December Med/Long Range Discussion Part 2

[Yeoman]

Much obliged..

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, HighStakes said:

Don't worry JB's Brazilian meteograms will save our winter.

When I was at PSU in the late 90s/early 2000s and JB was at acciweather and his stuff was free he was actually pretty good. Always was a snow weenie but he was more grounded. He made specific forecasts for specific locations and didn't spend half his time trying to spin something or off on a tangent  about utter nonsense. Now all he does is hype and make vague calls so he can try to spin things into a win. It's a shame to see someone that once had real talent become such a joke. 

[mdsnowlover]

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Oh cool so were only losing 4 weeks of prime Climo. This wouldn't be the same jb that called for a great December and was saying cold would roll right into January and it was a front loaded winter 2 weeks ago. Not the same guy right?  

yo, you got that all rght!!!

[CAPE]

Latest EPS is more of the same. No real hint of improvement. Not a blowtorch by any means, but the pattern remains hostile for snow chances. Ridge remains to the west of AK, +AO/NAO, -PNA. We are probably looking at mid January for pattern improvement if the weeklies are to be believed.

[CAPE]

10 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Oh cool so were only losing 4 weeks of prime Climo. This wouldn't be the same jb that called for a great December and was saying cold would roll right into January and it was a front loaded winter 2 weeks ago. Not the same guy right?  

The guy is just awful. No idea why anyone pays attention to him. A few weeks ago he was cherry picking runs of the CFSv2 to show how cold it was going to be for the latter half of December for the east coast.

[BristowWx]

10 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Latest EPS is more of the same. No real hint of improvement. Not a blowtorch by any means, but the pattern remains hostile for snow chances. Ridge remains to the west of AK, +AO/NAO, -PNA. We are probably looking at mid January for pattern improvement if the weeklies are to be believed.

When winter is about half over.  Some said we are due a bad one maybe this is the one.  I need to remind myself that for most of us our winter comes down to a few key events with the rest of the time it's just boring and mild.  Not many raging harsh three month winters in the MA.

[CAPE]

5 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

When winter is about half over.  Some said we are due a bad one maybe this is the one.  I need to remind myself that for most of us our winter comes down to a few key events with the rest of the time it's just boring and mild.  Not many raging harsh three month winters in the MA.

And we need to remind ourselves that La Ninas tend to suck here.

[showmethesnow]

Not sure we can lay the blame so much on the La Nina as we can on the lack of the NAO cooperating. Our region can do fairly well when we are dealing with a neutralish to a weak La Nina of which with readings of -.6, -. 7, and -.8 the last 3 months suggest we are at. If we can ever get a legit -NAO I think our prospects would increase a great deal. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ji]

Euro run last night opens door for a fluke in next 10 days 

[CAPE]

23 minutes ago, Ji said:

Euro run last night opens door for a fluke in next 7 to 10 days 

There has been a window showing up just before Xmas, with brief ridging out west and trough swinging through the east. Who knows maybe some place in our region could manage some flakes if there is a storm. If the control run could be believed, looks like a legit threat around day 10.

[PhineasC]

Late January through mid-March is peak time in this region over the last several years. Tossing December and early January shouldn't be shocking to anyone.

[WinterWxLuvr]

We need to look at the calendar.

 

[NorthArlington101]

Well, looks like we have a chance at some backend pity flakes for the next two weeks. GFS twins give us 4 chances to see first flakes (unless you did today).

Para also has a coastal on Day 11, but we won't talk about that

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, Ji said:

Euro run last night opens door for a fluke in next 10 days 

Yea. Euro control has a storm right after Xmas. The ridge gets beat down enough and there is at least cold close by unlike last year, that if a storm rides to our north and temporarily beats the ridge down then something comes up right behind we could score a fluke. It would melt right away and be a very temporary blip in the overall pattern but we would all take it at this point. 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

We need to look at the calendar.

