January Mid/Long Range Disco 3: The great recovery or shut the blinds?

[Interstate]

How did we get 10 pages in this thread that was created yesterday in this junky environment? 

 

[nw baltimore wx]

Just now, Interstate said:

How did we get 10 pages in this thread that was created yesterday in this junky environment? 

 

Because it's all banter.

[Ralph Wiggum]

8 minutes ago, Blue Dream said:

March snow is worlds better than January rain, just saying.

Well said. 

[AtlanticWx]

17 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

I never understood the "saving winter" concept. Most snow weenies enjoy winter for the snow. So when it snows in March, isn't that still snow? If it snowed in Oct and none the rest of the winter did we "save winter" or did we enjoy the snow? I guess I just have a different mindset. I don't care for it stcking around, getting crusty, dirty, annoying, etc. Sure, a few days is cool, but like post marital sex, ya take it when you can get it even it only last briefly.

exactly this, we live in dc you genuinely cannot expect every event to be some crazy all snow event

[jayyy]

I've had snow the 2nd week of April that accumulated and stuck around for 36 hours. March is a winter month, period. Maybe not deep winter or peak climo but that's like saying late Nov or early Dec snow sucks. 

Winter quite literally ends during the 3rd week of march, so yeah, it’s a winter month. Living in the lower Hudson valley in NY most of my life, we had plenty of late march into early April snows. Some of which stuck around for multiple days. When I was in Buffalo for college, I experienced a 18”snowfall during the last week of APRIL and it was just as wonderful as December snow.

I guess it’s a mindset thing, but for me - snow is snow. Fuck rooting against it because of the date it falls on.


.

[Terpeast]

I’m on team snow-is-snow-no-matter-when.

Latest GEFS confirmed my can-kick/headfake suspicions. EPS not that bad but may be trending that way. 

If the GEFS is right and we go into a nina Feb, it’s lights out. 

March redemption perhaps, but wouldn’t hold my breath. 

[Maestrobjwa]

10 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

I’m on team snow-is-snow-no-matter-when.

Latest GEFS confirmed my can-kick/headfake suspicions. EPS not that bad but may be trending that way. 

If the GEFS is right and we go into a nina Feb, it’s lights out. 

March redemption perhaps, but wouldn’t hold my breath. 

Why do you say the 0z EPS is trending that way? Looked quite similar to 12z to my eyes.

[Ralph Wiggum]

7 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

I’m on team snow-is-snow-no-matter-when.

Latest GEFS confirmed my can-kick/headfake suspicions. EPS not that bad but may be trending that way. 

If the GEFS is right and we go into a nina Feb, it’s lights out. 

March redemption perhaps, but wouldn’t hold my breath. 

I'm not sure that's a shutout look tho on the latest GEFS. CPF entering central US, stj under a split flow, weakness in the 50/50, and a ser. Looks more like a gradient or boundary setup where it will depend how strong/dominant each feature becomes. Cold is able to be tapped, 50/50 may help at times, stj sending waves along the boundary. To the N of where that sets up can cash-in. Going to depend d alot on the strength and positioning of the SER. That will likely drive the pattern wrt where the boundary sets up shop. Alas, we are talking last day of an ens means forecast. But I don't think that's a shutout look verbatim. It's close to being pretty good tbh.

[Ralph Wiggum]

4 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Why do you say the 0z EPS is trending that way? Looked quite similar to 12z to my eyes.

I think he is honing in on the SER feature and the eps is seeing that a little bit more. Either way it doesn't look like a blinds-shutter. Could go either way, alot will depend on how much cAk can press and how much the SER pumps....will it flex? Will it be a flat ridge like we've seen recently? Who knows yet, something to  watch.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Meanwhile, the GEPS overwhelms us with cold/dry and nary any sign of a SER. So pick your poison. 

[Paleocene]

8 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Meanwhile, the GEPS overwhelms us with cold/dry and nary any sign of a SER. So pick your poison. 

At this point i'll take a cold dry period over 50s and april showers.

[psuhoffman]

@Maestrobjwa please skip this post, seriously just don't read it, its not going to be good for your health.  

Before I respond to some specific things I've seen lately let me first lay out the case that THIS IS NOT NORMAL...its not just a normal cyclical thing.  Remember it was back in 2019 to 2020 that I was on the other side of this.  Because the people going overboard then were doing it prematurely.  There was a LOT of precedence for a several year run of low snowfall following a generally good stretch from 2010 to 2016.  But I know the data, I know the historical cycles, and we are way way past that now. 

