January Medium/Long Range Discussion Part 2

[CAPE]

33 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

I don't know if you were referring to me exclusively with your original post, but let me tell you why I believe they should be believed in this case.

Computers are obviously guidance and not gospel. They have to be considered in light of the actual weather and patterns.  In the vernacular,  the default setting this winter has been warmer than normal and BN snowfall,  if not snowless. Moreover, medium and long range modelling has been found to be too gung-ho on blocking and cold than reality. But I note they have not been as flawed when it comes to their warm and snowless predictions.   All this being the case, it is both rational and reasonable to believe the medium range modelling(and long range for that matter) when it either backs down from a colder than normal/snowy look or progs above normal/snowless conditions. 

Several times you have mentioned that we could still get lucky and sneak in a snow event here or there. While that's possible,  I play the odds. The problem with this year has been we've had both a bad pattern and no luck, though the two are obviously related.  This also refers to what I previously said in this thread (I believe) that I will assume it won't snow until it does. What I really mean is, the preponderance of the evidence (including seasonal patterns, model accuracy,  and model trendencies) suggests that it is more likely that it won't snow significantly than it will. 

So that's why I'm inclined to believe modelling that shows warm. Now, where do we go from here?  I think the day 9-10 chance looks to be on its last leg and probably dead come 12z barring a significant change.  So then we're to the day 15+ warmup advertised on the Euro 15 map posted and GEPS. Assuming we get past that, we're mid-February? Suddenly,  we're left with hoping for an end of season bone (s) like 07 or 08 when we got a couple of 2-4" events after a horrid winter. Or maybe even a 3/09 event if we're real lucky.

I hope I'm very wrong, and leave it at that.

Being pessimistic about winter weather is  always prudent in this region. It usually pays off. We have mild winters here and it rains many more times than it snows in every winter. That being said, part of the fun of living here is tracking chances, and even though the failure rate is high, its how we roll! I see your points and they are valid. If we just look at the ens guidance at face value, starting the middle to end of next week it gets colder and we stay cold for at least 7 days, and even at the end of the run, although it moderates, its still chilly. Just have to hope we get some opportunities during that period, most likely with clippers. Beyond that who knows. There are mixed signals for sure. There are indications of PV displacement, and a -AO is hinted at on the weeklies. Plus the last few runs of the CFS are are a weenie dream for Feb.

[dallen7908]

According to the EURO, 41 hours of rain heading our way beginning early Sunday afternoon. ~2.1"

According to the NAEFS, seasonal temperatures Jan28 through Feb 02 but dry as a bone. 

 

With respect to the above discussion: the apriori (persistence / no snow in this case) has to be weighted into any forecast that extends into the future more than 5 or 6 days, 

[CAPE]

Man if only...we can hope lol.

[mdsnowlover]

1 minute ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Man if only...we can hope lol.

other mets have pointed this out too, 2 in particular

[frd]

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

Man if only...we can hope lol.

Isn't that from Jan 17 th to the 18th? Anything more current ? 

 

 

[CAPE]

15 minutes ago, frd said:

Isn't that from Jan 17 th to the 18th? Anything more current ? 

 

 

Its an avg of 12 runs ending at 18z yesterday(the 19th). And its the latest monthly, but if you go to TT and look at the individual weeks, it goes up to the 0z run.

Check out week 3. Its fairly close to whats being depicted on the eps weeklies for that general time. The period centered on the 9th of Feb looks interesting, and then again around the 18-20th. All subject to change lol.

[mattie g]

Just now, C.A.P.E. said:

Its an avg of 12 runs ending at 18z yesterday. And its the latest monthly, but if you go to TT and look at the individual weeks, it goes up to the 0z run.

Check out week 3. Its fairly close to whats being depicted on the eps weeklies for that general time. The period centered on the 9th of Feb looks interesting, and then again around the 18-20th. All subject to change lol.

The CFS? Change? No way...

[CAPE]

Just now, mattie g said:

The CFS? Change? No way...

