weatherwiz

Yup…textbook events are very hard to come by. Many weather events, including big events (whether severe or winter) generally aren’t textbook.

shame there was never any updates to NARR after 2014

I was hoping to pull off 100” but probably going to have to scale that back to 80” given slow January start.

meant in reference to forecast models not sensible weather haha

I was kind of hoping we could have gotten a solid 2-3 year stretch of ENSO neutral conditions but this developing La Nina and now signals for an emerging EL Nino are going to run that. But this constant seesaw of ENSO with multiple strong EL Nino events over the last decade is really causing some major atmospheric chaos

As much as I am a believer in CC and its influences on weather and while there may be some influences, I agree that CC is not the ultimate driver behind our crummy luck. Eventually we will get into periods (and a several year stretch) where things work out and we get slammed. This will happen sooner versus later.

I'm ready for climo to deliver. I finally got all shoveled out from all the good looks and each of the climo periods from the last several winters

Maybe Marco Sturm can transition practices outside and teach the Bruins how to play defense and punish them by making them stand outside in Arctic air at a clip of 30 minutes for each penalty they commit during a game

@40/70 Benchmark getting back to the end of last weeks discussion regarding that fast flow stuff...I retract what I had stated and I will also add that anything blaming fast flow is also voodoo...to a degree

I just kind of want the weekend to get here. This period is very low probability, but just enough of a probability to keep us a bit into it. We'll either put this to rest this weekend or see a theme where we are inching towards something.

How Low can you go

Was just going to mention that...how the pattern is structured is about as important than anything and I think stuff like this goes overlooked. People see ridge in the west and trough in the east and assume that is good but that is not necessarily the case.

gravy in the sense that the signal for anything significant from that is diminishing so if it happens to work out its a bonus.

Yup its been wild how drastically we've seen guidance alter within the medium-to-long range...clearly there is still a struggle with fully grasping the PAC. I also wonder if there is some residual feedback from the monster -PDO we had late summer...obviously not going to impact the models but moreso how the PAC is evolving in real time

I was hopeful for that first wave but I've become a bit less enthused, however, I am hoping that it may somewhat help set the stage for better potential with the second shortwave...there's a quite a bit of energy that will be in play there

The best potential for a larger storm is probably that mid-month period. Beyond mid-month, however, the pattern may become much more active...maybe with SWFE's given we may be battling the SE ridge...which may not be a bad thing given we'll be into peak climo. Not totally sold on the SE ridge becoming as stout as advertised though which would work into our favor. We may not get into deep cold, but we'll have deep cold available nearby so if we can tug a storm track a bit south/east we can easily pull into it

I'll say...I have zero clue how anyone forecasts in Anchorage or Alaska in general Anchorage is an insane market and often times can get screwed in the snowfall department because they get downsloped but they can also get wind winds because the winds can funnel. The airport can get like 3" of snow and a few miles away they're pulling off 20". But there are times anchorage can get absolutely dumped on too.

Yeah and its definitely gaining more weight. Still a bit off from anything to really worry about in terms of say power outages but untreated surfaces will become icy for sure

I still think your December call was pretty damn good. I know your upset about the snowfall aspect, but if you look at the region as a whole, it wasn't *terrible*. This December is a big reason why I am not a fan of doing snowfall total predictions because there are too many wildcards that aren't necessarily related to the pattern but more dependent on small scale processes during system evolution. When you look at the systems which gave us the snows in Decembers...those aren't systems which are conducive to widespread, uniform accumulations, it was more contingent on how each system evolved. While different scales, it's like dealing with convection during the summer. We can have an active pattern for showers and thunderstorms but at the end of the day some areas may come out of it with hardly anything while some areas got slammed.

2z NAM looks like it may be icier for up north Saturday...also seems like the timing has slowed down a bit too.

It's a thought I've had too. I have to do some stuff for Anchorage so I'm always paying attention and after like the first week of December they've been largely below average and temperatures and its been active at times into western Alaska. I've said to myself several times man...this look for Alaska doesn't totally bode well for us. Just wish I've been able to really divulge deeper into everything, particularly the state of the PAC.

Certainly no lack of winter there. Anchorage has been in the ice bowl this week...some pretty decent cold for them given their proximity to the water.

At least we aren't the west...mountain areas going to be getting nada after today/tomorrow for the next few weeks.

yup...sometimes you just need to swing to the fences

Given how I think the upcoming pattern is all about phasing potential, we're likely going to see some wild swings within OP solutions. What we want to continue seeing is either northern stream energy continuing to amplify or timing of northern/southern stream to be enough to yield potential for a phase as we get closer. Usually in these patterns or setups I don't focus too much on SLP output because whether a storm is shown is dependent on the phase. It's definitely an intriguing look but as Scott said it isn't perfect so its best to go through with caution.