases. I'll admit I didn't foresee that. Until that weakens or gets out of 5/6 we are not going to be able to sustain an eastern trough.

1998. We had so many perfect track rain storms that year. Ugh

I zoomed in and your right it has you at about 20-21". But Stephens city average is not 30. Its closer to 26. I used to have a really detailed snow mean map generated by a long term analysis of snowfall that showed the snowshadow zone you live in well. It's also evident here on this map lwx produced many moons ago. But either way getting 20" in 4 weeks is nothing to toss. There is still a solid month of snow climo left when they run ends to get the 10" or so more to put you into "great snow year" territory. Keep in mind as well your median is closer to 17" not 26. Finally keep in mind that map is straight 10-1. The reason your area averages more snow than D.C. is in large part due to higher ratios from colder boundary conditions. I went through the 5 day panels. There are several systems that track perfect. You get slightly less snow at 10-1 but in reality you would be the jack zone with high ratios while D.C. Is getting 8-1 slop. So chill out. This is one such example.

I'm not thrilled to have JB on my side. I'm about as big a jb basher as there is. He is biased, hypes, and is stubborn so you don't ever know for sure if he really believes what he is saying or if he simply is doing his not back down thing. But I'll begrudgingly admit he was consistent that it would be warm late December and early January and he has been consistently saying it would get colder after Jan 15 for many of the same reasons others have stated so I can't criticize his winter forecast this year since it was basically the same as mine. If he goes down I go down. That mjo is troubling. The Canadian has the loop also. I'm starting to wonder if this ssw isn't hurting more than it will help. There is a correlation between sswe and an enhanced mjo in warm phases. I'm not sure which is the cause vs effect though. But if the mjo is being enhanced into warm phases and killing what was a good pattern otherwise...and then the effects of the sswe don't help us...either it doesn't propagate down or it impacts the troposphere in a way that doesn't do us much good...than in effect it actually killed what was shaping up to be a good pattern on its own. This is why I'm not a fan of the strat stuff. Even when they do happen and do propagate, they often don't do us any good wrt snow anyways. It's a whole lot of speculation for very rarely any payoff.

But the worst part was it did deliver him about 25% more than his climo snow for the whole season in like a 4 week period and he was upset because someone else got a little more. And he is in the other thread wanting to punt January 20 on every year because of the sun angle and melting.

That wasn't an ensemble mean. It was the control run. We got hit by 3 warning events and a couple minor ones. Western NC was higher because there was one big southern slider in there. New England got more because they are New England. Your reading too much into it. It was a great run and your upset because you weren't the bullseye. Ive got a dose of harsh reality for you. We are almost never the bullseye. Years like 1987 and 2010 come around once every 20 years.

Lol that it shows D.C. more then double climo snow in just the next 6 weeks and you take away that.

Weekly control is fun

I'm curious too. Not critical, I respect your opinion and always looking to broaden my understanding...curious if there were factors I missed or weighted differently.

The progression isn't delayed it's just we're impatient. I remember a couple weeks who we wanted to see the start of the flip towards a good pattern by New Years. We are now. No question the evolution in January is stepping towards better. But I understand being impatient. Feels like forever since that snow in November.

Isotherm is more the expert. But I do agree the winter was showing it's hand some early and absent the mjo wave and or the ssw we were looking good. But it's more complicated imo. There seems to be some correlation between a ssw and warm periods at the initiation. There is also a correlation with a ssw and warm mjo phases. And there seems to be a correlation between warm mjo phases and late December in a nino. But correlation and causation are two different things. We can observe a relationship but we don't fully understand the causation. So maybe the warm up was inevitable due to some underlying relationship with the nino that is yet not understood. But none of that is important to the point of what will happen going forward as the effects of the warm mjo phases and the initiation of the ssw come off. I agree the effect should be a reversion to a colder more favorable pattern for snow over the mid Atlantic.

I prefer to think we will know how the first half of January is going in 2 weeks. Then we will know the second half in another 2 weeks.

That bothered me some too. But I really suspect it's temporary. You can tell ridging is attempting to develop under the PV and is pressing and over time should dislodge that enough for what we need. That one stick is really all that's between the look we are getting and really good. Additionally I take some comfort that over the years when guidance is insistent in a specific look coming often it will be rushed and we have to wait longer but eventually it usually does materialize. The last couple years when the initial progred flip was a week of two into February that delay was a winter killer. The pattern did eventually get favorable but not until march and too late to save winter. If this pattern gets delayed from early January to late January that's not as problematic to our snow prospects. We should know in 2 weeks.

Many of us have been following your updates. Excellent read as always. Thanks!

Definitely nice pacific pattern moving into mid January. Now just get the other side right.

If you want me to be critical one thing I don't like is how the PV is just sitting over the pole and seems stuck there off to day 15 on the euro guidance. Gefs breaks it down faster. That's really interfering in our ability to get blocking to lock in. Need that to move to get either cross polar flow and or permanent ridging up top to establish.

The nao tanking (now in only a few days) has been trending stronger. The EPS has also been delaying its breakdown. Perhaps the transient window ends up longer than thought. The guidance really becomes jumpy and unclear beyond day 10. Even in the generalities. Hopefully soon they start converging on the changes we want in the high latitudes.

2 weeks

Ok...fair question. I think its too small a sample size to know. But history suggest Boston wasn't getting big storms early in most nino years...but they were getting nickel and dime stuff from clippers and such...this year that kind of thing has been absent in general, even during the cold period it was big storms or bust. Boston had a couple close misses also so them sitting with nothing vs a couple inches so far is probably bad luck.

That's 99% of our threats lol

@frd great stuff as usual. My only skepticism regarding this strat stuff...and why I think sometimes some of the strat experts put too much into it, the seasonal guidance was forecasting the SAME general pattern from back in September/October, a LONG time before they started picking up on the SSW potential. And most of the winter outlooks that forecasted the cold/snow look the second half did not rely on ssw to get it. And most of the analogs that turned snowy also did not include a SSW. I think 1966 did, but most of the others did not. So if the seasonal guidance was already showing a -NAO and eastern US trough before seeing a SSW, and the analogs indicate that is what is likely even without an ssw...why are some acting like this SSW needs to save us and putting so much emphasis on the SSW regarding our prospects for cold? Don't imply this means I don't think ssw's have significant impacts on our weather. They do. The one last year definitely impacted our cold/snowy March pattern. And this has the potential to help for sure. But despite what Chuck thinks, an SSW is not the only way to get blocking or a trough in the east during winter.

It was a close miss last night but everyone was to gloom and doom for me to bother mentioning it.

I see the potential for another miss to the south and if Richmond and NC are sitting above climo while we are still waiting in a week its going to get UGLY in here lol

Are we? We had 3 straight years of above average snowfall from 2014 to 2016. That is pretty rare actually. Since then we had one really awful year, and one year that was actually only a little below a median winter even though people acted like it was god awful (probably because it was mediocre following a god awful winter and we got spoiled). But where is the perception we are having bad luck? Or did you just mean this winter so far?

fair enough...and I remember a few people rooting on the pattern change in January the last 2 years because they were tired of the "cold dry" pattern. I was NOT one of them. I remember saying "be careful what you wish for" because in a nina cold/wet is just not on the table and I would have rather stuck with the cold dry pattern and just hoped that eventually we would luck into one of those waves or a nice clipper or something. Sure enough the pattern flip meant 8 weeks of warm and mostly a shutout pattern. This isn't the same thing.