The Mystical Month of February--Long Range Discussion

[frd]

4 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Ok seriously someone explain to me why if we have...

-NAO, 50/50, -epo, -soi, mjo phase 8/1

we can’t get the trough out of the west day 10-15?  What is pumping that eastern ridge?

What am I missing here?

Seems we are looking at the best potential of this crappy winter coming up from mid month to early March and then things change.  Going to bring over  an interesting update. 

Seems this winter things are just having a hard time lining up. CAPE mentioned this earlier,  about the location and orientaton of some key features for us here on the East Coast.  

 I also recalled something the other day about a weak Nino and a early season SSWE versus later in the season and  how those winters were duds. 

Also Isotherm's intial posts about the progression of the QBO and its phase.  It appears as webbweather noted this back in late November that the phase of the QBO was one in which these early season SSWE occur. But, overall I think this winter did not have an ideal QBO for us.  ( in terms of direction and + or - )  

[frd]

4 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Holy ridge bridge with a 50/50 day 10 EPS 

Seems the overall BEST potentail rides the period Feb 20th to March 6th .  Little if any faith beyond early March. At that point I am thinking about Spring things,  unless we get a repeat of last year, However, scanning things , it seems that outcome is remote. Unless we get the MOTHER of all Greenland blocks.   ( wonder the  association last year with that block and the role of the QBO)  That Greenland block last March was a thing of beauty building on the heels of Feb warmth.    

[Wonderdog]

55 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

Under 10 days and PD weekend.  It’s a lock

If the HP gets situated more north of us than currently shown next weekend, and with a LP actually being south of us, moving up the coast ( imagine that) a lot of us will be very happy. 

[aldie 22]

We don't even know how the storm next week ends up lol

[CAPE]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Most of the times that look rolls into a good pattern. 

Maybe it ultimately will. There have been recent runs that depicted the EPO ridge in a more easterly position, with the mean trough not as dug in out west. Overall though there seems to be some stability to the advertised long wave pattern, despite improvement with the MJO and SOI. Blame it on the Nino flop I guess. 

[frd]

This morning's GEFS looks better for us near Greenland. .   

Speaking of the GEFS :

 

 

 

 

 

[frd]

Well  just when I was starting to get excited for concensus for a deep dive in the AO.  It really it not worth the time any longer to track these setbacks and miscues. Seems the model backed off .

 

Was general concensus for a - 2 SD yesterday for the AO or more, but today I see a spray of solutions . Not really as impressive and some stay positive. 

 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Maybe it ultimately will. There have been recent runs that depicted the EPO ridge in a more easterly position, with the mean trough not as dug in out west. Overall though there seems to be some stability to the advertised long wave pattern, despite improvement with the MJO and SOI. Blame it on the Nino flop I guess. 

The most likely way that evolves is actually as we lose the (useless) west based epo ridge that trough in the west splits and a piece retrogrades unti an eastern pac trough and the eastern piece cuts under into the east and some pna ridge can pop in between.  As we head towards March with shorter wavelength that epo near AK becomes less and less helpful and getting rid of it might ultimately help. 

[psuhoffman]

@C.A.P.E. most of our big second half of season snows featured a trough near AK and off the west coast. If you have blocking to clog up the flow and prevent the pac jet from blasting acrosss with shorter wavelengths late that works.  Of course if you don’t have any blocking that same look in the pac is a disaster. 

[psuhoffman]

@C.A.P.E.@frd

basically there are two ways to edit this rut were in into a good pattern.

1.  Shift the epo east (a lot) or severely displace a tpv to our north to suppress the ridge in the east. Unlikely. 

2.  Get the NAO blocking to finally go nuts and force the pac energy to cut under. In that scenario we might be better off losing the west based epo altogether so it stops dumping troughs into the Rockies, which is what guidance suggests in the long range. 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, frd said:

This morning's GEFS looks better for us near Greenland. .   

Speaking of the GEFS :

 

 

 

 

 

It’s jumpy but guidance overall has been correcting towards expected outcomes given the mjo/soi in the long range. 

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, frd said:

Seems we are looking at the best potential of this crappy winter coming up from mid month to early March and then things change.  Going to bring over  an interesting update. 

Seems this winter things are just having a hard time lining up. CAPE mentioned this earlier,  about the location and orientaton of some key features for us here on the East Coast.  

 I also recalled something the other day about a weak Nino and a early season SSWE versus later in the season and  how those winters were duds. 

