John1122

The ridge/trough orientation has just sucked for basically the entire forum. Especially the west side. It's been cold and mostly dry. We got clipped by a couple of clippers in the East. If the ridge had been oriented into a +PNA configuration, those clippers that buried the Midwest to Virginia would have been rolling across Tennessee. Northern Kentucky has gotten hit a lot. Louisville Kentucky already has about a foot in the first 15 days of met winter. With a +PNA that would have had that active northern stream, which is common in La Nina, over our forum area.

Yes, I'm surrounded on all sides by 2500ft+ peaks.

I'm verifying much cooler than forecast lately. Last night my predicted low was 21, it was 15 this morning. Predicted high was 45, it was 41. Predicted low of 32 tonight, it's already 26.

That NAO depicted above really strengthens around Dec 28th on the CFS.

Use with caution, but the CFS fired off a big -NAO and cold underneath a few days post Christmas.

You're welcome, the snow was on the 20th, instead of the 21st, I mistyped. The Arctic air just wrung every bit of moisture from the air throughout that day, the temp fell from 32 to -15 on the 20th. We see big drops like that when we start in the 60s, but it's rare to see one when we start in the 20s/30s.

The WPO has been negative through our cold snap since late November. It was deeply negative a couple of days ago, which is one of the reasons we got this big cold snap the last couple of days. It looks like it goes + in about a week on the GFS and it's positive on Christmas. Which means warm east. It flips back negative towards the end of the run on the GFS. The aleutian ridge moves east over Alaska and could be working towards a +PNA, but it could be a headfake.

-28 with 9.5 inches of snow on the ground. -2 high temp. It snowed 4 inches, then snow showers for a couple days, then 8.5 on the 21st. It got up to 37 one of the days or we'd have had 12-13 inches on the ground. That would have probably produced -30s here.

According to the paper, the Aleutian high contributed to the SSW event on December 30th, 1984.

During that AH period in 1984, we were cold a few days after it formed, had a light snow event, highs in the 20s and single digit lows. Then the rest of December except for a couple of days, was very warm. We were in the 70s a week after the single digits and back in the 70s a few days after Christmas, with plenty of 60s in between. That continued into early January and the AH finally started breaking down and it flipped cold, then it flipped exceptionally cold.

Unfortunately they are notoriously hard to discharge. On average, they persist for 33 days in winter, but can go longer. About 60 percent of the time they lead to a split or displacement of the Polar Vortex, and over 95 percent of the time an early AH saw the PV disturbed later in the season. A paper I read about them noted that there could be a connection to extreme weather after they break down. They used December '84 as an example. One formed on December 3rd, the PV was disturbed on December 30th, and the AH dissolved on January 4th 1985.

Went to 5 this morning. High today has been 33.

Currently at 7 degrees, still a little more time to go a little lower.

This is the station closest to me that same date.

This is the 2nd snow in Pennington Gap in January 84. There is a 3 inch two days before.