February Medium/Long Range Discussion

[Bob Chill]

4 minutes ago, CAPE said:

I would characterize the interplay between the vortex near the Aleutians, the poleward extending EPO ridge, and the TPV lobe(s) collectively as a block. It seems to get kicked off by a cyclonic wave break out of the Aleutian vortex that pinches off the Pac ridge and amps it up into the EPO space, followed by a poleward anticyclonic wave break, which sends the TPV lobe south, and then it all becomes self sustained. Loading the h5 vorticity panel and hitting play is fun stuff. Turbulent flow on the largest scale.

Pretty interesting and completely unexpected for me. I had a hunch that the epo and or pna would visit at least one more time before season ends but I def did not see this setting up. Shades of FM 2014&15 but even those tpv intrusions didn't set up like this. Maybe one or 2. Can't remember. We did quite well timing stuff but we didn't have a prolonged stretch where the tpv parked like ens are showing now. Hope it's real man. Lol

[stormtracker]

45 minutes ago, RevWarReenactor said:

An endless train of precip getting shunted up here. One of them has to time right with the cold air; I think. I’d be far more excited if I was in upstate NY in this pattern. But I think we are at least in the game.

So is it the blinds, windows and doors closed, or still just the blinds?  Because your above statement kinda seems different. 
 

Please keep us posted on your excitement level.  Thanks. 

[stormtracker]

3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Pretty interesting and completely unexpected for me. I had a hunch that the epo and or pna would visit at least one more time before season ends but I def did not see this setting up. Shades of FM 2014&15 but even those tpv intrusions didn't set up like this. Maybe one or 2. Can't remember. We did quite well timing stuff but we didn't have a prolonged stretch where the tpv parked like ens are showing now. Hope it's real man. Lol

Dude, who cares what you think?  We are all breathlessly waiting for Chuck. You are too detailed and knowledgeable. We need cryptic and endless NCEP maps from 1993 and nonsense.   
 

chuck, you’re up.  

[stormtracker]

25 minutes ago, StormchaserChuck! said:

I don't think they are beautiful looks, High pressure in the Pacific is the only real thing. 

Ah. I missed this. Always clutch.  Thank you sir. 

[nj2va]

22 minutes ago, CAPE said:

I would characterize the interplay between the vortex near the Aleutians, the poleward extending EPO ridge, and the TPV lobe(s) collectively as a block. It seems to get kicked off by a cyclonic wave break out of the Aleutian vortex that pinches off the Pac ridge and amps it up into the EPO space, followed by a poleward anticyclonic wave break, which sends the TPV lobe south, and then it all becomes self sustained. Loading the h5 vorticity panel and hitting play is fun stuff. Turbulent flow on the largest scale.

I don't even care if what you're saying is actually right, but damn it sounds smart!  

[GramaxRefugee]

12 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Pretty interesting and completely unexpected for me. I had a hunch that the epo and or pna would visit at least one more time before season ends but I def did not see this setting up. Shades of FM 2014&15 but even those tpv intrusions didn't set up like this. Maybe one or 2. Can't remember. We did quite well timing stuff but we didn't have a prolonged stretch where the tpv parked like ens are showing now. Hope it's real man. Lol

Analog year of March 2014. (Insanely cold first week, I recall) At IAD, 2014 owns 9 cold temp records (if you count lo max), and 5 snowfall records, including snowiest month at 19.8" ...viz:

[clskinsfan]

I would prefer to see the PV drop a little further south for us. At least as far as snow chances go. But that cant be resolved this far out anyways. At least we are still going to be tracking threats into March. 

[stormtracker]

22 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

I would prefer to see the PV drop a little further south for us. At least as far as snow chances go. But that cant be resolved this far out anyways. At least we are still going to be tracking threats into March. 

I’m just glad to see cold relatively nearby with precip on the map in the medium range. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

22 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

I would prefer to see the PV drop a little further south for us. At least as far as snow chances go. But that cant be resolved this far out anyways. At least we are still going to be tracking threats into March. 

Careful … unless you wanna watch another one south of us

[mattie g]

1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

Yes, our Atlantic "blocking" in an anti-atlantic blocking regime is the PV itself. I posted about this sometime last week if you remember. The tpv drops into the US often so that's not rare. But it usually drops south then pulls north. Without a -nao or -ao, the only thing that can "block" the tpv from a quick pull north is ridge extensions from either the EPO region or Scandinavia. Looks like both are showing up now. This forces the tpv track more laterally and ultimately squishes heights in the 50/50 general area. That's blocking regardless of what any numerical index says. In the panel below, the tpv itself is the block and it could end up being a good one. Lots of time to kill tho...

 

 

Eta: blocking for our purposes is anything and everything that keeps a storm from tracking northward with ease. In the panel above, any storm that tracks north into that confluence is going to get stopped in its tracks. That's a legit upper level wall and if it's real, it will become quite distracting. Lol

Cool stuff.

That EPO ridge is kind of sneaking into the western NAO domain, as well, and the Scandinavian Ridge and EPO ridge are threatening to pinch off the TPV altogether. It's certainly a +NAO on the matrix, but that's just semantics because it absolutely works for us.

