January Medium/Long Range Discussion

[psuhoffman]

3 hours ago, Ji said:

This winter is a carbon copy of 09-10 except that the dec 19 blizzard went to Richmond. Jan 30 to feb 10 will be epic

If we're looking for somewhat similar years that hold hope I would say it's actually more like 58. Similar cold periods early. One anomalous big mid Atlantic storm. This year slightly south of 1957. Then a crap long lasting shutout warm period. That year broke cold and snowy in early February and didn't let up until April. Small snow early Feb. HECS mid Feb. Then a 4-10" storm early March and the late March HECS nw of 95. That nino was way stronger but a modoki and some similarities in other SST regions. 

2 hours ago, BristowWx said:

I wasn’t sure if week 1 started today or week from now.  But your snarktastic response has ensured I won’t ask that question again.  Much obliged.

I was just messing with you. If it makes you feel better the other day I didn't realize when I moved a trash can it was blocking the garage door sensor and the door hadn't gone up. I backed right into it and destroyed my garage door.  Not my most spectacular moment. Feel free to snark away!

2 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

Ok, i'm feeling slightly better. Gefs gives the "a ok" to the op. We're good until the 0z eps comes out at least. 

Not perfect but def a snow pattern along the EC

That is even better then the heights there show. Keeping in mind an ensemble will have members that disagree at that range that mute the signal some...it's very likely that assuming the majority are correct the blocking will be even more pronounced and so will the troughing over the Conus that is only weakly hinted at there. 

1 hour ago, Wonderdog said:

Just to show you that I believe in the upcoming pattern change, tomorrow I will not only put the oil into the SB, I will peruse the manual. 

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

for the love of everything sacred and holy...noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[das]

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

 Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

for the love of everything sacred and holy...noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

No kidding.  It's this type of wanton disregard of the snow gods that is leading to the current state of affairs all up and down the east coast.  It's 9:22pm on December 31st here in Vermont and it's raining.  Really people?  I'm especially looking forward to 50F and raining when I get back down to Clarksburg on Thursday.

In all seriousness, '58 is not a bad analog.  Neither is '09/'10.  I fully expect a similar flip to blocking with a southern stream that remains active sometime in January.  Then, we take our chances......  

[Bob Chill]

@psuhoffman

The only reason I'm in mini melt mode is because early Jan looks like dog poop now but just a week or so ago both the eps and gefs were advertising a pattern that could produce. Now we're stuck in a shutout pattern until further notice. I'm bored AF. I'd be thrilled if we had a 1" event to track. 

I'm absolutely not cancelling winter. I know better than that this early. But come the F on man... give us something discrete to talk about. D15 pac puke panels are irritating beyond words....

[Bob Chill]

How did we miss this? I might start a thread

[Ji]

How did we miss this? I might start a thread

Lol we didnt miss it. Fv3 was stuck st 276 on TT at 830pm. Must of recovered

[BristowWx]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

If we're looking for somewhat similar years that hold hope I would say it's actually more like 58. Similar cold periods early. One anomalous big mid Atlantic storm. This year slightly south of 1957. Then a crap long lasting shutout warm period. That year broke cold and snowy in early February and didn't let up until April. Small snow early Feb. HECS mid Feb. Then a 4-10" storm early March and the late March HECS nw of 95. That nino was way stronger but a modoki and some similarities in other SST regions. 

I was just messing with you. If it makes you feel better the other day I didn't realize when I moved a trash can it was blocking the garage door sensor and the door hadn't gone up. I backed right into it and destroyed my garage door.  Not my most spectacular moment. Feel free to snark away!

That is even better then the heights there show. Keeping in mind an ensemble will have members that disagree at that range that mute the signal some...it's very likely that assuming the majority are correct the blocking will be even more pronounced and so will the troughing over the Conus that is only weakly hinted at there. 

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

for the love of everything sacred and holy...noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Anybody who does weather analysis like you can say whatever they want.  I know more about MJO than I thought possible.  Yet knowing why it’s not snowing doesn’t make it any more pleasant of an experience.  

