Winter 2020-2021

[Spanks45]

17 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

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.

 

So the the stronger we get here, the more it can impact our region.... Great, our winter was looking grim before, now we might as well go full ratter at this point. So the wild card could be the solar min. Expectations remain low going into October.

[ORH_wxman]

Just now, Spanks45 said:

So the the stronger we get here, the more it can impact our region.... Great, our winter was looking grim before, now we might as well go full rather at this point. So the wild card could be the solar min. Expectations remain low going into October.

A lot of it will depend on the AO/NAO I think....esp the further south you go. Recall that 2010-2011 was a strong La Nina that peaked at -1.7C trimonthly. That is probably the gold standard for winters down in your 'hood over the past 2+ decades....so it can be good if it gets help. A potent La Nina can have a very active PJ, so if you get a little bit of blocking, it can produce a ton of miller Bs and other fun systems that go south of SNE.

Obviously we want to avoid an AK pig too...if we don't avoid that, then it's game over for all of us.

[Typhoon Tip]

40 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

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.

 

asterlies 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.

 

 

Mmm  I wonder ... 

See, - gosh ur gonna hate this - I think the HC expansion shit is playing a role there. 

The flow all summer was not relaxing as it typically did ... between 300 years ago, and the year 2002 ( ~ ) for typology/summer eddy climate. 

We kept up with jet surpluses through the summer ... oh, we were no longer getting 180 kt sustained westerlies at 500 mb between SFO and London...no - but, we were observing anomalous gradient and faster flows by some subtle measures, enough so to sustain Rosby looks too ...The nebularity of summer was showing less entropy ..or 'breakdown' of the R-wave structures than normal

So wtf is the point?   

Well, my point is, something is driving the gradient in the westerlies...and that is where the HC terminates in free-space with the lower Ferrel Cell above the mid latitudes.  So, it is likely by logic alone that the HC is still strong ...   

By convention of that, the easterlies trades underneath the westerlies and the HC are getting augmented by large scale mass-conservation argument alone - perhaps ... This part I admit to more speculation, but from a geophysical meets with "conceptual arithmetic" perspective, it's not a bad notion to wonder if enhancing trade flux is causing sea-surface distribution - and that what we are really seeing is that more so than a systemic La Nina. 

It matters ... because, that means the gradient distribution in the total hemispheric integral is not likely to trigger the La Nina climatology as readily - at some point... scientific speculation has to considered. I'm not averring fact here lol... but you know what I mean. 

I'm just saying that it is possible a stronger HC is playing/accentuating matters ...and while not a "faux" La Nina...it may be exaggerating any real footprint there.  So we may be looking for -1.5 -related climate impacts and wondering where they are again.  

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

24 minutes ago, Spanks45 said:

So the the stronger we get here, the more it can impact our region.... Great, our winter was looking grim before, now we might as well go full ratter at this point. So the wild card could be the solar min. Expectations remain low going into October.

My ratter thoughts working out well so far. No reason to think we get any help from the nao/ao regions either. Check AK later this month and into Novie, fear the piggie. So, AN temps with BN snows maybe we sneak a good storm to two to make it to Normal but it won’t feel like it. Basically, nothing to get excited about. 

[Spanks45]

22 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

A lot of it will depend on the AO/NAO I think....esp the further south you go. Recall that 2010-2011 was a strong La Nina that peaked at -1.7C trimonthly. That is probably the gold standard for winters down in your 'hood over the past 2+ decades....so it can be good if it gets help. A potent La Nina can have a very active PJ, so if you get a little bit of blocking, it can produce a ton of miller Bs and other fun systems that go south of SNE.

Obviously we want to avoid an AK pig too...if we don't avoid that, then it's game over for all of us.

No pigs please.... hopefully the blocking we have seen recently has something to do with the solar min and not some random garbage. Possibly seeing some rounds of blocking this winter.  Probably the typical massive swings 0 to 60 degrees in 24 hrs with little snow retention with and average winter is what we can hope for I guess....