 

I get the point but I know our climo and so does Bob and Wes and what has us concerned are the signs showing up that don't bode well for the future. Extremely pos AO Decembers aren't usually kind winters to us. And the pattern about to set up can be a difficult one to shake and could last well into January if something like a pv split or other such mayhem doesn't reshuffle the deck. If we're still on here January 10 with low heights over Alaska and Greenland and nothing promising on the radar the it's only December arguing isn't going to work and that's my fear. It's still early and it could go the other way. Even later this week now looks colder so models could all be wrong but I'm not hanging my hat on " hopefully the models are wrong" as a reason for optimism. Hope yes, optimism no. 

[Wonderdog]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

I get the point but I know our climo and so does Bob and Wes and what has us concerned are the signs showing up that don't bode well for the future. Extremely pos AO Decembers aren't usually kind winters to us. And the pattern about to set up can be a difficult one to shake and could last well into January if something like a pv split or other such mayhem doesn't reshuffle the deck. If we're still on here January 10 with low heights over Alaska and Greenland and nothing promising on the radar the it's only December arguing isn't going to work and that's my fear. It's still early and it could go the other way. Even later this week now looks colder so models could all be wrong but I'm not hanging my hat on " hopefully the models are wrong" as a reason for optimism. Hope yes, optimism no. 

You, Bob and Wes are our best posters but you obviously know that model accuracy is low after what, 5 or six days. On any day, a significant shift in the LR can pop up and usually does, just don't know when. With that knowledge and the fact it is still December, I'm going to assume that things are basically normal for our region to date and I look forward to the JI storm in nine days or so.

[psuhoffman]

3 hours ago, BristowWx said:

When winter is about half over.  Some said we are due a bad one maybe this is the one.  I need to remind myself that for most of us our winter comes down to a few key events with the rest of the time it's just boring and mild.  Not many raging harsh three month winters in the MA.

Good point about the key events. Even in the worst winters we get chances.  If we get lucky and a couple hit then it's just a typical winter. Get unlucky and it's 2002.  Very rarely we get a year where the pattern sets up consistently cold or "cold enough" and stormy around here. 1996, 2003, 2010, 2014, 2015. Those were going to be good. 2015 underperformed if anything but we would take that every year.  other years we need some luck and without it were in trouble. We will need to score a fluke or capitalize during one of the Windows we will get at some point. No different then most of our winters. 

[PhineasC]

There has never been a season in which hoffman didn't fret and worry the whole way. He is the best representative of what it means to be a weather hobbyist in this region.

[ErinInTheSky]

So, what models nailed today? I'd like to know what I should watch other than the GFS and Euro on wxbell.

[North Balti Zen]

3 minutes ago, supernovasky said:

So, what models nailed today? I'd like to know what I should watch other than the GFS and Euro on wxbell.

The Canadian held on to snow and then ice solutions longest from range and I think did way better with this than the euro or gfs. Closer in rgem and nam actually did pretty great, particularly rgem which was coldest and wettest solution. Seemed to have better idea on precip getting in faster and cold bleeding out slower.

[psuhoffman]

8 minutes ago, supernovasky said:

So, what models nailed today? I'd like to know what I should watch other than the GFS and Euro on wxbell.

From long range they were all too cold and snowy. Closer in the nam and rgem did better. 

[psuhoffman]

29 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

There has never been a season in which hoffman didn't fret and worry the whole way. He is the best representative of what it means to be a weather hobbyist in this region.

Being analytical and pragmatic about storm chances is not necessarily worrying. I do like to stay in character on the fringe thing though. And I like to keep my expectations in check so I'm not disapointed over and over. But when I legitimately think something looks good and were likely to get a flush hit I'll say so. But we're the midvatlantic. Things look bad more often then good. That's just honest evaluation. You want to feel good without justification go read JB

[87storms]

34 minutes ago, Wonderdog said:

You, Bob and Wes are our best posters but you obviously know that model accuracy is low after what, 5 or six days. On any day, a significant shift in the LR can pop up and usually does, just don't know when. With that knowledge and the fact it is still December, I'm going to assume that things are basically normal for our region to date and I look forward to the JI storm in nine days or so.

