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Looking towards the beginning of December


CoastalWx

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Yeah this is right. Who care if we're -2 or +2 on the month... the issue is simply about whether we can get a storm or two that delivers. Through at least 12/10 the pattern is hostile. Some hope after that but what's the mechanism to dislodge the cold? What pops the PNA ridge? How do we ensure the gradient pattern doesn't favor Chicago for snow lol.

Not that anyone asked, but I care. It's ALL part of "Meteorology".

This forum gets a bit too carried away by "snow", when that is just 1 facet in a field of study that carries very many.

I know we've been over it and I don't mean to spark up that pointless debate (if for no other reason, any snow-contrary point of view is unintelligible white nose to the listener, so why bother). At first it was a detraction for me when I would feel ...well, it would 'occur to me', and then I'd think I was contributing not to a weather forum, but to an Internet catch-basin of obsessors more snow-nutty than an Inuit at an igloo convention.

But I guess there is some truth to it being relative to the season. It may be tough to get one's mind around tornadoes and heat right now - ha! Most folk are into the weather for the experience of the weather. Scott's right - who the heck cares about mostly sunny, high of 80 if that is all there ever is. I actually agree with that much.

You know, part of that is evolution ingrained, as an instinct for exploration in all people. Moreover, you can't truly explore the weather unless it operates at the bounds of what is physically possible. THAT requires dramatic events: For a pure Meteorologists, it requires "extreme" events; for everyone else, its "drama", and by design, people will tend to associate drama with their memories and sentiments - it just so happens most are of the latter ilk, and that happens to be snow.

To put it simply, a pure Meteorologist is someone that cares whether any anomaly at all is transpiring, not just weather it is snowing or not. I fall for in the former camp, but I'm not going to sit here and lie and try to come off as though it doesn't bother me that it won't f snow in winter anymore. jesus christ!

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Honestly you should probably try to add to the conversation here. No one is overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. Right now we're in sort of a holding pattern and know that we have some opportunities ahead post 12/10.

Your posts on the pattern change have been abysmal.

Like your forecasts for Son of Sandy, and this last snowstorm? Rough couple of weeks for you
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Not that anyone asked, but I care. It's ALL part of "Meteorology".

This forum gets a bit too carried away by "snow", when that is just 1 facet in a field of study that carries very many.

I know we've been over it and I don't mean to spark up that pointless debate (if for no other reason, any snow-contrary point of view is unintelligible white nose to the listener, so why bother). At first it was a detraction for me when I would feel ...well, it would 'occur to me', and then I'd think I was contributing not to a weather forum, but to an Internet catch-basin of obsessors more snow-nutty than an Inuit at an igloo convention.

But I guess there is some truth to it being relative to the season. It may be tough to get one's mind around tornadoes and heat right now - ha! Most folk are into the weather for the experience of the weather. Scott's right - who the heck cares about mostly sunny, high of 80 if that is all there ever is. I actually agree with that much.

You know, part of that is evolution ingrained, as an instinct for exploration in all people. Moreover, you can't truly explore the weather unless it operates at the bounds of what is physically possible. THAT requires dramatic events: For a pure Meteorologists, it requires "extreme" events; for everyone else, its "drama", and by design, people will tend to associate drama with their memories and sentiments - it just so happens most are of the latter ilk, and that happens to be snow.

To put it simply, a pure Meteorologist is someone that cares whether any anomaly at all is transpiring, not just weather it is snowing or not. I fall for in the former camp, but I'm not going to sit here and lie and try to come off as though it doesn't bother me that it won't f snow in winter anymore. jesus christ!

Lol

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How's the guidance look for saturday? Still cold and a lil precip, or no. I mean could be our last shot for a while

It's still there... It's a gentle overrunning scenario. There is even a bit of S/W material rippling out underneath to give some very weak frontogen in there, but primarily it has a snow grain/flurry/light snow look in a west east band that some 100 or so mile wide between ALB-BOS. The high slips east and the llv trajectory then comes around to the ESE/SE then S and its over by Sunday morning. But at least its a day of a winter vibe.

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can someone please tell what specific feature/teleconnection did/did not come to fruition to seemingly completely rewrite the next three weeks? The overwhelming consensus (not just on this board but local and national media as well) was for a cold start to the meteorological winter for New England, but now it is becoming clear that not only is below normal temps off the table until the third week of december...but people are now calling for +2 or +3 for the month. I know it can happen that forecasts can do a 180, but I would love to know that is happening to do so...

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He had snow no snow snow no snow as models flopped around. Instead of staying the course. And not everyone busted on SOS

Actually was forecasting wintry precip when the models had the thing cutting through Michigan. Nice try though.

And most everyone busted on SOS.

Looking forward toward your cold and snowy pattern that begins on 12/5. Should be fun :snowman:

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It's still there... It's a gentle overrunning scenario. There is even a bit of S/W material rippling out underneath to give some very weak frontogen in there, but primarily it has a snow grain/flurry/light snow look in a west east band that some 100 or so mile wide between ALB-BOS. The high slips east and the llv trajectory then comes around to the ESE/SE then S and its over by Sunday morning. But at least its a day of a winter vibe.

Will you hang bulbs and ornaments from your weenie while decorating the tree with snow gently falling outside?
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Whats interesting is that if you go back and read the forum around this time (back on eastern I mean) in 2008...there were a lot of people ready to jump. The ensembles had all been predicting a huge cold intrusion for early December...almost similar to Dec '83 and a huge -NAO to boot. They all backed off near the 1st of December and things looked very volatile but somewhat normal to above normal overall.

