Winter 2020-21 Discussion

[Eskimo Joe]

Just now, Subtropics said:

Climo has changed most likely. Expecting 15 inches of snow in DC from multiple storms isn't realistic IMO. We will always have a chance at a big one given our location to the coast, but boom or bust on storms is something we should get used to.

You're probably right, it seems we are more like North Carolina climo or tidewater of VA these days.

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

More support for a crappy winter

 

[Maestrobjwa]

30 minutes ago, BTRWx's Thanks Giving said:

More support for a crappy winter

 

Hey look...at least this time there won't be many expectations. I mean if these turn out to be right, it'll still suck, but at least there won't have to be disappointed hopes too, lol And also...if it's like last year at least we'll all kinda be in it together here on the East Coast! But it would be kinda historic though to have back-to-back winters where most of the MA and northeast got little to nothing, wouldn't it?.....Let's hope it's a least a little better that, lol

[JakkelWx]

I don't put much faith into BAMWX. They've been wrong a lot before IIRC.

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

20 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Hey look...at least this time there won't be many expectations. I mean if these turn out to be right, it'll still suck, but at least there won't have to be disappointed hopes too, lol And also...if it's like last year at least we'll all kinda be in it together here on the East Coast! But it would be kinda historic though to have back-to-back winters where most of the MA and northeast got little to nothing, wouldn't it?.....Let's hope it's a least a little better that, lol

That was me last year.

[WinterWxLuvr]

Does anyone here actually remember last winter? There’s no way it will be worse than that. @WxWatcher007 will be giving huge discounts on suites by the time Feb rolls around because nobody will be booking rooms with him.

[Maestrobjwa]

7 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Does anyone here actually remember last winter? There’s no way it will be worse than that. @WxWatcher007 will be giving huge discounts on suites by the time Feb rolls around because nobody will be booking rooms with him.

At the very least I can't see us staring down 1.8" again (that was the BWI measurement)...Historically when we got that low, we'd at least be able to follow up with a 6-8" total for the season...BWI has never once done back-to-back sub 2" winters, lol

[PhineasC]

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

You're probably right, it seems we are more like North Carolina climo or tidewater of VA these days.

Everyone shifted south in terms of climo. DCA is RIC. RIC is RDU. BWI is DCA. RDU is ATL. Adjust accordingly. 

[frd]

1 hour ago, JakkelWx said:

I don't put much faith into BAMWX. They've been wrong a lot before IIRC.

BAMWX put together a very detailed and research based presentation rich with relevant data and analogs for the winter outlook of 19-20. 

The presentation was over 30 minutes long,  given in November of 2019 for the winter of 19-20. 

Guess what, they blew it, they had to back pedal until stating they were wrong. They were very confident in a cold winter.  Going too cold and too snowy overall.  

Of course they  spin it, by stating they adjusted their winter forecast to counter their early seasonal forecast.    

In my opinion, that is still a fail. No one really knows what is going to happen. After two years of incredible busts regarding winter outlooks by everyone, the bottom line is that you should never put faith in a winter seasonal forecast that depends on cold air intrusions. It is a different climate now, with new evolving drivers on a global scale.    

You can even share the insights and opinion of tip over in the New England forum, whom states that regardless of Nina or Nino it does not matter at all,  because a small area of the Pacific cannot counter the global warmth and the corresponding accelerating global warmth drivers.  

 

[Subtropics]

27 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Everyone shifted south in terms of climo. DCA is RIC. RIC is RDU. BWI is DCA. RDU is ATL. Adjust accordingly. 

Today's DCA being RIC of 30-50 years ago is a very good comparison. Given RVA is 100 miles south of DC, it's pretty sad in a half century.

[jlh]

7 hours ago, PhineasC said:

Everyone shifted south in terms of climo. DCA is RIC. RIC is RDU. BWI is DCA. RDU is ATL. Adjust accordingly. 

Interesting way to see it, and seemingly accurate. Imagine where this trend will put us all in another decade or two...

[CAPE]

13 hours ago, frd said:

BAMWX put together a very detailed and research based presentation rich with relevant data and analogs for the winter outlook of 19-20. 

The presentation was over 30 minutes long,  given in November of 2019 for the winter of 19-20. 

Guess what, they blew it, they had to back pedal until stating they were wrong. They were very confident in a cold winter.  Going too cold and too snowy overall.  

Of course they  spin it, by stating they adjusted their winter forecast to counter their early seasonal forecast.    

In my opinion, that is still a fail. No one really knows what is going to happen. After two years of incredible busts regarding winter outlooks by everyone, the bottom line is that you should never put faith in a winter seasonal forecast that depends on cold air intrusions. It is a different climate now, with new evolving drivers on a global scale.    

You can even share the insights and opinion of tip over in the New England forum, whom states that regardless of Nina or Nino it does not matter at all,  because a small area of the Pacific cannot counter the global warmth and the corresponding accelerating global warmth drivers.  

