January/February Medium/Long Range Disco

[showmethesnow]

The overnight EPS run in the extended was discouraging to say the least. I will just leave it at that.

[CAPE]

39 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

The overnight EPS run in the extended was discouraging to say the least. I will just leave it at that.

Yeah difficult to make lemonade out of that. Seems to be advertising a pretty stable h5 look for now. I dug a bit to see if there is any 'conflict' among the members- I looked at the temp anomalies/probabilities on WB. Pretty unanimous that days 9-12 are going to be very mild. Beyond that there is some spread as to how mild things remain in the east- some indication of cold pressing eastward towards the end of the run, but the cold anomalies are clearly out west on most members, which aligns with the advertised mean western trough. At this point I guess we can hope the model is 'missing' something, maybe MJO or SOI related, and the crap look will become more muted in future runs, but there is pretty clearly going to be a warmish period of some duration. GEFS is indicating this as well, although it does not keep the mean trough in the western US as long and improves somewhat towards day 15. It has lost the great looking block of a few runs ago though(surprise). Had that verified it would have kept heights lower in the east, but now it just has the look of full latitude h5 ridging with less impressive +heights in the NAO domain. That wont get it done.

[showmethesnow]

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

Yeah difficult to make lemonade out of that. Seems to be advertising a pretty stable h5 look for now. I dug a bit to see if there is any 'conflict' among the members- I looked at the temp anomalies/probabilities on WB. Pretty unanimous that days 9-12 are going to be very mild. Beyond that there is some spread as to how mild things remain in the east- some indication of cold pressing eastward towards day the end of the run, but the cold anomalies are clearly out west on most members, which aligns with the advertised mean western trough. At this point I guess we can hope the model is 'missing' something, maybe MJO or SOI related, and the crap look will become more muted in future runs, but there is pretty clearly going to be a warmish period of some duration. GEFS is indicating this as well, although it does not keep the mean trough out west as long and improves somewhat towards day 15. It has lost the great looking block of a few runs ago though(surprise). Had that verified it would have kept heights lower in the east, but now it just has the look of full latitude h5 ridging with less impressive +heights in the NAO domain. That wont get it done.

Not going to happen but I do see one possible way out of the look on the extended. Get the pv that rotates through in the next few days to move more towards or into the 50/50 region. Right now it is too far west. Would flip the long wave pattern to favor a more easterly trough hopefully not allowing the energy to dive into the west and get buried there.

MJO doesn't look promising. GEFS suite is the only one that looks to maybe push beyond 7. All the rest are pretty much crap with the best showing a progression into 7 before a dive into the COD. Oh well. Will keep my focus on the coming Tuesday/Wed system and the one possibly after and hopefully by then we see some changes in the extended when I start diving into that again.

[stormtracker]

Trying to hold on....

[Wonderdog]

Looking at hour 120, you see depicted some snow approaching the mid Atlantic from the midwest; some precipitation in the Gulf and some precipitation in western Atlantic then each area dries up when I was expecting a storm to form somewhere but nothing. I'm gonna watch this time period for some surprise after the Arctic front rolls thru.

[Ralph Wiggum]

12 minutes ago, Wonderdog said:

Looking at hour 120, you see depicted some snow approaching the mid Atlantic from the midwest; some precipitation in the Gulf and some precipitation in western Atlantic then each area dries up when I was expecting a storm to form somewhere but nothing. I'm gonna watch this time period for some surprise after the Arctic front rolls thru.

H5 setup for anything meaningful appears skewed too far East with the important features downstream from the PNA ridge. Everything looks good off the PAC Coast and into the West with the PNA ridging and a disturbance undercutting the PNA but it is a flat ridge which doesnt appear very robust thus it keeps everything progressing East and shearing out under the NS which is ripping under the departing PV in Eastern Canada.  Slow things down, pump the Western ridge more, and adjust the Eastern trof West just a bit and things might line up better. Most guidance is against that happening tho for now. I draw on 2 weenie rules.....we need to wait and see how the 2 systems unfold between today and Wednesday and also the energy for the weekend is in sparse data regions of the Pacific attm.....so there's that 

[psuhoffman]

12 hours ago, Ji said:

no offense to anyone but the long range prognostication this year has been pretty awful. I dont think anyone has a clue of how we got here....and where we are going. I remember in early January---we looked at a pattern change for Jan 15.....and then we got what we thought might be the appetizer(jan 11-12)....as we grew closer---the models started throwing out 4,5,6 threats in a 384 run(remember those)....and then it all went away. And then there was eternal wait for the long awaited February and the EPS is throwing a blowtorch in our face. Even the superstars like Isotherm,Don Sutherland..JB have been way off even though they sound like things are on track. No matter what happens...this winter is a bust and anyone who tells you things are on track or this is how i thought things would go down is just lying. 

