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December 2019 Med/Long Range Disco


Bob Chill
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1 hour ago, Ji said:

I like how one run of 18z gefs goes bad...when 6z 12z were good and eveyone gives us. Bob was pointing out how great the 12z was like 5 minutes ago emoji849.png

I’m silent because I’m withholding judgment. Since the gefs has an underdispersion issue I tend to take a 24 hour cycle of runs as one entity in my mind. It cuts down on mood swings. So while I admit 18z was alarming I’m not assigning the gefs is caving yet. But I do think it was rushing the progression anyways. 

I am disappointed so far. I thought we would do a little better to this point. We’ve had some workable looks. A couple perfect h5 tracks where low level temps were a tad too warm. A trailing wave that was a string out mess.  A couple scenarios where we needed progressive and it trended amplified. This last one wasn’t an awful look but the lead wave died and despite a good 50/50 the high was pathetic and couldn’t hold long enough to get any front end with the second wave. 

I’m not saying we should have had 10”+ by now or anything but with a little luck we could be sitting on 3-5” region wide if a couple of those went slightly better and the whole mood in here would be different. Now we go into the first dead period having struck out so far. I’ll admit that’s a little depressing. 

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57 minutes ago, Wonderdog said:

Recently it seems that we have really only mid Jan. through Feb as the most likely time that we get snow in the coastal plain, besides these useless mulch covering snowfalls. Although, for years growing up in South Jersey, my recollection is that the last two weeks of December was a transition period and useful snowfall was rare. But that is my questionable memory.

And for our most significant snows...mid Jan-Feb (but not the last week of Feb for whatever reason, lol) and early March has been the general strike zone even in previous decades (but if you include the 1-4" storms, I guess we did use to have a better chance in late Dec/early Jan. But these days we don't get much in that time period...so it's not as disappointing to me when it doesn't happen then. I just look ahead to the prime climo time! :D

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I'm absolutely not pooping on the whole season. I know you already know that. Just don't want my post taken out of context that I think we're seasonally F'd. 

We've had a better Atlantic so far than any year since 2010 so that's a good start. I don't mind the Pac messing things up because it's normal for the pac flow to oscillate between good and bad all year. What the eps and now gefs show is a crappy altantic and pacific simultaneously. Can't work with that as we need one or the other at a minimum. 

I don't like where the tpv is now on the gefs/eps though. If we can't have the atl working for us then we at least need the tpv to play traffic cop in eastern Canada. Gefs was fairly gung ho on that until the 18z run today. There's a ton of time for things to work back in our favor but right now the end of the gefs and eps runs aren't encouraging. That general setup is at least another week away from anything good. I like tracking storms (even if fantasy range) far more than I like tracking pattern changes 2-3 weeks down the road. Lol

 

You are correct in my interpretation of your post. Def not seasonally screwed. My apologies if it seemed like that’s what I thought. I actually thought this was going to be a backloaded winter when I set my forecast in the contest. That’s why my numbers are pretty much around avg for the year. Just really sucks seeing yet another year of December snow chances thrown out the window. I don’t even have skin in the game, and I’m down about it. It’s become a fairytale like the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, and a Cleveland Browns winning season.

 

 

.

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I’m silent because I’m withholding judgment. Since the gefs has an underdispersion issue I tend to take a 24 hour cycle of runs as one entity in my mind. It cuts down on mood swings. So while I admit 18z was alarming I’m not assigning the gefs is caving yet. But I do think it was rushing the progression anyways. 
I am disappointed so far. I thought we would do a little better to this point. We’ve had some workable looks. A couple perfect h5 tracks where low level temps were a tad too warm. A trailing wave that was a string out mess.  A couple scenarios where we needed progressive and it trended amplified. This last one wasn’t an awful look but the lead wave died and despite a good 50/50 the high was pathetic and couldn’t hold long enough to get any front end with the second wave. 
I’m not saying we should have had 10”+ by now or anything but with a little luck we could be sitting on 3-5” region wide if a couple of those went slightly better and the whole mood in here would be different. Now we go into the first dead period having struck out so far. I’ll admit that’s a little depressing. 
Yep we wasted opportunities. Boston has one of their snowiest Decembers and we got jack. Weve had 6 weeks of decent cold anomalies . And everytime we needed one Break in our favor we broke the other way. Last winter I got 30 inches lol and it was still painful
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3 minutes ago, Ji said:
1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:
I’m silent because I’m withholding judgment. Since the gefs has an underdispersion issue I tend to take a 24 hour cycle of runs as one entity in my mind. It cuts down on mood swings. So while I admit 18z was alarming I’m not assigning the gefs is caving yet. But I do think it was rushing the progression anyways. 
I am disappointed so far. I thought we would do a little better to this point. We’ve had some workable looks. A couple perfect h5 tracks where low level temps were a tad too warm. A trailing wave that was a string out mess.  A couple scenarios where we needed progressive and it trended amplified. This last one wasn’t an awful look but the lead wave died and despite a good 50/50 the high was pathetic and couldn’t hold long enough to get any front end with the second wave. 
I’m not saying we should have had 10”+ by now or anything but with a little luck we could be sitting on 3-5” region wide if a couple of those went slightly better and the whole mood in here would be different. Now we go into the first dead period having struck out so far. I’ll admit that’s a little depressing. 

Yep we wasted opportunities. Boston has one of their snowiest Decembers and we got jack. Weve had 6 weeks of decent cold anomalies . And everytime we needed one Break in our favor we broke the other way. Last winter I got 30 inches lol and it was still painful

Whoa, whoa backup...you got that much (probably the most of the subforum)? I know it was a rather frustrating winter, but...dude, lol

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Most winters have a mild period.  In December to date, looking at the stats at DCA through yesterday, we have averaged about .6 of a degree above normal.  So the first three weeks of the month will average near normal taking into account the current cold snap.  Yes, no one is talking about it because it does not fit the torch forecast since before Thanksgiving but it is cold outside right now.  We are heading into a milder pattern for a period....shocker!  It happens every winter.

