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December 2021 Obs/Disco...Dreaming of a White-Weenie Xmas


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3 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

I thought he canceled winter 

 

This is just another problem right here. There is just a constant barrage of social media posts that are nothing more than "what if's" and all it does is lead to immense hype and hope. What drives me absolutely nuts is the posts that state, "This is unlikely to happen but if it did...." WHY THE **** EVEN POST IT THEN?  There is absolutely zero benefit or reason to post it...well with the exception of clicking profiles, likes, and new followers. 

How many times do we continue to see signals of any extreme in the long-range back off? Literally happens every single time. These freaking posts of one day "cancelling winter" to "winter is back" on a daily basis is nothing but an emotionally draining, giving people wrong idea, sense of crap. 

Then there always has to be a justification as to "why it's possible". Anyone can throw up a map of anything...anything and come up with some outlandish reason as to why some solution is possible. Could post a SLP map of the low pressure going through the Pains Wednesday which is going to be quite intense and say, "Ohhh if this system had more moisture there would be a major blizzard NW of the low" or "if moisture return was much stronger in the warm sector there would be a severe outbreak". "If that low tracked 700 miles east we would get snow". You don't post that what if crap b/c it's BULLSHIT 

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6 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Congrats to those stuck on the roads for hrs, 14 years ago. 

That was a great SWFE. Came in like a wall (so did 12/16/07 too 3 days later). I remmeber I was actually out running a couple errands and got back home just in time...it was prob around 11-1130am or so. Like a few weenie flakes were falling right as I pulled back in the driveway and then about 5 minutes later I looked back outside and it was S/S+....just ripping.

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4 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

This is just another problem right here. There is just a constant barrage of social media posts that are nothing more than "what if's" and all it does is lead to immense hype and hope. What drives me absolutely nuts is the posts that state, "This is unlikely to happen but if it did...." WHY THE **** EVEN POST IT THEN?  There is absolutely zero benefit or reason to post it...well with the exception of clicking profiles, likes, and new followers. 

How many times do we continue to see signals of any extreme in the long-range back off? Literally happens every single time. These freaking posts of one day "cancelling winter" to "winter is back" on a daily basis is nothing but an emotionally draining, giving people wrong idea, sense of crap. 

Then there always has to be a justification as to "why it's possible". Anyone can throw up a map of anything...anything and come up with some outlandish reason as to why some solution is possible. Could post a SLP map of the low pressure going through the Pains Wednesday which is going to be quite intense and say, "Ohhh if this system had more moisture there would be a major blizzard NW of the low" or "if moisture return was much stronger in the warm sector there would be a severe outbreak". "If that low tracked 700 miles east we would get snow". You don't post that what if crap b/c it's BULLSHIT 

Good post

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On 12/7/2021 at 10:04 AM, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah if we assume the model is handling the polar domains fairly well, I'm figuring we end up decently colder than it shows at least up in the northern latitudes. It's really hard to have a ridge in AK and some ridging in greenland and end up torching....I'm not even sure how that happens at all outside of a temporary cutter or something.

The issue here is the SE ridge and all the velocity it's creating as the flow tries to bump up against it and gets compressed. We've seen it so many times, it's endemic in this fast-flow environment, especially in a Nina. It can't dig enough.

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1 minute ago, MJO812 said:

Good post

It really is maddening. I don't want this to be mistaken as me hating winter or snow b/c I love snow...absolutely love it (can't stand the cold but if it will snow I'll take it). But there is just something about winter that is just maddening...people go crazy trying to find any justification possible that the "pattern is changing and we're going to get slammed". The biggest problem overall IMO is too many correlate to a specific weather pattern to a particular result...and this doesn't just imply to winter weather it refers to any weather event...tropical, severe, etc. 

You can see why though...from a research prospective + how our brains work it's very easy to correlate a pattern to an output. It's very easy to create 500mb patterns through re-analysis and there are many tools to do that. So boom you throw in height composites for 5 different snow storms (or tropical or severe) find a common pattern and boom...you have a "correlation". We also remember the times a pattern produces vs. the time it doesn't...and again it's much easier to do analysis on a pattern that produced than didn't produce b/c you can find the date of a particular event and go from there.