I am not going to get into what is causing it...we don't need to bring THAT in here.  Maybe its a confluence of several factors all coming together at once, and I do think there is SOME of that...and I will get to those things later in this post also but first simply the facts that indicate this is not just a typical funk as I continue to see some claim.  

I've gone into the trends and numbers at DCA but just a quick comp to previous bad cycles to show this is not normal.  Lets look at that 1970's period people like to bring up.  That was the previous next worst 6 and 7 year period other than this one.  But it wasnt AS BAD.  

At BWI for instance this period has been 3 inches worse.  That doesn't seem like much but lets look at some other factors also.  IMO the pattern was actually WORSE then...yet they had better results.   Compare H5, and keep in mind this is using current normals so you have to adjust for that.  But look at the longwave pattern mean.  The 1970's had a RAGING positive AO/NOA and extremely -PNA the entire time with pretty much no EPO help either.  This is the worst possible M5 mean you could ever make.  This is a classic awful look.  If we got this today it would be a total no hope shit the blinds pattern all the damn time.  

Look at the current period to compare.

  Yea this is bad...the Pac ridge is west of where we want it...but on the means it actually is extending into the west coast more...the PNA isn't as awful, this is way more EPO help...and the AO is actually averaging slightly negative over the period with a neutral NAO.  This is not good but its not as bad.  But the results are worse.  Imagine what our results would be in that 1970's look now.  Would it be 80 degrees in January with that look up top and that pacific now considering what we have had in results with a less hostile overall mean pattern.  

Additionally 6 and 7 years isn't really long enough to get a full scope of a period.  Lets use 18 years again since that is considered a minimum number to get a significant mean for most statistical analysis.  If we look at past 18 year periods...take the 1970's one for example.  It was bookended with a big snowfall period in the 60's and late 70's/early 80s.  That makes this current situation a lot more dire because by comparison the snowier period that preceeded our current funk did not stand up to the snowy period on the front end of that 1970s drought.  

To put it numerically...for BWI to end the current 18 year period starting in 2011 with similar results to that referenced previous "WORSE PERIOD EVER" BWI would need to average 32" of snow the next 5 years.  Think of that...just to equal the period everyone is citing as the "its been bad before" we need 32" every single winter the next 5 years...  Now because some of those years before and after that 1970's period were so huge a better comp for a longer period might be 1938 to 1955.  There was no 7 year stretch nearly this bad but there also was no 1960's and late 70s snowstravaganza.  But even that period BWI would need to average 27" the next 5 years to match.  Lets me honest that aint gonna happen, this 18 year period will be by far the worst in history at BWI.  Using BWI since many feel it is way more representative of more of the region...but the results are the same just slightly higher overall.  

DCA would need to average 34" the next 5 years to be better than that 1970's 18 year period, but to be more fair again, DCA's worse 18 year period EVERY was 1942-1959.  DC will need to average 25" over the next 5 years to equal that.  How many of you want to make a bet with me that DC averages 25" of snow over the next 5 seasons?  I'll take that bed.  My kids need to go to college...so please let me know if you want in on that action.  

So can we please stop with the "this is just cyclical and its happened before" nonsense.  No this has never happened before.  Its never been close to this bad before if you really dig into the data.  Even just looking at this year tells the story.  We have had several different patterns now...each time I look at the analogs.  They have never been great.  But none were shutouts.  We keep getting analogs to blah periods but ones that did produce SOME SNOW...not a total shutout.  Yet here we are.  

@Ralph Wiggum man you were all over the place...

Just last night you said

It's solar, but 97-98, Nina, WAR, but the MJO... ok lets address all these

Solar...ok but we have not had solar flares non stop for 7 years and there is a lag actually so I doubt the solar flare a few days ago is what is causing our problems right now.  Certainly wasnt the problem in December.  

97-98...fair enough but even if you want to say that's the comp to this...and to be fair it was the top analog for a while, THIS IS WAY WORSE.  Yea you can cherry pick one location like DCA where its the same 0 and 0.  But not far from DC there was snow.  My area had a 3.5" snowfall late December.  Several 2-3" snows during the early winter that year also.  I was up over 10" by now.  Here I sit at 0.  This is not specific to my location.  Places not far NW of DC had a bad but not awful amount of snow by now in 98.  I was in east central PA that year and we had already had several pretty decent snowstorms by now...the same location has had almost nothing this year.  This year is WORSE.  Both were bad...this is worse. 

