Winter 2020-2021

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

At least the heating bills will be low again:

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

16 hours ago, raindancewx said:

This is what I ended up with for snow nationally. The numbers are percentages of normal for July-June. My forecast is basically done, just waiting for a few things to come in this week.

 

Wow.....you actually crush my area with snow. 127% of normal?

I never would have guessed that. 

Good luck.

Not so secret about your analogs anymore haha. What is the rationale behind the inclusion of 2012-2013 and last season?

[ORH_wxman]

32 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

At least the heating bills will be low again:

 

 

Actually looks pretty similar to 2017-2018

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

6 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Actually looks pretty similar to 2017-2018

 

I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar seasonal progression.....quick start, then we stagnate in January....abysmal February, then a happy ending. Probably not as extreme with the Feb warmth, or the happy ending.

[CoastalWx]

Yeah verbatim I do like seeing Canada with low heights sort of "trapped" there. Ridging into AK is usually good for that, and seems like AO region near Poles has some higher heights. Fighting the SE ridge is just something you do in Nina's especially without a -NAO, but that verbatim isn't bad to me. I guess that is the UK seasonal or something like that? 

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar seasonal progression.....quick start....abysmal February, then a happy ending. Probably not as extreme with the Feb warmth, or the happy ending.

Yeah the obscene torch February and then the obscene March blocking episode are unlikely to repeat. It would be cool to see the single months but that site doesn't show them.

[CoastalWx]

For instance, if I saw ridging in the east and a pig near AK...then that is a toaster bath only Tippy could enjoy. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah the obscene torch February and then the obscene March blocking episode are unlikely to repeat. It would be cool to see the single months but that site doesn't show them.

That was my best outlook of the six that I have issued. I emphasized how extreme each of those periods would be, and even implied a white xmas (xmas AM storm).

Its been all down hill from there-

[ORH_wxman]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

For instance, if I saw ridging in the east and a pig near AK...then that is a toaster bath only Tippy could enjoy. 

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

For instance, if I saw ridging in the east and a pig near AK...then that is a toaster bath only Tippy could enjoy. 

I didn't think it was bad...a lot of people see colors that they don't like over their BY and run.

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

Yes. That is a Pacific Puke CJ only LL and Forky would enjoy. 

[ORH_wxman]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I didn't think it was bad...a lot of people see colors that they don't like over their BY and run.

To be fair, it shows warm 2m temps over us....though I agree I woudn't be scared of that H5 look. But he's pretty far south in CT...that would def be a latitude look, so there's reason to like it less the further south you are. Esp with that low height anomaly on the southern tip of Greenland and into Davis straight like 2007-2008.

[ORH_wxman]

6 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

That was my best outlook of the six that I have issued. I emphasized how extreme each of those periods would be, and even implied a white xmas (xmas AM storm).

Its been all down hill from there-

Yeah you hit the huge March hard too.

LR is tough to nail obviously. If you can get it pretty accurate about 60% of the time, you'll be doing very well.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, ORH_wxman said:

To be fair, it shows warm 2m temps over us....though I agree I woudn't be scared of that H5 look. But he's pretty far south in CT...that would def be a latitude look, so there's reason to like it less the further south you are. Esp with that low height anomaly on the southern tip of Greenland and into Davis straight like 2007-2008.

I know its a bit above average...its probably not 1995-1996, but my point is that I don't see anything that renders that a non-starter. Sure, latitude is beneficial...as is often the case in a la nina. 

I can already see the bitterness and resentment at the ready when the CT clan tagged my response to raindancewx's sneak preview. lol

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I know its a bit above average...its probably not 1995-1996, but my point is that I don't see anything that renders that a non-starter. Sure, latitude is beneficial...as is often the case in a la nina. 

I can already see the bitterness and resentment at the ready when the CT clan tagged my response to raindancewx's sneak preview. lol

FWIW, I think Canada (and prob northern tier of CONUS) is way too warm on that 2m map if the H5 anomaly verifies.

[40/70 Benchmark]

8 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah you hit the huge March hard too.

LR is tough to nail obviously. If you can get it pretty accurate about 60% of the time, you'll be doing very well.

2014-15 was probably my second best, but def. an element of "right for the wrong reason" (tied huge snows to NAO, not EPO) that didn't sit well with me. I can't stand when people (cou-JUDAH-gh) whistle past that.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, ORH_wxman said:

FWIW, I think Canada (and prob northern tier of CONUS) is way too warm on that 2m map if the H5 anomaly verifies.

Long range 2m temp progs are garbage..just check the H5 and make your own inferences. To me, that prog says that the majority of the storms will not be pretty, but there should be plenty of cold around.

[ORH_wxman]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Long range 2m temp progs are garbage..just check the H5 and make your own inferences. To me, that prog says that the majority of the storms will not be pretty, but there should be plenty of cold around.