But at the end of the day having a "favorable pattern" is an incredibly small piece to the puzzle and I think gets way more weight than it really should be getting. Yes, having a favorable pattern is just the start but there's a ton else that needs to happen within that pattern. So we have certain connections between pattern and output...for example, major severe weather outbreaks in the Plains have occurred with a trough digging through the West with a ridge in the East...but does every trough digging through the West produce severe weather...no. Does every trough in the East bring snow or an active pattern...no. Does every -NAO bring snow or an active pattern...no. 

Weather forecasting is just getting lazy and lazy b/c it is so easy to just find a 500mb height anomaly map, throw the picture up on social media and then type up some gibberish explaining the "what if" and calling it a day. 

I  bet if one were to do extensive research...and I mean extensive the result would be that "favorable" patterns probably don't produce to the degree that one would think they do (and this again goes to all type of weather).

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21 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

This is just another problem right here. There is just a constant barrage of social media posts that are nothing more than "what if's" and all it does is lead to immense hype and hope. What drives me absolutely nuts is the posts that state, "This is unlikely to happen but if it did...." WHY THE **** EVEN POST IT THEN?  There is absolutely zero benefit or reason to post it...well with the exception of clicking profiles, likes, and new followers. 

How many times do we continue to see signals of any extreme in the long-range back off? Literally happens every single time. These freaking posts of one day "cancelling winter" to "winter is back" on a daily basis is nothing but an emotionally draining, giving people wrong idea, sense of crap. 

Then there always has to be a justification as to "why it's possible". Anyone can throw up a map of anything...anything and come up with some outlandish reason as to why some solution is possible. Could post a SLP map of the low pressure going through the Pains Wednesday which is going to be quite intense and say, "Ohhh if this system had more moisture there would be a major blizzard NW of the low" or "if moisture return was much stronger in the warm sector there would be a severe outbreak". "If that low tracked 700 miles east we would get snow". You don't post that what if crap b/c it's BULLSHIT 

A finalist for post of the year award!!!

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7 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

It really is maddening. I don't want this to be mistaken as me hating winter or snow b/c I love snow...absolutely love it (can't stand the cold but if it will snow I'll take it). But there is just something about winter that is just maddening...people go crazy trying to find any justification possible that the "pattern is changing and we're going to get slammed". The biggest problem overall IMO is too many correlate to a specific weather pattern to a particular result...and this doesn't just imply to winter weather it refers to any weather event...tropical, severe, etc. 

You can see why though...from a research prospective + how our brains work it's very easy to correlate a pattern to an output. It's very easy to create 500mb patterns through re-analysis and there are many tools to do that. So boom you throw in height composites for 5 different snow storms (or tropical or severe) find a common pattern and boom...you have a "correlation". We also remember the times a pattern produces vs. the time it doesn't...and again it's much easier to do analysis on a pattern that produced than didn't produce b/c you can find the date of a particular event and go from there.

But at the end of the day having a "favorable pattern" is an incredibly small piece to the puzzle and I think gets way more weight than it really should be getting. Yes, having a favorable pattern is just the start but there's a ton else that needs to happen within that pattern. So we have certain connections between pattern and output...for example, major severe weather outbreaks in the Plains have occurred with a trough digging through the West with a ridge in the East...but does every trough digging through the West produce severe weather...no. Does every trough in the East bring snow or an active pattern...no. Does every -NAO bring snow or an active pattern...no. 

Weather forecasting is just getting lazy and lazy b/c it is so easy to just find a 500mb height anomaly map, throw the picture up on social media and then type up some gibberish explaining the "what if" and calling it a day. 

I  bet if one were to do extensive research...and I mean extensive the result would be that "favorable" patterns probably don't produce to the degree that one would think they do (and this again goes to all type of weather).

..and another finalist for post of the year award!!!

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25 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

This is just another problem right here. There is just a constant barrage of social media posts that are nothing more than "what if's" and all it does is lead to immense hype and hope. What drives me absolutely nuts is the posts that state, "This is unlikely to happen but if it did...." WHY THE **** EVEN POST IT THEN?  There is absolutely zero benefit or reason to post it...well with the exception of clicking profiles, likes, and new followers. 

How many times do we continue to see signals of any extreme in the long-range back off? Literally happens every single time. These freaking posts of one day "cancelling winter" to "winter is back" on a daily basis is nothing but an emotionally draining, giving people wrong idea, sense of crap. 

