New Years 2018 Mid-Long Range Disco

[psuhoffman]

19 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

The upcoming period looks frustrating but it's a moving target. Who knows, in 5 days we could be tracking something real. I don't really care much about the long term drought. I can't do jack about it.  I'm good with .25 qpf colliding with a cold air mass. It precipitates during dry periods. Just nothing prolific. We'll constantly reassess the future on a daily basis for another 9 weeks. 

This... I am not dismissing all the drought talk because I have my head in the sand about the fact its been dry, but we don't need prolific qpf to get what most of us would deem an acceptable snowfall.  If we eek out 2" tonight from .1 qpf and then at some point in the next 10 days some wave the models aren't seeing manages .25 qpf and we get 3-5" from that due to the cold most of us would say this was a good period for snow even though from a moisture POV it was dry and a continuation of the pattern.  If we only get two storms in February each with .75 qpf and one is a 6-10" snowstorm we will be happy even though it would be "dry".  The dry thing isn't the end all be all of snow for us and since I care more about snow then qpf I am not digging into that too much.  That said yes we do need moisture to get snow so it would help if we werent uber dry like right now obviously but I don't see that continuing the rest of winter.  Would be totally unprecedented. 

[poolz1]

Something will eventually amplify in this pattern.  Correct me if i am wrong but it seems like our biggest problem is that there are just too many short waves in the pattern right now.  Every time it looks like we may get one to amplify the models pick up on another s/w right on its tail that knocks down the ridge in the west or kicks our promising looking s/w east.  My guess is eventually we will hit a period where these pac short waves are spaced a bit more and something will pop.

[nw baltimore wx]

1 minute ago, frd said:

Was that MJO related, ( lack of amplitude and falling back to the COD ), or the turn around from many days in a row of a - SOI to positive readings the last couple days. It looked great while it lasted. 

Lol. You're asking the wrong guy.  But I know a lot of us on here look for that magic index that portends our best friend, but I'm in the camp that many of those indices are so intertwined that for a novice like me, they are more reactive than predictors. It's better for someone like me to look at the big indices like enso rather than the more specific ones. The mjo for example, seems to react quickly to current conditions. It's nice to see the green line going into the favorable zones a week or two down the road, but imo it doesn't do very well long term.

[psuhoffman]

12 minutes ago, frd said:

A dry Dec. and Jan. in a Nina is followed many times by normal precip in Feb.  Whether that will be mostly snow, or rain, who knows. I see some sources calling for a stormy Feb and March, that's hard to believe now too. Then again, I would have never thought a 10 day stretch of below freezing this winter, shows you anything is possible. 

It's hard to say.  Honestly I think there are seasonal trends we can definitely pick out in a Nina that are fairly reliable.  They are northern stream dominant.  Even 1996 was northern stream dominant.  One of the only systems to have a significant STJ involvement turned out to be our blizzard.  But the majority of the other storms were mostly northern stream with some but minimal STJ.  We even had that rare pure northern stream miller b that blew up in time to clobber DC in February that year.  The NAO helped force the northern stream to dig enough that it worked out for us.  Basically the extreme -NAO turned our area into what typically happens to New England in a cold nina pattern.  When a nina is east based it seems to favor cold into the east more (like now).  When its west based we tend to have a SE ridge most of the winter.  But beyond those observations the rest of what we call "nina climo" isnt reliable.  Some nina's start cold and snowy in december, others did not.  Some end cold with snow in March like 99 and 2009, others like 2012 do not.  Besides the fact that its likely to be northern stream dominant (and that is a challenge for us) and that being east based is better for a trough in the east (that at least helps some) the rest seems to be up to random chance. 