Agreed.  They offer the logical posts.  I'm more of a fan/vent poster.  I feel better discussing sports lol (the Wizards need another wing/big).  Anyway, I definitely went into this Winter with low expectations and would be fine with 1 or 2 significant snowfalls.  We've had 2 great Winters and one with a legendary snowstorm, so gotta take some dud seasons here sometimes.  That said...last Winter minus the blizzard was weak so maybe we can get a normal 2-3 storm Winter out of this.

[BristowWx]

Xmas day not looking like a torch any more.  Miracles do happen.  Looks like a mild wedge pattern.  For now at least.

[Thanatos_I_Am]

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[BristowWx]

That will be tough to dislodge.  Will just have to make the best of a bad pattern for a while.  Assuming it's correct .  

[Bob Chill]

Ensembles are starting to hone in on another aleutian ridge event d10+ (bulding prior to d10 though). It's showing up fairly strong on the means at long leads. GEFS is less amplified with the poleward push than the EPS. Here's the d11-15 EPS mean:

 

 

In general, this is a repeat of what we are experiencing now and would make sense. If it happens and holds for a time again then the aleutian ridge moves into first place for dominate features other than the usual suspects so far this winter and could end up being the story of the winter irt NA winter patterns (total speculation and just pointing out the possibility). 

The mean look is a cold canada pattern with the coldest anoms in the western half. IF this type of look is where we are going after xmas then we could experience another round of significant cold fronts with a continued west storm track. Which actually wouldn't be that bad. We're in prime climo by the end of Dec. 

 

EPS mean temps keep trending down after Christmas as well. Mean smoothing of features makes temps look stable but we know that wouldn't be the case in reality. I would expect significant ups and downs in that pattern with a continued active precip pattern. For all we know this could be remembered as the year of ice storms and or mixed events. We'll see how things progress. If we can shake se ridge amplification leading into fronts/precip events our snow chances would increase quite a bit. Assuming the progged pattern is real, embedded features should start to show up better in 5-7 days or so.

 

[Bob Chill]

 

1 hour ago, supernovasky said:

So, what models nailed today? I'd like to know what I should watch other than the GFS and Euro on wxbell.

Each event here will provide unique challenges depending on setup and type. Range is important too. Euro is the best d3-5 but not always of course. When the euro/gfs agree in that range confidence is higher than normal. To complicate things...the gfs is often better than the euro with pure northern stream events and the euro is definitely better at split flow or southern stream storms. 

Short range is tricky too. Nam usually sucks and is very bouncy with precip maxes and totals. Especially 2+ days out. You'll see the term "Nam'd" used from time to time. The nam likes to have these runs that blast us when all guidance says otherwise. But it occasionally is the first to see big changes in the short term so ignoring it can bite back. My personal favorite short term model is the rgem but it can have flaws too. The newest 3k nam seems pretty good with temps but the jury will be out for a while as it faces more tests. 

Another important thing of note is the gfs is notorious for being stingy with precip on the nw side of lows in the med and even short range. Hopefully we end up on the nw side this winter so you can see...lol

Euro used to have a bias of hanging energy back in the SW at medium range. That seems to have changed with the upgrade.  However, the new euro seems to have a bias of over amplifying storms in the medium range. Most notable in the d4-6 period. 

Lastly, knowledge of our climo is imperative to making sense out of conflicting signals on the models. There are some great posters here who cover that very well with events. All of our red taggers are really good but Wes is the go to voice wit winter storms here. His knowledge is off the chrats. Matt (Deck Pic), Ian (if he comes back), and PSU are solid among a slew of other hobbyists. 

Winter weather here is full of flaws and problems like 80% of the time. It's almost never east to predict and hugging one model all the time will ruin your batting average. 

[HighStakes]

What has me concerned for all of us that want a big winter is the fact that just about every winter season that gives us much above snowfall had some meaningful snow in December. If we go snowless in December then reaching our averages will be a challenge in my opinion. 

[Maestrobjwa]

7 minutes ago, HighStakes said:

What has me concerned for all of us that want a big winter is the fact that just about every winter season that gives us much above snowfall had some meaningful snow in December. If we go snowless in December then reaching our averages will be a challenge in my opinion. 

Except last year, of course, lol