December/January Medium/Long Range Discussion

[nj2va]

Best snowfall mean I’ve seen recently on the GEFS.  4” touching NW DC.

ETA: through the end of the run

[yoda]

11 minutes ago, nj2va said:

Best snowfall mean I’ve seen recently on the GEFS.  4” touching NW DC.

ETA: through the end of the run

Unfortunately... part of that is because of e13

[Ji]

This is impressive whether it happens or not. I've never seen this

[Ji]

Unfortunately... part of that is because of e13

I'm sure there are some members that have nothing too

[yoda]

5 minutes ago, Ji said:

16 minutes ago, yoda said:

Unfortunately... part of that is because of e13

I'm sure there are some members that have nothing too

Through Day 14, 14 out of the 20 have DCA with 2" or more... 6 have DCA in or nearby the 6" marker

[psuhoffman]

Gefs makes no sense towards the end. -AO, -nao, -epo, Aleutian Trough. Yet it's just blowtorching the whole Conus. No mid latitude response at all. 

 

[showmethesnow]

47 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Gefs makes no sense towards the end. -AO, -nao, -epo, Aleutian Trough. Yet it's just blowtorching the whole Conus. No mid latitude response at all. 

 

Don't think I would be concerned with what it shows. Just taken verbatim with the flow we would probably see the warmer temps in a good chunk of the CONUS as the weak PNA (central portion) and the weakness in the southwest is allowing a PAC flow to drive through and lock the cold north. Only where the trough is dipping down in the Lakes and east is there the ability to drive the cold south. So about the only issue I have with the temps is that the northern tier through the midwest into the east should probably be running colder. And I think if you look at the anomalies it does hint at that.

But reading between the lines and looking in the west with the weak signature on the PNA in the CONUS and the ambiguous weakness in the SW trough I have to wonder if we are seeing two camps on the ensembles. One that wants to drive energy/trough into the SW and one that wants to pop a full latitude PNA into there. And considering the models have had issues in that region so far it wouldn't surprise me if that is what we are seeing here. If that is the case then the temp profile will be muddied anyway. 

[MJO812]

Anthony Masiello

BTW, next week's setup for the eastern US has a shot. Post-jet extension EPO cold to work with means snow chances. The 1/3-1/5 period seems to be another recent climo spike in activity too with these EPO shots

[psuhoffman]

18 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Don't think I would be concerned with what it shows. Just taken verbatim with the flow we would probably see the warmer temps in a good chunk of the CONUS as the weak PNA (central portion) and the weakness in the southwest is allowing a PAC flow to drive through and lock the cold north. Only where the trough is dipping down in the Lakes and east is there the ability to drive the cold south. So about the only issue I have with the temps is that the northern tier through the midwest into the east should probably be running colder. And I think if you look at the anomalies it does hint at that.

But reading between the lines and looking in the west with the weak signature on the PNA in the CONUS and the ambiguous weakness in the SW trough I have to wonder if we are seeing two camps on the ensembles. One that wants to drive energy/trough into the SW and one that wants to pop a full latitude PNA into there. And considering the models have had issues in that region so far it wouldn't surprise me if that is what we are seeing here. If that is the case then the temp profile will be muddied anyway. 

The EPS makes more sense. It isn't as good a run as 12z because it lost the -nao but the ridging in western Canada is even better so that somewhat offsets. But you can see how the jet is undercutting the ridging and with the epo ridge promoting a flow from the north there are generally cooler temps across the mid latitudes in the US. If the EPS had the -nao the gefs has it would be even colder. 

[showmethesnow]

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

The EPS makes more sense. It isn't as good a run as 12z because it lost the -nao but the ridging in western Canada is even better so that somewhat offsets. But you can see how the jet is undercutting the ridging and with the epo ridge promoting a flow from the north there are generally cooler temps across the mid latitudes in the US. If the EPS had the -nao the gefs has it would be even colder. 

 

 

You can also see that the EPS seems to favor troughing/weakness in the southwest with the colder temps placed there not to mention the 500's are stronger in that regards. Actually a decent look through the mid-latitudes with what looks to be a split flow and a trough in the east that doesn't look to be suppressive. And though we aren't seeing what I would technically call a -NAO I would think it is close enough to an eastern based -NAO that we would see some blocking regardless.

[showmethesnow]

Not a fan of where the EPS went with the Jan 3'rd system. Seeing stronger and a more westerly dig of the trough behind the developing southern low which is bumping up the heights in the east more so and farther west then previous runs. The result is that the low is taking a more westerly track that would place it through or to the west of our region. Wouldn't take much of a correction on the 500s to put as back in the game. And considering the models haven't been exactly stellar with the 500s and we are still talking roughly 5 days away I wouldn't be putting a fork into our chances just because of this one run.