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15 minutes ago, JakkelWx said:

Nice 50/50 low pattern setting up on the 6z GEFS. Also has a west based -NAO pretty much the whole run. Too bad the surface is a torch but that looks overdone.

That look, -NAO, -PNA can work better later in winter. A theme I’m seeing with years that featured a somewhat similar look early and shared enough common factors to take them as credible analogs, what changed wasn’t so much the pattern as the seasonal reaction to the pattern.  With more depth to the continental cold airmass and shorter wavelengths a -NAO can offer much more resistance to attempts to press a pacific airmass across NAM. This time of year it’s a struggle and that pacific look blasts a ridge unto the central US so even with a massive 50/50 -NAO we’re just not torching as much and dry. 

Whar we do need is for a period of epo ridging in January to help NAM build a cold profile. Then if we recycle into this pattern it will be a better result for us.  

Back in the fall I mentioned it’s hard to find good analogs because if you ignore the enso state, most of the good analogs in every other way were nino years. That continues wrt pattern analogs. So perhaps given were in a very long lived warm neutral bordering on nino at times, and given all the other pattern drivers are in a phase typically associated with a nino, using those analogs would have been a good idea.  Some of the best pattern matches so far have been 1965-66, 1986-87, and 1997-98. The first two went on to good things later in January. 97-98 tried and had a beautiful storm track but the super nino meant the pac onslaught never let up a minute and NAM never was able to build any cold. I find that outcome unlikely this time. But as @Bob Chill says sometimes the weather will just weather so we will see. 

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17 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Huh?? 6z?  Looks pretty rough to me.

If you just look at the Atlantic and ignore the dumpster fire that is everything else it looks good. lol. 

It’s too early in the season for that look to work. But if we can a repeat of the last month with an epo ridge dump of cold followed by the current look...I think we will come out ok. I probably sound like a broken record but Im hugging that until it becomes evident it’s not going right, but hey I don’t like being miserable all the time so I tend to have a “tomorrow will be a better day” attitude. 

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1 hour ago, leesburg 04 said:

Average high in DC on Christmas is 44 degrees. How far off from that is it really going to be?

49/34 doesn’t strike me as a torch around these parts, but hey we are in sad, self-pity mode here right now so I guess it qualifies. Yup, not gonna snow on Christmas in the furnace and that’s just not fair. 

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Just now, WxUSAF said:

The issue is the TPV is not dropping down toward Hudson Bay anymore on the GEFS. Instead it stays strong and moves up over the pole. If it’s going that way, I’d rather it go park itself in Mongolia than hang over the pole. 

Yea if it stays there we are screwed as NAM is completely cut off from cold.  Luckily it’s unlikely for such a compact TPV to remain in the same spot all winter. It’s not like it’s some raging huge ball it blue everywhere up there. They would bother me even more. 

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Since @showmethesnow is mia...someone search the casinos stat...I’ll fill in. There is a way out at the end of the eps. We know it’s not going to be exactly right in every way from 15 days. So assuming it’s wrong in some way...if it’s just a little more progressive with the pacific ridge it sets off a chain reaction that leads to a good pattern. 

9085D7E9-E768-4C83-8C3B-D575D1963F45.thumb.jpeg.ff9ebc16c13a53db3d559a6c49fb2aa0.jpeg

Shift that ridge east some and it forces the trough east which would throw storms through the 50/50 domain again and the wave breaking there would feed the NAO ridge which would press the tpv off the pole a bit more. One error (if it’s in our favor) actually turns that into a good pattern. It’s not perfect, ideally the tpv drops but mid winter we can survive with the tpv displaced out of the way. My guess is that might be how that’s going anyways but we will have to wait a bit longer than we want. 

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1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

Huh?? 6z?  Looks pretty rough to me.

It is not a bad look. Certainly isnt 'epic' but like Bob always says, epic patterns on the means dont automatically equal snowstorms. By hour 200 you can already see the ridge N of Hawaii getting squashed in favor of an Aleutian low trying to rebuild. Scandinavian ridge which PSU says is usually a key indicator of the NAO building is present. The 50/50 region continues to have lower pressures. Is not a bad look and is miles away from the EPS and yesterday's GEFS mean which had people jumping.  Anad again, these developments are under 240 hours so maybe not fantasy range. 

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@psuhoffman something else for you to ponder.

As a  connection to the record + IOD  ( Also note the SH SWE also had implications - see Amy's post below ) 

Maybe we need to look to Australia for clues to the long term changes in our weather here, ( focus on Jan , Feb, and March )  regarding the + IOD and the progression of the Pac, including the MJO.  

Speculation that maybe we need to see the current pattern there start to change. Just a little speculation on my part. Some locations there are forecast to have their hottest temp for ANY time of the year, that is really remarkable. Again, another piece of the puzzle.   

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/iod/

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/12/18/australia-has-its-hottest-day-record-sydney-residents-brace-heat-fires-smoke/

 

The heat is forecast to peak Friday in Adelaide, where the forecast high temperature is 113 degrees (45 Celsius), as well as Melbourne, which is predicted to reach 109 degrees (43 Celsius).

The BOM is also forecasting that many locations will break monthly records for the hottest temperatures in December. In fact, some places in New South Wales could see their hottest temperature on record for any time of the year, particularly Saturday, according to BOM meteorologist Blair Trewin.

 

 

 

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