[EastCoast NPZ]

27 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

This... I am not dismissing all the drought talk because I have my head in the sand about the fact its been dry, but we don't need prolific qpf to get what most of us would deem an acceptable snowfall.  If we eek out 2" tonight from .1 qpf and then at some point in the next 10 days some wave the models aren't seeing manages .25 qpf and we get 3-5" from that due to the cold most of us would say this was a good period for snow even though from a moisture POV it was dry and a continuation of the pattern.  If we only get two storms in February each with .75 qpf and one is a 6-10" snowstorm we will be happy even though it would be "dry".  The dry thing isn't the end all be all of snow for us and since I care more about snow then qpf I am not digging into that too much.  That said yes we do need moisture to get snow so it would help if we werent uber dry like right now obviously but I don't see that continuing the rest of winter.  Would be totally unprecedented. 

I get it, but you are basing that hope on nearly 100% of the QPF events being snow.  At our location, that is a pipe dream.  We have a pretty bad batting average here; it requires lots of swings for us to finally get on base.

[psuhoffman]

Gfs op came around to what the EPS and gefs last night was showing day 10-15. For those wondering "how we get a cutter" in this pattern that's how. It's not in this pattern.  The problem now in general is the troughs are flat and too Far East. But if the trough decides to dump into the west after day 10 and a ridge develops in the east we would only have a short window. After that anything that comes would amplify way to our west on the east side of the trough. Basically the trough goes from centered too Far East to too far west without any real window in between. I doubt anything at that range but that is what the guidance last night and the 12z gfs was saying.  

[Inverted_Trough]

21 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

This... I am not dismissing all the drought talk because I have my head in the sand about the fact its been dry, but we don't need prolific qpf to get what most of us would deem an acceptable snowfall.  If we eek out 2" tonight from .1 qpf and then at some point in the next 10 days some wave the models aren't seeing manages .25 qpf and we get 3-5" from that due to the cold most of us would say this was a good period for snow even though from a moisture POV it was dry and a continuation of the pattern.  If we only get two storms in February each with .75 qpf and one is a 6-10" snowstorm we will be happy even though it would be "dry".  The dry thing isn't the end all be all of snow for us and since I care more about snow then qpf I am not digging into that too much.  That said yes we do need moisture to get snow so it would help if we werent uber dry like right now obviously but I don't see that continuing the rest of winter.  Would be totally unprecedented. 

I'd be curious - what was our driest winter (or winters)?  And do those winters have any similarities from a ENSO and teleconnections perspective to our current winter so far?

[Bob Chill]

13 minutes ago, nw baltimore wx said:

Lol. You're asking the wrong guy.  But I know a lot of us on here look for that magic index that portends our best friend, but I'm in the camp that many of those indices are so intertwined that for a novice like me, they are more reactive than predictors. It's better for someone like me to look at the big indices like enso rather than the more specific ones. The mjo for example, seems to react quickly to current conditions. It's nice to see the green line going into the favorable zones a week or two down the road, but imo it doesn't do very well long term.

The one thing that no index or teleconnection can tell you is that sometimes (more often than we realize) is weather can just be weather. Sure, blocking can increase chances as can favorable teleconnections but we have plenty of history of wasted great patterns and also getting decent or even great events that look terrible on paper. 

Discrete pieces of energy embedded in the atmosphere do the heavy lifting. Sometimes things line up and other times they don't. No graph or numerical index can overcome bad spacing. Which we're having a bad run of right now. Is what it is. Hopefully things play nice together in the near future. 

[Bob Chill]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Gfs op came around to what the EPS and gefs last night was showing day 10-15. For those wondering "how we get a cutter" in this pattern that's how. It's not in this pattern.  The problem now in general is the troughs are flat and too Far East. But if the trough decides to dump into the west after day 10 and a ridge develops in the east we would only have a short window. After that anything that comes would amplify way to our west on the east side of the trough. Basically the trough goes from centered too Far East to too far west without any real window in between. I doubt anything at that range but that is what the guidance last night and the 12z gfs was saying.  

But look at the d16 high latitudes. Feb is gonna be rockin

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

I get it, but you basing that hope on nearly 100% of the QPF events being snow.  At our location, that is a pipe dream.  We have a pretty bad batting average here; it requires lots of swings for us to finally get on base.

