Is next winter looking like a disaster?

[CAPE]

1 hour ago, showmethesnow said:

Great December look but I would be curious what the rest of the months show (Nov-March). Not sure the CANSIPS has been updated on Tropical Tidbits though the above matches what CANSIPS is now showing.

 

It appears the initialization issue has not changed the overall 500 mb idea. Its August. Its freaking hot. This is feel good stuff until we get to mid October when we might start to get some actual legit clues about how early winter will behave.

The 2 indices to monitor over the next couple months are ENSO and PDO.

eta- and SAI of course. 

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, Rhino16 said:

TT appears to be updated, the messed up one would be obvious.

No x 2.

[Rhino16]

2 minutes ago, wxdude64 said:

Same here. Getting ready for work calling for 3-5, they (NWS) upped it on forecast to 6-10 as I left the house at 7 am. Got home that night (after an hour + drive that normally is 10 minutes) after 8 pm to 20.5"!

Even with that, the winter still sucked. One snowstorm shouldn’t decide if another one follows right? (That was the only noteworthy snow we had in Central VA)

[Rhino16]

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

No x 2.

No? Okay... Sorry!

[CAPE]

9 minutes ago, Rhino16 said:

No? Okay... Sorry!

No worries. I am the one who first posted about it here when it first came out. Does not appear to have been updated on TT- same initialization time, and the h5 panels for DJF look the same. The updated (fixed) run seems to have the same look overall based on the Ventrice post.

[wxdude64]

22 minutes ago, Rhino16 said:

Even with that, the winter still sucked. One snowstorm shouldn’t decide if another one follows right? (That was the only noteworthy snow we had in Central VA)

Yeah, ya'll got blanked the rest of the winter basically. I had a few more snows and finished right at 35" for the year, about 8 inches above normal.

[Maestrobjwa]

On 8/17/2019 at 9:49 PM, MN Transplant said:

Yeah, the Philly game has more snow, but Vikes-Ravens had the insanity.  Just sad that Baltimore had the ball last.

Nonsense  (says this Ravens fan, lol)

[Rhino16]

19 minutes ago, wxdude64 said:

Yeah, ya'll got blanked the rest of the winter basically. I had a few more snows and finished right at 35" for the year, about 8 inches above normal.

It was torture watching the storms slide north or south of us. Glad someone enjoyed it!

[JakkelWx]

Weenie blocking galore

 

[mattie g]

2 hours ago, Prestige Worldwide said:

Another long range winter model-  conclusion:  too early to tell anything. But here it is

<snip>

That looks *exactly* like the run with the supposed poor initialization, so either it didn't matter at all or Ventrice is mistakenly posting and referring to the initial run.

[CAPE]

None of these LR/Climate tools are very reliable, as we all know from the perpetually epic EPS weeklies runs from last winter. That being said, recent runs of the CFS have advertised some big time HL blocking similar to the CanSIPS, but mostly for the back half of winter. Fun too look at and dream a little as we trudge through the dog days.

[mattie g]

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

None of these LR/Climate tools are very reliable, as we all know from the perpetually epic EPS weeklies runs from last winter. That being said, recent runs of the CFS have advertised some big time HL blocking similar to the CanSIPS, but mostly for the back half of winter. Fun too look at and dream a little as we trudge through the dog days.

Totally agree. It's fun to look at and speculate on, but ultimately they mean very little.

[CAPE]

26 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Totally agree. It's fun to look at and speculate on, but ultimately they mean very little.

Yup. IMO at this stage and into early fall, the primary potential influences on the upcoming winter to keep an eye on are in the Pacific- the PDO and ENSO state.

HL blocking is notoriously difficult to predict at range. I think the NAO has been predominately in the negative phase for 4 straight months. Pretty much neutral now but the guidance is a bit split on where it goes from here. The CFS favors a continuation of a -NAO into Sept. What are the odds that continues into fall and winter? I will leave the AMO/QBO/solar minimum etc. analysis/correlations to others. Without digging into it, statistically, my gut says it isn't very likely.  

[Maestrobjwa]

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

Yup. IMO at this stage and into early fall, the primary potential influences on the upcoming winter to keep an eye on are in the Pacific- the PDO and ENSO state.