[WinterWxLuvr]

Just now, stormtracker said:

I’m just glad to see cold relatively nearby with precip on the map in the medium range. 

You will always be blamed for the Feb warmup of 2022. Who goes to Mexico during winter? C’mon man

[stormtracker]

30 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

You will always be blamed for the Feb warmup of 2022. Who goes to Mexico during winter? C’mon man

Look, I normally have a rule to never travel in the winter.  But I was betting this winter would be shit.  I barely won the bet, but it was close enough where I'll never travel in winter again.

[Bob Chill]

38 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Cool stuff.

That EPO ridge is kind of sneaking into the western NAO domain, as well, and the Scandinavian Ridge and EPO ridge are threatening to pinch off the TPV altogether. It's certainly a +NAO on the matrix, but that's just semantics because it absolutely works for us.

Exactly man. I stopped watching numerical indices. I'll check them now and again but the real story is always embedded in h5 plots and not nao/ao/pna/epo numbers. We can have a completely useless -2sd nao block. We just had it last year. Lol. Take it any way you can get it here and we're in the game for now. 

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

Said it once... I'll say it again... I really really like what I'm seeing. It's a really convoluted way to get blocking but we'll take it any way we can get it. The types of storms that happen with compressed/confluent flow don't need a sub 1000mb slp for a big hit. It goes back to what I talked about when the fake bowl pattern was showing. Get the hose from the W-SW pointed at your yard on the cold side of the boundary and a foot+ is possible without a big synoptic event. We could use an "easy" one lol. 

 

2 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

The -EPO ridge advertised may be the strongest of the winter? And it’s not fantasyland. The PAC jet extension that starts kicking it off begins in 48-72hrs. The Atlantic side is weirder, but a properly placed TPV can do good things for us. I think that’s the bigger wild card, however.

Does look like a very juicy pattern coming up. My instinct is that slop/mix storms are heavily favored over pure snow given both the pattern and the calendar. But even a front end snow transitioning to mix/rain could be a big hit given the moisture plume and cold air source. 

Just to add to these posts... we've said over and over how 2014 and 2015 were anomalous wrt snowfall in a purely pacific driven regime...and the reason was oddities that worked out in our favor with the positioning of the TPV over N. America.  In 2014 it was often displaced to our NW in a way that lined up progressive waves to come at us from the southwest over and over and over again.  In 2015, even more oddly, it got displaced to our northeast in a way that mimicked -NAO blocking in terms of creating confluence to our north from the compressed flow under the TPV there.  Same outcome from a completely opposite feature!  

We've seen this winter that just having the pacific aligned without any help elsewhere can be extremely frustrating.  It's cold, it does usually snow some...but it feels underwhelming considering all the cold and amount of tracking.   What interests me with this coming pattern is the possibility that we get that weirdly displaced TPV feature into southeast Canada.  But as WxUSAF said that is still a bit of a wildcard, but key to getting a favorable storm track this go around.  It doesn't shock me the pacific is reloading into the same basic pattern since that is clearly this winter's base state....go figure we needed a la nina to break the la nina pac base state LOL!  But if we do in fact get a displaced TPV to our north this next pattern recycle offers more potential than the last few.  

[WinterWxLuvr]

26 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

 

Just to add to these posts... we've said over and over how 2014 and 2015 were anomalous wrt snowfall in a purely pacific driven regime...and the reason was oddities that worked out in our favor with the positioning of the TPV over N. America.  In 2014 it was often displaced to our NW in a way that lined up progressive waves to come at us from the southwest over and over and over again.  In 2015, even more oddly, it got displaced to our northeast in a way that mimicked -NAO blocking in terms of creating confluence to our north from the compressed flow under the TPV there.  Same outcome from a completely opposite feature!  

We've seen this winter that just having the pacific aligned without any help elsewhere can be extremely frustrating.  It's cold, it does usually snow some...but it feels underwhelming considering all the cold and amount of tracking.   What interests me with this coming pattern is the possibility that we get that weirdly displaced TPV feature into southeast Canada.  But as WxUSAF said that is still a bit of a wildcard, but key to getting a favorable storm track this go around.  It doesn't shock me the pacific is reloading into the same basic pattern since that is clearly this winter's base state....go figure we needed a la nina to break the la nina pac base state LOL!  But if we do in fact get a displaced TPV to our north this next pattern recycle offers more potential than the last few.  

I wanted to jump on this one with a thought that I have that it’s much easier to get larger precip events at this time of year than it was 6 weeks ago. I just wanted to see if you agreed with that assessment. All of the talk is about the cold and granted we need that, but unless we are gonna get appreciable precip I’m not interested in cold at this stage.

[RevWarReenactor]

2 hours ago, stormtracker said:

So is it the blinds, windows and doors closed, or still just the blinds?  Because your above statement kinda seems different. 
 

Please keep us posted on your excitement level.  Thanks. 

You are being sarcastic… but I’ll answer anyway. Scares me when psu says we are reverting to Jan pattern; but instead it’s March. We didn’t do well. 
 

