January 2023 Obs/Discussion

[ORH_wxman]

5 minutes ago, Whineminster said:

I can't remember once in my 10 years on here where folks have said the pac looks good

You must have been under a rock in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 minutes ago, Whineminster said:

I can't remember once in my 10 years on here where folks have said the pac looks good

Feb 2015?

[ORH_wxman]

39 minutes ago, Heisy said:

Actually saw some pretty large scale changes on 12z OP CMC. It gets a TPV piece to drop SE with energy left over near Texas. Unfortunately the fast flow doesn’t let anything develop from it.

Fishing for anything boys




.

Same general mechanism that produces the snow/ice on the GFS for 1/6. GEM actually presses the TPV lobe a little too much. 

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Feb 2015?

Dec 2017/early Jan 2018 was mostly PAC-driven too. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

34 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

The danger is wearing rose colored glasses is that one gets blinded and married to “rosy” ideas and won’t jump off the horse 

I've been expecting pretty normal snowfall since November....when many expected the epic December, and I still do now....while the bipolar pendulum swings towards "it will never snow again".

[RedSky]

10 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

this is kinda of cool looking...  having the Pacific jet align from Tokyo to San Francisco with pretty much 0 deviation from a straight line.  heh

http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/data/gfs/12/north-pac/500_vort_ht/gfs_north-pac_156_500_vort_ht.gif

That's concerning better post advisory alert for Godzilla crashing the Golden Gate bridge in the coming days

 

[WinterWolf]

5 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

You must have been under a rock in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. 

Hes drinking wine as his name suggests. 

[brooklynwx99]

13 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

this is kinda of cool looking...  having the Pacific jet align from Tokyo to San Francisco with pretty much 0 deviation from a straight line.  heh

http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/data/gfs/12/north-pac/500_vort_ht/gfs_north-pac_156_500_vort_ht.gif

this is why I don't think this type of bad pattern is sustainable... we're basically getting super Nino'd in a moderate -ENSO. that jet is going to retract and we're going to get a nice +PNA/-EPO when it does

[WinterWolf]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I've been expecting pretty normal snowfall since November....when many expected the epic December, and I still do now....while the bipolar pendulum swings towards "it will never snow again".

You just put his mind at ease with that post…that’s what he was looking for.  I think a normal snowfall season is a good bet for most too. 

[WxWatcher007]

40 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

You can always find some guidance that sucks.....as I said, the GFS has done better with the Pacific this year. I'm not going to beat my head against a wall...like I said yesterday, the reverse psych gestapo that believes that it will never snow again is out in full force and there will be no convincing them otherwise until it does.

 

37 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

And the it’s always snowy contingent will not be convinced otherwise until it doesn’t 

 

I was and will always be disgusted with what happened in December, but I’m a little less disgusted than I was a week ago.

I thought I had a low bar with expecting an advisory and warning event and we never got close. On the other hand, there was a Parthenon storm for the Lakes/very high end storm for much of the continental US. We got unlucky in a tremendous longwave pattern, but saw high end cold around Christmas. That kind of cold and that kind of storm are hard to replicate.

Subjectively for me, I’m not sure winter will be redeemed in a meaningful way for me, especially if we’re struggling another year to reach climo.

Objectively however, there’s still peak climo coming up and the pattern looks decent enough. Past performance doesn’t guarantee the same result in the future. 

Yes, I’d like snow imby and yes I think it’ll snow again. I don’t do the mental gymnastics because I think generally I have good perspective on this stuff. 

I just don’t care what happens at this point. There’s no bar. It’s whatever.

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

this is why I don't think this type of bad pattern is sustainable... we're basically getting super Nino'd in a moderate -ENSO. that jet is going to retract and we're going to get a nice +PNA/-EPO when it does

Bingo....the whole "jet retraction" concept eludes me, but I am confident that the Pacific will be good in January. If that is what delivers, then sign me up.

Care to explain the jet retraction stuff?

[qg_omega]

11 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

this is why I don't think this type of bad pattern is sustainable... we're basically getting super Nino'd in a moderate -ENSO. that jet is going to retract and we're going to get a nice +PNA/-EPO when it does

It’s very stable and absolutely no reason to revert to +PNA/-EPO with the water temperate anomalies in the northern pacific

[SnoSki14]

1 minute ago, qg_omega said:

It’s very stable and absolutely no reason to revert to +PNA/-EPO with the water temperate anomalies in the northern pacific

Thank you for your insights 

[40/70 Benchmark]

4 minutes ago, qg_omega said:

It’s very stable and absolutely no reason to revert to +PNA/-EPO with the water temperate anomalies in the northern pacific

The pattern will not be held in place by SST anomalies....they can help to sustain when everything else is favorable.

[brooklynwx99]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Bingo....the whole "jet retraction" concept eludes me, but I am confident that the Pacific will be good in January. If that is what delivers, then sign me up.

Care to explain the jet retraction stuff?

we're going to see a -EAMT over the next week or so, which would help with a Pacific jet retraction for sure. a strong +EAMT part of what forced the insane -EPO event last week

also, it just doesn't really make sense to me. usually, a shit pattern in a -ENSO state is usually from a flat Aleutian ridge that leads to a strong -PNA. even if the ridge is poleward, you're prone to cutters without blocking. this is the type of thing I'm talking about, which I'm sure you're familiar with

so, overall, these type of insane jet extensions are usually due to a very strong +ENSO event, which we are certainly not in. I'm not worried about this sticking around for a particularly long time. the forcing mechanism for it is weaning 

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

The pattern will not be held on place by SST anomalies....they can help to sustain when everything else is favorable.

He just makes shit up. Don’t treat his posts as anything other than unserious clutter. 