[showmethesnow]

Just taking a lazy man's way (EPS snowfall means) of looking at our snowfall potential, excepting the Jan 3'rd system, the overnight EPS doesn't like our chances until +10 day. And with the jan 3'rd system it backed off somewhat as well with roughly a handful of members showing measurable for the general DC/Balt corridor.

[BristowWx]

Right on cue both GFS at 6z say “what snow” for Jan 3rd.  

[PDIII]

I can't believe that there is not one mention of the euro... Hmmm..

[WxUSAF]

19 minutes ago, PDIII said:

I can't believe that there is not one mention of the euro... Hmmm..

We don’t talk about warm rain much?

[BristowWx]

All I took away from the GEFS at 6z was right until mid month Canada is not all that cold for mid January.  

[WxUSAF]

4 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Gefs makes no sense towards the end. -AO, -nao, -epo, Aleutian Trough. Yet it's just blowtorching the whole Conus. No mid latitude response at all. 

 

Very end of the 6z GEFS looks fairly close to that 360hr Eps map you posted. But it gets there only after 7-10 days of pac crap flooding the conus yet again. Eps evolution seems much more conducive to keeping cold air around and snow chances above zero.

[Wonderdog]

8 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Very end of the 6z GEFS looks fairly close to that 360hr Eps map you posted. But it gets there only after 7-10 days of pac crap flooding the conus yet again. Eps evolution seems much more conducive to keeping cold air around and snow chances above zero.

Well that takes us close to Jan 15th and that is when our winter is supposed to begin. Patience.

[Ralph Wiggum]

10 minutes ago, Wonderdog said:

Well that takes us close to Jan 15th and that is when our winter is supposed to begin. Patience.

This. We are slowly starting to get into the ens lead time out to mid month so in the days ahead there should be notable positive looks beginning to appear in the LR. 

[psuhoffman]

29 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Very end of the 6z GEFS looks fairly close to that 360hr Eps map you posted. But it gets there only after 7-10 days of pac crap flooding the conus yet again. Eps evolution seems much more conducive to keeping cold air around and snow chances above zero.

EPS does that too now. Doesn't start to transition to a better pattern until day 13. I think it's inevitable that we will be stuck in this Pacific crap pattern another 10-15 days.  Why would t we?  If the strong mjo wave is the culprit and it's still in warm phases for another 10 days minimum then why would we expect the pattern since dec 15 to break down?  I think the guidance keeps teasing because at range it doesn't see the mjo impact or weight it enough. It sees all the other factors that argue for the base state without the mjo interference. But as it gets closer it reverts to what a strong mjo phase 3-6 looks like. Good news is once the mjo progresses out of those phases then the teases should stop and the pattern really will flip. 

One thing annoying me is the soi. We really need that to couple with the nino. It's in Nina territory and the mjo is producing Nina results. A lot of the assumptions including my own were based on nino climo. If the soi continues to stay in Nina state than I'm less confident in the changes we need lasting. I still think we would get a good period but if the soi is still acting like a Nina the mjo is likely to weaken or race through phases 8-2 then go back into the puke phases. Plus in a Nino some of the phases aren't as bad. But the mjo has been yielding Nina type results to the mjo phases. An soi drop would make me feel a lot better. 

[psuhoffman]

@WxUSAF

one point of hope is the nao seems to be showing signs of a long term phase change. But what a way for the Pacific to ruin a -nao 

but if we can get the mjo to lay off and that PAC firehouse to relax it wouldn't take much to get that workable fast. The only problem is the full latitude trough off the west coast. 

[Ji]

41 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

EPS does that too now. Doesn't start to transition to a better pattern until day 13. I think it's inevitable that we will be stuck in this Pacific crap pattern another 10-15 days.  Why would t we?  If the strong mjo wave is the culprit and it's still in warm phases for another 10 days minimum then why would we expect the pattern since dec 15 to break down?  I think the guidance keeps teasing because at range it doesn't see the mjo impact or weight it enough. It sees all the other factors that argue for the base state without the mjo interference. But as it gets closer it reverts to what a strong mjo phase 3-6 looks like. Good news is once the mjo progresses out of those phases then the teases should stop and the pattern really will flip. 

One thing annoying me is the soi. We really need that to couple with the nino. It's in Nina territory and the mjo is producing Nina results. A lot of the assumptions including my own were based on nino climo. If the soi continues to stay in Nina state than I'm less confident in the changes we need lasting. I still think we would get a good period but if the soi is still acting like a Nina the mjo is likely to weaken or race through phases 8-2 then go back into the puke phases. Plus in a Nino some of the phases aren't as bad. But the mjo has been yielding Nina type results to the mjo phases. An soi drop would make me feel a lot better. 

and the white flag is raised.....

