February Medium/Long Range Disco Thread 2

[midatlanticweather]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

Yea if we wanted to publish a trajedy. About as depressing as Les Miserables. 

 So True! A Tragedy even!

 

[MDstorm]

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea if we wanted to publish a trajedy. About as depressing as Les Miserables. 

I don't know.  The premise and the plots were captivating.  It's just the endings that sucked.  I'm sure that you still have one good one left in you.....hopefully with a more satisfying ending.

 

MDstorm

[pasnownut]

15 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea if we wanted to publish a trajedy. About as depressing as Les Miserables. 

Lol.  You get an E for effort.  Lord knows had some of this potential come to light, you and chill would have been best sellers.

Like stated earlier, yall have had some decent luck down there and unfortunately this winter hasnt worked out so well...but like you said, there still is time and the signs havent been overwhelmingly bad.  I'm frustrated because of the run of luck, as its been much better than last years mess, but at the end of the day, that doesnt put snow IMBY so I guess to many...its all the same.

 

Nut

 

[pasnownut]

Oh....and is it me, or is the 18z GFS closing the gap a bit on Wed/Thurs?

Nut

 

[Bob Chill]

59 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Saw it just not wasting time on details of another day 13 threat. 

Right now I'm mentally disconnected from winter wx. Based on the ens the last few days, I fully plan on getting sucked back in this week. May as well get another futile chase in before the climo door starts closing. 

[osfan24]

14 minutes ago, pasnownut said:

Oh....and is it me, or is the 18z GFS closing the gap a bit on Wed/Thurs?

Nut

 

Looked a little better. Enough to keep me interested. Still a ways to go and time is beginning to run short.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

44 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea if we wanted to publish a trajedy. About as depressing as Les Miserables. 

Or a good Russian tragedy.  Though yes, the French are quite good at those too!  Think of how poetic this winter would sound from the pen of Hugo or Dostoevsky!

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

21 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Right now I'm mentally disconnected from winter wx. Based on the ens the last few days, I fully plan on getting sucked back in this week. May as well get another futile chase in before the climo door starts closing. 

Yeah, I'm kind of "meh" for right now as well.  But would fully get sucked in should any decent event appear toward the end of February or early March!

[Scraff]

10 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

Looked a little better. Enough to keep me interested. Still a ways to go and time is beginning to run short.

18z closed the gap a bit and still leaves the door open...though it's like 100s of Bostonian's on the other side trying to slam the door in our face.    Stand strong. We got this.  Maybe we should be in storm mode...

[BristowWx]

Hr 288 on 18z.  That's what we need.  An easy east to west weak system to drop 2-4.  That would be fine.  

[WinterWxLuvr]

1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

Right now I'm mentally disconnected from winter wx. Based on the ens the last few days, I fully plan on getting sucked back in this week. May as well get another futile chase in before the climo door starts closing. 

Starts?

[Bob Chill]

15 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Starts?

First week to 10 days of March is probably just as good as the last 10 days of feb climo wise. Recent years defied that but this year seems to be payback or regression or whatever you want to call it. 

18z gefs says March lion instead of lamb. Eps hinting that way too. I know how much you love storms that melt by lunch. Lol

[Fozz]

I can get over the lunch melting, but what I really want to see is a storm with heavy rain changing over to heavy snow with crashing temps and a good plastering of 8"+ of wet snow that sticks to all the trees and everything it can touch, preferably during the day.

I know that's a lot to ask for, and it's basically what March 2013 could've been, but that's what I want more than anything else. A HECS with cold powder would be cool, but I've been there, done that.

[Eskimo Joe]

7 minutes ago, Fozz said:

I can get over the lunch melting, but what I really want to see, is a storm with heavy rain changing over to heavy snow with crashing temps and a good plastering of 8"+ of wet snow that sticks to all the trees and everything it can touch, preferably during the day.

I know that's a lot to ask for, and it's basically what March 2013 could've been, but that's what I want more than anything else. A HECS with cold powder would be cool, but I've been there, done that.

I like the way you think

[cbmclean]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea if we wanted to publish a tragedy. About as depressing as Les Miserables. 

psuhoffman,

Hello, I am a visitor from the SE forum.  I live in Eastern NC and pop in here from time to time since the synoptic conditions affecting us are often similar, although you guys usually get better results.  You seem to be considered as one of the most knowledgeable and rigorous analysts on here so I am interested in your opinions on the "autopsy" on the winter of 2016 - 2017.  This winter has been epic in its suckitude for winter weather lovers in most of the eastern CONUS?  In the SE we have less to loose in terms of snowfall (since most lowland areas get minimal even in a good year) but our positive temperature anomalies have just been ugly.