Also Isotherm's intial posts about the progression of the QBO and its phase.  It appears as webbweather noted this back in late November that the phase of the QBO was one in which these early season SSWE occur. But, overall I think this winter did not have an ideal QBO for us.  ( in terms of direction and + or - )  

After my morning scan of all the guidance... the MJO/SOI is still on target.  No sign of degradation in those signals.  SOI tanking begins in 2-3 days and really becomes extreme by day 5/6.  The next MJO wave looks to be initiating now and begins to gain amplitude into 7/8 in the next few days and all guidance reaches high amplitude in either 8 or 1 in the long range, which would fit the seasonal trend of high amplitude slow progressing MJO waves.  I loved the 6z GEFS and the EPS was darn near perfect...just needed that SE ridge slightly more suppressed and it would be ideal, and it is trending that way imo.  My one and only concern is that the favorable period might be muted somewhat by "other" influences.  I do not think the SE ridge is solely a product of the Pac and so the PAC forcing can try to overcome it but there is a chance we waste a bit on the front side of a 2-3 week favorable window "getting" that ridge beaten down.  As far as March... I think if this pattern progression is real this time, and I think it is, we would have a favorable pattern into at least the first week of March.  I would bet the second as well...with a breakdown probably happening sometime between March 10-20th.  But that is about when we run out of climo road anyways so who cares.  How often do we get a longer pattern than 3 weeks to lock in anyways... even if our best winters USUALLY the best patterns come in 15-20 day chunks and then a relax or reload period.  We don't have time for that so this next pattern progression is it.  

2 hours ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Maybe it ultimately will. There have been recent runs that depicted the EPO ridge in a more easterly position, with the mean trough not as dug in out west. Overall though there seems to be some stability to the advertised long wave pattern, despite improvement with the MJO and SOI. Blame it on the Nino flop I guess. 

I totally agree the nino has not been the pattern influence we hoped or needed.  But I think some are also overdoing this "collapse" as well.  It's there, at least from an SST perspective.  It was never supposed to be a strong nino.  It was always weak to low end moderate at the high end potential.  The ONI got to .9 which was in line with all the analogs I identified pre season.  (slightly higher then some, slightly lower then others...but my top analogs were all in the range of .7 to 1.1 ONI)  The failure of the nino to couple with the atmosphere to create the needed pattern influences might be due to other factors.  But I think it's important to note the SST because "IF" we get a -soi period with an mjo phase more typical of a nino we could see the more classic nino pattern emerge for a time here late.  

BTW...I know you know this stuff but so others can follow...

Look at the seasonal SST for the last 90 days

certainly looks like the modoki nino analogs I looked at pre season.

Current SST

After a brief period where it became basin wide it has retreated into a more classical modoki look, as is typical of a modoki, they initiate in the central Pac and propagate east and then retreat west late in the season.  Obviously it pulses week to week but overall the SST wasn't off, the atmosphere was, and that is important IF we get the typical mjo/soi response the last 30 days of the winter season for what our expectations should be. 

But look at some of the analogs that were being thrown around pre-season.  Keep in mind these scales are not the same.  The yellow starts at anyting above 0C anomaly on these and the charts above start at +.5C so if you normalize for that difference the similarities in the enso SST are pretty close with these most recent 3 top analogs.  

2003

2005

2015

The best match from purely the ENSO SST is probably 2005 followed by 2015 and 2003 but none are crazy wrong.  Even 2005, which most remember as the worst of the lot, once the nino coupled we had a run with 3 SECS level events and several other minor events mixed in from Late January into Early March.  The pattern was slightly less ideal then some of the other years but I also still think 2005 could have ended better with some luck... a slightly further south transfer with the January storm and its a MECS instead of SECS.  Slightly more amplification with either of the 2 late season perfect track storms and one could have been a MECS instead of a SECS.  Get just one of those three 4-8" storms to be a 10-12" type storm and suddenly that was a good year instead of mediocre.  But I digress 

So I think from an SST POV things did happen as expected, it just didn't have the impact we expected.  That happens sometimes, we really want a moderate...weak nino's can be very good...but they can also have the issues we are seeing this year with a failure to couple.   I guess I didn't give that enough weight going in, at first I was kind of hesitant about that, but once I started to see all the long range guidance go right to the good weak nino analog look I figured it wouldn't be a problem.  In reality the guidance was simply weighting the enso SST too much and missing the MJO.  If the nino was stronger it would be able to influence the pattern through the noise of the other influences like the QBO SSWE and MJO.  But it obviously wasn't strong enough to do that, and there were other more dominant destructive pattern forces at work this year, like the MJO.  