I think it was 2014-2015 when the Euro seasonal and EuroSIPS were showing this monster EPO ridge....huge positive height anomaly over AK and the Yukon Territory, basically the perfect cold-loading location for central Canada and the northern CONUS.....and it had 2m temps torched....maybe one small area of near normal or something. I remember Scott and I making fun of it.

Moral of the story was the 2m temps don't always reflect the upper air forecast. We still haven't figured out why it struggles so much with that. We were joking there was a climate change parameter in there that just paints everything red.

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

It is the UK seasonal which indicates a warm winter for the south and east with cold in the northwest and northern plains. Cold is around though so there will be chances. 

[CoastalWx]

36 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

I think it was 2014-2015 when the Euro seasonal and EuroSIPS were showing this monster EPO ridge....huge positive height anomaly over AK and the Yukon Territory, basically the perfect cold-loading location for central Canada and the northern CONUS.....and it had 2m temps torched....maybe one small area of near normal or something. I remember Scott and I making fun of it.

Moral of the story was the 2m temps don't always reflect the upper air forecast. We still haven't figured out why it struggles so much with that. We were joking there was a climate change parameter in there that just paints everything red.

I think it had that even in '13-'14 too. It just didn't make sense. I think we know in our heads what the temps may look like when we see those patterns, so I never take the 2m temps verbatim. 

[Typhoon Tip]

Yeah ... but I have noticed my self a growing "gap" tendency in the dailies between the thickness and hypsometry of the atmosphere. 

Primer:  take the Hypsometric Equation, integrate it for PV=NRT ...   = thickness...   

The only thing that really changes is the WV ... Hypsometric height is the room the heights expand when the moisture is removed.  ...  This is counter-intuitive to some degree ( pun intended...) because folks have heard that WV is an efficient greenhouse gas - but what is happening is, the column of wet warm air cools off slower than the column of dry air at the same height - ...such that the wet column nets/accumulates heat when exposed to less insolation ( sun ). 

Anyway, I have noticed that particularly over North America above ... 37 or so N latitude (~) ... The heights are there, but the atmosphere is dodging heating up ...maybe cloud albedo ...smoke... industrial farts, who knows. But, the hypsometric heights are getting taller, but the lower troposphere isn't getting thermally charged and the increased moisture input is holding the thickness down - insidiously, too... because we have been 'above normal'   ... What this does is, hides how warm 'it could have been' ...by shirking the extent of it.  fascinating really -

 

[OSUmetstud]

That's the UKMET Seasonal from September. The new one comes out on the 11th. 

[Go Kart Mozart]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

To be fair, it shows warm 2m temps over us....though I agree I woudn't be scared of that H5 look. But he's pretty far south in CT...that would def be a latitude look, so there's reason to like it less the further south you are. Esp with that low height anomaly on the southern tip of Greenland and into Davis straight like 2007-2008.

+.5 to +1.0 doesn't scare the krap out of me, I can live with that.

[michsnowfreak]

4 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Wow.....you actually crush my area with snow. 127% of normal?

I never would have guessed that. 

Good luck.

Not so secret about your analogs anymore haha. What is the rationale behind the inclusion of 2012-2013 and last season?

I'm in the 127% club too

[raindancewx]

7 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Wow.....you actually crush my area with snow. 127% of normal?

I never would have guessed that. 

Good luck.

Not so secret about your analogs anymore haha. What is the rationale behind the inclusion of 2012-2013 and last season?

I'll go into it more later, but I like 2003, 2012, and 2019 as "fixers" more than anything. Although 2003 is pretty close to the temperature pattern for this October on the models. It actually is one of the better matches on some non-ENSO stuff I like. In general, 1995, 2003, 2007, 2019 all saw declining Nino 3.4 values year over year. 2012 is an interesting case, as it is around 27.0C in Nino 3.4 late Summer but fell off hard to 26.0C by January - roughly - I'm approximating. I actually Googled "Paul Pastelok Winter Analogs 2020-21" just to see if anyone else had similar years, and he had 1995, 1998, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2016 as his package for winter as of August (may have changed since - not sure) - and if you look at the Accuweather winter forecast it does kind of look like that blend. I wouldn't pick 2010 or 1998 - you're talking about a massive year/year change in SSTs both times that we just don't have in Nino 3.4.

29C to 25C or whatever 1998 was...is nuts. This is 27C to 25C best case, and probably 20% less than that. I think 29C to 25C is close to the maximum downward change you can get year/year in Nino 3.4. My blend has super low ice. The ice got to 3.74 million square km in September 2020, the main analogs, 2007/2012, are pretty dead on to that. I've mentioned before, the lowest sea ice extent years with a cool ENSO event, starting 2007, have tended to produce similar cool West looks. 2007, 2012, 2016 fit this. Not a higher sea ice year since 2007 does: 2008, 2010, 2013, 2017, with 2011 right at the edge (the line seems to be 4.3m, and it was cold in NM/TX).