I'm an engineer by trade some when something goes wrong my burning desire is to understand why.  Of course at first blush the obvious culprit would be that South-east/west Atlantic ridge that just seems to be dominant.  Even when it is temporarily displaced it just comes back after a few days. Over on our board many are pointing to La Nina as the cause for this, but it puzzles me how such a weak (almost non-existent) La Nina has had such a strong signal.  Much has been written about how "progressive" the pattern is and certainly pretty much every single cold shot has slid right off the east coast to be quickly replaced with warm southerly flow.  But to mee it doesn't seem that a progressive pattern necessarily has to be warm but for this one the warm phases of the temperature oscillations have been strong to epic, while the cold phases have been 1 or 2 F below climatology, if we are lucky.

Do you have any thoughts you feel like sharing? 

 

 

 

[gymengineer]

58 minutes ago, Fozz said:

I can get over the lunch melting, but what I really want to see is a storm with heavy rain changing over to heavy snow with crashing temps and a good plastering of 8"+ of wet snow that sticks to all the trees and everything it can touch, preferably during the day.

I know that's a lot to ask for, and it's basically what March 2013 could've been, but that's what I want more than anything else. A HECS with cold powder would be cool, but I've been there, done that.

We've seen that recently, right? 1/26/11?  Although up where where you are, I would guess you skipped the heavy rain part. That tree plastering is why Pepco had its second largest power outage ever behind Isabel (until the derecho became 2nd).

[Fozz]

22 minutes ago, gymengineer said:

We've seen that recently, right? 1/26/11?  Although up where where you are, I would guess you skipped the heavy rain part. That tree plastering is why Pepco had its second largest power outage ever behind Isabel (until the derecho became 2nd).

Problem was, I was at College Park, which stayed warm enough that the snow had trouble sticking, and amounted to 4" of slop. It was far better IMBY, and I'm still kicking myself for not finding a way to go home for that storm. I didn't think the disparity would be so vast beforehand.

In fact, missing out on that was a big reason why I felt especially tempted to drive to York in October 2011, and go all the way to New England in Feb 2013.

[gymengineer]

4 minutes ago, Fozz said:

Problem was, I was at College Park, which stayed warm enough that the snow had trouble sticking, and amounted to 4" of slop. It was far better IMBY, and I'm still kicking myself for not finding a way to go home for that storm.

4"?! That's a microclimate sinkhole. Even less than DCA. So sorry

[Fozz]

20 minutes ago, gymengineer said:

4"?! That's a microclimate sinkhole. Even less than DCA. So sorry

Yup... it's an awful place for snow, as bad as DCA, if not worse. I realized that right after the storm. It was probably the lowest total in the entire region. I went home a few days later and saw everything plastered for most of the way back. It was a wonderful sight, but also painful in a way.

Thankfully I was home during all of the big 2009-10 storms... those were historic enough that I had to be there.

[Bob Chill]

@cbmclean

Obviously not PSU but it's actually fairly simple. We had a raging positive AO for 2 straight months without a single break. 9 times out of 10 that's a death knell for MA and SE winters.  Yea, 13-14 and 14-15 broke that rule but if you look back through history, the vast majority of winters with a strongly positive AO have below normal snow and above normal temperatures. 

When you have an anomalous positive AO then less conventional features are required to get cold and snow. Things like the pna and epo ridges. The problem with those is they are typically not stable so long duration cold/snow is very hard to come by. 

The jury is out on why the AO was so positive. I think it's safe to say now that the Siberian snowcover thing is not a good predictor of the AO.  Especially considering how it's being sold as the best method for long range winter forecasting in the US and Europe. 

There definitely seems to be decadal oscillations with the ao and nao. The 60's had a strong negative bias and the 90's had a strong positive bias. We also had a great run in the early 2000's. For whatever reason the ao and nao are on a multi year positive heater.  Personally I think it's just weather being weather at times. 

The good news is that it will flip and even out. It always has and always will. Maybe next year.

[Amped]

12z para tracks tracks the 23rd storm from NYC ESE almost to Bermuda. Thats gotta be more of an anomaly than lat years blizzard.

[gymengineer]

9 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

I know you're joking but also see the same thing I do last week of the month. It's another winter pattern on the means that could do something. 

This year has been particularly annoying because workable patterns keep coming and going. It's one thing to have an 11-12 type winter where we go weeks on end with nothing good showing up. Isn't fun but at least there is no reason to chase anything. This winter has held interest door to door but game time has sucked.