Nina...this is kinda revisionist history.  2017 was a cold neutral following a super nino.  2018 was a legit Nina.  But 2019 was a nino and 2020 was a warm nuetral following a nino.  2021 to now was a nina but if we go back 5 years the mantra was...its the NAO, why can't we get NAO help anymore...when we had 2 seasons in a row with a positive NAO.  Remember that...for years all anyone blamed this on was the AO/NAO.  But then we started getting -NAO and -AO periods that did us no good and suddenly the new vogue thing to blame it all on was the MJO.  Then we got some MJO phase 8/1/2 that did us no good and now its just the really lazy "its the pac" crap.  We keep changing "what the problem is" but the one constant is a SE ridge that is more than our snow chances can survive regardless of whatever the du jour "problem" is at that moment.  We've had a pac ridge, pac trough, positive AO, negative AO, whatever...doesn't matter the SE ridge remains a problem the vast majority of the time.  

MJO???  first of all phase 3 becomes a colder phase as we head into Feb...but what about Phase 1 and 2.  You just skip right over the fact we are going to torch right through the cold phases then use the warm phase we head into 2 weeks from now as the excuse for the warmth?  Sorry that doesn't fly for me. 

WAR...  yea but the WAR is an effect not a cause.  That's like saying your headache is causing your brain cancer.   Maybe we should be discussing the AMO more.  

Now...I do think some of this might be a confluence of things all going wrong at the same time.  This combo of the PDO and AMO is a really bad one.  I am not denying that the general longwave pattern isn't really good.  But its not the worse we've ever seen...yet its been the worst results we've ever seen.  Past periods with this confluence of AMO/PDO weren't good but they weren't nearly this bad either.  But my 2 main points are no this is not normal, this is by far the worst period ever in recorded history for our area and there is way more going on here than all these singular excuses we keep cycling through to try to explain it away.  

[87storms]

27 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

I’m on team snow-is-snow-no-matter-when.

Latest GEFS confirmed my can-kick/headfake suspicions. EPS not that bad but may be trending that way. 

If the GEFS is right and we go into a nina Feb, it’s lights out. 

March redemption perhaps, but wouldn’t hold my breath. 

Late season snow is kinda nice as a lead-in to Spring.  I'd be cool with that.

[SnowenOutThere]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

@Maestrobjwa please skip this post, seriously just don't read it, its not going to be good for your health.  

Already know this post is gonna be an interesting and thoughtful read that goes into why/how our climo has changed instead of acting like it hasn't. 

[Chris78]

This should be a snowstorm in mid January lol.  Or atleast a thump to mix to dry slot. Nice high to the north. 

What can you do lol.

[Maestrobjwa]

11 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Already know this post is gonna be an interesting and thoughtful read that goes into why/how our climo has changed instead of acting like it hasn't. 

I don't think the "why" part is settled, tbh I mean like he said it could be some of THAT, but it sounds like others things are at play too. While it is indeed the worst period, do we give it longer to see if it's permanent?

But trust me, I'm in a better place than I was 5 days ago. I'm just starting to see through the facade that this means more in life that is perpetuated by overexposure to this forum. You get exposed to a perceived negative long enough you start to believe it objectively is and life is worse because of it.

[Ralph Wiggum]

2 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

This should be a snowstorm in mid January lol.  Or atleast a thump to mix to dry slot. Nice high to the north. 

What can you do lol.

It's not far off tbh. Low probability but still.

[Maestrobjwa]

2 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

It's not far off tbh. Low probability but still.

Overall a colder run than 6z

[87storms]

@psuhoffmanI don't have a degree in met, but I would imagine we probably want the Atlantic on our side.  It's going to be more difficult by default to get snow if we're fighting off warmer ocean temps.  Maybe that Nino will mix things up a bit and/or a busier Atlantic 'cane season.  Otherwise, the idea that we'll need better timing of systems/Arctic air makes sense.

[Ralph Wiggum]

GFS is really trying to pump a pna ridge after the 20th. Maybe transient, not sure, but the 22nd threat is digging in response. Might be a decent run.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Kind of disorganized with lots of moving pieces. Dont hate what I'm seeing next week anyway.

[SnowenOutThere]

1 minute ago, Maestrobjwa said:

I don't think the "why" part is settled, tbh I mean like he said it could be some of THAT, but it sounds like others things are at play too. But trust me, I'm in a better place than I was 5 days ago. I'm just starting to see through the facade that this means more in life that is perpetuated by overexposure to this forum.