[psuhoffman]

@C.A.P.E.  I don't mean to blame the mjo as in "if only it didn't do that" like some have because the mjo did happen and we don't understand the causality enough to say why and so the same things we are thinking will bring the better pattern could also have made the mjo inevitable. I can't just cherry pick parts of the global drivers I like. And I agree the mjo isnt the end all.  So this isn't an excuse for the winter so far. 

That said...I do think there is an obvious correlation between the mjo and the pattern recently.  If you look at the h5 over the last couple weeks and the projected next week it matches the mjo phases way to closely to think it's coincidence.  Additionally the mjo has been literally at record amplitude levels.  The stronger the amplitude the more likely the mjo impacts the longwave pattern.  

But this isn't a blame game.  Correlation and causation aren't the same.  The mjo is part of the equation so it's not like I can say "things would be great if not for the mjo"  The mjo isn't severable from the pattern.  

  

[psuhoffman]

49 minutes ago, das said:

No kidding.  It's this type of wanton disregard of the snow gods that is leading to the current state of affairs all up and down the east coast.  It's 9:22pm on December 31st here in Vermont and it's raining.  Really people?  I'm especially looking forward to 50F and raining when I get back down to Clarksburg on Thursday.

In all seriousness, '58 is not a bad analog.  Neither is '09/'10.  I fully expect a similar flip to blocking with a southern stream that remains active sometime in January.  Then, we take our chances......  

Everytime someone on here makes some ridiculous post about how they don't want snow if it's....too early, too late, not at least 6", changes to rain, doesn't stick to roads, melts within 48 hours, is too dry, too wet...I think what if somewhere some higher being is saying "Fine be careful what you wish for". Would explain why lately it seems we either get a hecs or nothong for long stretches. 

Agree on the flip but at this rate no one will be left alive in here to see it. 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Maestrobjwa said:

I'm still wondering...if this nino will be more of a two-year event (especially if it is developing late!). In which case...perhaps the next winter we could expect more typical nino behavior throughout the winter as opposed to...whatever we're seeing now?

We can't get next week right and your worried about next year?

[frd]

A little more HM as 2018 winds down .

Scott Nogueira‏ @ScottNogueira 31 Dec 2018

More

Replying to @antmasiello

May need some help on the PAC side. AO starts to turn - but boy that jet. Yeesh.

Anthony Masiello‏ @antmasiello 31 Dec 2018

More

If you imagine the vortices rotating around the Arctic Circle plus added momentum from East Asia, you make a tight tropospheric circulation/good inertia. But, when the center heads towards NE Siberia and -MT occurs, then what?

 

 

Scott Nogueira‏ @ScottNogueira 31 Dec 2018

 

I assume it would help. To me anyways, it seems we are in this state of forcing near 135E that’s been persistant and just making quite the jet as you highlighted earlier. I think overall many rushed the change. Not their fault, just how it goes. I think it comes, just delayed.

[psuhoffman]

48 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

How did we miss this? I might start a thread

I'm fringed so there's that...

[Maestrobjwa]

40 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

We can't get next week right and your worried about next year?

Hey, having the insurance of a two-year nino (knowing that in most of those cases that at least one of those years, we cash in) gives a little hope in case this year doesn't come together! (I think part of me has been already focusing on that...and the low solar period we're in!)

Been a tough stretch...but law of averages says unless this is like the 70s...we'll be due is things don't turn around this winter!

[snowmagnet]

6 hours ago, WhiteoutMD said:

Daffodils are starting to come up and grass has a nice green color at this time.

No room for grass. The mud has overtaken my yard. 

[Wonderdog]

12 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Hey, having the insurance of a two-year nino (knowing that in most of those cases that at least one of those years, we cash in) gives a little hope in case this year doesn't come together! (I think part of me has been already focusing on that...and the low solar period we're in!)

Been a tough stretch...but law of averages says unless this is like the 70s...we'll be due is things don't turn around this winter!

The weather gods don't believe in hope, insurance, or law of averages.

[PCT_ATC]

Happy New Year  may the snow gods smile upon us. Except for JI.. hes too negative.  

[BristowWx]

At a party and everyone asked me “when is it going to snow?”....STFU is what I replied...and Happy New Year of course 

[JakkelWx]

First SOI post of the year.