Between now and March 10th I average about 6" qpf. If I get only 60% of normal that's dry but still almost 4" qpf. If only half of that is snow I still probably would manage 25 given my normal ratios here.  That would give me about 32" on the year.  Below my avg but I can live with that.  That math isn't quite as favorable for D.C. But I bet using the same idea gets them to at least another 8-10" and puts them out of single digits which is the bar for many there.   I'm not saying we want a dry pattern but it's not the end all for snow. But yes getting decent in a dry pattern is harder and would require a decent percentage of our qpf be frozen. Given the persistence of cold this year so far that isn't out of the realm. 

[psuhoffman]

6 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

But look at the d16 high latitudes. Feb is gonna be rockin

Lol 

i do doubt given the epo and the AO look going forward that any warm up becomes a locked in prolonged problem. We could see a cutter pull everything east again then a caboose wave gets us. I'm only talking about that day 12-13 system and what might happen with it. Beyond that who knows. Crap who knows with the day 10 setup even given the pattern. Models suck with transient patterns and shifts and they have sucked already before that b

[WVclimo]

32 minutes ago, Inverted_Trough said:

I'd be curious - what was our driest winter (or winters)?  And do those winters have any similarities from a ENSO and teleconnections perspective to our current winter so far?

There doesn't seem to be any correlation to ENSO as far as I can see.  Since they started taking measurements at the current site, DCA's driest winters have come from across an ENSO spectrum.  Not sure about other teleconnections without digging deeper, but here are Dec-Jan-Feb precip totals and ENSO state:

1980-81: 3.85" Neutral

1976-77: 4.15" Weak Nino

1979-80: 4.86" Weak Nino

1955-56: 5.03" Moderate Nina

1958-59: 5.34" Weak Nino

1968-69: 5.99" Moderate Nino

2008-09: 6.00" Weak Nina

2001-02: 6.06" Neutral

2010-11: 6.15" Strong Nina

2006-07: 6.29" Weak Nino

 

 

[nw baltimore wx]

@WVclimo

That's interesting. Thanks for the data.

[AfewUniversesBelowNormal]

This has no chance of verifying. 

[EastCoast NPZ]

7 minutes ago, WVclimo said:

There doesn't seem to be any correlation to ENSO as far as I can see.  Since they started taking measurements at the current site, DCA's driest winters have come from across an ENSO spectrum.  Not sure about other teleconnections without digging deeper, but here are Dec-Jan-Feb precip totals and ENSO state:

1980-81: 3.85" Neutral

1976-77: 4.15" Weak Nino

1979-80: 4.86" Weak Nino

1955-56: 5.03 Moderate Nina

1958-59: 5.34 Weak Nino

1968-69: 5.99" Moderate Nino

2008-09: 6.00" Weak Nina

2001-02: 6.06" Neutral

2010-11: 6.15" Strong Nina

2006-07: 6.29 Weak Nino

 

 

I find it interesting that 4 out of the top-10 driest have occurred in the past 16 years.

[WVclimo]

And 4 of the top-10 wettest for the same period of record as well:

2002-03: 13.84"

2013-14: 12.13"

2015-16: 11.31"

2009-10: 11.07"

Normal for the winter months in DC is 8.48" but we sure seem to swing to the extremes these past couple of decades.

 

[EastCoast NPZ]

1 minute ago, WVclimo said:

And 4 of the top-10 wettest for the same period of record as well:

2002-03: 13.84"

2013-14: 12.13"

2015-16: 11.31"

2009-10: 11.07"

Normal for the winter months in DC is 8.48" but we sure seem to swing to the extremes these past couple of decades.

 

Indeed.

[Ji]

illl take teh 10 day GGEM and call it a winter

[Ji]

we lost the Ukmet but it dosent seem like we ever had it.