We then got the ice storm on Dec 11-12 which was not seen well until within 4 days (it started off as a huge cutter on the models)...then we torched after that and Kevin had his famous meltdown about seeing brown grass and burly men's arms hanging out of pickup trucks right through Christmas. The Dec 19-20 event was originally progged as a torching cutter at D6-7 on the Euro. It trneded into a very cold SWFE.

The bottom line...unless the pattern is epic looking for a KU (ala December 2009/1995) or it looks like December 2006/2001/2011, these volatile patterns are not going to be modeled well in terms of snow events or even short term cold shots. I used the 2008 example to show how difficult it was to see that month turning out the way it did after the busted 1983 redux cold pattern. I used the 1985 pattern earlier as an example too..it was a great blocked up pattern that gave us a -4 month and hardly any snow...I hardly think people would have been celebrating on here. KU events in December aren't that common. Boston's top snowiest Decembers have almost all come from SWFE patterns....1970, 2007, 2008, 1975. Only 1995 was a top 5 December that was more classic looking in terms of the KU cookbook pattern.

So I think some people need to gain a little bit of perspective when looking at forecasted patterns. It doesn't mean we are going to rock this month...that is not easy to predict. We could end up on the wrong side of the gradient and have a torch month. But historically, odds would say that from where the blocking has been, the N plains will eventually get quite cold and some of that will come our direction giving us chances. That's all you can really say at this point until we get closer.

There's one theme that was in common with all of the snowier Decembers...they had ridging up near the Bering/W AK EPO/WPO region, or even slightly north of that. We don't see a huge vortex ending up there right now so all options remain on the table.

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can someone please tell what specific feature/teleconnection did/did not come to fruition to seemingly completely rewrite the next three weeks? The overwhelming consensus (not just on this board but local and national media as well) was for a cold start to the meteorological winter for New England, but now it is becoming clear that not only is below normal temps off the table until the third week of december...but people are now calling for +2 or +3 for the month. I know it can happen that forecasts can do a 180, but I would love to know that is happening to do so...

It's tough to hone that during this particular era, though. The reason is ... much of what Will and Scott, Ryan and Trop' and everyone else has been discussing when they said tag lines like "hopeful for this" or "encouraged by that...", those were all based on ...hinted trends so to speak. Which, yeah ... that kind of means "use at own risk", but a lot of those hints were pretty loud - like yesterday's 12z runs were more than mere hints, frankly.

Anyway, the teleconnector side of this is not a deterministic solution. They are used as "correction vectors" - in other words, where to correct the models toward. That AO was differentiating heavily negative, there were multi-model products signaling a warming tropopause over Siberia ... the NAO was progged to vacillate but stay negative while doing so, and the PNA had some factors that suggested it would rise in 10 days.

All those together, combined with those hinted trends in the the various operational models is where we were at 24 hours ago.

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Whats interesting is that if you go back and read the forum around this time (back on eastern I mean) in 2008...there were a lot of people ready to jump. The ensembles had all been predicting a huge cold intrusion for early December...almost similar to Dec '83 and a huge -NAO to boot. They all backed off near the 1st of December and things looked very volatile but somewhat normal to above normal overall.

We then got the ice storm on Dec 11-12 which was not seen well until within 4 days (it started off as a huge cutter on the models)...then we torched after that and Kevin had his famous meltdown about seeing brown grass and burly men's arms hanging out of pickup trucks right through Christmas. The Dec 19-20 event was originally progged as a torching cutter at D6-7 on the Euro. It trneded into a very cold SWFE.

The bottom line...unless the pattern is epic looking for a KU (ala December 2009/1995) or it looks like December 2006/2001/2011, these volatile patterns are not going to be modeled well in terms of snow events or even short term cold shots. I used the 2008 example to show how difficult it was to see that month turning out the way it did after the busted 1983 redux cold pattern. I used the 1985 pattern earlier as an example too..it was a great blocked up pattern that gave us a -4 month and hardly any snow...I hardly think people would have been celebrating on here. KU events in December aren't that common. Boston's top snowiest Decembers have almost all come from SWFE patterns....1970, 2007, 2008, 1975. Only 1995 was a top 5 December that was more classic looking in terms of the KU cookbook pattern.

So I think some people need to gain a little bit of perspective when looking at forecasted patterns. It doesn't mean we are going to rock this month...that is not easy to predict. We could end up on the wrong side of the gradient and have a torch month. But historically, odds would say that from where the blocking has been, the N plains will eventually get quite cold and some of that will come our direction giving us chances. That's all you can really say at this point until we get closer.

There's one theme that was in common with all of the snowier Decembers...they had ridging up near the Bering/W AK EPO/WPO region, or even slightly north of that. We don't see a huge vortex ending up there right now so all options remain on the table.

Not at all, agreed. I do remember 2008 and how it looked on models which is also why I mentioned these SWFE type deals won't be seen like 2-4 weeks out. They sort of spring up on you all of the sudden. Remember how the NYE 2008 deal was like 1-2" and then rain? That thing was a 6-8hr dendrite dump here while Sam was nude in the deformation band. That wasn't a SWFE really...but you get what I mean.

I think weenies are setting the bar high because there were a few points about how it could be an awesome period. We just don't know if we'll be in the good side of the gradient. 200 miles may mean the difference between epic stretch and epic fail...how are you going to figure that out 2+ weeks out? You can't, other than note the similarities of previous patterns.

On that note, the daily roller coaster continues. Ensembles looked better.

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