1 Jan 2019

1009.66

1006.60

-7.30

8.53

4.66

[yoda]

Meh... workable

[Chris78]

1 minute ago, yoda said:

Meh... workable

Looks ok to me. Hints at an active SS as well.

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, yoda said:

Meh... workable

Aleutians trough. -epo, -ao, -nao. Yea workable. First shots of the new year fired by the gefs. Not blinking. Let's see if the EPS flinched. 

[psuhoffman]

In fairness the weeklies indicated the EPS is heading to the same destination only a week slower. 

[cbmclean]

@PSU or Bob Chill

Do you guys put any stock in this AAM or EAMT stuff?  Sometimes it's hard to sort out meaningful concepts for someone's mumbo jumbo.

[Bob Chill]

10 minutes ago, cbmclean said:

@PSU or Bob Chill

Do you guys put any stock in this AAM or EAMT stuff?  Sometimes it's hard to sort out meaningful concepts for someone's mumbo jumbo.

They definitely have an effect on hemispheric patterns but it's not like any person or computer model can predict that stuff at long leads.  Like you, i'm reading a lot of explanations as to why our winter wx sucks but how long it takes to get out of this funk is anybody's guess.

[psuhoffman]

15 minutes ago, cbmclean said:

@PSU or Bob Chill

Do you guys put any stock in this AAM or EAMT stuff?  Sometimes it's hard to sort out meaningful concepts for someone's mumbo jumbo.

I've read some stuff on it and the apparent correlations. I know a negative aam is typically associated with a Nina. Most of the most negative aam januaries were ninas but a couple were cold and the h5 correlation maps I've seen look kinda ambiguous to me. But I know some very intelligent mets think it's an important driver. Honestly I'm not comfortable I understand the relationships enough to be using it though. 

[Bob Chill]

30 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Aleutians trough. -epo, -ao, -nao. Yea workable. First shots of the new year fired by the gefs. Not blinking. Let's see if the EPS flinched. 

Gefs and eps are worlds apart with the NPac d10+. One of them is going to fail bigly here shortly. I know who i'm rooting for. Lol

[Bob Chill]

FV3 supports the gefs 

[psuhoffman]

8 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

FV3 supports the gefs 

I'll hug the crap out of that!!!

[yoda]

15 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

FV3 supports the gefs 

FV3 is the creme de la creme lol... its way better than even the 00z GEFS run tonight

[Yeoman]

The SSW is most likely messing with the models. Stay patient everyone.

The SSW BS will continue just as it has over the past several years. Continue to believe the excuses from Cohen.. it will snow when you least expect it.


. Pro

[Yeoman]

A fascinating read from over at 33andrain from a member. Bottomline, the models need time to take into account what is happening, I think whether you believe in the strat/MJO/tropical forcing interactions at play or not,the massive effects from the SSWE and extreme EAMT you have to at least think that the modeling, even in this day and age, is suffering from making proper outcomes due to all the complexities coming together recently. Just MHO. 

•  
• Posted 24 minutes ago

I just posted this across the pond for a slightly different audience - only slight editing:

 

REALLY GREAT NEWS!

Now some of you will not realise the significance of this:

  

Those of you who have been reading my posts and those from the likes of [mention=1304]Tamara[/mention], [mention=70]Isotherm[/mention] [mention=447]Snowy Hibbo[/mention], myself and others who comment on the key teleconnections will know that we've been banging on about +ve EAMT (East Asian Mountain Torque) in particular. We could see this event unfolding a few weeks ago as part of the GSDM (global synoptic dynamic model), the GWO (global wind oscillation), GLAAM (global atmospheric angular momentum) and both FT (frictional torque) and MT (mountain torque) which all link in with tropical forcing, the ENSO state and the MJO. These charts are produced 2 days after the actual position - so this afternoon's chart (above) shows the position as on Dec 29th.  In my previous posts I said that EAMT was already rising strongly and that could be seen in the pressure distribution over eastern Asia (I showed the StormSurf charts, most recently yesterday).  Well, EAMT is not just rising but it's sky rocketing as can be seen by the red line in the chart and looks set to climb quite a bit higher, in fact with that 2 day chart time lag it already is.