Oh I am not just talking about the CFS lol. All LR is subject to change. But yeah we know how the CFS flip flops on the reg. It has been pretty steady here lately though, so who knows.

[frd]

1 minute ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Oh I am not just talking about the CFS lol. All LR is subject to change. But yeah we know how the CFS flip flops on the reg. It has been pretty steady here lately though, so who knows.

Wonder why the Euro weeklies lost thier consistency ? They held firm for a good bit. 

Wonder again if it is the background state, or the QBO , who knows. Mayabe too many people take them as gospel,  or give them too much credit.

 

 

[aldie 22]

I'm with Mitch

[CAPE]

8 minutes ago, frd said:

Wonder why the Euro weeklies lost thier consistency ? They held firm for a good bit. 

Wonder again if it is the background state, or the QBO , who knows. Mayabe too many people take them as gospel,  or give them too much credit.

 

 

They have not done a major shift, but there were some notable differences between yesterday and Monday runs.  PSU and I posted about it last evening if you read up a bit.

Both the CFS and the EPS weeklies have a pretty nice look generally for the second week of Feb. I know the CFS is ridiculed, but we are talking about Feb which is just around the corner, and it has been consistent with the same general look for several runs now.

[frd]

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

They have not done a major shift, but there were some notable differences between yesterday and Monday runs.  PSU and I posted about it last evening if you read up a bit.

Both the CFS and the EPS weeklies have a pretty nice look generally for the second week of Feb. I know the CFS is ridiculed, but we are talking about Feb which is just around the corner, and it has been consistent with the same general look for several runs now.

I viewed them, I just felt the new weeklies were not as robust as Monday's release ,and also not as locked in on a favorable pattern. 

Thanks 

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, frd said:

I viewed them, I just felt the new weeklies were not as robust as Monday's release ,and also not as locked in on a favorable pattern. 

Thanks 

That is a pretty good assessment.

[Bob Chill]

The only way long range guidance won't change on the regular is if it's able to consistently nail a pattern at 3-6 weeks lead. That type of skill won't exist probably in my lifetime and maybe my kid's. If the next weeklies doesn't shift then the one after that probably will and on and on. 

I'm kinda with mitch too. I've seen enough this year and have stopped chasing and analyzing every run. I'm finding it much more peaceful just waiting for a real threat to come in view inside of 5 days and not worrying about anything else. There is no long tracking this winter unless we get a big fat stable block. 

We've had multipe periods where ensembles showed a higher prob of snow d10-15 and nothing has come into focus at a skilled lead time. There's one exception with the SE storm. Guidance did a good job locking into that opportunity at fairly long leads. We almost backed into an event leading up but it wasn't meant to be for 95'ers and west. But even with that storm we were on the outside looking the whole time.

We haven't had a single stable good pattern this year that has held long enough to keep us in the game for more than a few days. All of our chances have been one off followed by reverting to a low/no chance pattern. We've had some real good looks d10+ but they have all been ghosts with no staying power. Until that type of persistence breaks overhead and not in LR model land I'll go with persistence above all else. 

One thing I think can break in our favor is the ao/nao. It sorta has the feel that the massive + streak might be getting close to running its course. Imho- to get a decent stretch of good opportunities, we need the ao/nao far more than the epo or pna this winter.  

[Interstate]

11 hours ago, mitchnick said:

Sounds like it's wise to be skeptical of all the medium and long range models this year, more so than recent years, ehh?

This year??? Models going out past 5 days should not be made to the public.  I bet it is .05% of anything that is over 10 days ever verifies based upon models.

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, frd said:

I viewed them, I just felt the new weeklies were not as robust as Monday's release ,and also not as locked in on a favorable pattern. 