[psuhoffman]

Must be some members in the gefs that agree with a colder evolution like showme said because there is a spike in snow days 10-15. 

[WxUSAF]

11 minutes ago, Ji said:

and the white flag is raised.....

[Ralph Wiggum]

12 minutes ago, Ji said:

and the white flag is raised.....

Nobody has given up but beginning to slowly see doubts from some pros popping up here and on other social media as well. Same general idea regarding the SOI and the MJO and how neither is really behaving as was expected going in. While December was mostly not a BN temp month for many, an argument can certainly be made to whether Dec truly was a typical Nino regime or not. There were certainly more Nina-like behaviors than typical Nino imho. Someone mentioned an atmospheric lag irt ENSO so perhaps this is a real thing?

[aldie 22]

13 minutes ago, Ji said:

and the white flag is raised.....

 

[psuhoffman]

5 minutes ago, Ji said:

and the white flag is raised.....

Nope but that doesn't mean I'm not frustrated by this mjo wave or unaware of things that "could" go wrong. 

Wxusaf had a great point yesterday how what's frustrating isn't the warmup but that it's turned into a complete shutout pattern. I didnt expect that. A big culprit is the combo of the soi and mjo. In 2002/3 we had a mjo wave progress warm phases this time of year also. And we did have a warmer period. But because the soi was coupled to nino the results weren't as bad. The warm phases of the mjo are muted in a nino typically. So we still were able to eek out a couple snow events (the Xmas snow and a nice clipper in early January) during the warm period. It wasn't 4 weeks of total waste. We also got unlucky to get nothing out of a pretty good pattern early December. That combo makes this frustrating. 

That said I don't expect the mjo to stay in phases 3-6 all winter. And I also don't expect the soi to stay in Nina mode. We have had soi spikes in a nino before. And they are almost always followed by a crash.  The last time I checked the weekly oni peaked around 1.1 and was still hanging out around 1. That's not borderline nino that firmly in nino territory and close to moderate. It would be unprecedented to have the soi to stay above 0 the entire winter with such a high oni value. 

So if the mjo cycles around in warm phases for the next 8 weeks and the soi stays in Nina territory all winter then yes my prediction will go down in flames. Mainly because all my assumptions were based on a modoki nino. But the soi is what makes the enso matter. Without a response in the soi we basically don't have a nino in an atmospheric sense. 

But I don't expect that. It would be totally unheard of. Do you really expect either of those things?  Yea it's possible. Just because it's never happened doesn't mean it's impossible but if we were waiting on something we needed that had never happened before you would say that's crazy. So I'm not going to worry too much about this until it starts to become apparent something has gone wrong. As of now we have seen soi and mjo spikes like this before and history suggests they should be getting close to the end of their influence. 

[psuhoffman]

54 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Nobody has given up but beginning to slowly see doubts from some pros popping up here and on other social media as well. Same general idea regarding the SOI and the MJO and how neither is really behaving as was expected going in. While December was mostly not a BN temp month for many, an argument can certainly be made to whether Dec truly was a typical Nino regime or not. There were certainly more Nina-like behaviors than typical Nino imho. Someone mentioned an atmospheric lag irt ENSO so perhaps this is a real thing?

Yea JB is really rattled. Just read his morning post. Said he was up all night because he is concerned at how the EPS suddenly backed off its good look long range yesterday.  Mentioned the soi Lol

I mean it looks bad. And the pattern flip was showing up and then evaporated. So it's warranted to be concerned. I thought the end of the ensembles would be showing something better by now. The Pacific blasting warmth across even under ridging has be concerned. That wasn't what I expected and isn't very nino like. More nina. Need that soi crash stat. 

[aldie 22]

DC is sitting at +3.2 temp wise. Matt and CWG are going to absolutely nail December...well done

[frd]

23 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea JB is really rattled. Just read his morning post. Said he was up all night because he is concerned at how the EPS suddenly backed off its good look long range yesterday.  Mentioned the soi Lol

I mean it looks bad. And the pattern flip was showing up and then evaporated. So it's warranted to be concerned. I thought the end of the ensembles would be showing something better by now. The Pacific blasting warmth across even under ridging has be concerned. That wasn't what I expected and isn't very nino like. More nino. Need that soi crash stat. 

Did you read HM's thoughts this morning ( all 20 posts from late last night ? ) Interesting .....