I think the why part is pretty settled, if we look around the biggest part in why our storms have failed is warmth either directly or indirectly. Its the simplest reason that we have failed, as @psuhoffman pointed out our pattern is better than the previous worst snowfall periods but our snowfall total is lower. What is the simplest explanation for this change? AGW. 

[SnowenOutThere]

1 minute ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Kind of disorganized with lots of moving pieces. Dont hate what I'm seeing next week anyway.

Snow over MA at 219, well except for @Ji

[psuhoffman]

44 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Why do you say the 0z EPS is trending that way? Looked quite similar to 12z to my eyes.

If you go back over several days it’s slowly bleeding the wrong way wrt SE ridge and pna. 

14 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

This should be a snowstorm in mid January lol.  Or atleast a thump to mix to dry slot. Nice high to the north. 

What can you do lol.

Another mid latitude system during the coldest month of the year with absolutely no appreciable frozen WAA precipitation to the north of the track until you get north of 43*!  

[Ralph Wiggum]

Just now, SnowenOutThere said:

Snow over MA at 219, well except for @Ji

This run is a much improved look for the 19th - 24th. Not quite there yet. That's all we can take away for now.

[psuhoffman]

We don’t need to have the why debate in here. I was just trying to end the “it’s not really that bad” claims. It is that bad. The why debate can happen in another place. 

[anotherman]

I'm thinking the maple sugaring season in the northeast will be non-existent this year.  You can't have a sap run if you have no winter.

[Terpeast]

Another way to look at it:

Even in bad patterns before, we may have had a SE ridge with cutter tracks, but we still had just enough antecedent cold air to the north so we'd get CAD overrunning 2-4/3-6" events before changeover or dry slot. 

Now? We don't have the cold air to the north of us. There goes our season padders that used to make "bad" patterns "not so bad" in the snowfall department. 

[forkyfork]

33 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

@Maestrobjwa please skip this post, seriously just don't read it, its not going to be good for your health.  

Before I respond to some specific things I've seen lately let me first lay out the case that THIS IS NOT NORMAL...its not just a normal cyclical thing.  Remember it was back in 2019 to 2020 that I was on the other side of this.  Because the people going overboard then were doing it prematurely.  There was a LOT of precedence for a several year run of low snowfall following a generally good stretch from 2010 to 2016.  But I know the data, I know the historical cycles, and we are way way past that now. 

I am not going to get into what is causing it...we don't need to bring THAT in here.  Maybe its a confluence of several factors all coming together at once, and I do think there is SOME of that...and I will get to those things later in this post also but first simply the facts that indicate this is not just a typical funk as I continue to see some claim.  

I've gone into the trends and numbers at DCA but just a quick comp to previous bad cycles to show this is not normal.  Lets look at that 1970's period people like to bring up.  That was the previous next worst 6 and 7 year period other than this one.  But it wasnt AS BAD.  

At BWI for instance this period has been 3 inches worse.  That doesn't seem like much but lets look at some other factors also.  IMO the pattern was actually WORSE then...yet they had better results.   Compare H5, and keep in mind this is using current normals so you have to adjust for that.  But look at the longwave pattern mean.  The 1970's had a RAGING positive AO/NOA and extremely -PNA the entire time with pretty much no EPO help either.  This is the worst possible M5 mean you could ever make.  This is a classic awful look.  If we got this today it would be a total no hope shit the blinds pattern all the damn time.  

Look at the current period to compare.

  Yea this is bad...the Pac ridge is west of where we want it...but on the means it actually is extending into the west coast more...the PNA isn't as awful, this is way more EPO help...and the AO is actually averaging slightly negative over the period with a neutral NAO.  This is not good but its not as bad.  But the results are worse.  Imagine what our results would be in that 1970's look now.  Would it be 80 degrees in January with that look up top and that pacific now considering what we have had in results with a less hostile overall mean pattern.  

Additionally 6 and 7 years isn't really long enough to get a full scope of a period.  Lets use 18 years again since that is considered a minimum number to get a significant mean for most statistical analysis.  If we look at past 18 year periods...take the 1970's one for example.  It was bookended with a big snowfall period in the 60's and late 70's/early 80s.  That makes this current situation a lot more dire because by comparison the snowier period that preceeded our current funk did not stand up to the snowy period on the front end of that 1970s drought.  