Thanks 

They were pretty similar in the major features.  In general they still redevelop some PNA ridging after a short relax around day 14-18.  Then around day 25 or so they develop a -AO/NAO with ridging over the top and hold that through the run.  The major drivers we liked about the last run are there this run.  The "problem" is the heights over the CONUS have almost no response to those.  The reason we like the PNA ridge and the -NAO is both those things usually force a trough into the east.  The trough in the east is what actually gives us a good chance of snow.  So having a good PNA and NAO does us no good if somehow there is still ridging over us.  Now the troughing was pretty pathetic honestly on the last run.  We were never seeing much below normal heights, mostly normal to slightly below, but I think we saw the good features of the PNA and NAO and saw a good trough axis and said...good run.  Now we still see the good features but it has red over us and so its a bad run.  But the blue was weak or not even just neutral most of the time on the last run, and this one the red is weak or neutral most of the time.  So we are talking a pretty minor adjustment to the details, but an important one to our ground truth.  

The other issue is the fact that the troughing was weak and the ridging is weak now to me means likely there is divergence within the members.  THat makes way more sense then the idea we get a PNA ridge and ridging over the top and still manage high heights all across the CONUS.  That just doesnt usually happen.  The more likely way to get that look is you get 60% of the members with a pretty good PNA/NAO look and some decent but not overwhelming lower heights in the east, then the 40% cluster of members has no blocking over the top and just a raging inferno torch across the CONUS and H5 similar to what we just saw.  If you blend both those camps together you get the look we see on the mean.  Some decent blocking where we want it yet no response in the mean over us.  That is the most likely way I see to get that look.  I am certainly interested in anyone else has another hypothesis for how to get that, what is to me, very odd look overall.  

Finally, the weeklies werent awful.  Sometimes I have to watch what I say.  I say they are ok and they are the worst thing ever.  I say something looks pretty good and its the most amazing pattern ever.  I thought the weeklies looked average, and a step back, and then kind of ambiguous and useless day 30 on.  They arent a shutout pattern.  There is a pretty good look around day 22-27 and another one later in the run.  Then there is a whole lot of..hmm not sure what to make of that, and some it could snow with some luck in that looks.  But nothing that screams, "oh yea great pattern there."  We would have chances in that look overall, just not as many as I would like.  

[psuhoffman]

12 minutes ago, RidingTheModelWithMostSnow said:

This year??? Models going out past 5 days should not be made to the public.  I bet it is .05% of anything that is over 10 days ever verifies based upon models.

I think the models have done well in identifying the basic pattern trends all year.  They identified the colder period mid december.  They nailed the torch coming over the holidays.  They picked up on the colder early January period from 15 days out.  They then got the flip back to warmer as well, and they did identify what is going to be a colder period coming up for at least a week.  Now it has not snowed in any of these periods.  And they have teased us with specific storm details from 10 days out that might have suggested it would snow.  But is anyone expecting them to get those kind of details right from that far out?  They have been pretty darn good at overall pattern identification from distance this year.  Plus each of the "better" patterns had flaws and we noted then early on.  None of them was a perfect OMG YES pattern.  Each time I can remember everyone saying its a better look and it could snow, not this is perfect and its going to snow.  We did have chances.  We had a reasonable shot if things had gone right mid december.  We had a reasonable shot early January.  We didnt get lucky.  The rest of the time its been a god awful pattern but the models correctly identified that also.  Just because it never snowed doesn't mean they were wrong on what we should be using them for at long range.  

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

The only way long range guidance won't change on the regular is if it's able to consistently nail a pattern at 3-6 weeks lead. That type of skill won't exist probably in my lifetime and maybe my kid's. If the next weeklies doesn't shift then the one after that probably will and on and on. 

I'm kinda with mitch too. I've seen enough this year and have stopped chasing and analyzing every run. I'm finding it much more peaceful just waiting for a real threat to come in view inside of 5 days and not worrying about anything else. There is no long tracking this winter unless we get a big fat stable block. 

We've had multipe periods where ensembles showed a higher prob of snow d10-15 and nothing has come into focus at a skilled lead time. There's one exception with the SE storm. Guidance did a good job locking into that opportunity at fairly long leads. We almost backed into an event leading up but it wasn't meant to be for 95'ers and west. But even with that storm we were on the outside looking the whole time.