Weatherbell currently has 1973, 1988, 2010, 2010 as their blend. That'd be a decent winter here, but I don't think it's right. Nino 4 cooled way faster in 1973 and 2010 than in this year. 1988 may not be terrible for the "look" of winter, but its probably a much stronger La Nina than this year, with very high solar, and a colder North Atlantic and North Pacific. September 2019 (very warm) and September 1973 and 2010 (very cold) are all about 1.0C out from current readings in Nino 4. I like 2007 because Nino 4 did cool off a lot, but it took much longer than 1973 and 2010.

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

15 hours ago, Go Kart Mozart said:

+.5 to +1.0 doesn't scare the krap out of me, I can live with that.

It will be more like +2.0 though. Seasonal’s aren’t as extreme with 2m temps. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

It will be more like +2.0 though. Seasonal’s aren’t as extreme with 2m temps. 

I think the of greater concern is that the fact that 2m temps are not always congruent with H5 depctions.

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

54 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I think the of greater concern is that the fact that 2m temps are not always congruent with H5 depctions.

Gotchya. Yea, I just think the multiple thaws in the heart of the season in addition to the new norm of higher mins will result in a higher departure from normal then what a simulation projects. 

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I think the of greater concern is that the fact that 2m temps are not always congruent with H5 depctions.

Not that you or anyone else in particular is doing the following ...  this doesn't save winter, either - ... I sense a tendency to rely on stuff as a denial enabler LOL

Seriously these offsets are more like "somewhat reliable" ?  A warm H5 anomaly .. will tend to promote a warm 2-meter result in the longer term when circuitously getting through all geophysical processes that connect those two metrics. 

It's just that for us here in New England, we tend to "tuck" and curl the flow at all scales, both synoptically and beta-meso scales.  

At the continental scale ...the whole of the westerlies flow coming off the Pacific tends to rise in latitude due to the oceanic laminar flow encroaching/sensing the inhibition downstream of the western topography of the continent.  As the air 'piles up' the Coriolis force then curl it into a anticyclonic orientation.. which is why the rest state PNAP is always a modest ridge in the west..with a flattening out/subtle trough impression working east from the Rockies ...  Since the natural R-wave/long-wave distribution of the planet also nodes a trough in the Maritimes of SE/E Canada, that means that confluence over southern and southeastern areas of Canada tends to occur given time and space...

So, that's tucking the atmosphere back SW as a - for lack of better words - "potential vector" always in place.  Here is an idealized example from a recent Euro run ...showing this this tucking behavior ... at synoptic scales:

In this case...the 850 mb temperature is used to infer a current of cold air is being curled around by the synoptic/Coriolis forcing at large scales, ...and at this time there is also a confluence born high pressure up over the lower Maritimes... Note the warm air ends up on the N side of the anticyclonic eddy by as much as 6 to 8 C between the core of the cold channel of air and the warm 'seclusion' over NF/NS ...

This is why those late May heat waves in NW New England were not experienced in the Mid Atlantic, because of this sort of large scale curl/tuck at synoptic scales, ... 

WHICH ... I have noticed has become a more discerned phenomenon in modeling, and in verification since this HC expansion shit and the quickening of the ambient westerlies velocity et al become prevalent over the last 10 years.   

But I'm digressing as usual ... 

I'm just saying, that we have sort of a built in "talent" for our spatial-circumstantial orientation wrt to the rest of geophysical aspect of the continent .. where these kind of aspects ( and there's a smeared spectrum of others that are cousin to this... BD's are related for example... 'Burrier jets' and ice storms always forecast to end sooner than they due because no one ever guesses this right...etc... ), and... the emerging statistical result of 2-meter temperatures tending to be cooler than the H5 modes  at times.

That said, I don't like personally relying on that ...  If the orange and red anomalies are there...  tends to quack like a duck and you end up with warm geese in the area.  For me I just keep it in mind as a kind of on-going corrective maintenance, that we may have lower thickness wedging and/or soundings that "cheat" the hypsometric look due to the exaggerated curl causing the lower troposphere to gain some additional N momentum/mixing of thermal regulation from time to time that robs real heights from expanding thickness within.  

You know ...as an afterthought ... this fits why NASA's state of the climate publications dating back some 20 years, have 60 to 70% of the color graphic layout depictions with a cooler region painted over eastern N/A or near enough by that despite our warmer than normal ... we taint our contribution. 

[ORH_wxman]

This La Nina is really starting to crank.

ECMWF really increased the peak of the Nina....a lot of members in the -1.5C or stronger range now. Hardly any were there in the Sept forecast...and pretty much all of them save for a couple are -1C or stronger.

 

 

Easterlies look like they will only pick up as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting for the CPC T-depth anomaly to update (should be any day now)....but even the 9/30 readings were impressive. This signals a moderate basin-wide La Nina.