But I will chase for sure. Prob next weekend. So I’m excited. My last chase had to be canceled last minute. My cat got sick. Got money back on hotel room. Then paid for vet appointment. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

6 minutes ago, RevWarReenactor said:

You are being sarcastic… but I’ll answer anyway. Scares me when psu says we are reverting to Jan pattern; but instead it’s March. We didn’t do well. 
 

But I will chase for sure. Prob next weekend. So I’m excited. My last chase had to be canceled last minute. My cat got sick. Got money back on hotel room. Then paid for vet appointment. 

I actually can see being skittish on “the January pattern” but I think the difference here is that we are less likely to be as dry as we were then. When PSU says Jan pattern I think he is referring to the Pacific and not making a statement on specific storm types or tracks.

[psuhoffman]

29 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

I wanted to jump on this one with a thought that I have that it’s much easier to get larger precip events at this time of year than it was 6 weeks ago. I just wanted to see if you agreed with that assessment. All of the talk is about the cold and granted we need that, but unless we are gonna get appreciable precip I’m not interested in cold at this stage.

I definitely think the kind of progressive boundary waves we sometimes need in a non blocking pattern can be more juiced due to enhanced baroclinicity in March.  At the same time, these boundary waves can also end up further north without blocking so its a double edge sword.  But in general yes I do think there is an elevated risk for anomalous events in March compared to mid winter.  That said...in recent years getting significant precip events along the boundary hasn't been a big issue.  Even this year...its not like there were no big precip events during the cold period, they just didn't hit us.  The one storm cut inland another missed us to the east, and another hit to our north.  But all 3 were very significant precip producers.  

[WinterWxLuvr]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I definitely think the kind of progressive boundary waves we sometimes need in a non blocking pattern can be more juiced due to enhanced baroclinicity in March.  At the same time, these boundary waves can also end up further north without blocking so its a double edge sword.  But in general yes I do think there is an elevated risk for anomalous events in March compared to mid winter.  That said...in recent years getting significant precip events along the boundary hasn't been a big issue.  Even this year...its not like there were no big precip events during the cold period, they just didn't hit us.  The one storm cut inland another missed us to the east, and another hit to our north.  But all 3 were very significant precip producers.  

I would agree but those events had a narrow area of elevated precip. When I said larger I actually meant more geographic. 

[CAPE]

At this juncture I am not rooting for or wasting energy tracking ice/sleet/slop-to-rain events. Non starter. I am only interested in mostly or all snow events, in any form. And yes they can occur in a pattern such as the one being advertised in early March, even southward into NC. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

6 minutes ago, CAPE said:

At this juncture I am not rooting for or wasting energy tracking ice/sleet/slop-to-rain events. Non starter. I am only interested in mostly or all snow events, in any form. And yes they can occur in a pattern such as the one being advertised in early March, even southward into NC. 

I’m ok with the snow to sleet to freezing rain to slot. I like those, but I’m not interested in tracking anything under 1/2” of precip. I’m done with those.

[WEATHER53]

Very slowly but surely winter is becoming JFM more than DJF.

[Weather Will]

WB 12Z GEFS mean unfortunately looks familiar….good news is we have over a week for improvements.

[Weather Will]

WB 12Z GEFS…looking at the individual members actually is good.  Several hits to our south.  So cold air should make it to our latitude….storm tracks TBD.

[TSG]

1 hour ago, WEATHER53 said:

Very slowly but surely winter is becoming JFM more than DJF.

I do agree things seem to be shifting a bit if looking at the last 5-10 years, but winter in the Mid-Atlantic has always been much better predicted by astronomical winter (Dec 21 - Mar 20) than meteorological winter (Dec 1 - Feb 28). 

[Fozz]

1 minute ago, TSG said:

I do agree things seem to be shifting a bit if looking at the last 5-10 years, but winter in the Mid-Atlantic has always been much better predicted by astronomical winter (Dec 21 - Mar 20) than meteorological winter (Dec 1 - Feb 28). 

The 00s were an aberration IMO. That decade had a lot of early December storms, especially Dec 5th. I almost got used to it for some time.

[SnowenOutThere]

Long range CMC is interesting and quite possibly drunk 

[Maestrobjwa]

50 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Long range CMC is interesting and quite possibly drunk 

Me thinks it drinketh too much...probably too much vodka, lol

[Bob Chill]

4 hours ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

I actually can see being skittish on “the January pattern” but I think the difference here is that we are less likely to be as dry as we were then. When PSU says Jan pattern I think he is referring to the Pacific and not making a statement on specific storm types or tracks.

It hasn't been dry in my yard. Over 5" of precip in Jan alone. And with avg highs pushing 50 shortly, cold is exceptionally important versus Jan. We go back and forth on this a lot and it's fun but let's be honest here, we need both and considering 80-90%+ of our winter precip is rain year after year, if it ain't cold we ain't snowing. Maybe in the mountains by you but not for 95% of our sub. 

[Bob Chill]

1 hour ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Long range CMC is interesting and quite possibly drunk 

Ignore cmc temps. GEPS as well. Always way cold in mid/long range. Don't know why but if the cmc is the only model showing cold enough to snow, your shovel will gather dust.