 

11 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

It really all comes down to one thing that was pretty much universally wrong so far. Winter clearly hasn't behaved like a nino. If all I saw were the Dec & Jan h5 composites and nothing else I would not guess this was nino. Not even close. Temps and precip in early Dec was sorta like a Nino but ends there. 

 

I think most are admitting it’s not gone to plan. And the ones that haven’t are the known spin doctors who never will. But Bob is 100% right it’s all about the nino. I remember almost every winter forecast (including my garbage one) talked about how the nino was likely to influence the tropical forcing in our favor. Some specifically mentioned the mjo. Others used different less technical ways to say the same thing.  But that hasn’t happened. The mjo has spent 90% of winter at high amplitude in warm phases. The soi has averaged positive much of the time. 

Later people can parse the reasons why.  The ONI did peak around 1.1 weekly and about .9 on the monthly charts. That’s weak but still in the range of some of the good analogs like 1978 and 2015. But there hasn’t been even a weak nino response. At best the measurable atmospheric response has been that of a neutral with a Nina lag. Tips sst gradient theory as to why there hasn’t been a typical nino response makes sense.  The physics of that theory makes sense on paper but unfortunately I don’t think there are any good observed analogs to test the theory in practice. There could be other factors. Maybe there is a factor we missed that in hindsight will reveal itself as a cause of the persistent maritime continent forcing.  But the cause is irrelevant to our snow chances the bottom line is the assumption that we would have predominantly  central pacific forcing was catastrophically wrong. 

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

7 hours ago, Ji said:

This has to be a record

It won't be too much longer before things get good!

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

In 2003, Presidents' Day was the big one.  The MJO is on a perfect track for another!

[Wonderdog]

51 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

 

I think most are admitting it’s not gone to plan. And the ones that haven’t are the known spin doctors who never will. But Bob is 100% right it’s all about the nino. I remember almost every winter forecast (including my garbage one) talked about how the nino was likely to influence the tropical forcing in our favor. Some specifically mentioned the mjo. Others used different less technical ways to say the same thing.  But that hasn’t happened. The mjo has spent 90% of winter at high amplitude in warm phases. The soi has averaged positive much of the time. 

Later people can parse the reasons why.  The ONI did peak around 1.1 weekly and about .9 on the monthly charts. That’s weak but still in the range of some of the good analogs like 1978 and 2015. But there hasn’t been even a weak nino response. At best the measurable atmospheric response has been that of a neutral with a Nina lag. Tips sst gradient theory as to why there hasn’t been a typical nino response makes sense.  The physics of that theory makes sense on paper but unfortunately I don’t think there are any good observed analogs to test the theory in practice. There could be other factors. Maybe there is a factor we missed that in hindsight will reveal itself as a cause of the persistent maritime continent forcing.  But the cause is irrelevant to our snow chances the bottom line is the assumption that we would have predominantly  central pacific forcing was catastrophically wrong. 

Well, I give Tip and Isotherm kudos with going for a robust winter based on a theory they believe in. Unfortunately, the theory hasn't born any fruit. Still a lot of unknowns in weather forecasting which is why I, probably stupidly, believe we will still score two or three moderate events by 3/15/2019. Are there any verification scores on the MJO predictions? 

[frd]

MJO forecasts rule the models. Still feel the models, including the EPS,  is not correct down the road. 

One thing Ihave been thinking about are the two camps out there about the prospects for March this year. Some  are going very warm, while others are going cold.

The warm camp states the Pac goes to hell and the WAR expands. 

The cold camp goes with the delayed and lag effect from blocking, also included is the weak-ish El Nino state.    

Even with this meager El Nino I feel the manner things are progressing that March could be a rather stormy and cold month.  If you go with delayed but not denied March could be rather exciting.      

[frd]

The look from yesterday's ensembles regarding the severe drop in the AO s still there this morning.

