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Winter 2014-2015 Pattern Discussion Thread I


LithiaWx

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Starting to think we are not going to see some deep cold locked in for chunks at a time this winter. More of 87 type winter, active, potentially snowy but not a frigid winter.

 

I'm thinking that also after taking a look at the Weeklies. Appears the Aleutian low comes back so that ridge off the west coast up into Alaska doesn't stick around after the first week of Jan.

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I like the look of the weeklies -NAO by week three with the ridge building into western Canada. I think we will all take our chances with that. We don't need a " fridgid " pattern.

Plus who cause the weeklies will look different Thursday and again next monday

I agree, I prefer an 87 over a 77. The week 3 look has solid blocking. B

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Good luck pack. I'm done with chasing the pattern, it's fun in Nov and Early Dec, but once we get a storm to chase, even if it's a long shot, all I focus on is the next chance, no matter the odds. Pattern chasing the negative ao, negative nao, +pna, weak west based nino e.t.c is a never ending quest to get all lined up just the way we prefer. Then you have the table set and guess what happens no storm and the fustration turns into what a waste of a great pattern, we can't even score with the perfect set up. So be of good cheer, even if, or better put when we whiff this Saturday we should have atleast a couple of more decent shots at accumulating snow before 2015 rolls in which is really all we can ask for

Agreed... I'd rather chase our 10-percent chance storm this weekend than chase a pattern several weeks off.

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Chasing fantasy snow and chasing fantasy patterns are pretty much the same thing.

 

Fantasy patterns don't give me beautiful maps with pretty colors and digits painted over my geographic location, though.  Fantasy patterns just give me 500 mb maps, anomaly maps, and a lot of "winter's gonna be rockin' in a month"s...

 

But that's just me. :)

 

In addition, I find chasing patterns to be a bit fruitless considering you don't really need a great pattern to score a storm, and a great pattern is no guarantee that you will get a storm.  To each his own, though!  We wouldn't be here if we didn't enjoy fantasy maps. :)

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Fantasy patterns don't give me beautiful maps with pretty colors and digits painted over my geographic location, though.  Fantasy patterns just give me 500 mb maps, anomaly maps, and a lot of "winter's gonna be rockin' in a month"s...

 

But that's just me. :)

 

In addition, I find chasing patterns to be a bit fruitless considering you don't really need a great pattern to score a storm, and a great pattern is no guarantee that you will get a storm.  To each his own, though!  We wouldn't be here if we didn't enjoy fantasy maps. :)

Some of us don't have any potential fantasy storms to track so we are stuck looking at day 11-15 NH anomaly maps. If I was in GSO I wouldn't care about the LR either, you guys are on quite a run.

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I want all the damn cold air I can get.  I'll worry about finding a storm later.  It probably has a lot to do with location too.  It's so much harder to get it cold enough in the Atlanta/Spartanburg/Charlotte corridor than it is in the mountains over toward Winston.

 

And I'm a pattern chaser.  It's like being a Detroit Lions fan (OK pattern) vs. being a Seattle Seahawks fan (good pattern).  The Lions give you a chance at winning the Super Bowl, but not a realistic one...while the Seahawks give you an elevated chance at winning the Super Bowl, though it's far from guaranteed.  I want the pattern that gives you elevated chances, even if they don't come around a lot.

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^

Sounds like the Muschamp football era (error) down here.

 

Seriously - and I'm pretty much staying away from posting since I can't make heads or tails of what's going on -

 

Seems like yesterdays dream is tomorrow's nightmare, over and over and over again

 

After all the long range forecasts, and then the wait until next week, and its only 384 hours out and so forth and so on ...

 

Sounds like the same for most past winters.

 

Frustration reigns, and I'll confess up front, I'm guilty.

 

But every silver lining has a touch of snow ...

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That is a really cool graph, did you make that?

 

 

Yep, I made it in a numbers spreadsheet & sifted through every winter storm in the NCSU winter storm database that goes back to 1958 & added a few storms like the winter storm in Dec 1958 for example. The 5 day increments I wanted to keep within the same month, thus I had to normalize the data to account for the extra or lack of days to work with at the end of each month & I felt based on the length of the dataset, going to 5 day increments instead of a week was a viable option... The data from NC is also consistent w/ what I attained after sifting through NESIS/Kocin & Uccellini... I.e. the coldest/snowiest portion of an El Ninos winter vs climatological averages comes during the heart of the winter, & as I've said numerous times here, December is often the mildest & the most boring month of an El Nino winter in the east US. El Nino winters with cold starts like 2009, 1958, & 1976 are the exception not the rule... 

 

The normalized NESIS values by month are very telling & it's not even a contest, El Ninos dominate January & February on the eastern seaboard...

Monthly-NESIS-Normalized-Snowstorms-El-N

Here was another analysis I recently conducted of the GA, SC, & NC combined El Nino monthly winter temperatures. February as expected is clearly the coldest of the 3 months, w/ one year actually averaging up to 4-5 *standard deviations* below normal against 1981-2010 climo here in the Carolinas & Georgia...