We haven't had a single stable good pattern this year that has held long enough to keep us in the game for more than a few days. All of our chances have been one off followed by reverting to a low/no chance pattern. We've had some real good looks d10+ but they have all been ghosts with no staying power. Until that type of persistence breaks overhead and not in LR model land I'll go with persistence above all else. 

One thing I think can break in our favor is the ao/nao. It sorta has the feel that the massive + streak might be getting close to running its course. Imho- to get a decent stretch of good opportunities, we need the ao/nao far more than the epo or pna this winter.  

I am going to respond in a minute to Mitch regarding my thoughts on persistence and its place within weighting factors in a forecast.  But I totally agree with your thoughts on the NAO.  I think the base state of the PAC is just not going to help us much this year.  We lost the warm pool that might have helped, the weak cold enso or neutral does nothing for us in tropical forcing.  People dont realize how bad neutral can be, and I think they assume a weak nina is bad also, when really the problem is anything other then a weak/moderate nino really just isnt any help in that department.  So we lose one major factor that can help line the others us in our favor.  So then we are relying on a good alignment of all these other factors to just happen randomly and usually it does not.   I don't think there is anything inherently awful about neutral or very weak cold enso signals, its just they dont help at all and often times we need help from the tropics since our climo is pretty bad for snow.  As for if we get it, I hold out some hope, the strat warming going on (weather its classic or not that debate can rage on) could help and the effects of that if they were to happen would be in another week or two and could come on rather suddenly.  As we have seen from Ender the QBO effects that I do think have been really hurting us a lot could flip in our favor once into Feb.  And more then a few of the CFS runs and the Euro weeklies do still give us some help in that regard.  I am skeptical but hold out some hope.  But we need that, were not going to get it done with just Pacific forcing this year.  

[showmethesnow]

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

They were pretty similar in the major features.  In general they still redevelop some PNA ridging after a short relax around day 14-18.  Then around day 25 or so they develop a -AO/NAO with ridging over the top and hold that through the run.  The major drivers we liked about the last run are there this run.  The "problem" is the heights over the CONUS have almost no response to those.  The reason we like the PNA ridge and the -NAO is both those things usually force a trough into the east.  The trough in the east is what actually gives us a good chance of snow.  So having a good PNA and NAO does us no good if somehow there is still ridging over us.  Now the troughing was pretty pathetic honestly on the last run.  We were never seeing much below normal heights, mostly normal to slightly below, but I think we saw the good features of the PNA and NAO and saw a good trough axis and said...good run.  Now we still see the good features but it has red over us and so its a bad run.  But the blue was weak or not even just neutral most of the time on the last run, and this one the red is weak or neutral most of the time.  So we are talking a pretty minor adjustment to the details, but an important one to our ground truth.  

The other issue is the fact that the troughing was weak and the ridging is weak now to me means likely there is divergence within the members.  THat makes way more sense then the idea we get a PNA ridge and ridging over the top and still manage high heights all across the CONUS.  That just doesnt usually happen.  The more likely way to get that look is you get 60% of the members with a pretty good PNA/NAO look and some decent but not overwhelming lower heights in the east, then the 40% cluster of members has no blocking over the top and just a raging inferno torch across the CONUS and H5 similar to what we just saw.  If you blend both those camps together you get the look we see on the mean.  Some decent blocking where we want it yet no response in the mean over us.  That is the most likely way I see to get that look.  I am certainly interested in anyone else has another hypothesis for how to get that, what is to me, very odd look overall.  

Finally, the weeklies werent awful.  Sometimes I have to watch what I say.  I say they are ok and they are the worst thing ever.  I say something looks pretty good and its the most amazing pattern ever.  I thought the weeklies looked average, and a step back, and then kind of ambiguous and useless day 30 on.  They arent a shutout pattern.  There is a pretty good look around day 22-27 and another one later in the run.  Then there is a whole lot of..hmm not sure what to make of that, and some it could snow with some luck in that looks.  But nothing that screams, "oh yea great pattern there."  We would have chances in that look overall, just not as many as I would like.  