 

 

[CAPE]

I am gonna keep hugging the CFS until further notice. It has the one "bad" week, or reshuffle, but it continues to show major west based blocking developing and persisting through the run(week 6). Negative AO/NAO plus it develops a big ridge out west, and even though the axis is a bit further west than ideal, the monster block would allow for favorable storm tracks.

[SnowGoose69]

10 minutes ago, frd said:

MJO forecasts rule the models. Still feel the models, including the EPS,  is not correct down the road. 

One thing Ihave been thinking about are the two camps out there about the prospects for March this year. Some  are going very warm, while others are going cold.

The warm camp states the Pac goes to hell and the WAR expands. 

The cold camp goes with the delayed and lag effect from blocking, also included is the weak-ish El Nino state.    

Even with this meager El Nino I feel the manner things are progressing that March could be a rather stormy and cold month.  If you go with delayed but not denied March could be rather exciting.      

It’s not a big sample size but the tendency in El Niño winters where the SOI averages near zero is for March to be fairly lousy in regards to snow and cold.  As if we needed more bad news the ENSO models are becoming increasingly less loving of an El Niño in 19-20 recently too.  

[psuhoffman]

@showmethesnow@C.A.P.E. @Bob Chill

I’ll try to keep this as non deb as I can.   This could still flip. I’m not saying we’re done and winters over. But...when I saw the signs the NAO was unlikely to flip again...for the 3rd time, this progression was what I saw as inevitable.

So let me post some of the “epic” looks from the weeklies from several different runs. 

look at the ridge axis and pna out west on all those and the NAO.

First of all a full latitude ridge into the NAO domain isn’t a NAO block. It won’t have the impact we need on the longwave trough axis even if it shows up on a numerical chart as a -NAO.  The pacific has never been right, but I think what many missed was it was never actually supposed to get great. It was “ok” but the NAO was the driver.  Look at those panels. The epo/pna isn’t the driver in any of them. There were some off runs of a random week in all those weekly or cfs runs that had us excited with a pna ridge but 80% of the good look was NAO driven. The epo has always been centered too far west to be the primary driver of a snowy pattern here.

Our epo snow looks feature an epo ridge in western Canada not AK. And a pna has only been a sporadic thing that last a week it is on one run and gone the next. So the attempts to find a way to make this work without the NAO never interested me much. I don’t see a path there. The guidance hasn’t been wrong about that either. It’s been wrong about the NAO. So I don’t put much stock or hope into the “Maybe it’s wrong” theme. It hasn’t been wrong about the epo locations at all. And I’ll make an argument that if you adjust for the NAO error is he coming retrogression of the epo ridge is the direct consequence. 

If the NAO block fails as wavelengths shorten an epo becomes less helpful and correlates with cold and snow here less. And that’s even with an ideal epo axis. An epo off the west coast is useless for snow. The trough axis will naturally shift west the later we go and it was already too far west in January. 

So my gut “uh oh” was that I saw signs the NAO was failing again. And if it fails the epo will retrograde some and the trough will end up west of us. The epo ridge has been a stable feature except for the 2 week AK vortex period around the holidays. But it’s been consistently too far west to help. Even if it stayed centered around AK it would likely become even less helpful.  But now it looks to retrograde a little which would be really bad without any NAO help. 

If the NAO block develops that same look becomes workable. The pac jet undercuts the ridge. The energy is forced under the block which knocks down the WAR and then suddenly you have the look in those panels above. Remove the NAO block and you have a massive full latitude eastern NAM ridge. 

So im not saying we’re done. It’s still only January. Long range could flip. Maybe the euro is dumping too far west and GEFS isn’t as bad and if the NAO truly develops it would flip quick and Bob is right that often that happens fast without warning.  But what I was and am saying is the attempts to get it to snow a lot here without the NAO are unlikely to work this year imo. I guess if someone is in the camp that the NAO is hopeless then I am saying it’s over lol. But I’m not in that camp. I don’t know what the NAO will do. But unless the blocking look that was the driver in the “good pattern” we were expecting develops this is not likely to end well. 

Lastly...when I say won’t end well that is a matter of perspective. I’m not saying it won’t snow again even if the NAO fails. But I don’t expect any epic run of snow oh snow warning events or a mecs/hecs levek event.  But we can fluke our way to something in almost any pattern. A wave following a cutter could finally work. We got a 4-8” snow in feb 1997 during a flat out god awful H5 pattern because a system lucked under us. It happens.  

