December 2019 Med/Long Range Disco

[WEATHER53]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Did you bother to read the study before deciding it’s trash?  

I do not feel adrift and desperately need the 15 different models and indexes to tell me what the weather will be 

[Ralph Wiggum]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

I’m not concerned but will point out the smoothed our blah look on the ensembles day 10-15 is not because they mostly think that will be the pattern. It’s becagas they have no clue with huge divergence and a mean that combines a lot of variance (some good looks and some bad) into an ambiguous mean.  In short that look is not likely and it’s going to end up adjusting one way or the other and depending on which camp is correct we could end up with a pretty good pattern or a real crap one. 

Biggest takeaway....the god awful seasonal/weeklies pattern continues to get delayed and is always 10+ days out....for now.

[Maestrobjwa]

I almost hesitate to ask this because I know somebody is gonna mock/troll, but just a legit question (trying to learn)

Let's just say, hypothetically...that climate change were to result in the MJO staying in the bad phases longer from now on...Would there be anything we could look to to counteract that? Or would we just have to hope to try and score during whatever brief times it goes through the good phases? (wouldn't want that option...lol average snowfall would certainly fall in the future) Or is it more complicated than that? (Can other things influence the MJO?)

[psuhoffman]

16 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Biggest takeaway....the god awful seasonal/weeklies pattern continues to get delayed and is always 10+ days out....for now.

The look of the seasonals is pretty much gone. Even on the weeklies it’s mostly ambiguous with some mediocre looking weeks and acrually a period right after Xmas that looks pretty good imo. 

[Ralph Wiggum]

5 hours ago, frd said:

The much anticipated warm December is coming. Simply can not fight the deep tropics. 

The same concerns last year regarding the MJO that lasted in the warm phases for weeks on end may repeat again this December.

The latest AO forecast do not look as good today, the NAO going up.  Source regions are warming. The camp that predicted an overall warm December is a step closer to possibly being correct. Early December this year similar to last year, and then we warm.  Whether it lasts two weeks or longer is still hard to pin down. 

The consistency of the last few years of the pronounced warm up post 12/20 is an increasing risk again this December. 

There is a repeating pattern of late.... warm Octobers , cold Novembers, Decembers turning  warmer after the first week.    There could be a delay this December with the cold winning out until the 10th, but still looking like we warm once past the 10th.  

I will  also mention new research reinforces that the idea in which the MJO is spending more time in the warmer phases while racing  through the cold phases. This is pronounced in the time period from 2010 forward.

 

  

What is even more telling is the sudden silence from HM on Twitter. Speaks volumes.

[WxUSAF]

1 minute ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

What is even more telling is the sudden silence from HM on Twitter. Speaks volumes.

Does it? He never posts a lot, it is thanksgiving weekend and he just posted 3 hours ago about East Asian mountain torque. 

 

I know last nights eps looked pretty rough after D10. 12z Eps looks nice at D10, so I’m guessing it probably looks promising for at least D11-12, but haven’t seen any of D10-15 to be sure.

[Ralph Wiggum]

1 minute ago, WxUSAF said:

Does it? He never posts a lot, it is thanksgiving weekend and he just posted 3 hours ago about East Asian mountain torque. 

 

I know last nights eps looked pretty rough after D10. 12z Eps looks nice at D10, so I’m guessing it probably looks promising for at least D11-12, but haven’t seen any of D10-15 to be sure.

Tbh I haven't looked past day 10 on the ens except for the strat stuff which I rend to glance at. That SPV gets squeezed and almost splits Day 10+ with lots of warning over Siberia. Take what you want from that I guess. Could look worse.

[WxUSAF]

2 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

MJO forecasts are never great. There’s a bias to kill waves off into the COD when in reality most propagate through. What’s happening now though is the +IOD has generated a strong standing wave in the West Indian Ocean (phase 8-1) that’s confusing the MJO forecasts. Combine that with the cooler than normal waters near the maritime continent means that the early MJO wave death predictions actually aren’t crazy. 

Makes sense whoever you are 

 

[Prestige Worldwide]

 

[WxUSAF]

That’s a REALLY nice look on the Eps long range. Probably best I’ve seen in the last 5-7 days.