 

only thing we have left is JB and Roger Snow(i mean smith)

[Wonderdog]

Somewhat of a change on the EURO at hour 120.

[eurojosh]

If the Euro were any further East it would be the Asia.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Somewhat of a change on the EURO at hour 120.

[stormy]

53 minutes ago, WVclimo said:

There doesn't seem to be any correlation to ENSO as far as I can see.  Since they started taking measurements at the current site, DCA's driest winters have come from across an ENSO spectrum.  Not sure about other teleconnections without digging deeper, but here are Dec-Jan-Feb precip totals and ENSO state:

1980-81: 3.85" Neutral

1976-77: 4.15" Weak Nino

1979-80: 4.86" Weak Nino

1955-56: 5.03" Moderate Nina

1958-59: 5.34" Weak Nino

1968-69: 5.99" Moderate Nino

2008-09: 6.00" Weak Nina

2001-02: 6.06" Neutral

2010-11: 6.15" Strong Nina

2006-07: 6.29" Weak Nino

 

 

The dry pattern in the Shenandoah Valley began in September and continues.  Precipitation: September 1.76"- normal 4.43", October 2.84"- normal 3.25, November 1.19"- normal 3.54, December .38 rain and melted snow- normal 2.59. Since September 1,  6.17 total in 4 months, normal 13.81    45% of normal during that 4 month period.  Stream flows are near historical lows. December has been the driest since records began in 1979. December of 1980 was number two with .47".  I cannot believe that it will persist much longer. 

[psuhoffman]

37 minutes ago, Ji said:

illl take teh 10 day GGEM and call it a winter

Looking at the h5 setup we probably wouldn't like how that ends. It would start frozen and maybe that alone is enough of a win for some but the way the trough is digging to the west and heights rising with the high on its way out I bet we end up with bare ground when it's over. 

For me that's my benchmark. I don't mind a flip to ice or rain at all as long as when it's over my ground is white but these systems that cut way west and we get 1-3" of snow before a 50 degree rainout...no thanks I'll pass. 

[Amped]

2 minutes ago, eurojosh said:

If the Euro were any further East it would be the Asia.

12z runs in nice agreement, in a Bermuda storm.

[eurojosh]

What's going on at the surface from 184-192?  Hard to tell with the TT maps.

[Bob Chill]

5 minutes ago, eurojosh said:

What's going on at the surface from 184-192?  Hard to tell with the TT maps.

Weak disturbance (very weak) embedded in the flow comes through. Dusting to maybe 1" favoring southern and eastern zones. Such subtle feature though and considering lead time it's really nothing to even think about. It does get going a little bit once off the coast so the atlantic might book a couple inches. 

[Bob Chill]

Looks like another d10 fantasy on tap with the euro. Return flow overrunning trying to attack a big cold high.... Similar to the CMC but good god d7+ is getting older than my memories of the good ole days when the NAO was negative. 

[EastCoast NPZ]

36 minutes ago, stormy said:

The dry pattern in the Shenandoah Valley began in September and continues.  Precipitation: September 1.76"- normal 4.43", October 2.84"- normal 3.25, November 1.19"- normal 3.54, December .38 rain and melted snow- normal 2.59. Since September 1,  6.17 total in 4 months, normal 13.81    45% of normal during that 4 month period.  Stream flows are near historical lows. December has been the driest since records began in 1979. December of 1980 was number two with .47".  I cannot believe that it will persist much longer. 

Where are these numbers from?  Certainly confirms my recollection.  Not sure that August was any better IMBY.

 

ETA: It wasn't.  Just 2.12" at OKV in August.  Not sure what the avg is for the month, but sure that it is more than 3.5".

[eurojosh]

Just now, Bob Chill said:

Weak disturbance (very weak) embedded in the flow comes through. Dusting to maybe 1" favoring southern and eastern zones. Such subtle feature though and considering lead time it's really nothing to even think about. It does get going a little bit once off the coast so the atlantic might book a couple inches. 

Thanks!