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Winter 2014-2015 Pattern Discussion Thread II


JoshM

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I think the statistics still favor at least one event of magnitude this winter just based on weak el-nino climo in this area. Whether we switch to a much colder pattern sometime in January remains to be seen. Personally I still think sun spots and sun levels have an impact on the AO and it always scares me when the Sun is active during winter months. I am looking forward to the future lower sun activity, b/c I think that could play a role in colder winters down the road. In the meantime enjoy the warmer weather, to me the cold/dry of some winters is miserable. I love playing golf the day before an ice or snowstorm...   :santa:  Merry Christmas

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I think the statistics still favor at least one event of magnitude this winter just based on weak el-nino climo in this area. Whether we switch to a much colder pattern sometime in January remains to be seen. Personally I still think sun spots and sun levels have an impact on the AO and it always scares me when the Sun is active during winter months. I am looking forward to the future lower sun activity, b/c I think that could play a role in colder winters down the road. In the meantime enjoy the warmer weather, to me the cold/dry of some winters is miserable. I love playing golf the day before an ice or snowstorm...   :santa:  Merry Christmas

I totally agree about the sun's activity. I would think the flares of the past month are playing havoc with the magnetic field. Has to have an impact on the stratosphere. Weak solar activity of the past cycle has led to recent cold winters IMO. The next cycle should be very, very weak. Great observation.

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it doesn't look undecided for the western us. I wonder why it's so consistent for the west but so inconsistent in the eastern half ?

I feel like models are still out to lunch on exactly how the ridge forms..you can see some outlooks with a very warm AK but some back off...to me the latest IC is a strong signal for a strongly -EPO which we're headed towards...the other idea is where the heck the PV is going to drop, how cold it will be and whether or not any of that will go east. I guess there's a lot of reasons why it's undecided on the east coast. You can see on the last 3 runs there is widespread cold in Canada, that's a good sign to me at least the model is putting the cold on our side of the globe...the other factor is where it goes after that.

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I totally agree about the sun's activity. I would think the flares of the past month are playing havoc with the magnetic field. Has to have an impact on the stratosphere. Weak solar activity of the past cycle has led to recent cold winters IMO. The next cycle should be very, very weak. Great observation.

Thanks, the future cycle of lower sunspots(or even no sunspots) is pretty exciting from a winter lover's perspective. If these forecasts are right, we could see some radically colder winters ahead. I will always remember how dead the sun was in the 09-10 winter. 

 

Back to this winter, if we could see the el-nino continue to trend west based, that will only help matters as we head through winter. Region 4 will hopefully continue to trend upwards. This generally sets up a favorable Aleutian low/western US ridge anomaly.  Don't give up hope, the back end of winter still offers some good chances I think. 

 

ssta_c.gif

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I thought that this solar max was still pretty low on the scale. Is that not true? If solar was the magic bullet, then every year with a solar min would be cold, right?

This is a pretty decent nasa gif. Personally I think it's a factor in the equation, how much of a factor remains to be seen. I've always wanted to do research into a sunspot/AO link, but never have. Looking at the past data during the maunder minimum, it's hard to argue the sun doesn't play a large role. If forecasts of it trailing off again similar to that time period are accurate, that's pretty exciting from a snow lovers perspective.

 

ssn_predict_l.gif

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Only like .5 of QPF as ice for the CAD areas of NC. 

 

Looks like it has the northwestern Piedmont (GSO, etc.) hanging on to sub-freezing temperatures nearly to the end of the storm.  Sort of reminiscent of March 2014 in that regard.  It seems like the Canadian sometimes overdoes low-level cold in the LR, though, so I'm not sure if it could be a bias or what.

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