 

Seems what the models are most unsure about is where that NPAC trough sets up. Aleutian low or GOA. Difference between them produces a nice +PNA or a Pac puke flood. I imagine a lot of that is due to them having trouble with the tropical forcing, but understanding that is beyond my pay grade.

[showmethesnow]

58 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Does it? He never posts a lot, it is thanksgiving weekend and he just posted 3 hours ago about East Asian mountain torque. 

 

I know last nights eps looked pretty rough after D10. 12z Eps looks nice at D10, so I’m guessing it probably looks promising for at least D11-12, but haven’t seen any of D10-15 to be sure.

Besides the WAR looks fine to me without any major red flags.

eta: guess I should have kept scrolling.

[Ralph Wiggum]

9 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Besides the WAR looks fine to me without any major red flags.

eta: guess I should have kept scrolling.

WAR is no surprise in this new post-2010 type climo. Whether it feeds the NAO ridging as it had been doing much of the fall or decides to play bully and remain stationary or worse feed the SE Ridge is the 100k$ question on the Atl side going forward.

[Bob Chill]

51 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

That’s a REALLY nice look on the Eps long range. Probably best I’ve seen in the last 5-7 days.

 

Seems what the models are most unsure about is where that NPAC trough sets up. Aleutian low or GOA. Difference between them produces a nice +PNA or a Pac puke flood. I imagine a lot of that is due to them having trouble with the tropical forcing, but understanding that is beyond my pay grade.

Yea, recurring theme with ens showing the pna going up and it's logical. Prob fight through some crap first but I'm expecting a +pna period of a week+ sometime in Dec. Happens often after a storm cycle in the west. Rockies/Sierra etc look to get a steady stream of good storms. When that cuts off we'll likely see a big ridge out there as everything rolls forward. 

I'm patient and have no problem waiting until mid Dec or beyond before we get some legit chances. No real troubling signs anywhere. Heck, ens show a closed epo ridge in 10-15 days. We know exactly what a +pna/-epo/+nao can do because we've had a lot of that last 4 years. It's not perfect and good events don't come easy but keep that pattern going for a week or 2 and odds favor some sort of event. 

[winterymix]

2 hours ago, Maestrobjwa said:

I almost hesitate to ask this because I know somebody is gonna mock/troll, but just a legit question (trying to learn)

Let's just say, hypothetically...that climate change were to result in the MJO staying in the bad phases longer from now on...Would there be anything we could look to to counteract that? Or would we just have to hope to try and score during whatever brief times it goes through the good phases? (wouldn't want that option...lol average snowfall would certainly fall in the future) Or is it more complicated than that? (Can other things influence the MJO?)

My approach is that we must trust the science.   

[TSG]

3 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

Makes sense whoever you are 

 

someone gave him a public shaming

[JakkelWx]

3 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

Makes sense whoever you are 

 

What kind of person would copy your exact same words verbatim and post them on someone's twitter account? That's downright plagiarism right there. Glad he was called out in the tweet below (he also admitted to it)

 

[Ralph Wiggum]

3 minutes ago, JakkelWx said:

What kind of person would copy your exact same words verbatim and post them on someone's twitter account? That's downright plagiarism right there. Glad he was called out in the tweet below (he also admitted to it)

 

Apparently all the weirdos come out of the woodwork as winter draws nearer. 

[cbmclean]

3 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

Makes sense whoever you are 

 

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Consider yourself flattered. 

[JakkelWx]

Just now, cbmclean said:

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Consider yourself flattered. 

By the looks of it that copycat could be lurking on the forum right at this second.. keep an eye out. 

 

Edit: A quick little search and a user "WeathermanB" pops up. Apparently a banned poster from March of last year. It appears that poster still hasn't learned any lessons.

[Maestrobjwa]

2 hours ago, winterymix said:

My approach is that we must trust the science.   

Forgive me, but...Come again? Lol I'm a bit confused by your answer...(Not sure what that has to do with my question about the MJO)

[raindancewx]

If you use absolute value to score past 100 years for how they match to the observed highs from July-Nov in Albuquerque, you get this as your expected blend for December, ranked by how good the match is:

1960
1943
2011
1982
2018
1953
1983
1997
1948
1959

Believe it or not, that blend actually has the core of cold in November by the Mississippi river, like this November. 1943, the second strongest objective match in 100 years, is actually the coldest December in the last 100 years for a lot of the Southwest. None of those Decembers are warm in the Southwest, but most are very cold (1943, 1953, 1960, 1982, 1997, 2011). 

