December 2021 Medium/Long Range Discussion Thread

[CAPE]

If the advertised block is legit we should have a period of 'cold enough' and chances for storms to track under us.

[Eskimo Joe]

Starting to get that 2001 - 02 feel.

[SnowenOutThere]

From what people are saying this upcoming post Christmas through Mid January looks to be a pretty good pattern for us. What should we roughly expect snowfall wise? I know nothing is certain but by the end of this pattern should we at least get one storm?

[RIC_WX]

1 minute ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Starting to get that 2001 - 02 feel.

I was going to post this yesterday but somehow resisted it.  Thank you.

As for GEFS, I get the feeling there is a classic thermal boundry setting up for the late holiday / post holiday period.  On the right side of the boundry is cold/dry and on the wrong side you have today and the rest of this week.  This pattern will eventually produce some cold days and nights, and pity snows (cartoppers).  Chance of brine 90%.

There is legit cold air in western canada but without a mechanism to force it down, it's hard to envision a sustained period of deep winter.

IIRC the all time January high temp for several stations in VA was set in late January 2002 (~80*F).

[anotherman]

13 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Starting to get that 2001 - 02 feel.

Oh wonderful.

[Kmlwx]

32 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

From what people are saying this upcoming post Christmas through Mid January looks to be a pretty good pattern for us. What should we roughly expect snowfall wise? I know nothing is certain but by the end of this pattern should we at least get one storm?

That's not how forecasting really works. You can't say "In this pattern we expect 10 inches of snow in the next 4 weeks" - the exact same/similar pattern can yield vastly different results. As PSU has said - a lot is luck. Then add in chaos as well. 

Nobody can guarantee anything - not even "one storm" based on longwave H5 patterns. Just not how it works. All we can say is "X pattern looks good going into the next 2-4 weeks" - beyond that it's pretty much the unknown. 

ETA: You seem to want to apply short-term forecasting abilities to long term patterns. There's not some metric that says "H5 pattern = X, therefore Snow > 6 inches in region" - BIGGEST word that will derail you in your post was "EXPECT" - you should never "expect" any snow  

[IronTy]

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

Looking at the GEFS/GEFSX, our temps are average to a few degrees below average from the last few days of Dec through Jan 18 verbatim. I'll take that on a mean.

No JB weenie ass vodka cold showing up though.

In fairness to JB he was referring verbatim to the GEFS output, not what he thought was going to happen.  I give JB a lot of shit (though I've been a paying member for years) but I can't think of anybody in the business who can pull historical analogs out of their ass better than him.  

[RedSky]

43 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Starting to get that 2001 - 02 feel.

 

[IronTy]

1 hour ago, mattie g said:

If the EPO does cooperate and we get the blocking that's showing up on the ensembles, then I think we do get cold and our chances start shortly thereafter, which is when our general chances at frozen start to increase significantly in general.

While I realize that waiting a little bit for the pattern to favor us is much better than having it kick in earlier, I kinda wish we'd seen this like 10 days earlier so that we'd have a better shot at some white leading into Christmas...though I'm not going to complain about it if we do wait and it comes to fruition!

Yeah i agree. Haven't had a white Christmas in decades though I guess I expect it down here.  At the very least I would like some cold weather so I can burn some of this firewood I got stacked all over.  Can't complain about cold heading into January though.  Lol but last time we had a cold January spell I managed to start my huge compost pile on fire during that wind storm and the flames must be been 30ft tall. I was legit afraid I'd burn the neighborhood down.  Of course the hoses were frozen so all I had was my tiny kitchen fire extinguisher which quickly ran out.  I used buckets of water and rakes after that....luckily got it under control.  Next day I went on Amazon and bought three large fire extinguishers just in case....

[WxUSAF]

It’shappening.gif

 

[North Balti Zen]

Even for Tasslemeyer…just. No.

[Baltimorewx]

12 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

Even for Tasslemeyer…just. No.

Social media has ruined these guys. I was a big fan of his, and to a degree Tony Pann as well. Now they (especially Pann) just seem to post outlandish stuff about snow for attention 

[Yeoman]

47 minutes ago, IronTy said:

In fairness to JB he was referring verbatim to the GEFS output, not what he thought was going to happen.  I give JB a lot of shit (though I've been a paying member for years) but I can't think of anybody in the business who can pull historical analogs out of their ass better than him.  

Worlds best ass puller.. keep the $$ coming and he'll personally hand pick only those that keep you coming back.

[Eskimo Joe]

8 minutes ago, Baltimorewx said:

Social media has ruined these guys. I was a big fan of his, and to a degree Tony Pann as well. Now they (especially Pann) just seem to post outlandish stuff about snow for attention 

He, Pann, and Bass are just going off the deep end.

[WinterWxLuvr]

1 hour ago, Ji said:

we just need some precip. who cares about vodka

There it is folks. Nothing more true has ever been said.

[WinterWxLuvr]

34 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

It’shappening.gif

 

This is so bad there aren’t words for it.

[StormchaserChuck!]

Might be the strongest -PNA on record for December, 12z GFS ensembles have 2 separate reloads of +640dm and +600dm! Enjoy the pure extremes over weather for the next two weeks.. observe what a High pressure in the Central North Pacific Ocean is like here. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

1 minute ago, StormchaserChuck! said:

Might be the strongest -PNA on record for December, 12z GFS ensembles have 2 separate reloads of +640dm and +600dm! Enjoy the pure extremes over weather for the next two weeks.. observe what a High pressure in the Central North Pacific Ocean is like here. 