To put it numerically...for BWI to end the current 18 year period starting in 2011 with similar results to that referenced previous "WORSE PERIOD EVER" BWI would need to average 32" of snow the next 5 years.  Think of that...just to equal the period everyone is citing as the "its been bad before" we need 32" every single winter the next 5 years...  Now because some of those years before and after that 1970's period were so huge a better comp for a longer period might be 1938 to 1955.  There was no 7 year stretch nearly this bad but there also was no 1960's and late 70s snowstravaganza.  But even that period BWI would need to average 27" the next 5 years to match.  Lets me honest that aint gonna happen, this 18 year period will be by far the worst in history at BWI.  Using BWI since many feel it is way more representative of more of the region...but the results are the same just slightly higher overall.  

DCA would need to average 34" the next 5 years to be better than that 1970's 18 year period, but to be more fair again, DCA's worse 18 year period EVERY was 1942-1959.  DC will need to average 25" over the next 5 years to equal that.  How many of you want to make a bet with me that DC averages 25" of snow over the next 5 seasons?  I'll take that bed.  My kids need to go to college...so please let me know if you want in on that action.  

So can we please stop with the "this is just cyclical and its happened before" nonsense.  No this has never happened before.  Its never been close to this bad before if you really dig into the data.  Even just looking at this year tells the story.  We have had several different patterns now...each time I look at the analogs.  They have never been great.  But none were shutouts.  We keep getting analogs to blah periods but ones that did produce SOME SNOW...not a total shutout.  Yet here we are.  

@Ralph Wiggum man you were all over the place...

Just last night you said

It's solar, but 97-98, Nina, WAR, but the MJO... ok lets address all these

Solar...ok but we have not had solar flares non stop for 7 years and there is a lag actually so I doubt the solar flare a few days ago is what is causing our problems right now.  Certainly wasnt the problem in December.  

97-98...fair enough but even if you want to say that's the comp to this...and to be fair it was the top analog for a while, THIS IS WAY WORSE.  Yea you can cherry pick one location like DCA where its the same 0 and 0.  But not far from DC there was snow.  My area had a 3.5" snowfall late December.  Several 2-3" snows during the early winter that year also.  I was up over 10" by now.  Here I sit at 0.  This is not specific to my location.  Places not far NW of DC had a bad but not awful amount of snow by now in 98.  I was in east central PA that year and we had already had several pretty decent snowstorms by now...the same location has had almost nothing this year.  This year is WORSE.  Both were bad...this is worse. 

Nina...this is kinda revisionist history.  2017 was a cold neutral following a super nino.  2018 was a legit Nina.  But 2019 was a nino and 2020 was a warm nuetral following a nino.  2021 to now was a nina but if we go back 5 years the mantra was...its the NAO, why can't we get NAO help anymore...when we had 2 seasons in a row with a positive NAO.  Remember that...for years all anyone blamed this on was the AO/NAO.  But then we started getting -NAO and -AO periods that did us no good and suddenly the new vogue thing to blame it all on was the MJO.  Then we got some MJO phase 8/1/2 that did us no good and now its just the really lazy "its the pac" crap.  We keep changing "what the problem is" but the one constant is a SE ridge that is more than our snow chances can survive regardless of whatever the du jour "problem" is at that moment.  We've had a pac ridge, pac trough, positive AO, negative AO, whatever...doesn't matter the SE ridge remains a problem the vast majority of the time.  

MJO???  first of all phase 3 becomes a colder phase as we head into Feb...but what about Phase 1 and 2.  You just skip right over the fact we are going to torch right through the cold phases then use the warm phase we head into 2 weeks from now as the excuse for the warmth?  Sorry that doesn't fly for me. 

WAR...  yea but the WAR is an effect not a cause.  That's like saying your headache is causing your brain cancer.   Maybe we should be discussing the AMO more.  

Now...I do think some of this might be a confluence of things all going wrong at the same time.  This combo of the PDO and AMO is a really bad one.  I am not denying that the general longwave pattern isn't really good.  But its not the worse we've ever seen...yet its been the worst results we've ever seen.  Past periods with this confluence of AMO/PDO weren't good but they weren't nearly this bad either.  But my 2 main points are no this is not normal, this is by far the worst period ever in recorded history for our area and there is way more going on here than all these singular excuses we keep cycling through to try to explain it away.  

it's climate change, duh

[stormtracker]

25 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

This should be a snowstorm in mid January lol.  Or atleast a thump to mix to dry slot. Nice high to the north. 

What can you do lol.

1035 High, low attacking from the south.  And…fuck.