If soil moisture means anything, the record moisture in November in Arizona and New Mexico should prevent significant heating for a while. (This map doesn't even include today - I'm running over 4x average precip in Nov now, literally 1.99" v. an average of 0.46"). Big wildcard is if the SOI really does go positive in December like the CFS has been showing for a week. The dry central/eastern US did warm up a lot in the last week.

[NorthArlington101]

Still a ways to go... 00z NAM flashed this look at us:

 

 

Gets some snow into much of the sub forum. Worth watching, especially the NE Maryland folks (who I think have already been watching)

 

[psuhoffman]

54 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Forgive me, but...Come again? Lol I'm a bit confused by your answer...(Not sure what that has to do with my question about the MJO)

The MJO hanging out in warm phases isn’t good. But there are a lot of factors that drive our snow chances and some of them run in cycles. It does seem like we fight a hostile base state more lately BUT we also tend to score more frequently when the pattern is good. I wouldn’t sweat any one factors short term tendency all too much. We have been doing alright anyways. 

Just for some perspective.  Snowfall at BWI by decade.  Avg and # of above normal years. 

1970s 17.8”/3 above  

1980s 18.5”/4 above

1990s  17.7”/2 above 

2000s  18”/2 above

2010s  24”/4 above 

so the last decade was the best in Baltimore for snowfall since the 1960s.  Obviously it’s not hurting us that much.  

If anything the extremely anomalous 3 year run from 2013-16 raised expectations such that the last few winters seem worse than they are.  While not great they were a pretty typical 3 year stretch.  Nothing too awful by historical standards.  Truth is we had the best snowfall decade in a long time yet some people act like we’ve been getting screwed.  

Does the mjo matter, yes.  Will it hurt some if we spend more time in phases 3-6, yes.  But we’ve been ok and other factors have a say too.  It’s also too small a time scale to make long term conclusions imo.  

 

[osfan24]

12K NAM looked close to something interesting for the forum. 3K not so much.

[Cobalt]

3 hours ago, JakkelWx said:

By the looks of it that copycat could be lurking on the forum right at this second.. keep an eye out. 

 

Edit: A quick little search and a user "WeathermanB" pops up. Apparently a banned poster from March of last year. It appears that poster still hasn't learned any lessons.

Yeah, I remember him going completely out of line and saying something that wouldn't fly anywhere. Makes sense that he got banned. 

[psuhoffman]

24 minutes ago, Cobalt said:

Yeah, I remember him going completely out of line and saying something that wouldn't fly anywhere. Makes sense that he got banned. 

Is he the kid from Delaware?  

[Cobalt]

8 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Is he the kid from Delaware?  

Yup

[WEATHER53]

Kinda spooky in a way isn’t it?

[JakkelWx]

1 minute ago, WEATHER53 said:

Kinda spooky in a way isn’t it?

What's even spookier is the NAO looks to be at least moderately positive after basically tomorrow although we have a +PNA building on the ensembles as well.

[Maestrobjwa]

4 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Just for some perspective.  Snowfall at BWI by decade.  Avg and # of above normal years. 

1970s 17.8”/3 above  

1980s 18.5”/4 above

1990s  17.7”/2 above 

2000s  18”/2 above

2010s  24”/4 above 

so the last decade was the best in Baltimore for snowfall since the 1960s.  Obviously it’s not hurting us that much.  

If anything the extremely anomalous 3 year run from 2013-16 raised expectations such that the last few winters seem worse than they are.  While not great they were a pretty typical 3 year stretch.  Nothing too awful by historical standards.  Truth is we had the best snowfall decade in a long time yet some people act like we’ve been getting screwed.  

Indeed...And 3 of the 4 above average years came in a row! (something else that kinda rare--hasn't happened since, well, the legendary snow 60s, lol) For this region, it's been a pretty good decade overall (better than the previous two!). But I'm sure it's recency bias that may make it feel like we've been screwed--but, as you said, we've actually done pretty good! I guess my question about the MJO was rooted in an, er...slightly illogical concern about possible climate change making some anti-snow factor in the atmosphere become more of the norm. Thankfully we don't see that so far (uh, right? Lol)