 

This is something I mentioned in discussion with psu earlier in the thread. With the oceans all on fire, how much impact can a relatively small sliver of slightly cooler/warmer SSTs in the Pacific really have on the atmosphere at this point, and going forward? It would seem outside of a strong ENSO event, the influence should be muted relative to other pattern drivers.

[frd]

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

This is something I mentioned in discussion with psu earlier in the thread. With the oceans all on fire, how much impact can a relatively small sliver of slightly cooler/warmer SSTs in the Pacific really have on the atmosphere at this point, and going forward? It would seem outside of a strong ENSO event, the influence should be muted relative to other pattern drivers.

Does make sense. The exact location of anomalies and how strong in mid to late Fall will be very important in attempting a December forecast.  

[CAPE]

2 hours ago, frd said:

Does make sense. The exact location of anomalies and how strong in mid to late Fall will be very important in attempting a December forecast.  

As we move into October, the climate models may offer somewhat more reliable hints as to where the EPAC ridge will set up, and whether or not there will be any HL blocking for the first part of winter. We are probably still a month away from extracting anything useful from these models.

[frd]

58 minutes ago, CAPE said:

As we move into October, the climate models may offer somewhat more reliable hints as to where the EPAC ridge will set up, and whether or not there will be any HL blocking for the first part of winter. We are probably still a month away from extracting anything useful from these models.

I believe Ninas may tend to have colder Decembers versus Jan. and Feb. Means nothing, and I am not endorsing a cold December at this point. However, exposed waters above Alasaka and general SST forcing way up North may have a role in our sensible early winter weather before the most powerful and direct pattern weather drivers take hold for the East.   

 

 

[Roger Smith]

About the forest fire smoke situation -- 2017 was not that exceptional a year, we had a lot worse smoke in western Canada in 2018. Last year was fairly moderate and this year only became bad after mid-August. However, it has had a very noticeable effect on air mass temperature as it did in late August 2018. For several days where I am located, the uppers would have been good for 28-30 C each day but some days were as low as 20 to 23 C. As the smoke has thinned slightly yesterday and today we are back up to 24-25 C. But we're under a ridge with 570dm thickness. It should be 30 to 32 C here and 35 C in lower elevations of the inland Pac NW. The temperature anomaly is fairly widespread (meaning the temperature reduction due to smoke). I can see its signature into Alberta and Montana. The effects on subarctic temperatures could be significant too, if smoke layers advect north into the traditional source region for autumn arctic air outbreaks (NWT-w Nunavut). At those higher latitudes, solar angle becomes very low by late September and October, the influence of any particulates would be even more pronounced. 

On the other hand, pseudo-frontal boundaries created by these impacts could have ripple effects downstream, modelling that is not just a sketch on an envelope sort of proposition. 

It can also be noted that the weather in arctic Canada has not been unusually warm this past "summer" and August began the cooling cycle if anything a bit ahead of the recent average pace. This indicates prospects for a healthy arctic production of cold air masses through the autumn season. The trend in recent years has been for polar vortex positioning near Baffin Island and the Hudson strait region. When that expands to include large parts of Hudson Bay and Quebec, a cold regime can then extend well south of 40 deg latitude. 

[frd]

32 minutes ago, Roger Smith said:

About the forest fire smoke situation -- 2017 was not that exceptional a year, we had a lot worse smoke in western Canada in 2018. Last year was fairly moderate and this year only became bad after mid-August. However, it has had a very noticeable effect on air mass temperature as it did in late August 2018.

 

We have new records. 

 

 

[Eskimo Joe]

Wonder what, if any, impacts there are from the number of US landfalling tropical cyclones and temp/precip the following winter.

[Rhino16]

10 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Wonder what, if any, impacts there are from the number of US landfalling tropical cyclones and temp/precip the following winter.

I’ve always kind of thought for no reason whatsoever, that whenever we get a tropical storm we usually get some decent snow. (By decent, I just mean not like last year.)  I’m pretty sure it’s false, if anything I thought I read something about there being less...

[midatlanticweather]

 

[osfan24]

On 9/16/2020 at 1:55 PM, Eskimo Joe said:

You're probably right, it seems we are more like North Carolina climo or tidewater of VA these days.

Call me crazy, but I think it's too soon to be making declarations like that. 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 wasn't that long ago. 2015-2016 was a crappy winter but we still managed an epic storm. I'm more frustrated than anyone at the lack of snow, but sometimes we go through these stretches around here. It was just hard to remember brutal stretches like this because we were on such a heater there for awhile. Maybe climate change is really impacting our winters, but I think it's too soon to say our last several winters have been poor because of it.

[WinterWxLuvr]

39 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

Call me crazy, but I think it's too soon to be making declarations like that. 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 wasn't that long ago. 2015-2016 was a crappy winter but we still managed an epic storm. I'm more frustrated than anyone at the lack of snow, but sometimes we go through these stretches around here. It was just hard to remember brutal stretches like this because we were on such a heater there for awhile. Maybe climate change is really impacting our winters, but I think it's too soon to say our last several winters have been poor because of it.

