November Mid/Long Range Discussion

[dailylurker]

3 hours ago, Weather Will said:

WB 0Z EPS does show about 30% of members that are normal to chilly leading up to Thanksgiving... something to watch while it is dry and boring...

Looks like 70% of members say we wear shorts again this year for Thanksgiving. 

[ldub23]

GFS has a  cold  push for  T DAY

 

[Ji]

1 hour ago, ldub23 said:

GFS has a  cold  push for  T DAY

 

quite a change from previous runs

[poolz1]

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Still no sign of a negative or even neutral NAO/AO. Not a good sign.

I have no expectations after what we have dealt with over the past 3 years. But, here is just a week snapshot from mid Nov 2009.  We were staring at a horrid Pac and no real signs of life on the Atlantic side either.  We had to wait another 3 weeks until we started seeing positive signs.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Big -PNA November it looks like.. Not much of a correlation Nov going into December PNA

Lite correlation to February

[Eskimo Joe]

1 hour ago, poolz1 said:

I have no expectations after what we have dealt with over the past 3 years. But, here is just a week snapshot from mid Nov 2009.  We were staring at a horrid Pac and no real signs of life on the Atlantic side either.  We had to wait another 3 weeks until we started seeing positive signs.

Thanks for the clarification. I've read elsewhere on this board that +NAO Novembers strongly correlate to +NAO/AO winters.

[Terpeast]

11 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Thanks for the clarification. I've read elsewhere on this board that +NAO Novembers strongly correlate to +NAO/AO winters.

Not really. If anything a +NAO November correlates with a +NAO December, then the link breaks down after that.

[WxUSAF]

Negative correlation should be opposite signed, right? So +NAO in November would correlate to -NAO December?

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Negative correlation should be opposite signed, right? So +NAO in November would correlate to -NAO December?

The default is +, so +NAO has negative heights over Greenland. 

Fwiw, -PNA Nov has 0.2 correlation with -NAO December.

[Terpeast]

4 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Negative correlation should be opposite signed, right? So +NAO in November would correlate to -NAO December?

Neg correlation in my map means lower height anomalies.

Take the december map for example, we have neg correlations (lower heights) over Greenland. So the +NAO signature is still there

^^ @Stormchaserchuck1 beat me to it. And explained it more succinctly than I did.

[winter_warlock]

3 hours ago, Ji said:

quite a change from previous runs

 Yup definitely  a change!!

[87storms]

10 hours ago, jayyy said:

Didn’t the niño officially take hold in June though? We were still in a niña at the end of last winter through spring. So using the entire year as a reference doesn’t seem right here. Most mets I follow have been saying the STJ likely won’t get going until late November / early December. Have to imagine it takes some time for the longwave pattern to become entrenched and for things to unfold downstream for us. We also had a pretty wet September. Pretty sure dry Octobers during niño years isn’t super uncommon either but someone correct me if I’m wrong.

Think it’s still a tad early to be either too concerned or too optimistic about our chances this winter. If it’s still super dry come thanksgiving through December 15th, we can revisit the possibility of a drier niño.

One thing is for sure… there are a ton of different factors at play here. Some of which could drastically help us, some that could crush our hopes. We’ve discussed winner and loser niños at length in here over the past several months. All it takes is 1 or 2 things at h5 to be wrong for it all to come crashing down, or vice versa.

I think the takeaway currently is that this is the best h5 / longwave pattern we’ve had going into winter for nearly 7 years. How it all unfolds is anyone’s guess. I feel like we have a 65/35 chance of success vs failure this year given our new base state, which is a helluva lot better than the dismal chances we’ve had during the past several / consecutive niñas.

Hopefully you're right because this is gradually turning into another drought pattern.  I was just thinking about how this year has to be the most boring weather-wise that I've experienced.  So far, the west coast is still dominating all the interesting weather as well.  We'll see what happens as we get into December and whether the STJ comes alive to at least toss us some substantial precip from frontal passages.

[psuhoffman]

[Eskimo Joe]

Cool to watch the progression of everything.

 

[stormy]

With increasing speculation about precipitation this Nino winter, I have researched precipitation patterns with the 14 Nino's since 1980 at my location in Augusta County.

What I found has completely changed my attitude about winter precipitation with Nino's. Please understand, I am talking about liquid qp, not snow.

During the past month I have referred to a failed Nino if we don't evolve to a wet pattern by December 10. This was based on a review of 2 analogs. Everything changed when I detailed all 14 Nino's for 43 years. D.T. referred to a "failed Nino" in his winter comments.

My current realization is that a failed Nino is possible at 32 north latitude or Charleston S.C. but a failed Nino is not possible at Staunton Va. or Washington D.C.  How is this?  Because a normal Nino winter pattern does not exist at our latitude. It is highly variable, therefore cannot fail.

I recovered precipitation totals for 14 November - April Nino's since 1980. Only 43% of these years had above normal precipitation from November - April. Our latitude is sandwiched between a dry Ohio Valley and wet south and southeast, but we are certainly not guaranteed a wet winter. Snowfall is variable and can be heavy even during a dry winter. My normal qp from November - April totals 18.84". An example of a dry winter which gave heavy snowfall is 1979-80. 18.03" qp fell with a snow total of 49 inches, double my normal total of 24 inches. Another dry Nino winter that produced above normal snowfall was 15-16, 17.05" qp produced 26 inches of snow. An example of a wet Nino with below normal snowfall is 18-19, 26.60" qp only produced 21 inches of snow. The fabled 09-10 winter gave 25.77" qp with 63 inches of snow.