I admire your stamina. After watching promising patterns in the long range become not so promising in the near term, time and again this winter, I have reached the point where now I only do cursory glances for the most part and then move onto the short range hoping for a surprise to pop up.  

[Bob Chill]

18 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

I admire your stamina. After watching promising patterns in the long range become not so promising in the near term, time and again this winter, I have reached the point where now I only do cursory glances for the most part and then move onto the short range hoping for a surprise to pop up.  

This is where I'm at too. Composing thoughts about the long range has become fruitless because by the time the long range becomes the mid range, the best case scenarios are off the table and we're stuck debating low probability good in the face of bad. I will say this...if/when we get a legit thread in the skilled short range my post count will go through the roof. lolol

[HighStakes]

23 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

I admire your stamina. After watching promising patterns in the long range become not so promising in the near term, time and again this winter, I have reached the point where now I only do cursory glances for the most part and then move onto the short range hoping for a surprise to pop up.  

This is pretty much the point where I'm at as well. Just to frustrating to go fully into it but I do appreciate the effort of those who do. 

[mitchnick]

Not that we needed anything else to remind us how this "winter" has gone for us, the NAM and now the GFS both bring the slp for this weekend's "coastal" to our west.  lol

[showmethesnow]

2 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Not that we needed anything else to remind us how this "winter" has gone for us, the NAM and now the GFS both bring the slp for this weekend's "coastal" to our west.  lol

Euro and EPS are still promising but if the GFS is right it is game over.

[showmethesnow]

19 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

This is where I'm at too. Composing thoughts about the long range has become fruitless because by the time the long range becomes the mid range, the best case scenarios are off the table and we're stuck debating low probability good in the face of bad. I will say this...if/when we get a legit thread in the skilled short range my post count will go through the roof. lolol

Here's hoping you will shortly be posting your ass off then. 

[mitchnick]

3 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Euro and EPS are still promising but if the GFS is right it is game over.

Ukie was west at 12z yesterday, but then became a coastal at 0z. Doesn't matter for most of us south of 40N under 1,000' anyway. It's dead.

[showmethesnow]

3 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Ukie was west at 12z yesterday, but then became a coastal at 0z. Doesn't matter for most of us south of 40N under 1,000' anyway. It's dead.

Considering it is the only game in town at this point I will stick it out to the bitter end.

[psuhoffman]

4 hours ago, mitchnick said:

I don't know if you were referring to me exclusively with your original post, but let me tell you why I believe they should be believed in this case.

Computers are obviously guidance and not gospel. They have to be considered in light of the actual weather and patterns.  In the vernacular,  the default setting this winter has been warmer than normal and BN snowfall,  if not snowless. Moreover, medium and long range modelling has been found to be too gung-ho on blocking and cold than reality. But I note they have not been as flawed when it comes to their warm and snowless predictions.   All this being the case, it is both rational and reasonable to believe the medium range modelling(and long range for that matter) when it either backs down from a colder than normal/snowy look or progs above normal/snowless conditions. 

Several times you have mentioned that we could still get lucky and sneak in a snow event here or there. While that's possible,  I play the odds. The problem with this year has been we've had both a bad pattern and no luck, though the two are obviously related.  This also refers to what I previously said in this thread (I believe) that I will assume it won't snow until it does. What I really mean is, the preponderance of the evidence (including seasonal patterns, model accuracy,  and model trendencies) suggests that it is more likely that it won't snow significantly than it will. 

So that's why I'm inclined to believe modelling that shows warm. Now, where do we go from here?  I think the day 9-10 chance looks to be on its last leg and probably dead come 12z barring a significant change.  So then we're to the day 15+ warmup advertised on the Euro 15 map posted and GEPS. Assuming we get past that, we're mid-February? Suddenly,  we're left with hoping for an end of season bone (s) like 07 or 08 when we got a couple of 2-4" events after a horrid winter. Or maybe even a 3/09 event if we're real lucky.