[Spanks45]

3 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

My ratter thoughts working out well so far. No reason to think we get any help from the nao/ao regions either. Check AK later this month and into Novie, fear the piggie. So, AN temps with BN snows maybe we sneak a good storm to two to make it to Normal but it won’t feel like it. Basically, nothing to get excited about. 

After last year, day by day is probably the best way to go...but yeah, expectations are low. I didn't get to experience 2010/2011 up here, so let's go and do it again!

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Mmm  I wonder ... 

See, - gosh ur gonna hate this - I think the HC expansion shit is playing a role there. 

The flow all summer was not relaxing as it typically did ... between 300 years ago, and the year 2002 ( ~ ) for typology/summer eddy climate. 

We kept up with jet surpluses through the summer ... oh, we were no longer getting 180 kt sustained westerlies at 500 mb between SFO and London...no - but, we were observing anomalous gradient and faster flows by some subtle measures, enough so to sustain Rosby looks too ...The nebularity of summer was showing less entropy ..or 'breakdown' of the R-wave structures than normal

So wtf is the point?   

Well, my point is, something is driving the gradient in the westerlies...and that is where the HC terminates in free-space with the lower Ferrel Cell above the mid latitudes.  So, it is likely by logic alone that the HC is still strong ...   

By convention of that, the easterlies trades underneath the westerlies and the HC are getting augmented by large scale mass-conservation argument alone - perhaps ... This part I admit to more speculation, but from a geophysical meets with "conceptual arithmetic" perspective, it's not a bad notion to wonder if enhancing trade flux is causing sea-surface distribution - and that what we are really seeing is that more so than a systemic La Nina. 

It matters ... because, that means the gradient distribution in the total hemispheric integral is not likely to trigger the La Nina climatology as readily - at some point... scientific speculation has to considered. I'm not averring fact here lol... but you know what I mean. 

I'm just saying that it is possible a stronger HC is playing/accentuating matters ...and while not a "faux" La Nina...it may be exaggerating any real footprint there.  So we may be looking for -1.5 -related climate impacts and wondering where they are again.  

That might be true....though I’m skeptical of the claim on the easterlies since they were pretty dormant until summer after our weak El Niño broke in the spring. Maybe there’s some mild enhancement? But I don’t think it is anything like a primary driver. 

As for the impact...muted or not muted, they are still going to be larger on a moderate or strong la Niña vs a weak one...so it’s worth pointing out the strengthening event. 

We aren’t currently in a deep -PDO either like the 2007-2012 years so that will probably have at least some impact as well. To what extent? Anyone else’s guess is probably better than mine.

Its hard to quantify the sensible impacts. We’ve had La Ninas that acted like El Niño’s before....ala 1995-1996. Hell, that season even had some bouts of STJ. And then we’ve had El Niños that acted like La Niña too...see 1968-1969. Who knows if the deeper phase PDO had an effect or not...I’m sure it wasn’t the only reason but you wonder since each respective season had an “out of phase” PDO look.  

My biggest personal question is how far poleward does the Aleutian ridge get? La Niña almost always has an Aleutian ridge and how far poleward it gets can be a large factor. 

[Typhoon Tip]

17 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That might be true....though I’m skeptical of the claim on the easterlies since they were pretty dormant until summer after our weak El Niño broke in the spring. Maybe there’s some mild enhancement? But I don’t think it is anything like a primary driver. 

As for the impact...muted or not muted, they are still going to be larger on a moderate or strong la Niña vs a weak one...so it’s worth pointing out the strengthening event. 

We aren’t currently in a deep -PDO either like the 2007-2012 years so that will probably have at least some impact as well. To what extent? Anyone else’s guess is probably better than mine.