 

I'll not go into the complexities but +ve EAMT events have an extraordinary influence on all levels of the lower and middle atmosphere and especially on the northern hemisphere global weather patterns and many of these assist directly or indirectly with setting up ridges and troughs and blocking patterns. Here are some of them:

 

1. A "major contributor" to wave breaking in the stratosphere (there are other influences too, of course) and vortex attacks by creating huge uplift and vertically propagating planetary waves from the Tibetan Plateau and particularly (as discovered more recently) the Mongolian Mountains, which can reach the upper stratosphere and even the lower mesosphere before reaching the "critical level" which is effectively "wind shear" in the troposphere as shown in this chart.

In the stratosphere the critical level has the easterlies above it which are the reversed winds and the planetary waves cannot break through it and are reflected (or even deflected) back down and they break at increasingly lower levels.  This produces one or more attacks on the spv (stratospheric polar vortex) and prolonged events can send up further planetary waves with attacks from above and below.  The last surge in EAMT occurred  during Dec 4th to 12th and peaked around Dec 9th/10th.  A few days later we saw some attacks on the SPV.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

2. Now we have a further event which is likely to repeat the exercise and if there's any problem with the split or the downward propagation this may well deliver the final blow to the SPV in a few days.  In fact the timing is almost perfect with the split (if it happens) predicted for later this week.

 

3. EAMT also influences the tropospheric patterns with lateral planetary waves influencing the jet stream and downstream patterns in winter across the North Pacific and into N America. This can help the jet stream to meander and/or buckle.  This action in association with other factors can have knock on effects setting up the pattern and distribution of troughs and ridges around the hemisphere.

 

4. In the summer half of the year EAMT has a powerful influence on the Asian Monsoon.

 

5. The planetary waves also spread polewards and this is where it gets very interesting.  Some of us will have heard of and studied Judah Cohen's theories on early Asian Snow Cover extent and the greater likelihood of SSWs.  He recently admitted that it is more complicated than that and it was not a perfect correlation but nevertheless it does seem to work more often than not..  Over some years and particularly more recently, research has strongly suggested a link between North Asian blocking and the priming of the lower tropospheric layers and the surface to be receptive to a down welling SSW.  In several of my recent posts I've been showing those Asian pressure charts and the extraordinary expanse of HP over almost all central Asia northwards, Russia and Siberia.  I've been looking at the timing of these events and I'm pretty sure that it's no coincidence that a combination of +ve EAMT, extensive Asian snow cover (well above average right now as I showed yesterday) and the blocking regime are all coming together to make the patterns receptive or even highly conducive to downward propagation of the SSW to the surface. This obviously needs to be explored much more extensively and research into earlier SSWs (including near misses and failures) need to be considered. Another factor is GWD (gravity wave drag) which is mostly generated by the the east Asian mountains as well. That will be one of my 2019 projects amd Malcolm and Tom are likely to participate and others will be welcome.

 

Malcolm [mention=20040]Blessed Weather[/mention] and I have been studying these events and found that they fitted in perfectly to last February's SSW.  Here's the MT chart for back then:

Note the 3 spikes in EAMT.  The first one around Feb 1st to 5th and the SSW was triggered a week later on Feb 12th. The second one around Feb 20th-25th and we saw the full propagation down to the surface and just a few days later with the "Siberian Express" rushing westwards and producing the "Beast from the East" in the UK and progressing around the hemisphere to N America about a week or so later..  The final spike was March 5th-10th and the "Mini Beast" followed about a week or so later and with further impacts on N America a few days later (and lasting much longer).

 

Overall, some of this is still theory but the extraordinary influences of +ve EAMT events have been studied for over 20 years. Now more of you might realise why I'm so excited about this month's two +ve EAMT events.  The models simply do not have much of these influences factored into how they churn out their nwp solutions and it's why they often need a few days to adjust to changes in the background signals.  Before long we are likely to see some much more sophisticated models being developed. The next few days of monitoring the model output will be totally absorbing and fascinating. 

 

Finally a Happy New Year to everyone and what a January we have in store for us!

 

David        

•  

Insanity


. Pro