I hope I'm very wrong, and leave it at that.

First of all thank you for taking the time to explain your rational.  Second my post was not directed at you primarily.  You tend to offer more substance and while we disagree you bring good stuff to the table.  You are also not one of those people who is ALWAYS a naysayer.  When it looks good you will say so.  Third, even if it does snow a lot in Feb that does not make you wrong.  I don't actually disagree with your thought process.  I just approach forecasting and weighting what goes into that differently.  I also think expectations, forecasting, and hope are three very different things.  I will explain my rational, not to change your mind or edit your thinking at all, but so you know where I am coming from.

I think one problem is a confusion between expectations and speculation/hope.  I have enough negative stuff going on in life I don't need to spend my free time whining and complaining about how its not snowing.  So I tend to focus on looking for the next opportunity and going at it with a positive outlook.  That does not mean I expect it to snow.  I get the feeling sometimes that because I evaluate the pattern with an open mind and try to find some hope for snow within the guidance that means I think were going to get snow.  I said back in December there were some troubling things I saw this year.  And I was honest and said I was worried this had the potential to be one of our total dud years and that it was going to be a struggle to get snow this year.  I never expected a big year.  So lets take this idea of "beating climo" off the table.  But I did say and do believe that there was a range of possibilities ranging from a total dud under 5" type winter up to a respectable 12-18" type of winter.  I would perhaps lower that top bracket down to 8-14" at this point since we have wasted 1/2 of winter.  I am not holding out hope this ends up being a good year, just that we manage to fight our way to a year we wont look back on 20 years from now and say OMG that was so awful.  

I do think persistence has a place in forecasting and expectations.  I also think that we sometimes confuse climo and persistence.  Our base state is NOT snowing.  Snow itself is an anomaly here.  So they will always skew things in favor of not snowing.  Call that persistence, I guess they are kind of the same thing at times.  We might get about 70 precipitation events in a given year and on average it will only snow to any significant amount a handful of times.  So if you simply predict rain every single time you will be right way over 90 percent of the time.  Statistically you will be a great forecaster but that's piss poor meteorology IMO.  Are there dominant factors that can remain consistent throughout a winter season and bias the entire seasons for or against snow YES.  Of course there are thats how we get the 1996's and the 2012's.  But even within those years there are variables and variance within the patterns.  We still had warm periods and rain during 1996 and we still had snow even during 2012, just not very much.  While these dominant factors can inject themselves into each pattern cycle and make it harder to get snow, there can still be windows of opportunity where the other factors line up to compensate and you get a chance.  They key during bad years is taking advantage and getting lucky during those chances.  During a good year like 96 we might get 20 opportunities and so even without much luck we probably will have a decent snowfall total.  During a bad year like this we might only get 5 total.  Then luck or chaos will determine our fate between a total dud result like 2002 or something like 1995 or 1997 where one or two storms managed to hit and we at least got something.  With even a little more luck we could even hit the lottery and eek out a very respectable total.  Look at 2000, the pattern was god awful for the whole winter except 2 weeks, we essentially had 3 chances for snow all winter, but we got all 3 to hit and on paper it looked like an average or even slightly above average snowfall winter.  In reality the pattern sucked but who cares we got snow.  

Given the base state is not favorable for snow this year should we expect it NO.  But does that mean if I want to analyze each pattern and opportunity that I should just dismiss them out of hand, well besides being no fun, that wouldn't be sound logic either.  While the chances of snow are lower for each threat they do still exist and each opportunity needs to be evaluated on its own merits also.  There is still variability within the overall pattern.  And while you can make the argument "this is how the awful no snow years went" yes but its also now 1986 went with only 1.3" to this date then 14" in feb.  It is also how 1995 was going with .5" to this date then a 7.5" feb.  Or 2004/05 with less then 1" to this date then 16.9" the rest of the way.  2007 had .9 to this date then 10.1 after.  Even 1979 if you take out a fluke november snow had one meager 1.8" snow front end that was immediately washed away by rain to this date then the blitz started.  1913-14 had absolutely no measurable snow into Feb then finished above climo.  The point isnt that we should expect that, just that yea this is how the no snow years went, but also how some years that got snow late went.  Persistence always works, until it doesnt.  We tend to remember the awful it never snowed examples not the years that ended blah but got some snow late.  Persistence works really well for seasonal forecasts not individual events.