HL blocking is notoriously difficult to predict at range. I think the NAO has been predominately in the negative phase for 4 straight months. Pretty much neutral now but the guidance is a bit split on where it goes from here. The CFS favors a continuation of a -NAO into Sept. What are the odds that continues into fall and winter? I will leave the AMO/QBO/solar minimum etc. analysis/correlations to others. Without digging into it, statistically, my gut says it isn't very likely.  

When was the last -NAO winter? 2009-10? Even if it was a couple years later...it's still been a long time. May be better not to even guess at a -NAO being in the equation until it actually happens. Better to see what else we can get to go in our favor! (As far as the ENSO...right now doesn't La Nada seem more likely?)

[Maestrobjwa]

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

None of these LR/Climate tools are very reliable, as we all know from the perpetually epic EPS weeklies runs from last winter. That being said, recent runs of the CFS have advertised some big time HL blocking similar to the CanSIPS, but mostly for the back half of winter. Fun too look at and dream a little as we trudge through the dog days.

Trust nothing beyond 14 days...like, ever, lol For my amateur eyes, all those things like EPS and GEFS lost a lot of credibility...will not be trusting those again until they actually get something right again! Last year had to be an all-time biggest failure for all long (and even some medium) range modeling. Simply awful

[showmethesnow]

3 hours ago, Rhino16 said:

TT appears to be updated, the messed up one would be obvious.

?? Just curious how you think it would be obvious? 

[showmethesnow]

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

No worries. I am the one who first posted about it here when it first came out. Does not appear to have been updated on TT- same initialization time, and the h5 panels for DJF look the same. The updated (fixed) run seems to have the same look overall based on the Ventrice post.

Not sure we can go by initialization times. Initialization is not so much about when the model was run but more so about the time the met obs and other pertinent data were collected. So even if it was rerun I would think they would go with the time of data collection and not the run time.  And if you look at the CANSIP's Dec 500's from the tweet it is showing 8/1/2019. So either he misposted or the updated one will show the same initialization.

[showmethesnow]

31 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Trust nothing beyond 14 days...like, ever, lol For my amateur eyes, all those things like EPS and GEFS lost a lot of credibility...will not be trusting those again until they actually get something right again! Last year had to be an all-time biggest failure for all long (and even some medium) range modeling. Simply awful

You wouldn't have survived tracking pre-2000 when models quite often couldn't be trusted at 3 days let alone 7+. The advancements we have seen since have been extraordinary. 

By the way, I am sure the programmers of these models don't sleep at night knowing you don't trust their product. 

[Maestrobjwa]

25 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

You wouldn't have survived tracking pre-2000 when models quite often couldn't be trusted at 3 days let alone 7+. The advancements we have seen since have been extraordinary. 

By the way, I am sure the programmers of these models don't sleep at night knowing you don't trust their product. 

Lol No, no...They that design those things are experts in their field and I respect that. Biggest thing I learned from the last couple years is just how much guesswork there is...So I guess by pre-2000 standards... perhaps 3 day accuracy back then is equivalent to 7 day accuracy today, and 7 day accuracy is like today's 2 weeks? 

[CAPE]

44 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Not sure we can go by initialization times. Initialization is not so much about when the model was run but more so about the time the met obs and other pertinent data were collected. So even if it was rerun I would think they would go with the time of data collection and not the run time.  And if you look at the CANSIP's Dec 500's from the tweet it is showing 8/1/2019. So either he misposted or the updated one will show the same initialization.

No idea what the "issue" was so hard to speculate. You might be correct about running another simulation with the original data. I would have guessed whatever correction was implemented would be incorporated in the next edition, which is Sept 1 I think.

[showmethesnow]

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

No idea what the "issue" was so hard to speculate. You might be correct about running another simulation with the original data. I would have guessed whatever correction was implemented would be incorporated in the next edition, which is Sept 1 I guess.

Love the look the CANSIPs throws at us Nov-March. We get that and our winter would be rocking open to close. Can't recall ever seeing such a large expansive red ball of higher heights in the upper latitudes not to mention the length that it holds them. Sadly, I am tossing this run though. Saw a very dramatic flip from the previous runs and have to question whether the heat and sea pack melt in the arctic regions may have had some influence/skewed the run. That said, we see something similar come the Sept 1 run...

By the way, you forgot the biggest index of them all. WDI.

[CAPE]

2 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Love the look the CANSIPs throws at us Nov-March. We get that and our winter would be rocking open to close. Can't recall ever seeing such a large expansive red ball of higher heights in the upper latitudes not to mention the length that it holds them. Sadly, I am tossing this run though. Saw a very dramatic flip from the previous runs and have to question whether the heat and sea pack melt in the arctic regions may have had some influence/skewed the run. That said, we see something similar come the Sept 1 run...

