You know, this isn’t exactly a textbook pattern that gets us salivating and staying up late for euro runs.
Look at the weak aleutian ridge, retracted jet, and a central US trough with a downstream WAR. The only good thing was the -AO/-NAO block. Somehow we got the cold here far enough to suppress the SE ridge to prevent it from linking up with the NAO.
It partly explains why we did not get a 20 inch KU, but it should give us hope that we can still find ways to snow even a nina-like pacific paired with a -NAO (kind of like the 1960s?)
Funny, if you showed me this plot back in November without telling me what happened this week, I’d scoff with disappointment and think it’d just be yet another cutter.