This is good. People forget that we had a pretty bad run from the late 80’s into the early 90’s as well. I’m also old enough to remember some clunkers in the early 70’s. Climate is longer than a few years, even longer than 30 if you want to be honest about it.

[WxUSAF]

I think that’s all fair. Our snow totals are small enough and variable enough that seeing a trend in those numbers is hard and very noisy. The climate impact is clearly being seen in temperatures however. We’re getting warmer and losing winter like temperatures on the margins. 

[BristowWx]

I would be shocked if I ever saw the 3 month Temp outlook on CPC colored anything but red hues.  All orange all the time.  AN is the new normal I suppose. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

I think that’s all fair. Our snow totals are small enough and variable enough that seeing a trend in those numbers is hard and very noisy. The climate impact is clearly being seen in temperatures however. We’re getting warmer and losing winter like temperatures on the margins. 

I agree with this on temps. I still think that with warmer global temps you’re gonna see small scale climate features that may be colder than the old regime during winter.  We just don’t know where those are gonna set up. We probably can surmise that it won’t be us though, lol. But it’s gonna take a while before we can draw conclusions. A 3-5 year lean stretch is t enough to draw conclusions imo.

[jlh]

23 hours ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

This is good. People forget that we had a pretty bad run from the late 80’s into the early 90’s as well. I’m also old enough to remember some clunkers in the early 70’s. Climate is longer than a few years, even longer than 30 if you want to be honest about it.

I think it is more the longer term trends that we are looking at here, i'm not sold that the climate is not a factor. Looking at historical snowfall for DCA back to the late 1800s you can see a pretty consistent downward trend. Yes, some big years... But the recent "big hits" used to be the norm. Obviously there will always be ups and downs but the trend is definitely something to keep in mind.

dcasnow.pdf

[WinterWxLuvr]

46 minutes ago, jlh said:

I think it is more the longer term trends that we are looking at here, i'm not sold that the climate is not a factor. Looking at historical snowfall for DCA back to the late 1800s you can see a pretty consistent downward trend. Yes, some big years... But the recent "big hits" used to be the norm. Obviously there will always be ups and downs but the trend is definitely something to keep in mind.

dcasnow.pdf 195.69 kB · 5 downloads

I don’t disagree but when you’re looking at 100 year trends you also have to take into consideration the differences in urban areas along that 100 year journey. Lot more concrete and asphalt now vs then. The March 2013 storm is a great example. Just a few miles outside of that heat island was heavy snow. A degree or two made all the difference.

I think to draw conclusions on the 100 year trend with snowfall you’d have to get away from urban locations and look at a small regional collection of data. I know that I’ve looked at the data for Winchester and the thing that stands out the most is the randomness of the high and low snowfall totals.

I definitely think the climate will be a factor, just not sure that’s necessarily gonna show up in snow totals, or what that factor will be. Now if we get 10 of the next 15 winters as warm as last year, I might be singing a different tune.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

On 9/19/2020 at 7:49 AM, osfan24 said:

Call me crazy, but I think it's too soon to be making declarations like that. 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 wasn't that long ago. 2015-2016 was a crappy winter but we still managed an epic storm. I'm more frustrated than anyone at the lack of snow, but sometimes we go through these stretches around here. It was just hard to remember brutal stretches like this because we were on such a heater there for awhile. Maybe climate change is really impacting our winters, but I think it's too soon to say our last several winters have been poor because of it.

I'll take a bit of issue stating categorically that 2015-16 was a "crappy winter."  But that's all a matter of perspective and opinion of course, and others have expressed the same view, so it is what it is.  I won't deny that Dec. 2015 was absolutely awful, the worst in the annals of craptacularity, with a +11 temperature departure for the month.  More April than December.  However, if you look at the temperatures for Jan. 2016, it was slightly colder than normal, and Feb. 2016 was near to a hair above normal.  Though to be sure, the 2nd half of Feb. warmed up again.  For snow...outside that one amazing event...you could argue it sucked, sure.  But fact is we did get that one spectacular event.  And in Feb., there was a small to moderate snow/ice event (that changed to rain very late) around President's Day weekend.  Did we have other chances in that 2 month period?  I don't remember.  But to me, truly crappy would be last winter, where it was nearly wall-to-wall shutout with no chance.  And a toaster bath most of the time.  Or 2001-02, and 2011-12.  Those are the worst kinds in terms of awful winters in my opinion...consistently lousy temperatures and almost no real snow opportunities.  I'd argue that as bad as a lot of 2015-16 seemed (mostly thanks to that December), we still had a couple of realistic periods for something.

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Not so preliminary thoughts....but looong was from anything definitive. I offer up composites as coalesce my thoughts throughout the fall. Not at all a forecast.

This is evolving quickly IMO.

https://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2020/09/structural-changes-observed-in.html

 

[CAPE]

^Nice writeup with helpful supporting/background data. That last analog composite is generally in line with the h5 pattern the seasonal/climate models have been depicting for winter, with the possible exception of Dec, fwiw.

Not a good look for this region, but we are getting used to the pig EPAC ridge parking in an 'unfavorable' location with little to no help in the AO/NAO space.