I agree with your assessment of the pattern going forward.  Things looked better yesterday for the day 9-13 period.  The overnight runs sucked hard.  Trended less amplified with the trough and more positively tilted.  We lost almost any signal we had for a specific snow threat.  Its still cold and there is still enough going on WRT vorts that something come emerge.  I also would keep an eye on that STJ wave on the GFS day 7/8, that has been trending better for days without much fanfare.  But there is nothing that sticks out as high risk.  

After that things are cloudy.  Not bad, just murky.  There are enough good things popping up to think we dont necessarily revert to the god awful base state.  The cold enso is fading fast.  The MJO and SOI drop indicate some changes in the PAC forcing.  The MJO fades, perhaps we get another go, but the SOI looks more permanent and the neutral enso could create a less hostile PAC forcing.  But we will need some atlantic help.  There are some long range indications we could get it.  THe whole west QBO feb data gives me some hope.  THe average of the CFS and euro weeklies runs of late indicate the NAO becomes more favorable the rest of the way.  The strat warm would say maybe... Last nights 0z GEFS actually was good, started to build the ridge bridge over the top and the PV was getting pushed south and cold was pressing.  Then 6z kept the same general idea but shifted the whole thing north enough that we would be on the losing side of the gradient.  I am not going to over-react to each run of 15 day guidance.  That look is not one we cant work with.  But the key is getting the PV displaced south enough and the key to that is some blocking help over the top.  I do not believe seasonal persistence is the main problem there as this seems to be a fairly different pattern with some new factors influencing it.  If we fail it will be in a totally different way from past failures.  But I will not discount the fact that "failing" has been a consistent this year.  

I do think if we get the look over the arctic regions on the EPS weeklies we will score something.  I know it has a lot of higher heights over us throughout the run day 29 on but it has a pna ridge and a ridge bridge over the top and I just think give me that in Feb into early March and I will take my chances.  Maybe we arent cold but I am not going to be picky at this point, give me some snow, let me have another day or two to play with my son and sled and make a snowman and I don't care if we go +5 on temps the rest of the way.  

[Interstate]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

I think the models have done well in identifying the basic pattern trends all year.  They identified the colder period mid december.  They nailed the torch coming over the holidays.  They picked up on the colder early January period from 15 days out.  They then got the flip back to warmer as well, and they did identify what is going to be a colder period coming up for at least a week.  Now it has not snowed in any of these periods.  And they have teased us with specific storm details from 10 days out that might have suggested it would snow.  But is anyone expecting them to get those kind of details right from that far out?  They have been pretty darn good at overall pattern identification from distance this year.  Plus each of the "better" patterns had flaws and we noted then early on.  None of them was a perfect OMG YES pattern.  Each time I can remember everyone saying its a better look and it could snow, not this is perfect and its going to snow.  We did have chances.  We had a reasonable shot if things had gone right mid december.  We had a reasonable shot early January.  We didnt get lucky.  The rest of the time its been a god awful pattern but the models correctly identified that also.  Just because it never snowed doesn't mean they were wrong on what we should be using them for at long range.  

Then just release Ensembles past 5 days and no operation runs.

[psuhoffman]

7 minutes ago, RidingTheModelWithMostSnow said:

Then just release Ensembles past 5 days and no operation runs.

So because some people hurt themselves with a hammer should Home Depot stop selling them?

[WinterWxLuvr]

18 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

So because some people hurt themselves with a hammer should Home Depot stop selling them?

Actually we need to sell some to some of our posters.

Sell them two.........in case they miss with the first one.