cbmclean

I have lurked here for several years. The SE is obviously my home forum but I come here because the analysis is superior and as far as the hemispheric pattern, many of the factors that affect us are the same. Anyway, I have read many of your previous posts about teaching and I have been wondering how remote learning was working for your students. I know this should be in the banter thread but since it came up here and there wasn't much else going on I didn't feel it was too much a sin to ask the question here.

I am most directly interested in cold in and of itself. I love snow but I have lived in North Carolina all of my life so I have had to learn to be satisfied with a sloppy 2 inches a year if I am lucky. So I love cold and dry almost as much as snow (I had a good Christmas). That being said I am interested in understanding if there are multiple different ways to succeed or fail with regards to cold anomalies in the eastern CONUS. For example, I know that there are at least two distinguishable Pacific doom patterns which suck for cold in the east. One is the Alaska vortex. Another is the massive Aleutians ridge. Are there multiple distinguishable "good" Pacific patterns as well, or are they all really variations on the theme of a +EPO ridge?

The Atlantic High Latitudes are looking better than years past that is true. But for the foreseeable future the guidance suggest that the Pacific will vary between "Meh" at best to "Ugly" at worst. In addition; the relative warmth in our normal source regions (northern Canada) means that there won't be much cold to work with in general.

Are you bitterly pointing the fact that the good look is perpetually 10+ days away? Or are you seriously pointing to this a potential source for optimism (or at least muted pessimism). Sorry but its hard to tell without voice inflection or body language.

You seem to have a passion for teaching. If you feel so inclined I would love to see one of your teaching posts about the Pacific patterns and their impact on the eastern CONUS. You touched on it somewhat last year in the Snow Climo thread but it was more in the context of the incredibly crappy pattern that was then upcoming. Are there any particular pattern stretches (good or bad) that it would be instructive for me to go back and look at the 500 MB anomalies on the NCEP tool?

If there is an EPO ridge, what is the mechanism for the warm air?

Tropical Tidbits has limited euro products. Does the Euro agree with the Alaska vortex?

The Atlantic may be mitigating the effect of the Pacific somewhat, which is better than nothing. But three straight years of crappy Pacific gets old.

I don't mind it being 10 days away...as long as tomorrow its 9 days away

The reason that we didn't get snow: it was the soap!

Thank you Mr. Wiggum. By the way, I am a big fan of your work. Your portrayal of George Washington in the school play was especially powerful.

Anyone bored on Christmas Eve and care to explain the mechanics of how this "look" leads to air flow from Asia to Canada. I do not know enough to see it. I understand the basic concepts of 500 MB anomalies and such, but I do not understand how various anomalies direct airflow from one region to another.

Cutters?

Thank you for this info.

Interesting, do any of those terms mean anything to you? I am only vaguely familiar with NWP. I was under the impression that it involves lots of non-linear partial differential equations.

I'm not sure about the statement that the long range was "inaccurate". The storm signal was there for like 10 days. The existence and approximate location were never in doubt. Yeah there was a time where it looked like DC was going to good snow, and that didn't happen but that was corrected. The fact that we knew about the storm at all from 10 days out is a miracle of modern science.

Honest question, what kind of "in-house" model could possibly be of use in serious forecasting? The big boys all run on huge government supercomputers. How could a homebrew model even have a chance. I'm not trying to criticize, just honestly curious.

My real question for PSU, more important than snow or patterns is: what the heck happened to the Eagles? I don't mean just this year. I mean in 2018 after the super bowl the future looked so bright, with plenty of talent and they were the darlings of the nation.

To each their own. I despise warm weather in the winter.

Well we knew that we were likely to have Pacific problems going in to this year. Without the Atlantic/HL help we would probably be looking at at another tropical Christmas, so I look on the bright side of that.

For example, your Boxing Day 2010 disaster was a Boxing Day 2010 dream in my neck of the woods (and a white Christmas in western NC, where I was spending Christmas with my wife's family).

So would the TPV be the Gatekeeper and the SPV the Keymaster?

Last year especially the strength of the PV was truly sickening to behold. Perhaps the most demoralizing part was the fact that modeling picked it up so early and it advanced forward in time so remorselessly. I am still scarred by your infamous post from December 30th of last year highlighting the historical results from past analogs to the pattern then forecast, absent extensive NA help.

I understand what the SPV and TPV are and that they are usually distinct entities. What happens when the SPV downwells into the TPV?

Anyone remember Christmas 2015? As long as we are far away from that, I will be satisfied.