weatherwiz

I think you misread, he said continental view, not continental flow.

That almost looks too perfect

I don't think I'd consider 40's a torch either, even during peak winter climo, although probably for northern New England I would. I guess though getting above like 47-48 may be a different story.

Hopefully because of this prolonged cold a number has been done on the tick population

Being held by the Statue of Liberty

Sometimes there is way too much focus on what phase a particular teleconnection is in or what the upcoming phase will be, however, there really is no right answer. It depends on what outcome or result you're looking for. Generally speaking, the most active weather is going to occur during the transition period, this is when you're most likely to see potential for stronger weather systems. This is why if you're rooting for a big dog, like a top percentile type of snowstorm along 95, you want to see the NAO becoming less negative with respect to time as a storm is riding up the coast. In the sense of the PNA you would probably want to see the PNA becoming positive (ridge building into the west) but ultimately, you would want the PNA to be progressive or transient because you want that trough to continue ejecting east which would then come with ridging building into the West (developing RNA). If you're looking for active weather you would want the pattern to setup and kind of remain a fixture for a period of time...this is something that can work extremely well for us and is how we get the periods like we did in like 1996, 2011, 2013. But because pieces are constantly moving globally it is extremely difficult to get such regimes to develop and maintain during the cold season. What you would hope is to get a great pattern to develop but be able to revert right back to that type of pattern after periods of relaxation.

Yeah you've been pretty spot on so far. It can be really difficult to forecast the extent of the more anomalous regimes teleconnections can become.

I can see why the frustration is there but it really is only January 2. If we were in a strong EL Nino regime then I would probably be in the camp of throwing away the rest of winter, however, I don't see any strong arguments or data that can make one say with a high level of confidence the remainder of winter is cooked. Sure, December could have been better as a region given how cold it was with the constant shot of Arctic airmasses, but what's the correlation to increased snowfall and storms with Arctic airmasses? I would wager not particularly high...those airmasses are usually quite cold and dry and more often than not, any bigger storms precede the Arctic air. We are also just beginning to enter peak climo which I would presume most receive the majority of their seasonal snowfall between mid January and mid February (obviously different the farther north you go). Yeah places finished under climo in December for snow but its not like December is a massive snow month in the climo department. Whatever negative departures a location has from not meeting December snow quota can easily be made up in January. This milder pattern we're about to enter, may not be a bad thing. Let's reshuffle things up a bit and go from there. There is nothing indicating this mild stretch is something that will be prolonged.

IMO, there is way too much instability and hostility to have a solid idea moving past mid-month. I agree that there are times and situations where someone who is incredibly skilled at long-range forecasting can accurately nail pattern evolution and regime looking several weeks down the road...I mean there are some meteorologists who make a killing doing such forecasts for energy companies. Anyways, there is just so much at play right now and so many factors. While we have an idea of how things may unfold over the next few weeks, there are still uncertainties and low confidence in this and because of that there is no way to gauge how the pattern evolves past that because it will be highly dependent on how the next few weeks evolve. But in these situations this is where analogs can provide tremendous value but when you're dealing with the wildcards such as the stratosphere...even analogs may not work too well.

We get fake cold, fake snow, and fake tornadoes. Ahhh this was fun but was May, not April. I can still feel the adrenaline rush

Let’s see what 2026 can bring. The best part of 2025 weather wise was the gustnado that came within several feet of me back in April. Should watch that video again.

Must be the hangover then

I think some have had wayyyh to much champagne

Yup...I am intrigued in that period too. Looks quite chaotic and that combined with the variance indicates the pattern should be more on the active side.

somehow I feel like that energy back in the SW ~7th is holding back on the potential for the wave to amplify a bit more