Looks like we'll have another potential window that will have some good looks and potential threats starting to show up as we move through this week. I guess I'll hold out hope that I get an event that eclipses an inch. Lol. One measly inch in one event has been too high a bar all year though. 

In my entire lifetime so far- from the end of the 70's through now- there has never been a cold season where Rockville, MD didn't have a 1"+ event. That includes the absolute horrific winters of 97/98 (late December), 01/02 (the single January event), and 11/12 (the late January snow to mix).

As for not having at least one moderate (grass covering) event- so around 3" threshold- there are only two seasons in the last 35+ that didn't hit that benchmark. Those seasons are 97/98 and 11/12. 

[cbmclean]

46 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

@cbmclean

Obviously not PSU but it's actually fairly simple. We had a raging positive AO for 2 straight months without a single break. 9 times out of 10 that's a death knell for MA and SE winters.  Yea, 13-14 and 14-15 broke that rule but if you look back through history, the vast majority of winters with a strongly positive AO have below normal snow and above normal temperatures. 

When you have an anomalous positive AO then less conventional features are required to get cold and snow. Things like the pna and epo ridges. The problem with those is they are typically not stable so long duration cold/snow is very hard to come by. 

The jury is out on why the AO was so positive. I think it's safe to say now that the Siberian snowcover thing is not a good predictor of the AO.  Especially considering how it's being sold as the best method for long range winter forecasting in the US and Europe. 

There definitely seems to be decadal oscillations with the ao and nao. The 60's had a strong negative bias and the 90's had a strong positive bias. We also had a great run in the early 2000's. For whatever reason the ao and nao are on a multi year positive heater.  Personally I think it's just weather being weather at times. 

The good news is that it will flip and even out. It always has and always will. Maybe next year.

I appreciate the feed back.  Earlier this cold season there was some discussion in our forum about which index is the most impactful to the state of the SE winter.  Some held to the NAO, others feel that the state of the pacific (eg PNA) is more important for us.  You sound like you are an AO man.

I am a fairly low-level hobbyist but I have an insatiable appetite to learn and this season I have started to pick up on the importance of the 500 mb situation.  It has been explained to me that the NAO index reflects the tendency (or not) for blocking, whereas the AO reflects the tendency (or not) of the polar jet to buckle.  So I can conceive that they have somewhat independent effects.  We could have a - AO environment which allows cold air to escape out of Canada, but a lack of blocking means it's transient.  We could have a -NAO environment with blocking but no cold air for it to block in.  I have been told that the latter was the case in the very mild winter of 2001 - 2002: we had blocky troughing in place but nothing to show for it because the cold air was over on the other side of the world.  

 

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, cbmclean said:

psuhoffman,

Hello, I am a visitor from the SE forum.  I live in Eastern NC and pop in here from time to time since the synoptic conditions affecting us are often similar, although you guys usually get better results.  You seem to be considered as one of the most knowledgeable and rigorous analysts on here so I am interested in your opinions on the "autopsy" on the winter of 2016 - 2017.  This winter has been epic in its suckitude for winter weather lovers in most of the eastern CONUS?  In the SE we have less to loose in terms of snowfall (since most lowland areas get minimal even in a good year) but our positive temperature anomalies have just been ugly.

I'm an engineer by trade some when something goes wrong my burning desire is to understand why.  Of course at first blush the obvious culprit would be that South-east/west Atlantic ridge that just seems to be dominant.  Even when it is temporarily displaced it just comes back after a few days. Over on our board many are pointing to La Nina as the cause for this, but it puzzles me how such a weak (almost non-existent) La Nina has had such a strong signal.  Much has been written about how "progressive" the pattern is and certainly pretty much every single cold shot has slid right off the east coast to be quickly replaced with warm southerly flow.  But to mee it doesn't seem that a progressive pattern necessarily has to be warm but for this one the warm phases of the temperature oscillations have been strong to epic, while the cold phases have been 1 or 2 F below climatology, if we are lucky.

Do you have any thoughts you feel like sharing? 

 

 

 

This is the kind of thing I do love to get into. Trying to dig in and understand this whole thing.  I've not had time to do all the research and reading on some stuff I would like yet but my initial thoughts are that it's a combination of a whole lot of factors lining up wrong. 

Some of the big ones hurting us most imo are the enso configuration, the qbo, the north PAC sst and the sst off the east coast. 

I don't think enso is as simple as El Niño and La Niña. There is also a huge difference between west and east based enso events.  Data seems to suggest we want west based ninos and east based ninas. Basically regardless of enso state we want warmer water centered over the central equatorial Pacific and cooler waters off South America. That places the tropical forcing where we want it for colder snowier patterns. While the enso signal was weak, never reaching official Nina status, the location of the forcing was all wrong. The coolest waters were in the central PAC and as the Nina weakened the waters warmed even more to the east. So that if anything hurt us more. So while the enso signal was weak whatever forcing it had was detrimental to us. 