Its hard to quantify the sensible impacts. We’ve had La Ninas that acted like El Niño’s before....ala 1995-1996. Hell, that season even had some bouts of STJ. And then we’ve had El Niños that acted like La Niña too...see 1968-1969. Who knows if the deeper phase PDO had an effect or not...I’m sure it wasn’t the only reason but you wonder since each respective season had an “out of phase” PDO look.  

My biggest personal question is how far poleward does the Aleutian ridge get? La Niña almost always has an Aleutian ridge and how far poleward it gets can be a large factor. 

Yeah...and honestly, the easterly Trade flux anomaly is just something I've recently flashed into the old sci-fi library of personal guess-work hahaha...

But what triggered me to speculate on that is observing the behavior out over the Atlantic hurricane season...and the propensity of easterly shear.  I used to think of shear as a west problem rearing up in Meteorology.  When the wind turned around E at mid levels, look out! Suppose to be a good thing... but his year? It was f'n fire hose man.. mitigation of TW's moving W,, everywhere S of the 30th parallel.  I saw TD after TD fail to sustain chimneys because they leaned and torn off with anvils making the Leewards when they were only half way the distance across the Basin...  That much is not guesswork, it was actually seen..  

Then noticing the west Pacific has been dearthy ( so far) too...particularly the western area of the Pac Basin.  Both the Atlantic and the Pacific open areas are more prone to whole-scale balancing of mass load ..whereas closer to the Americas .. obviously the circulation structure changes at large scales might disrupt those 'orderly' field layouts and so we've seen some better growth profiles at home.   

Interesting stuff... but, what is interesting... the season was forecast' to be above normal in activity and they nailed that!!!  The chagrin is that the 70% of it was rotating cumulus clouds  oh my god - run for your lives!   But the shear seems to be the suspect for the low ISE ... and just from my own records it was easterly.   

 

 

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

1 hour ago, Spanks45 said:

After last year, day by day is probably the best way to go...but yeah, expectations are low. I didn't get to experience 2010/2011 up here, so let's go and do it again!

What a stretch in late Dec into Jan...then it was over. I’ll take that any winter though. Throw me 3 KU’s in 4 weeks then take it away. 

[ORH_wxman]

12 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

What a stretch in late Dec into Jan...then it was over. I’ll take that any winter though. Throw me 3 KU’s in 4 weeks then take it away. 

Once you are outside of the elevated interior in SNE, the winters are not going to be wire to wire in terms of pack retention. It just doesn’t happen. Maybe once every couple of decades. 

So for “good winters”, it’s either a 3-4 week blitz like 2011/2015/2009/1994/1987/1978/etc or it’s a longer drawn out winter with events in every month but some thaws in between. Winters like ‘00-‘01, ‘02-‘03, ‘04-‘05, ‘13-‘14, ‘17-‘18, ‘81-‘82, ‘69-‘70, ‘71-‘72

Sometimes you get lucky and get both in the same winter like 1995-1996. That had a 4-5 week blitz, massive thaws but events in Feb/Mar/Apr as well. Or even ‘60-‘61. 

 

[sebastiaan1973]

Hi guys, first of all thanks for sharing all your thoughts from the otherside of the Atlantic Ocean. I'm having fun reading your intelligent readings.

Since the 8th of october a lot more of ECMWF is available. You can take a look over here

https://apps.ecmwf.int/webapps/opencharts/products/extended-anomaly-mslp?base_time=202010080000&projection=opencharts_global&valid_time=202011090000 for the weeklies.

Or

https://apps.ecmwf.int/webapps/opencharts/?facets={"Type"%3A[]%2C"Range"%3A[]%2C"Product type"%3A["High resolution forecast (HRES)"]%2C"Parameters"%3A["Precipitation"%2C"Snow"%2C"Surface characteristics"%2C"Temperature"%2C"Wind"]}

[OSUmetstud]

Early still, but probably a good thing to see a -NAO pop up in the weeklies in November. 

 

[Hoth]

16 hours ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

My ratter thoughts working out well so far. No reason to think we get any help from the nao/ao regions either. Check AK later this month and into Novie, fear the piggie. So, AN temps with BN snows maybe we sneak a good storm to two to make it to Normal but it won’t feel like it. Basically, nothing to get excited about. 

