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Models Have Us On Northern Edge Of Snow 3/4/16


bluewave

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God....I know they say the models are always this bad, but boy do they seem particularly awful this year. I realize 168+ hour range is always going to be really bad....but the 120-144 hour range seems horrendous this winter season. Does the 5-6 day range usually flip flop to this degree?

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Seems fairly consistent to me. Would you honestly be surprised if this turned out to be a cutter / rain-maker for us? Seems we're locked in this pattern.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

GGEM is further east than the GFS but it's also a cold front by the time it gets here.

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GFS and GGEM look terrible for every storm. Tune in tomorrow for another solution.

The problem is that in this El Nino winter, the good looking solutions end up being bad solutions. If something down the road looks good, it usually ends up being wrong. We had the blizzard but other than that little has worked out. Typical El Nino winter. The 12z Euro and EPS I believe showed next weekend's storm OTS, correct? I believe someone said we needed to actually root on the WAR. Now all of sudden tonight it's a lakes cutter? It seems that we just can't believe any positive looking solutions in this pattern. I hope we get lucky with something in the first half of March before spring settles in, but I'm quickly losing faith. 

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I don't know the weather models in great detail, but I do know how they operate, since I've done computational fluid dynamics modeling for small chemical reactors, which essentially utilizes the same heat, mass and momentum transfer equations and these also include phase changes and chemical reactions, so the composition is changing over time.  For both systems, the models start with defining an initial state (initial conditions in the reactor or the global "reactor" for meteorology), certain boundary conditions, and the best physical approximation of the fundamental governing equations, which allow one to move forward in time, predicting what the next "state" looks like and then repeating the calculations for subsequent points in time.  In both cases, the actual systems are so complex that "analytical solutions" do not exist (i.e., the various differential equations can't be "solved" per se), so a collection of usually non-linear numerical approximations are made for how the variables involved change over time, which is why so much computer horsepower is required.  

 

So, given that the initial conditions, globally in three dimensions at very fine grid spacing are not known well at all, and given the complexity of the equations involved, combined with the fact that weather is, by nature, inherently chaotic, meaning minor errors in initial conditions or forward moving calculations in time can lead to major errors in the various future state model outcomes (the butterfly effect as Lorenz called it, wherein a butterfly flapping its wings a certain way, in theory leads to a hurricane thousands of miles away well into the future), the question isn't, "why are these models so bad?" but really, how amazing is it that these models are this good?"  It's hard to predict the future state of mixing in a chemical reactor I can hold in my hand and yet people are complaining that we can't predict the future state of a global system which still isn't that well understood on many levels?  I wish I could convey better how unbelievably difficult it must be to even have any accuracy at all with these weather models. 

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The problem is that in this El Nino winter, the good looking solutions end up being bad solutions. If something down the road looks good, it usually ends up being wrong. We had the blizzard but other than that little has worked out. Typical El Nino winter. The 12z Euro and EPS I believe showed next weekend's storm OTS, correct? I believe someone said we needed to actually root on the WAR. Now all of sudden tonight it's a lakes cutter? It seems that we just can't believe any positive looking solutions in this pattern. I hope we get lucky with something in the first half of March before spring settles in, but I'm quickly losing faith.

This is not a typical Niño winter. If any thing this pattern is more Niña with a dominant northern jet and weak STJ.

#LaNiño

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GFS, GGEM, Ukmet and Euro are all cutters. Operationals and ensembles are cutters and yes the EPS is a cutter

Never again will I be fooled by anything that says we have a negative AO, positive PNA or MJO is favorable. They are all supposedly favorable and yet the storm plow right through the negative AO.

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Never again will I be fooled by anything that says we have a negative AO, positive PNA or MJO is favorable. They are all supposedly favorable and yet the storm plow right through the negative AO.

-AO alone will not cut it in this pattern.    The Atlantic is horrible, more is needed to overcome that than a decent AO signal.   Models will see the day 10 stuff as cutters eventually once they see that the -NAO signal is phantom.   At this point we have a better chance for record rains in March than a snow event

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-AO alone will not cut it in this pattern. The Atlantic is horrible, more is needed to overcome that than a decent AO signal. Models will see the day 10 stuff as cutters eventually once they see that the -NAO signal is phantom. At this point we have a better chance for record rains in March than a snow event

There is no semblance of a west based -NAO/Greenland block, east based "-NAO" will not get it done. The last 2 winters we got away with +NAO and +AO because we had 1) No overwhelming ENSO signal, 2) A severely +PDO helping to drive a relentless, dominant -WPO, +PNA, -EPO pattern out west that allowed for cross polar flow over the top without AO help. This winter, the El Niño monkey wrenched everything, as did MJO waves at the beginning of winter, which helped bring the blowtorch December
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-AO alone will not cut it in this pattern.    The Atlantic is horrible, more is needed to overcome that than a decent AO signal.   Models will see the day 10 stuff as cutters eventually once they see that the -NAO signal is phantom.   At this point we have a better chance for record rains in March than a snow event

Correct. A higher probability relative to climatology does not provide guarantees. Moreover, a cluster of the guidance now shows only weak blocking.

 

Having said that, it's still premature to assume that March won't have any measurable snow. But the probability of a much snowier than normal March is declining.

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