The westerly qbo was at record levels. There is an observed correlation between a westerly qbo and a stronger polar vortex and positive AO. So it's hard to ignore the possible effects of a record qbo on the positive AO this year.  I don't want to place too much importance on one thing because the closest qbo analog was 2013/14 but that year we had an anomalous warm pool in the North Pacific that was conducive to a helpful epo. This year we had almost the opposite and a north PAC sst that was hostile to getting much help from the epo or pna combo. The combo of those two factors hurt a lot imo.  

I want to read more on the qbo  I know the disruption of the normal qbo cycle last year really had some alarmed.  I've read it blamed on anything from global warming to the super nino to sst years strat warm event.  I have no idea the cause but it's interesting that we had a disruption in the phase change that brought on a second straight west phase and it went to record levels.

Also the Atlantic sst was conducive to ridging on the east coast.  And the North Atlantic sst wasn't all that great for nao help.  Combine the warmer waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific with the warm waters off the east coast and that's a whole lot of warm signal aimed at us.  

Then there are other factors also lined up wrong.  The whole northern hemisphere is biased warm probably due to a lag from the nino.  At least I hope it's that because it's been a blowtorch for a long time now and if that's the new base state it's going to be difficult to get sustained cold.  There just isn't much around.  There were times the models showed ridging in good spots and temps were still torching all around like one huge ridge everywhere.  Seeing that look a lot bothers me.  We have a hard enough time here without a lack of cold anywhere adding to our troubles  

Finally the northern jet has been screaming along.  Progressive isn't always bad but given all those other factors lined up warm a progressive flow is going to prevent the kind of jet buckling we would need to get cold in here and or amplify a storm under us.  The few times we did have cold the northern jet threw vorts across to help suppress the flow underneath. 

So off the top of my head those are the biggest problems I see. It's not one thing. More a whole lot of contributing factors that all lined up wrong this year. 

[Maestrobjwa]

Huh...0z GFS gets even closer Wed-Thurs? What's going on here?

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

@cbmclean

Obviously not PSU but it's actually fairly simple. We had a raging positive AO for 2 straight months without a single break. 9 times out of 10 that's a death knell for MA and SE winters.  Yea, 13-14 and 14-15 broke that rule but if you look back through history, the vast majority of winters with a strongly positive AO have below normal snow and above normal temperatures. 

When you have an anomalous positive AO then less conventional features are required to get cold and snow. Things like the pna and epo ridges. The problem with those is they are typically not stable so long duration cold/snow is very hard to come by. 

The jury is out on why the AO was so positive. I think it's safe to say now that the Siberian snowcover thing is not a good predictor of the AO.  Especially considering how it's being sold as the best method for long range winter forecasting in the US and Europe. 

There definitely seems to be decadal oscillations with the ao and nao. The 60's had a strong negative bias and the 90's had a strong positive bias. We also had a great run in the early 2000's. For whatever reason the ao and nao are on a multi year positive heater.  Personally I think it's just weather being weather at times. 

The good news is that it will flip and even out. It always has and always will. Maybe next year.

Excellent point on the AO. Trying to win against that is living dangerously and we finally had to pay the piper. Only reason I didn't include the AO specifically as a factor is I tend to view the oceans and the tropics as the drivers and the rest as effects more then causes. So the AO being positive was our biggest problem no doubt but I was speculating as to why it was positive.  I do think the qbo probably had a lot to do with it.  There is a correlation between west qbo and cold enso and positive AO. Even more so then the typical qbo AO link. I don't think that was the whole cause of our troubles but it certainly didn't help any. 

[psuhoffman]

9 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Huh...0z GFS gets even closer Wed-Thurs? What's going on here?

I haven't looked at it but it's probably just playing Lucy one more time. This winter has been a tease, bigly. 

[Maestrobjwa]

12 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I haven't looked at it but it's probably just playing Lucy one more time. This winter has been a tease, bigly. 

I hope it's more than that, because I mean...if you're gonna miss, just miss! Don't come close and then miss...that's just snowlover cruelty, lol

[kurtstack]

gfs qpf on the 00z op. it does make it somewhat interesting - but probably like apl the others this year - too little too late...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Maestrobjwa]

Reeaaal close to getting at least a little something?...Again, if it were to happen like this...I mean, c'mon, lol This has got to be progress for our sanity's sake!!