dendrite

lol CAR....literally 100" more than BOS (officially) and it's only late January.

I'm sick of Leon too. I'd like to see some negative anomalies to our north for better confluence/arctic sfc highs.

NAM almost looks like a glorified fropa.

Wait...you're shocked to see a ratter return from a mediocre pattern?

I'd leave that up to Will, Scoot, and the others. I'm not going to claim to be able to tell a cutter pattern from 1-2+ weeks out. I mean, I can look at it and say, "yeah...cutter risk", but I can't look at it and say we have another near shutout coming going forward. We've joked about the 80s around here, but there IS an eerie feel, sensible weather wise, compared to some of those 80s years. Cutter, record cold, cutter for us while a couple -40C PVs drop into the upper midwest. Tip had a good point...these cold shots knife on in and retreat with little fight at all. The one storm last weekend had a decent high trying to nose its way in, but even then, the midlevels were way northwest. You have to be pretty tilted to be pulling off sleet with a temp of 0F. But most of the cold shots have been fleeting. We have a -PNA building in d5-10 on the EPS/GEFS so the period after the SB definitely looks meh for a bit.

NNE has had plenty of rain and sleet too. They've racked up more in SWFEs thanks to latitude. idk...I just don't like the avg temps + high precip > little snow being due to luck argument. Not when we're getting 2-4" of liquid from multiple cutters each with 1.00-1.50" PWATs.

I guess...but it has mostly been a cutter pattern where we're getting juicy warm sector events to really up our precip totals. We've had long stretches in winters where that has happened before...cutter, frigid, meh SWFE, frigid, cutter, frigid, etc. When the pattern goes somewhat favorable and DC gets snow and we don't, I guess I'd call that some semblance of bad luck. But to me, this currently is just a shit pattern of cold shots and cutters.

Plenty of winter here...tough to judge by the main strip in Tilton. We stayed cool most of the day until mid afternoon when we semi slipped into the warm sector. Today was our biggest disparity in temps with you that I've seen since you got the new Davis. Your area is looking damn good for mid week. Have you tried Tilton House of Pizza? Those guys are damn good. They're right on the corner by the railroad tracks....I think I recall you mentioning Onions to me before. Kettlehead Brewery is a little further down by the high school too.

Elevation

It isn't though. TVF is flirting with 0C at 850 on the 3rd ahead of the next system coming out of the Rockies. The high of 7F would indicate steady or falling temps through the 12-00z period. I mean, the 12z temp there is 13F and 00z is 3F.

-46F at INL this morning. Broke the old record of -36F by a little bit. lol

Had some light rain showers in Tilton. Came home to a light dusting of snow at home. 34°

Glad we don’t live at thief river falls. GFSX MOS (MEX) KTVF GFSX MOS GUIDANCE 1/27/2019 1200 UTC FHR 24 36| 48 60| 72 84| 96 108|120 132|144 156|168 180|192 MON 28| TUE 29| WED 30| THU 31| FRI 01| SAT 02| SUN 03|MON CLIMO N/X -7 5|-29 -27|-38 -22|-31 -4| -4 17| 14 26| 6 7|-13 -4 16 TMP -2 -1|-23 -29|-33 -25|-24 -6| 3 14| 18 23| 13 3| -8 DPT -13 -11|-30 -38|-40 -32|-30 -12| -3 7| 12 15| 8 -2|-13 CLD OV OV| OV OV| OV PC| PC OV| OV OV| OV OV| OV OV| OV WND 17 12| 12 18| 14 9| 7 11| 13 10| 16 16| 12 12| 15 P12 61 33| 13 10| 7 4| 0 20| 23 21| 19 24| 33 18| 17999999 P24 69| 13| 8| 21| 27| 31| 40| 999 Q12 1 0| 0 0| 0 0| 0 0| 0 0| 0 0| | Q24 1| 0| 0| 0| 0| 0| | T12 0 0| 0 0| 0 0| 0 1| 0 0| 0 1| 0 0| 0 T24 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 PZP 1 1| 0 1| 1 1| 0 1| 2 3| 6 8| 7 1| 2 PSN 98 99|100 99| 99 98|100 99| 92 90| 90 74| 67 97| 95 PRS 1 0| 0 0| 1 0| 0 0| 2 5| 4 5| 15 2| 4 TYP S S| S S| S S| S S| S S| S Z| S S| S SNW 1| 1| 0| 0| 1| 0| |

Better up there, but I saw the best lift below the DGZ out there too.

There's a reason why we average 11-12:1.

33F with some flurries.

DGZ is way up there.

Widespread -40s in northern MN this morning. The AWOSs can’t even report that cold. INL -45°. No thanks. edit....saw a -48F at Ash Lake.

Probably too much of a pressure gradient for those northern arrowhead sites (Tower/Embarrass), but this one may have more oomph for places further south than 96 did. The associated sfc high settles over the Dakotas on Wed morning so maybe they have a better chance to decouple and get into the -40s. MEX is hitting MSP with a -18/-30 which is right up there with the -17/-32 of 1996. The wind chills will be ridonkulous.

Glad this will be greatly modified for us. MEX with -14/-25 for ORD Thursday. Shattered records if that verifies.

A few days of 80s and then the 31st flirted with 90. Then a hellacious backdoor moved through. Tippy remembers that one well.

Comfy spring overall. Not much of a mudseason up here. I was crushing BTV in the forecasting contest by going wayyy above guidance. No snow cover meant to bump up the mixing heights like it was late Aprl.

12, 10, 98...we won’t be picky

I think Jerry hit it on the head with sample size. There’s so many synoptic and global scale forcing mechanisms that work on the pattern that our relatively small sample size of datasets doesn’t necessarily give you a representative range of possible outcomes when factoring in some luck. Obviously you know all this and bust or not, you’ll be back next year fine. You have to have a “we’re onto Cincinnati” attitude.

I think the moral of the story is everyone still has a lot to learn wrt seasonal forecasting. Just when we think we have something figured out we get thrown a curveball...*cough judah*... If this ends up a lousy winter after a confident call of epicness, there’s nothing else to call it other than a major bust...whether you think the methodology is right or not. With that said, everyone learns from the busts and keeps pushing the science and the forecasts foreward. You can’t get discouraged either because we all bust. Some are good at spinning them with excuses, but for sure we’ve all had some big fails. With all of that said, it’s still January so let’s not mail it in like the 2012 Sox quite yet.