I'm just tossing winter going in. Anything that does come will be a pleasant surprise.

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, OSUmetstud said:

Early still, but probably a good thing to see a -NAO pop up in the weeklies in November. 

 

I went into this season with my  mind made up that my outlook would be averse to any sustained NAO, but I am beginning to waiver on that idea (not just because of this)....at least with respect to December. I think it will be an active December, and the gradient maybe further south than it was in 2007.

[40/70 Benchmark]

17 hours ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

My ratter thoughts working out well so far. No reason to think we get any help from the nao/ao regions either. Check AK later this month and into Novie, fear the piggie. So, AN temps with BN snows maybe we sneak a good storm to two to make it to Normal but it won’t feel like it. Basically, nothing to get excited about. 

My winter composite was dead-on. Not one of them had snowfall through the first week of October.

[CoastalWx]

That is a split flow look too. Verbatim, that might be active given the near to perhaps slightly BN heights over the SE.

[40/70 Benchmark]

48 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

That is a split flow look too. Verbatim, that might be active given the near to perhaps slightly BN heights over the SE.

Yea, I don't feel like this season will want for chances....with a little luck, the season is entirely salvageable, and we may not need as much luck as RUNAWAYNOOSE would lead you to believe with a bit of NAO assist (I know).

It doesn't appear to be a non-starter like last season ended up being, but I do expect a pretty abysmal mid winter stretch. I see could see a toned down (not AS warm February and not as robust March) 2017-2018.

I think the ceiling for this December is 2008/2010.

[40/70 Benchmark]

49 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

That is a split flow look too. Verbatim, that might be active given the near to perhaps slightly BN heights over the SE.

Almost looks el nino like in that respect.

[CoastalWx]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Almost looks el nino like in that respect.

Yeah, probably just lasts briefly, but verbatim would be active. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

19 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Yeah, probably just lasts briefly, but verbatim would be active. 

One think that I love about la nina is the active northern stream....I hate when the s stream is dominant. There is much more margin for error with respect to the N stream from our area points north and east relative to the s stream.

[Snowstorms]

11 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

One think that I love about la nina is the active northern stream....I hate when the s stream is dominant. There is much more margin for error with respect to the N stream from our area points north and east relative to the s stream.

I agree. Feb 2013 was arguably one of the best phased storms in recent times. Got 16" from that storm. Although 2012-13 wasn't officially a La Nina, much of that winter resembled a typical Nina pattern. Having an active northern stream increases the chances for more phased storms which can be very beneficial especially for us in the Great Lakes area. 2007-08 featured a lot of that. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

15 minutes ago, Snowstorms said:

I agree. Feb 2013 was arguably one of the best phased storms in recent times. Got 16" from that storm. Although 2012-13 wasn't officially a La Nina, much of that winter resembled a typical Nina pattern. Having an active northern stream increases the chances for more phased storms which can be very beneficial especially for us in the Great Lakes area. 2007-08 featured a lot of that. 

Well, I am not sure I would want to take my chances with 2007-2008 again in the absence of some NAO assist....I lucked out in that the PV was so ginormous.

That was great for you and NNE, yes.

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Well, I am not sure I would want to take my chances with 2007-2008 again in the absence of some NAO assist....I lucked out in that the PV was so ginormous.

That was great for you and NNE, yes.

1973-1974 kind of shows what happens when a 2007-2008 look 'goes wrong"....everything ended up NW in N VT and upstate NY....even PWM to CON was utter garbage.

[CoastalWx]

LOL. Imagine this place if the only posts were from Jspin, PF, Phin, and Tamarack.    

[CoastalWx]

At least it would be easy for Brian to access the chickens. 

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

1973-1974 kind of shows what happens when a 2007-2008 look 'goes wrong"....everything ended up NW in N VT and upstate NY....even PWM to CON was utter garbage.