GA-SC-NC-Monthly-Winter-Temperature-Stat

 

That year was 1978 of course. Talk about an icebox... Notice, the ridiculous scaling on this temperature map, 1 standard deviation increments? Wow...

cd65.191.92.192.348.19.47.21.prcp.png

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I want all the damn cold air I can get. I'll worry about finding a storm later. It probably has a lot to do with location too. It's so much harder to get it cold enough in the Atlanta/Spartanburg/Charlotte corridor than it is in the mountains over toward Winston.

And I'm a pattern chaser. It's like being a Detroit Lions fan (OK pattern) vs. being a Seattle Seahawks fan (good pattern). The Lions give you a chance at winning the Super Bowl, but not a realistic one...while the Seahawks give you an elevated chance at winning the Super Bowl, though it's far from guaranteed. I want the pattern that gives you elevated chances, even if they don't come around a lot.

And we have a winner! Gimme the cold and we'll work on the precip. I get plenty of precip all throughout the year with marginal cold or no cold altogether. I'll take a cold and favorable pattern first and then worry about getting a storm.

Franklin's post about the leaves blowing across the yard made me laugh though. And I do agree with Pack that we'll be above average in the snow dept in the end.

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I still like some storm there for just before Christmas, but yes my hopes are fading for that.  I actually think that one could easily cut west of us and give some SVR wx threat.  The one after could be big MULA!!! 

 

GFS PARA has the big Mula for the midwest after hour 200...giant snow giving cyclone just spinning and spinning day after tomorrow style lol. 

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Meh, if you guys want snow at I-20/more South, you really need some good cold air to work with that will squash the storm track down.  Example:

 

Here in KCAE, it's best when a strengthening low tracks across Central Florida to get really good snows. WAA usually wrecks our chances the closer to the coast it is either in the Gulf or the Atlantic.

 

Of course, then other areas to the North such as NE GA/NC usually don't see big amounts of snow because the precip is lacking.

 

Edit: This isn't always true, but for the most part it works out that way.

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On the 0z run, the coldest we get here at 850 is -1.3 AND we're only below 850 for 3 frames out of the entire run. We only have one low at 32 or below(monday). I dont think there's a single doubt that we end up above normal for the month now.

Are you going to trust this one run of the GFS to base the rest of the monthly departures on? Really.....  :whistle:

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On the 0z run, the coldest we get here at 850 is -1.3 AND we're only below 850 for 3 frames out of the entire run. We only have one low at 32 or below(monday). I dont think there's a single doubt that we end up above normal for the month now.

December may end up with above average temps for the entire SE, but I would be very reluctant to call it a slam dunk on the morning of the 16th based on a 0Z model run. There are quite a few very skilled LR mets (JB, DT, LC, DS.....) that see December having the cold fight back before the month is up. Webber has given us some clues to their reasoning.

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Yep, I made it in a numbers spreadsheet & sifted through every winter storm in the NCSU winter storm database that goes back to 1958 & added a few storms like the winter storm in Dec 1958 for example. The 5 day increments I wanted to keep within the same month, thus I had to normalize the data to account for the extra or lack of days to work with at the end of each month & I felt based on the length of the dataset, going to 5 day increments instead of a week was a viable option... The data from NC is also consistent w/ what I attained after sifting through NESIS/Kocin & Uccellini... I.e. the coldest/snowiest portion of an El Ninos winter vs climatological averages comes during the heart of the winter, & as I've said numerous times here, December is often the mildest & the most boring month of an El Nino winter in the east US. El Nino winters with cold starts like 2009, 1958, & 1976 are the exception not the rule... 

 

The normalized NESIS values by month are very telling & it's not even a contest, El Ninos dominate January & February on the eastern seaboard...

Monthly-NESIS-Normalized-Snowstorms-El-N

Here was another analysis I recently conducted of the GA, SC, & NC combined El Nino monthly winter temperatures. February as expected is clearly the coldest of the 3 months, w/ one year actually averaging up to 4-5 *standard deviations* below normal against 1981-2010 climo here in the Carolinas & Georgia...

GA-SC-NC-Monthly-Winter-Temperature-Stat

 

That year was 1978 of course. Talk about an icebox... Notice, the ridiculous scaling on this temperature map, 1 standard deviation increments? Wow...

cd65.191.92.192.348.19.47.21.prcp.png

 

Pretty awesome, thank you for posting!

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On the 0z run, the coldest we get here at 850 is -1.3 AND we're only below 850 for 3 frames out of the entire run. We only have one low at 32 or below(monday). I dont think there's a single doubt that we end up above normal for the month now.

Yea I think it's safe to say the true cold will not filter in until after Christmas at some point. By that time there isn't enough days yet to really make an impact. I could care less though if the models are correct about the long range. Haven't looked at the EPS yet.
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There are stark differences between the Euro and GFS Ensembles in the final week of the year.  Both have a weak -NAO look, but the Euro has more western troughing and slight ridging in the SE, while the GFS is quite chilly with a trough east of the Rockies.  The difference lies in the the location and orientation of the -EPO ridging in Alaska.

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Talking about the 0z EURO run and the 0z Euro EPS control run. It's a pattern that goes from mild to just seasonal to MAYBE cold.

You did the same thing last Dec. You called for a top 5 warmest December on record...If I recall. Just give the pattern change a chance to unfold, then the models won't make such drastic changes from run-to-run. Rest assured, the last half of the month will be colder than the first half (anomaly-wise).

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