And keep in mind my mood can’t be separated from my results. For many in here if we get 2 more snows and about 10” total this was an ok winter. But I’m still 32” away from average and 11” from my least snow ever. For me that same result would make this the worst winter ever out of the 14 I’ve been up here.  So I might be more negative about a mediocre look than some will. For me I need epic just to save me from a total dumpster fire winter.  So I’m probably in a much more negative POV than the dc area and I’m sorry and I’ll try to keep that out of my analysis from now on. 

[frd]

34 minutes ago, SnowGoose69 said:

It’s not a big sample size but the tendency in El Niño winters where the SOI averages near zero is for March to be fairly lousy in regards to snow and cold.  As if we needed more bad news the ENSO models are becoming increasingly less loving of an El Niño in 19-20 recently too.  

Yeah, not surprising. What you are saying here falls in the reasoning of those in the warm camp I mentioned.  

I guess we will see where we go this year. Maybe the trend of colder March months is coming to an end. 

 If we had a stonger Nino I am sure it would be decent.  

[WxUSAF]

 

[Bob Chill]

@psuhoffman

You won't hear me disagree with any of that. If one thing this winter has shown consistently is that the longwave pattern doesn't want to get right for "easy snow". That happens sometimes door to door. Relatively small shifts away from a really good pattern that never happens.

When the can got kicked in Jan I wrote off an epic recovery. Didn't write off additional snowfall. Just wrote off everything lining up perfectly. If it happens then great. If it doesn't I personally won't be blindsideded or surprised. Sometimes it just doesn't want to snow in the east and other times the atmosphere finds all kinds of ways to do it. The biggest tell is the philly to boston corridor. It really doesn't want to snow there. Every time something promising comes along in the mid range it fades in the short range. Nearly 2 months of persistence and counting...

[WestminsterSnowCapitalMA]

Will the Canadian model handle cold temps  more accurately ? 

 

[psuhoffman]

The GEFS probably looks better than the eps because it’s heading towards Mjo 8 while the eps is killing the mjo is 7. 

[showmethesnow]

17 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

@showmethesnow@C.A.P.E. @Bob Chill

I’ll try to keep this as non deb as I can.   This could still flip. I’m not saying we’re done and winters over. But...when I saw the signs the NAO was unlikely to flip again...for the 3rd time, this progression was what I saw as inevitable.

So let me post some of the “epic” looks from the weeklies from several different runs. 

 

look at the ridge axis and pna out west on all those and the NAO.

First of all a full latitude ridge into the NAO domain isn’t a NAO block. It won’t have the impact we need on the longwave trough axis even if it shows up on a numerical chart as a -NAO.  The pacific has never been right, but I think what many missed was it was never actually supposed to get great. It was “ok” but the NAO was the driver.  Look at those panels. The epo/pna isn’t the driver in any of them. There were some off runs of a random week in all those weekly or cfs runs that had us excited with a pna ridge but 80% of the good look was NAO driven. The epo has always been centered too far west to be the primary driver of a snowy pattern here.

Our epo snow looks feature an epo ridge in western Canada not AK. And a pna has only been a sporadic thing that last a week it is on one run and gone the next. So the attempts to find a way to make this work without the NAO never interested me much. I don’t see a path there. The guidance hasn’t been wrong about that either. It’s been wrong about the NAO. So I don’t put much stock or hope into the “Maybe it’s wrong” theme. It hasn’t been wrong about the epo locations at all. And I’ll make an argument that if you adjust for the NAO error is he coming retrogression of the epo ridge is the direct consequence. 

If the NAO block fails as wavelengths shorten an epo becomes less helpful and correlates with cold and snow here less. And that’s even with an ideal epo axis. An epo off the west coast is useless for snow. The trough axis will naturally shift west the later we go and it was already too far west in January. 

So my gut “uh oh” was that I saw signs the NAO was failing again. And if it fails the epo will retrograde some and the trough will end up west of us. The epo ridge has been a stable feature except for the 2 week AK vortex period around the holidays. But it’s been consistently too far west to help. Even if it stayed centered around AK it would likely become even less helpful.  But now it looks to retrograde a little which would be really bad without any NAO help. 