All that is a long winded way of saying, the enso is where it was supposed to be, and so if we get those other forces that have been destructive to become favorable...the "nino" could kick in or enhance those other factors once they become positive instead of negative.  We will see.  

 

[psuhoffman]

One last thing... I also agree with Bob that the PDO region ended up being more of a problem than anticipated.  

[frd]

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

All that is a long winded way of saying, the enso is where it was supposed to be, and so if we get those other forces that have been destructive to become favorable...the "nino" could kick in or enhance those other factors once they become positive instead of negative.  We will see.  

@psuhoffman

Good post psu. I agree. 

I had seen mentioned elsewhere too,  that the structure of the Nino was improving recently. Granted there is a lag but anything better is good , right.  

Your post brought something up very interesting regarding ocean and atmospheric  coupling, or the lack there of.

I recall back in late December bluewave made a post, and in it he mentioned that the December that passed was the first one ever possibly where the SOI was at such a positive reading. (hmm, warning signs )  

Now mind you,  this was before the real impact from the SSWE.    So the role of that on the SOI is not there.

Why was the SOI for Dec so high, versus what you expect in a El Nino ?

Thinking maybe part of the issue with coupling is that if you do not get it in December maybe it is harder to get Jan and Feb??? ( a lack of coupling is a sign of serious issues maybe for later in the Nino season , maybe ?) 

And a step further,  what are the implication of the very, very warm waters East of Aussie ?   But very cool waters West of Aussie?  JB many a times brought up the great look concerning the goodl ooks of the SSTs West of  Aussie and in the East Indian Ocean.  

Did the warmers waters East of Aussie have a role on the unexpected  MJO phases and the hadley cell this year?

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

[frd]

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

One last thing... I also agree with Bob that the PDO region ended up being more of a problem than anticipated.  

Zac is good at the Pac,  I haved found,  so I brought this over   -    you were talking about the  Pac/MJO, etc.  He just did an update below :

Posted 4 hours ago

1. From about now until the 16/17 Feb, we should see a +EAMT produced pattern. The jet starts extended according to the graphic I posted earlier on the 12th. We are currently in a -EAMT, so the extension impacts start within days of the start of the +EAMT period. The PNA impacts should start to be felt from the 18th or so, and continue for a 10 day period. This should push the Aleutian ridge more into the -EPO domain, more so than the NWP forecast IMO.

2. EPS shows a big fat low developing around the 16th, descending over the Mongolian ranges and into the Himalayas, fully disturbing the +EAMT by the 18th. This will weaken the push of the ridge into the -EPO domain, but I still think it should be further West than it is in this chart. The messy low situation on the West Coast is probably going to be maintained, so we need that low off Labrador to move further southwest in longer term runs. That would further allow the gradient curated -NAO (via the MSLP level Low over Siberia). This is indicating that the processes that curate the cold stable Siberian High are starting to break down or otherwise known as the beginning of the end for winter. However I do believe there is still plenty of room for more ridging in Siberia, it is just winter is starting to lose it's feet. Don't dismiss winter for North America yet though, as the breakdown of this winter stability can curate some unstable patterns that generate big winter storms.

3. Overall I think the Western US will do well over the next 10 days, but so will the Eastern US will still see the conveyor belt of storms behind it, on the 12th, 16th and 20th pretty roughly. The last week of February is the "peak" of this particular period, but I see no reason to discount potential for winter storms in the first two weeks of March. But after then, I think we are pretty much out (no random 12" early April storms, as one would expect). The next three weeks from now are what we are looking for. I think it is a pretty good indicator to see plenty of options, into the reality that tropical forcing in particular is driving a lot of this pattern. The extratropics will cooperate until the end of the month, and we could see a -AO/-NAO develop by then, but it really is on the back of the MJO and the WWB, that @Isotherm was talking about for quite a while, and @Webberweather mentioned in the Tele Thread, was getting very strong in the West-Central Pacific in the 150E-180 region, on the back of a ER wave, with the MJO and general Niño like state interact with it in the background. 

 

 

 

FT is currently increasing, which is an indicating of poleward propagation of +FT anomalies, but I wouldn't be surprised with a bit more of a jump, although I would prefer the WWB a bit further to the West for maximum +FT effect. These are improving signals, but it isn't like there isn't already an abundance of westerly momentum in the atmosphere anyway.

 

I'll leave all to ponder, on that note.

 

- Zac  

 

[psuhoffman]

9 minutes ago, frd said:

@psuhoffman

Good post psu. I agree. 

I had seen mentioned elsewhere too,  that the structure of the Nino was improving recently. Granted there is a lag but anything better is good , right.  