By the way, you forgot the biggest index of them all. WDI.

Weenie Drama Index?

[showmethesnow]

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

Weenie Drama Index?

Good one.  Nah, We're due index.

[CAPE]

4 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Good one.  Nah, We're due index.

I guess one argument for what the CanSIPS is advertising is it would be a continuation of the HL blocking pattern that has been established for several months now. Not sure that works statistically, but one would think the WDI would apply to a -NAO for the winter months.

[psuhoffman]

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

None of these LR/Climate tools are very reliable, as we all know from the perpetually epic EPS weeklies runs from last winter. That being said, recent runs of the CFS have advertised some big time HL blocking similar to the CanSIPS, but mostly for the back half of winter. Fun too look at and dream a little as we trudge through the dog days.

Totally agree.  But I do like to analyze why the models fail also to help pick out errors better in the future. Last winter the main issues seemed to be the continued problems with tropical forcing. The guidance continuously overestimated the forcing in favorable regions of the tropical pacific and underestimated the forcing near the maritime continent. Additionally the long range guidance repeatedly underestimated the strength of the pacific jet. Persistence won wrt both factors last winter. If we can identify the underlying factors to both something can be learned. There are theories. The ssta off Australia. The strat warming at both poles.  Persistence itself isn’t helpful since any pattern can flip at any time. But if we could figure out what was causing the persistence we could prevent the same mistake next time. 

[CAPE]

16 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Totally agree.  But I do like to analyze why the models fail also to help pick out errors better in the future. Last winter the main issues seemed to be the continued problems with tropical forcing. The guidance continuously overestimated the forcing in favorable regions of the tropical pacific and underestimated the forcing near the maritime continent. Additionally the long range guidance repeatedly underestimated the strength of the pacific jet. Persistence won wrt both factors last winter. If we can identify the underlying factors to both something can be learned. There are theories. The ssta off Australia. The strat warming at both poles.  Persistence itself isn’t helpful since any pattern can flip at any time. But if we could figure out what was causing the persistence we could prevent the same mistake next time. 

Would be nice to analyze/pinpoint the cause(s) of that. Been pretty persistent. Part of the reason may have to do with a topic most don't want discussed in these threads.

[psuhoffman]

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

Would be nice to analyze/pinpoint the cause(s) of that. Been pretty persistent. Part of the reason may have to do with a topic most don't want discussed in these threads.

I also suspect that could be part of the culprit. From my somewhat limited understanding of thermal dynamics an increased thermal gradient certainly could enhance the jet. Just common sense level reasoning would open the door to that possibility. Our resident arseclown avant- regent hiatus whatever would probably be glad to post 15 pages on it!!!

 

[Maestrobjwa]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

I also suspect that could be part of the culprit. From my somewhat limited understanding of thermal dynamics an increased thermal gradient certainly could enhance the jet. Just common sense level reasoning would open the door to that possibility. Our resident arseclown avant- regent hiatus whatever would probably be glad to post 15 pages on it!!!

 

I hope not...because wouldn't such a strong jet still end up screwing all of us (NE included?) over more often? (would kinda suck if that never-ending "progressive" flow and all that stuff were to become more of a norm). Or...is it more about the placement of said jet? (I could be misunderstanding the correlation though)

[showmethesnow]

Just want to preface this with the fact that this is not a prediction/thoughts whatsoever on the upcoming winter it is more so just for curiosity's sake. Climate models can have their issues and we are talking roughly 4+ months for the winter so it is somewhat at range. Not to mention they did have issues with this run to boot. Now it we continue to see this look in the coming months then I will get excited.

Below we have the 3 month 500 mb anoms for Dec-Feb.  This is a great look IMO. A large concentric ball of red (higher heights) centered on the pole with higher height anomalies centered both over Greenland (blocking) and eastern Russia (cross polar plow). This look would be suggestive of a very weak PV probably getting shoved around a good bit (think -AO). Under riding this we see the lower pressure anomalies straddling the mid latitudes (active weather pattern). Now if you look in the CONUS we have strong ridging driving all the way up into the arctic regions which is the vehicle to drive cold air into the central/eastern US. In response to this ridging we are seeing low pressure anomalies set up in the east (troughing). As I said I like this look a lot. What is even more impressive is the duration. We see the building of the heights begin in Sept and only by May do we see them breaking down. We are talking roughly 9 months. This would imply an early start to winter as well as a late ending with little to no breaks in between.