Then there always has to be a justification as to "why it's possible". Anyone can throw up a map of anything...anything and come up with some outlandish reason as to why some solution is possible. Could post a SLP map of the low pressure going through the Pains Wednesday which is going to be quite intense and say, "Ohhh if this system had more moisture there would be a major blizzard NW of the low" or "if moisture return was much stronger in the warm sector there would be a severe outbreak". "If that low tracked 700 miles east we would get snow". You don't post that what if crap b/c it's BULLSHIT 


I wish I could thank this post many times over.  What a great post and it's all true!!  Sadly, weather posts on Twitter and Facebook are such that, as you said, there's only a model map with no context.  That gets shared a shit ton of times and thus it becomes a "forecast" that in all likelihood never verifies.  What happens in the end is that the "public" ends up coming away thinking that it's another bust of a forecast and the meteorologist is wrong again - even though you and I and many others NEVER forecasted that to happen.  

Sometimes, I feel like the grumpy old man when I say to myself, It was better when all we had were difax printouts once or twice a day.  You actually had to forecast the weather and not just regurgitate a really pretty model map.  

Again, great post!!  

 

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33 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That was a great SWFE. Came in like a wall (so did 12/16/07 too 3 days later). I remmeber I was actually out running a couple errands and got back home just in time...it was prob around 11-1130am or so. Like a few weenie flakes were falling right as I pulled back in the driveway and then about 5 minutes later I looked back outside and it was S/S+....just ripping.

4 hours from UML to my mom's in west Wilmington.

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35 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That was a great SWFE. Came in like a wall (so did 12/16/07 too 3 days later). I remmeber I was actually out running a couple errands and got back home just in time...it was prob around 11-1130am or so. Like a few weenie flakes were falling right as I pulled back in the driveway and then about 5 minutes later I looked back outside and it was S/S+....just ripping.

It was. 10" of baking powder too.

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14 minutes ago, crownweather said:


I wish I could thank this post many times over.  What a great post and it's all true!!  Sadly, weather posts on Twitter and Facebook are such that, as you said, there's only a model map with no context.  That gets shared a shit ton of times and thus it becomes a "forecast" that in all likelihood never verifies.  What happens in the end is that the "public" ends up coming away thinking that it's another bust of a forecast and the meteorologist is wrong again - even though you and I and many others NEVER forecasted that to happen.  

Sometimes, I feel like the grumpy old man when I say to myself, It was better when all we had were difax printouts once or twice a day.  You actually had to forecast the weather and not just regurgitate a really pretty model map.  

Again, great post!!  

 

FAR too many TV METS do exactly that.  The majority of them do not make a forecast.  They just show model output/forecasts/future radar. 

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The 12z GFS is actually a great example to have right after the 06z GFS.....while the 06z GFS shows how things can go right, the 12z GFS shows how things go wrong. We're reliant on timing since we don't have true downstream blocking. That -NAO is still east-based so it's not going to provide much resistance for cutters....not until it retrogrades more into the central part of the domain which it might after Xmas....but prior to that, we are still at the mercy of timing.

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1 hour ago, weatherwiz said:

This is just another problem right here. There is just a constant barrage of social media posts that are nothing more than "what if's" and all it does is lead to immense hype and hope. What drives me absolutely nuts is the posts that state, "This is unlikely to happen but if it did...." WHY THE **** EVEN POST IT THEN?  There is absolutely zero benefit or reason to post it...well with the exception of clicking profiles, likes, and new followers. 

How many times do we continue to see signals of any extreme in the long-range back off? Literally happens every single time. These freaking posts of one day "cancelling winter" to "winter is back" on a daily basis is nothing but an emotionally draining, giving people wrong idea, sense of crap. 

Then there always has to be a justification as to "why it's possible". Anyone can throw up a map of anything...anything and come up with some outlandish reason as to why some solution is possible. Could post a SLP map of the low pressure going through the Pains Wednesday which is going to be quite intense and say, "Ohhh if this system had more moisture there would be a major blizzard NW of the low" or "if moisture return was much stronger in the warm sector there would be a severe outbreak". "If that low tracked 700 miles east we would get snow". You don't post that what if crap b/c it's BULLSHIT 

It's why you step away from SM.  My life is bliss not reading FB, Twitter, or other nonsense garbage.

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