Your post brought something up very interesting regarding ocean and atmospheric  coupling, or the lack there of.

I recall back in late December bluewave made a post, and in it he mentioned that the December that passed was the first one ever possibly where the SOI was at such a positive reading. (hmm, warning signs )  

Now mind you,  this was before the real impact from the SSWE.    So the role of that on the SOI is not there.

Why was the SOI for Dec so high, versus what you expect in a El Nino ?

Thinking maybe part of the issue with coupling is that if you do not get it in December maybe it is harder to get Jan and Feb??? ( a lack of coupling is a sign of serious issues maybe for later in the Nino season , maybe ?) 

And a step further,  what are the implication of the very, very warm waters East of Aussie ?   But very cool waters West of Aussie?  JB many a times brought up the great look concerning the goodl ooks of the SSTs West of  Aussie and in the East Indian Ocean.  

Did the warmers waters East of Aussie have a role on the unexpected  MJO phases and the hadley cell this year?

 

The MJO and the SOI are linked.  So there is causality that the MJO going so strongly into phases 4-6 prevented the SOI from dropping which prevented a typical nino atmospheric pattern.  But I am not sure what the cause of the hyper destructive MJO wave was.  JB seems to think the warm pool you mention had a role in that.  I don't know.   Something obviously favored forcing around the Maritime Continent this year and that is NOT typical of a nino and ran interference all winter up until now.  Maybe we will find a cause, or maybe its just weather being weather. 

 

[Interstate]

The 6z and 12z are pretty similar at 138 on the H5 map...  lol

 

 

 

That was a joke

[Wonderdog]

19 minutes ago, Interstate said:

The 6z and 12z are pretty similar at 138 on the H5 map...  lol

 

 

 

That was a joke

Looks like an early spring. 

[Bob Chill]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

One last thing... I also agree with Bob that the PDO region ended up being more of a problem than anticipated.  

I learned that from Matt many years ago. He's said many times we will struggle with storm track and ptype more often than not in any PDO phase except +. We can go down the rabbit hole of what drives what and such but at the end of the day, when a large area of AN SSTAs exist off the coast of Japan it's not a good sign here. 

Going off memory but I'm pretty much 100% sure that any nino of any strength that produced well here had a +PDO on the DJF means. I never liked seeing the state of the PDO in Nov and Dec but every damn long ranger went snowy in the east so I mostly discounted it. Never again man. Never again. 

[midatlanticweather]

What a crazy repetitive fail on the GFS.. wow! Ground will remain wet not white with that! 

 

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, midatlanticweather said:

What a crazy repetitive fail on the GFS.. wow! Ground will remain wet not white with that! 

 

Don't worry the euro will...oh wait it said the exact same thing last night!

I think we need to wait for the response to the coming SOI/MJO phase changes to get some more stable permanent blocking and thus shift the trough axis and press the boundary south.  That is why I have never really become excited about next week.  I still have hope I am wrong.  Not throwing in the towel on anything yet... Maybe this whole "guidance isnt seeing the CAD" thing is right.  But I have seen this pattern over and over and over again look good at range and shift NW when it gets into game time.  In most of the -EPO-PNA gradient patterns that worked either the EPO was centered much further east in western Canada, OR there was a displaced TPV to our north suppressing the boundary south.  We have neither of those and this falls into the category of "usually teases and then fails us".  I have no idea why the guidance likes to press the cold boundary too much in the long ranges in this type of pattern...but they do, and they do it again and again and again.  I am not sticking my head in that door to have it slammed in my face again!

[Maestrobjwa]

20 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

That storm is a cutter on ALL other guidance right now so did we really have any actual expectations pinned on that?  The GFS just had one run with a hiccup like that one Euro run a couple days ago.  I guess the fact they both had the same hiccup means that idea of the h5 cutting under is there as a possible solutions if the 50/50 goes ape but the fact it's only shown up on those 2 op runs out of the last dozen or so across all guidance, with almost no ensemble support...means its an extremely low probability with a cutter by far the most likely solution.  

Dang....so we gotta throw that out too? And now we're down to the last two weeks of February? Well that sucks...hope we have something to track by this time next week. Starting to get depressing...

[psuhoffman]

Daily SOI already down to -10 today...the drop should continue and become extreme after day 3.  

[HighStakes]

Just now, Maestrobjwa said:

Dang....so now we're down to the last two weeks of February? Well that sucks...hope we have something to track by this time next week. Starting to get depressing...

We were always down to the last 2 weeks of February. Anything next week is a bonus or because of a faster reaction to the soi crashing or mjo speeding up into phase 8.