Garbage for sure - 73-74 was my first full winter in Maine (BGR) and only a snowy April kept it from setting a futility record there.  They had more after the equinox (21.0") than before (19.8") and my biggest pre-equinoctial "storm" was 4.5" of near-zero feathers that had 0.10" LE.  The airport's biggest prior to spring was 3.3" in December that changed to RA and dumped nearly 3".   That was the event that featured 56° in BGR and at the same time 15° at my parents' place in NNJ, while the western half of SNE had a lights-out ice storm.   BGR's least snowy winter was 22.2" in 79-80; none came after the equinox.

[ORH_wxman]

10 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Garbage for sure - 73-74 was my first full winter in Maine (BGR) and only a snowy April kept it from setting a futility record there.  They had more after the equinox (21.0") than before (19.8") and my biggest pre-equinoctial "storm" was 4.5" of near-zero feathers that had 0.10" LE.  The airport's biggest prior to spring was 3.3" in December that changed to RA and dumped nearly 3".   That was the event that featured 56° in BGR and at the same time 15° at my parents' place in NNJ, while the western half of SNE had a lights-out ice storm.   BGR's least snowy winter was 22.2" in 79-80; none came after the equinox.

Pickles would have loved 1973-74....Dec 1973 alone had 5 (!!) cutters with heavy rainfall across a chunk of New England. That is not counting the ice storm on the 16th-17th....if you count that one (since basically east of ORH-CON was rain), then it would be 6 heavy rainers.

There were several more scattered throughout the winter....that winter definitely is one of the exceptions to the rule that very high precip = lots of snow. Prob a top 10-15 precip winter but a horror show when it came to snowfall.

[snowman19]

@40/70 Benchmark If this La Niña were to actually peak at strong come December, how much would it change the forecast than if it were only to peak at moderate in December?   

EL NIÑO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO)

DIAGNOSTIC DISCUSSION

issued by CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER/NCEP/NWS and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society

8 October 2020

Quote Synopsis:  La Niña is likely to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2020-21 (~85% chance) and into spring 2021 (~60% chance during February-April). La Niña continued during September, as evidenced by below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) extending from the Date Line to the eastern Pacific Ocean [Fig. 1]. The SST indices in the two westernmost Nino regions, Nino-4 and Nino-3.4, cooled throughout the month, and the Nino-3.4 index was -1.1°C in the past week [Fig. 2]. The equatorial subsurface temperature anomalies (averaged from 180°-100°W) remained substantially unchanged [Fig. 3], and continued to reflect below-average temperatures from the surface to 200m depth in the eastern Pacific Ocean [Fig. 4]. The atmospheric circulation anomalies over the tropical Pacific Ocean remained consistent with La Niña. Low-level wind anomalies were easterly across most of the tropical Pacific, and upper-level wind anomalies were westerly over the east-central Pacific. Tropical convection continued to be suppressed from the western Pacific to the Date Line, and a slight enhancement of convection emerged over Indonesia [Fig. 5]. Also, both the Southern Oscillation and Equatorial Southern Oscillation indices remained positive. Overall, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system indicates the continuation of La Niña. A majority of the models in the IRI/CPC plume predict La Nina (Niño-3.4 index less than -0.5°C) to persist through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2020-21 and to weaken during the spring [Fig. 6]. The latest forecasts from several models, including the NCEP CFSv2, suggest the likelihood of a moderate or even strong La Nina (Niño-3.4 index values < -1.0°C) during the peak November-January season. The forecaster consensus supports that view in light of significant atmosphere-ocean coupling already in place. In summary, La Niña is likely to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2020-21 (~85% chance)

[powderfreak]

6 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

LOL. Imagine this place if the only posts were from Jspin, PF, Phin, and Tamarack.    

Last winter? ha.

[ORH_wxman]

3 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Last winter? ha.

Last winter was pretty shitty up north wasn’t it?