If the NAO block develops that same look becomes workable. The pac jet undercuts the ridge. The energy is forced under the block which knocks down the WAR and then suddenly you have the look in those panels above. Remove the NAO block and you have a massive full latitude eastern NAM ridge. 

So im not saying we’re done. It’s still only January. Long range could flip. Maybe the euro is dumping too far west and GEFS isn’t as bad and if the NAO truly develops it would flip quick and Bob is right that often that happens fast without warning.  But what I was and am saying is the attempts to get it to snow a lot here without the NAO are unlikely to work this year imo. I guess if someone is in the camp that the NAO is hopeless then I am saying it’s over lol. But I’m not in that camp. I don’t know what the NAO will do. But unless the blocking look that was the driver in the “good pattern” we were expecting develops this is not likely to end well. 

Lastly...when I say won’t end well that is a matter of perspective. I’m not saying it won’t snow again even if the NAO fails. But I don’t expect any epic run of snow oh snow warning events or a mecs/hecs levek event.  But we can fluke our way to something in almost any pattern. A wave following a cutter could finally work. We got a 4-8” snow in feb 1997 during a flat out god awful H5 pattern because a system lucked under us. It happens.  

And keep in mind my mood can’t be separated from my results. For many in here if we get 2 more snows and about 10” total this was an ok winter. But I’m still 32” away from average and 11” from my least snow ever. For me that same result would make this the worst winter ever out of the 14 I’ve been up here.  So I might be more negative about a mediocre look than some will. For me I need epic just to save me from a total dumpster fire winter.  So I’m probably in a much more negative POV than the dc area and I’m sorry and I’ll try to keep that out of my analysis from now on. 

I agree with you. Left for Vegas with some great looks having just shown up on much of the guidance but quick glances over the trip and I could see the degradation. By the time I had gotten back it was pretty obvious we weren't going to see that knock out pattern, at least anytime soon. As you said we had lost the good look in the west and the PAC but I had hopes that a -NAO would be sufficient to overcome some of the short comings to our west and that was the bus I have been riding on until recently. But despite the models repeated attempts to establish blocking in the N Atlantic we are just not seeing it, except for some bootlegs. Mentioned to C.A.P.E. a few days back that seeing the WAR getting established early on and persisting through mid winter was a bad sign IMO for our -NAO hopes and I stick to that as I am really having serious doubts that we ever see a persistent -NAO this winter. We could have worked with WAR if we would have seen the EPO shifted farther east as it would have balanced out the WAR hopefully driving a coastal track for our storms. But that was not to be. Still have a month, month and a half to get things right so i won't give up, but at this point things are looking a little rough. Guess it's about time to pull out the big dogs to change our fortunes...

 

[Bob Chill]

20 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

The GEFS probably looks better than the eps because it’s heading towards Mjo 8 while the work is killing the mjo is 7. 

Gfs/gefs really likes the west based block inside of 10 days. Appears we fight the pna for a time regardless but you can't not like the potential at a reasonable lead time. We all know it's the only thing that can greatly speed up a transition from hostile to workable. 

[clskinsfan]

Great post PSU. We just havent had a stable favorable PAC this year at all. No Aleutian low whatsoever.

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Gfs/gefs really likes the west based block inside of 10 days. Appears we fight the pna for a time regardless but you can't not like the potential at a reasonable lead time. We all know it's the only thing that can greatly speed up a transition from hostile to workable. 

Yea...if true NAO blocking develops the whole equation changes. Other factors like energy crashing into the west under the pac ridge go from a bad to a good thing. It’s all a bunch of moving parts that have to align.  Change one and it changes how we need the others. I think that frustrates the newbies that want a simple “this is what we need to snow” rule. Atmosphere isn’t that simple. Lol

I went back and I see how my posts were taken the way they were. I was never trying to say we’re doomed. I was trying to point out that the NAO has always been the key to those epic looks we were waiting for and not the epo/pna and that if the NAO continues to fail then we probably are in trouble. For the record I’m throwing my hands up on that. I’m not saying it won’t happen. I’m just saying I have no freaking idea. Guidance keeps wanting to go to that for a reason so it’s not like there aren’t some factors that argue for blocking. But something keeps running interference and I have no idea if that continues. Persistence says yes but persistence only works until it doesn’t. 