[psuhoffman]

1 minute ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Dang....so now we're down to the last two weeks of February? Well that sucks...hope we have something to track by this time next week. Starting to get depressing...

About a week ago I said Feb 20 on based on the timing of the progression in the Pacific.  I tried NOT to crap on the period before that as the guidance looked "hopeful" and some were excited but I never jumped in because frankly I have seen this same pattern fail so many freaking times before I just can't bring myself to try to kick that same football again.  Sometimes they do work, it's not the worst shutout pattern there is, flukes can happen...but I was never that excited UNTIL... we get some stable blocking and the boundary shifts south more.  The trough axis is just way too far west right now without blocking to have a good chance.  I really really really hope I am wrong and next week trends into a snowy winter wonderland.  I am still optimistic after.  I have seen nothing on the pattern drivers this time to indicate the train is coming off the rails like I did back in Mid January yet.  I am not going to get too caught up in run to run variance in the long range guidance, until I see a sign the MJO/SOI is going to fail I am leaning on that and sticking too it.  

[midatlanticweather]

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

About a week ago I said Feb 20 on based on the timing of the progression in the Pacific.  I tried NOT to crap on the period before that as the guidance looked "hopeful" and some were excited but I never jumped in because frankly I have seen this same pattern fail so many freaking times before I just can't bring myself to try to kick that same football again.  Sometimes they do work, it's not the worst shutout pattern there is, flukes can happen...but I was never that excited UNTIL... we get some stable blocking and the boundary shifts south more.  The trough axis is just way too far west right now without blocking to have a good chance.  I really really really hope I am wrong and next week trends into a snowy winter wonderland.  I am still optimistic after.  I have seen nothing on the pattern drivers this time to indicate the train is coming off the rails like I did back in Mid January yet.  I am not going to get too caught up in run to run variance in the long range guidance, until I see a sign the MJO/SOI is going to fail I am leaning on that and sticking too it.  

Will be in the UK when things start looking good... at least that is what I think now.

 

[psuhoffman]

53 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I learned that from Matt many years ago. He's said many times we will struggle with storm track and ptype more often than not in any PDO phase except +. We can go down the rabbit hole of what drives what and such but at the end of the day, when a large area of AN SSTAs exist off the coast of Japan it's not a good sign here. 

Going off memory but I'm pretty much 100% sure that any nino of any strength that produced well here had a +PDO on the DJF means. I never liked seeing the state of the PDO in Nov and Dec but every damn long ranger went snowy in the east so I mostly discounted it. Never again man. Never again. 

I considered the less then ideal PDO in the fall as well...but 2 things threw me for a loop.  There is a bit of a conflicting signal there, with the warm pool near the PAC NW coast and some "cooler" waters to the west...but yea that warm pool east of Japan was no good.  But I wasn't sure how hostile it would be.  A lot of predictions thought the PDO might end up weakly positive.  The other was the fact there were 2 -PDO winters in the analogs and they were near the top, and both were epic.  1964 and 1966.  In hindsight the -NAO of that decade probably makes using those years as analogs a mistake.  You are right that if we throw out the 1950s and 1960's that since 1970 EVERY nino that was good had a positive PDO.  OOPS...live and learn.  

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, midatlanticweather said:

Will be in the UK when things start looking good... at least that is what I think now.

 

Can you get them to turn all their fans to face the NW and blow that ridge up into the NAO space for us?

[Ji]

Can you get them to turn all their fans to face the NW and blow that ridge up into the NAO space for us?

All i see is cutters thru 384

[Maestrobjwa]

22 minutes ago, HighStakes said:

We were always down to the last 2 weeks of February. Anything next week is a bonus or because of a faster reaction to the soi crashing or mjo speeding up into phase 8.

 

20 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

About a week ago I said Feb 20 on based on the timing of the progression in the Pacific.  I tried NOT to crap on the period before that as the guidance looked "hopeful" and some were excited but I never jumped in because frankly I have seen this same pattern fail so many freaking times before I just can't bring myself to try to kick that same football again.  Sometimes they do work, it's not the worst shutout pattern there is, flukes can happen...but I was never that excited UNTIL... we get some stable blocking and the boundary shifts south more

But looking at our history...Just how many solid (that is, 6" or more) events come after President's Day week? Not many from my recollection...(and early March isn't reliable--not out of the question, but not reliable) not for the corridor, anyway. Most of the hits came between mid-January and...February 20th (and not many after that). So unless we get a parade of storms the week after next...having to wait that long might not be good down here.

Edit: Okay, let's say 5" or more