 

Since I have been tracking (96) I can't ever recall seeing heights over the pole during the winter be at such magnitude, so concentric and centered on the pole and for such a long duration as what the CANSIPS is advertising. So I thought I would look into recent previous winters (back to 1981). Below we have some of the winters that featured stronger high latitude blocking. Notice that though some may share a feature or two of the above none are what I would call exactly a good match.

 

 

That brings us to these two years. Below we have 1985-86. This is a good match. Though not as large in scope nor as concentric it does have good heights centered over the pole. The greater anomalies are also setting up over Greenland and nosing into eastern Russia. West coast ridging, east coast troughing. Also see neg anomalies in western Europe which the above Cansips has as well. The one thing it does show that the CANSIPS does not have are indications that we may have been dealing with WAR (Western Atlantic ridging) at times. But over all this is a pretty good match. And for those who are curious, 15.6 inches were recorded in Baltimore and 15.4 in DC that year. Would have expected better myself but have to question whether episodes of WAR played into those totals.

 

 

And then we have 2009-10. Though it doesn't match up as well with the mid-latitude pressure anomalies like the previous example it does match better in the upper latitudes. I am sure I don't have to list snowfall for this year.  

 

And before someone brings up 1996 here it is. As you can see it is more so the strategic placement of the blocking/higher heights in the upper latitudes more then anything else. Not a good match to

what we see with the CANSIP around the pole.

.

 

 

 

[Rhino16]

6 hours ago, showmethesnow said:

Just want to preface this with the fact that this is not a prediction/thoughts whatsoever on the upcoming winter it is more so just for curiosity's sake. Climate models can have their issues and we are talking roughly 4+ months for the winter so it is somewhat at range. Not to mention they did have issues with this run to boot. Now it we continue to see this look in the coming months then I will get excited.

Below we have the 3 month 500 mb anoms for Dec-Feb.  This is a great look IMO. A large concentric ball of red (higher heights) centered on the pole with higher height anomalies centered both over Greenland (blocking) and eastern Russia (cross polar plow). This look would be suggestive of a very weak PV probably getting shoved around a good bit (think -AO). Under riding this we see the lower pressure anomalies straddling the mid latitudes (active weather pattern). Now if you look in the CONUS we have strong ridging driving all the way up into the arctic regions which is the vehicle to drive cold air into the central/eastern US. In response to this ridging we are seeing low pressure anomalies set up in the east (troughing). As I said I like this look a lot. What is even more impressive is the duration. We see the building of the heights begin in Sept and only by May do we see them breaking down. We are talking roughly 9 months. This would imply an early start to winter as well as a late ending with little to no breaks in between.

 

Since I have been tracking (96) I can't ever recall seeing heights over the pole during the winter be at such magnitude, so concentric and centered on the pole and for such a long duration as what the CANSIPS is advertising. So I thought I would look into recent previous winters (back to 1981). Below we have some of the winters that featured stronger high latitude blocking. Notice that though some may share a feature or two of the above none are what I would call exactly a good match.

 

 

That brings us to these two years. Below we have 1985-86. This is a good match. Though not as large in scope nor as concentric it does have good heights centered over the pole. The greater anomalies are also setting up over Greenland and nosing into eastern Russia. West coast ridging, east coast troughing. Also see neg anomalies in western Europe which the above Cansips has as well. The one thing it does show that the CANSIPS does not have are indications that we may have been dealing with WAR (Western Atlantic ridging) at times. But over all this is a pretty good match. And for those who are curious, 15.6 inches were recorded in Baltimore and 15.4 in DC that year. Would have expected better myself but have to question whether episodes of WAR played into those totals.

 

 

And then we have 2009-10. Though it doesn't match up as well with the mid-latitude pressure anomalies like the previous example it does match better in the upper latitudes. I am sure I don't have to list snowfall for this year.  

 

And before someone brings up 1996 here it is. As you can see it is more so the strategic placement of the blocking/higher heights in the upper latitudes more then anything else. Not a good match to

what we see with the CANSIP around the pole.

.

 

 

 

Does anyone know how well CANSips has done in the past? Not sure if it matters or not. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next run were to not be as impressive.