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Looking ahead to Winter 2011-2012?


Ji

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I dont think i can take another snowless winter. Last year we at least had stuff to track....this year??

unless you like drought and heat our weather sucks.. get over it

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There is really no reason to wait until the fall to make a winter outlook other than to see if there is an unlikely chance an El Nino will develop....we may get some interesting events, but the writing is on the wall....10-12" at DCA and a temp profile like below (I might go a little colder than climo)

post-66-0-84737600-1307973391.png

And if you remove the atypical supertorch that was 1999-00, it makes a bit of a difference. Not necessarily for DC snow, of course.

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There is really no reason to wait until the fall to make a winter outlook other than to see if there is an unlikely chance an El Nino will develop....we may get some interesting events, but the writing is on the wall....10-12" at DCA and a temp profile like below (I might go a little colder than climo)

post-66-0-84737600-1307973391.png

Always a safe bet to go with this type of forecast for around here than anything else.

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sure!...while you are at it, might as well remove 1951, 1971, and 1974 as well since they were even warmer here than 99-00...let's just include the cold winters in the sample!

Nationally, 1999-00 was the most atypical winter (for a winter following a first year Nina) of the bunch. I understand you are more concerned with the DC area, but that's the reason I singled that winter out.

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Really? Looks about the same when you consider the different scales used.

It's mainly the northern tier of the country that is affected, the northern plains/Rockies in particular. As seen in the map above, 1999-00 was a huge torch in that area, in complete contrast to pretty much all the other winters in the dataset.

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There is really no reason to wait until the fall to make a winter outlook other than to see if there is an unlikely chance an El Nino will develop....we may get some interesting events, but the writing is on the wall....10-12" at DCA and a temp profile like below (I might go a little colder than climo)

post-66-0-84737600-1307973391.png

to keep one's sanity, one must keep the faith

04MAY2011 25.1 0.4 27.0-0.2 27.2-0.5 28.0-0.5

11MAY2011 25.3 0.9 27.0-0.2 27.4-0.4 28.3-0.3

18MAY2011 24.6 0.5 27.0 0.0 27.6-0.2 28.4-0.2

25MAY2011 24.0 0.2 26.8 0.0 27.5-0.2 28.3-0.3

01JUN2011 24.3 0.7 26.8 0.1 27.5-0.1 28.4-0.2

08JUN2011 24.2 0.9 26.7 0.2 27.5 0.0 28.4-0.2

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My take on long range forecasting the winter is this ....

1. It must be incredibly hard to forecast temp anomoly correctly at long range. Last year, almost all forecasts were calling for above normal early transitioning to cold at the end. If I remember correctly it was just about the opposite.

2. Trying to forecast snowfall amounts must be even harder. It just seems that snowfall is so dependent upon the storm to storm variables that it would be hard to pin that down. In the NoVa area last year, we had a so-so winter, but came very close to a good one. If the Christmas storm is a mere 50-75 miles west, if the Jan 11 storm doesn't squirt just north of us at the last minute and if the mid Feb storm is snow and not sleet, we'd have a much different opinion of last year.

I guess I would have to say that what I'm thinking is that even under less than ideal conditions, surprises do happen. Give me the cold, let's take our chances with individual snow events. We aren't out of it yet, regardless of what the conditions might be right now and looking forward.

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We had a LOT of potential last year, but things never really came together. It easily could've been a 20" season at RIC.....if only the Christmas storm delivered and the other in mid February just before the big warm up. At least we did have the persistent cold in December and January.

Yeah, we had 2009-10, but this area is still waiting for the big one. Richmond hasn't had an official 15"+ snowstorm since February 11, 1983.

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I'd probably go with something similar to zwyts' outlook right now but I did text him that I'd add about 4-6" to DCA's snowfall if we went warm neutral for ENSO rather than cold neutral. Just a gut feeling as warm neutral actually has some polarizing results for DCA...some years have been horrible like '58-'59 and '90-'91 and others were pretty good like '79-'80 and '53-'54.

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Analogs that might be useful are 1967-68, 1974-75, and 2008-09. All were 2nd year Ninas after a Nino, featured the -PDO, the +AMO, and at least 2 of the 3 likely featured the +IOD. 2 of the 3 winters were in a period of lower solar activity as well (2008-09, 1974-75).

Of course this assuming the ENSO doesn't revert to neutral instead of a Nina. Past history would argue against that though. But low solar is important regarding the NAO, as is the QBO.

QBO DEC/JAN/FEB

1967/68: -7.27 -8.38 -10.21

1974/75: 22.57 -16.70 -15.39

2008-09: 10.46 10.71 12.33

2008/09 is the only year with a +QBO, so it may be an outlier presuming our QBO drops into negative territory.

cd72.83.117.198.163.15.51.39.prcp.png

Precipitation data is all confuzzled

cd72.83.117.198.163.15.54.12.prcp.png

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