[brooklynwx99]

@40/70 Benchmark also, for those moderate to strong -ENSO events I made the composite for, here is the mean Pacific jet... it's very retracted and leads to the strong Aleutian ridge

compare this to moderate to strong +ENSO events and to what we're going to be seeing:

so, yeah. this isn't forced by ENSO, it was forced by an anomalous extratropical mechanism that's going to reverse. not really worried about this stretch right now. we're basically getting super Nino'd to death and it isn't going to last IMO

[Baroclinic Zone]

Was gonna say, with this being a more Basin wide Nina, models have been struggling with the PAC jet.

Agree we need that jet to retract westward thus promoting more ridging into our cold source region.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Yea, same conclusion as me, only different angle to get there.

Thanks.

[Typhoon Tip]

35 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

@40/70 Benchmark also, for those moderate to strong -ENSO events I made the composite for, here is the mean Pacific jet... it's very retracted and leads to the strong Aleutian ridge

compare this to moderate to strong +ENSO events and to what we're going to be seeing:

so, yeah. this isn't forced by ENSO, it was forced by an anomalous extratropical mechanism that's going to reverse. not really worried about this stretch right now. we're basically getting super Nino'd to death and it isn't going to last IMO

Very fortunate for California ....  They're likely to get a couple decade foot of snow in the Sierra, with substantive rain fall below in several pulses over the next week.  It won't be enough to correct the "Millennial drought" - I mean I'm calling it that.   

The hydrology out there must be an interesting science.  About 10 years ago there was a better wet season, and a lot of reservoirs recovered quite a bit... it shorter order.  But that needs to happen in more than once per decade, or does the sustainable habitability for 40 million population become an issue, or remain viable by mid century.   Wondering thought ...

[STILL N OF PIKE]

16 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Very fortunate for California ....  They're likely to get a couple decade foot of snow in the Sierra,

Hmmm

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

8 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

Hmmm

Packing the car tonight?

[George001]

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

You must have been under a rock in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. 

Yeah the NAO was raging positive during the 2014-2015 winter. There is a reason why we got 100+ inches of snow with 4 monster blizzards that winter, and it wasn’t the atlantic.

[STILL N OF PIKE]

3 minutes ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

Packing the car tonight?

I’d look into it , if I could witness like 10 feet in 4-5 days and not be in avalanche danger . I’m content waiting a bit thou , I’m sure some places near mammoth will see 15-20 feet over 2 weeks if modeling is right (including the last storm that dropped 26” yesterday am at base elev. with 3.5 liquid .

[weathafella]

10 minutes ago, George001 said:

Yeah the NAO was raging positive during the 2014-2015 winter. There is a reason why we got 100+ inches of snow with 4 monster blizzards that winter, and it wasn’t the atlantic.

This is a patently false statement.  Raging positive?   Not sure if there’s any truth in that statement.  The storms were assisted by transient well timed North Atlantic blocking.

[George001]

5 minutes ago, weathafella said:

This is a patently false statement.  Raging positive?   Not sure if there’s any truth in that statement.  The storms were assisted by transient well timed North Atlantic blocking.

That’s true for Jan 2015, we had some blocking at the end of the month which helped with the blizzard. Wasn’t Feb 2015 a raging positive NAO though? I remember seeing a lot of blue over Greenland during Feb 2015, but that blue extended down into the eastern half of the US. 

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, weathafella said:

This is a patently false statement.  Raging positive?   Not sure if there’s any truth in that statement.  The storms were assisted by transient well timed North Atlantic blocking.

I don’t think I’d call it “patently false”. We had a vortex over the Davis Strait and Baffin regions. Maybe for the Feb 2nd event there was some ridging poking up toward Greeland that helped redevelop that SWFE into a coastal
 

The crazy success of that 3 week period was due to a nearly “standing wave” ideal PNA ridge out west…and the one time it broke down a bit in the Feb 7-11 window, we had well-timed Scooter streak to keep us north of the boundary and we got a 3 day overrunning event that dumped 2 feet in BOS

 

 

 

[weathafella]

3 minutes ago, George001 said:

That’s true for Jan 2015, we had some blocking at the end of the month which helped with the blizzard. Wasn’t Feb 2015 a raging positive NAO though? I remember seeing a lot of blue over Greenland during Feb 2015, but that blue extended down into the eastern half of the US. 

 

Just now, ORH_wxman said:

I don’t think I’d call it “patently false”. We had a vortex over the Davis Strait and Baffin regions. Maybe for the Feb 2nd event there was some ridging poking up toward Greeland that helped redevelop that SWFE into a coastal
 

The crazy success of that 3 week period was due to a nearly “standing wave” ideal PNA ridge out west…and the one time it broke down a bit in the Feb 7-11 window, we had well-timed Scooter streak to keep us north of the boundary and we got a 3 day overrunning event that dumped 2 feet in BOS

 

 

 

 

Just now, ORH_wxman said:

I don’t think I’d call it “patently false”. We had a vortex over the Davis Strait and Baffin regions. Maybe for the Feb 2nd event there was some ridging poking up toward Greeland that helped redevelop that SWFE into a coastal
 

The crazy success of that 3 week period was due to a nearly “standing wave” ideal PNA ridge out west…and the one time it broke down a bit in the Feb 7-11 window, we had well-timed Scooter streak to keep us north of the boundary and we got a 3 day overrunning event that dumped 2 feet in BOS

 

 

 

Well my point was the use of the word raging.  NAO indices:

 

January 2015:  +1..79

February 2015:  +1.32

 

But the point I was trying to make was when we needed the Atlantic enabled transient blocks which won't be seen in smoothed over graphics for each storm.  

[Damage In Tolland]

 

[Torch Tiger]

wow