I’ll give credit. You called this well in advance

[StormchaserChuck!]

2 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

I’ll give credit. You called this well in advance

We are on a streak since the 15-16 Strong El Nino that looks like this compared to the rest (Winter PNA):

6years -170

-120

-115

-112

etc

[BristowWx]

10 minutes ago, StormchaserChuck! said:

Might be the strongest -PNA on record for December, 12z GFS ensembles have 2 separate reloads of +640dm and +600dm! Enjoy the pure extremes over weather for the next two weeks.. observe what a High pressure in the Central North Pacific Ocean is like here. 

Sounds like a big pot of ass stew

[Eskimo Joe]

9 minutes ago, StormchaserChuck! said:

Might be the strongest -PNA on record for December, 12z GFS ensembles have 2 separate reloads of +640dm and +600dm! Enjoy the pure extremes over weather for the next two weeks.. observe what a High pressure in the Central North Pacific Ocean is like here. 

Might be the kiss of death for us this winter. We're about to enter peak climo for cool temps and if the Pacific isn't going to cooperate, then it's probably best to just turn off the lights and hope for something better next year or move north.

[dallen7908]

51 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

Even for Tasslemeyer…just. No.

Crazy of him to event mention an "event" that would be 10-days away beginning on XMAS eve; an operational model has no skill 10-days out and ensembles are only useful for guidance as to whether or not there will be an east-coast event. 

But I couldn't resist: 5 of the 51 EPS members show snow on the 24th or 25th- with a maximum amount of ~1". 

[IUsedToHateCold]

3 hours ago, Stormfly said:

The Derecho didn't affect us at all.  We were on the northern fringe.  Which was fine by me!  Northern VA OTOH was a mess indeed.

Sandy also brought wind but we didn't lose power aside from some flickers.  Total number of outages in BGE territory similar to the Jan 26, 2011 "Carmageddon" event. (250K) Irene and Isabel seem to be the highest (outage) events with over 700K outages.

March 2018 was a very long event too.  Fortunately we just don't get widespread winds with full tree canopy.   Even so there is too much vegetation impingement in our area.

Winter 2010-2011 is my favorite analog for this one. It's a match in many different ways (sea ice, SST anomalies, IOD). So maybe another Jan 26, 2011 event to come in 2022? 

[StormchaserChuck!]

Top 20 -PNA December's since 1948, 2010 was +300dm, which beat 1955 +230dm for 2nd. 

2nd dataset

[StormchaserChuck!]

Furthermore, El Nino's that missed it, and had a -3SD> December -PNA vs ENSO state include 1957, 65, 72, 97, and the following February (Feb 2023 analog)fwiw -PNA next year maybe. I also mention this because the other 2 times 6th year after Strong El Nino, 7th year broke it(this shows not). ^(for ENSO analogs) subsurface ENSO is Kelvin Wave/warm-neutral now(El Nino slight analog, -PNA is 3-4SDsvsENSO right now: -PNA signal next Jan-Feb)

 

[CAPE]

2 hours ago, IronTy said:

In fairness to JB he was referring verbatim to the GEFS output, not what he thought was going to happen.  I give JB a lot of shit (though I've been a paying member for years) but I can't think of anybody in the business who can pull historical analogs out of their ass better than him.  

I was referring verbatim to the GEFS output. One of us is wrong, er engaging in nonsensical hyperbole.

[aldie 22]

1 hour ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

I’ll give credit. You called this well in advance

Now you've done it you unleashed the Chucken

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Might be the kiss of death for us this winter. We're about to enter peak climo for cool temps and if the Pacific isn't going to cooperate, then it's probably best to just turn off the lights and hope for something better next year or move north.

Relax. The north pac ridge isn’t ideal but it could be worse. I’d be way more pessimistic if it was a mid latitude ridge again like recent years. Then we’d have the conus blasted with pac puke again. 
 

We know the best we can realistically hope for is a decent winter giving the limitations of the pac base state.  Given the options (we know there will be a ridge somewhere in the pac this isn’t the type base state where we can get a huge trough there which would be ideal) this is as good as we can hope for. It’s not working now because we just had an AK vortex and a positive AO and NAO.  Would you rather that ridge in the pac retreat and the vortex pull back to Ak and we repeat early last year?  
 

Blocking has a lag. We go through this everytime a block is just setting in. Its not instant. But if the blocking has staying power eventually the cold will spread east under the block. History shows a -epo/-NAO in January/February is cold enough.  
 

Thibgs could fail. A epo/NAO pattern in a Nina can be frustratingly dry. And we always need luck. And maybe the blocking fades too fast. Dunno. But there are no signs of it yet. So wait until after Xmas at least before throwing in the towel on a pattern that’s still a week away from starting. 

[CAPE]

HH GFS with some NYE snow. Might happen. Only half a month away!

[psuhoffman]

@Eskimo Joe2002 started nothing like this.  The pac was opposite. We did have a good Atlantic but the pac ridge was south allowing North America to get flooded with warmth. When the Atlantic backed off it was game over. This isn’t progressing the same way. Of course there are multiple paths to a fail here.