Right now guidance is split on the NAO. But man I would feel a lot better if the euro wasn’t the one that looks like a dumpster fire. But it’s not perfect and has lost pattern wars before. So if real blocking ever does develop and become stable I do think this flips in our favor fast. I just have given up predicting when or if that happens. 

[psuhoffman]

4 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Great post PSU. We just havent had a stable favorable PAC this year at all. No Aleutian low whatsoever.

True but even the long range runs that didn’t have that still had a great eastern US pattern because of the NAO. And the epo ridge/Aleutian low alignment was never ideal.  Plus there weee runs where the pac flipped first and we stayed mediocre and with a trough to our west until the NAO flipped. That was kind of my point. That imo the NAO was always the key to our snow chances this year. The absence of it so far has flipped our script. 

[psuhoffman]

I will say I learned this lesson. That any long range forecast that relies on the NAO as the key feature is low confidence regardless of how much guidance and analogs supports it. 

[Bob Chill]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

I will say I learned this lesson. That any long range forecast that relies on the NAO as the key feature is low confidence regardless of how much guidance and analogs supports it. 

It's a damn sneaky teleconnection. No doubt in my mind the most difficult long lead forecast tele. If it does form this year it will be one of the first times in recent history where it was picked up on 3+ weeks in advance.

The AO is currently negative and will likely stay that way. It's a good start but the AO alone can't offset a destructive neg pna. Thankfully the pna likes to cycle over 2 week periods more often than not and not monthly or longer. 

We have a couple possible events over the next week. I'm expecting the future to look a lot less dire by the time we get to next weekend. Hoping to somehow pull off 4.6" of snow to hit 20" by early Feb. I know your yard is lagging but late Feb and early March can easily close the gap. My yard generally doesn't do well after march 10th.

[cbmclean]

5 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

It's a damn sneaky teleconnection. No doubt in my mind the most difficult long lead forecast tele. If it does form this year it will be one of the first times in recent history where it was picked up on 3+ weeks in advance.

The AO is currently negative and will likely stay that way. It's a good start but the AO alone can't offset a destructive neg pna. Thankfully the pna likes to cycle over 2 week periods more often than not and not monthly or longer. 

We have a couple possible events over the next week. I'm expecting the future to look a lot less dire by the time we get to next weekend. Hoping to somehow pull off 4.6" of snow to hit 20" by early Feb. I know your yard is lagging but late Feb and early March can easily close the gap. My yard generally doesn't do well after march 10th.

I am just hoping that after taking most of the decade off, the -NAO comes back to being a regular part of our weather soon.  As you mentioned before, it is streaky.

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

It's a damn sneaky teleconnection. No doubt in my mind the most difficult long lead forecast tele. If it does form this year it will be one of the first times in recent history where it was picked up on 3+ weeks in advance.

The AO is currently negative and will likely stay that way. It's a good start but the AO alone can't offset a destructive neg pna. Thankfully the pna likes to cycle over 2 week periods more often than not and not monthly or longer. 

We have a couple possible events over the next week. I'm expecting the future to look a lot less dire by the time we get to next weekend. Hoping to somehow pull off 4.6" of snow to hit 20" by early Feb. I know your yard is lagging but late Feb and early March can easily close the gap. My yard generally doesn't do well after march 10th.

March can be a great equalizer. March is probably the month with the greatest disparity between our two snowfall averages. A lot of ~6” DC area March snowfalls were 15”+ storms up here.  And a lot of sloppy insignificant DC ones were 6”+ up here. But while I don’t mind March saves like some on here that seem to be unrealistically picky about when and how it snows, that doesn’t mean I want to live dangerously like that every year. 

[CAPE]

I have real doubts that the EPS advertised LR look will have any staying power, if it in fact happens at all. The analysis I was able to do on the 0z run suggest quite a bit of spread among the members beyond day 12, while D9-12 there is pretty good agreement for a mild period. Next few runs will be interesting. We probably wont get a perfect EPAC though- the ridge should return out west, but probably with the axis a tad too far west. I am usually very cautious in buying modeled -NAO, but there has been some persistence in the guidance.  CFS has been bullish on big NA blocking for many runs, and the GFS/GEFS has also consistently advertised stout west-based blocking, although recent runs are not as impressive. The really smart folks also seem to be remaining confident about the prospects, so that should also count for something. I guess I'm cautiously optimistic on the NAO.