Many Nino's give above normal snowfall to my area but less than half give a wet winter.

[clskinsfan]

Good post Stormy. Nino's are going to give us tons of chances. No guarantee its all snow. But we are going to get our precip. 12Z run of the GFS has a train of storms through the entire run. With the STJ looking active towards the end of its run. They just arent going to track well for us yet.  At least according to this run. 

[Ji]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

why are you showing us temp maps from last winter?

[Stormchaserchuck1]

41 minutes ago, Ji said:

why are you showing us temp maps from last winter?

I'd kinda worry about the February -PNA trend of the last 6 years, which gives us a +150dm anomaly. NAO might be negative at that time given all the Stratospheric warming signals, but Feb I think is not a blow out in the Pacific. 

[Met1985]

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

We should be used to this. Just another torch pattern. 

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, stormy said:

With increasing speculation about precipitation this Nino winter, I have researched precipitation patterns with the 14 Nino's since 1980 at my location in Augusta County.

What I found has completely changed my attitude about winter precipitation with Nino's. Please understand, I am talking about liquid qp, not snow.

During the past month I have referred to a failed Nino if we don't evolve to a wet pattern by December 10. This was based on a review of 2 analogs. Everything changed when I detailed all 14 Nino's for 43 years. D.T. referred to a "failed Nino" in his winter comments.

My current realization is that a failed Nino is possible at 32 north latitude or Charleston S.C. but a failed Nino is not possible at Staunton Va. or Washington D.C.  How is this?  Because a normal Nino winter pattern does not exist at our latitude. It is highly variable, therefore cannot fail.

I recovered precipitation totals for 14 November - April Nino's since 1980. Only 43% of these years had above normal precipitation from November - April. Our latitude is sandwiched between a dry Ohio Valley and wet south and southeast, but we are certainly not guaranteed a wet winter. Snowfall is variable and can be heavy even during a dry winter. My normal qp from November - April totals 18.84". An example of a dry winter which gave heavy snowfall is 1979-80. 18.03" qp fell with a snow total of 49 inches, double my normal total of 24 inches. Another dry Nino winter that produced above normal snowfall was 15-16, 17.05" qp produced 26 inches of snow. An example of a wet Nino with below normal snowfall is 18-19, 26.60" qp only produced 21 inches of snow. The fabled 09-10 winter gave 25.77" qp with 63 inches of snow.

Many Nino's give above normal snowfall to my area but less than half give a wet winter.

You’re looking too closely at one data point to see the pattern. There is a typical Nino pattern here, with an enhanced STJ and numerous storms sliding by to our south. Some years more of those impact us. Others less. This makes qpf variable since we straddle the NW periphery of the mean storm track. 
 

But that’s where you want to be for snow. Raw qpf is irrelevant to us getting a 20”+ winter (good for DC area) since that takes just 2” of QPF to fall as frozen. So whether we get 15” or 20” qpf in the winter season isn’t all that important to snowfall. 

[stormy]

52 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

You’re looking too closely at one data point to see the pattern. There is a typical Nino pattern here, with an enhanced STJ and numerous storms sliding by to our south. Some years more of those impact us. Others less. This makes qpf variable since we straddle the NW periphery of the mean storm track. 
 

But that’s where you want to be for snow. Raw qpf is irrelevant to us getting a 20”+ winter (good for DC area) since that takes just 2” of QPF to fall as frozen. So whether we get 15” or 20” qpf in the winter season isn’t all that important to snowfall. 

I see the pattern perfectly.

That's why we sometimes have above normal snowfall with below normal qp. As you say, "numerous storms sliding by to our south".  If we are brushed with a southern slider we get possibly significant snow but relative qp is rather light.  That's the beauty of Nino. We are on the cold north side of southern sliders therefore we are much more likely to see snow instead of mixed slop from OV riders.

With a pure Nino, we are almost always on the NW side of the mean storm track.

Thanks for your input, but I can assure you that I "see the pattern".

[clskinsfan]

18z GFS is close to our first flakes out here in the Shenandoah Valley for Sunday night into Monday. Would be right on time for out this way. Something to watch at least. 

[CAPE]

Not saying this is how it will go, but this is where we are at h5 on the means roughly 10 days from now..

Compare it to around the same time Nov of 2009-

 

And this is where the pattern ended up  a few weeks later-

[nj2va]

26 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Not saying this is how it will go, but this is where we are at h5 on the means roughly 10 days from now..

Compare it to around the same time Nov of 2009-

 

And this is where the pattern ended up  a few weeks later-

Apparently its more fun to post 384H OP temp anomaly maps. 

[CAPE]

2 minutes ago, nj2va said:

Apparently its more fun to post 384H OP temp anomaly maps. 

Yeah, let it be mild in Nov. Who cares. Only point I am making is the longwave pattern can look like crap in mid to late Nov in a developing Nino, and there is not much to be gleaned from that wrt the character of winter as a whole. I really don't expect this Dec to be anything like 2009, but it could be decent. My thinking is mid Jan through Feb will be the favorable period where we may get just enough cold with a more favorable HL look, in conjunction with an established STJ.

[Chris78]

36 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Not saying this is how it will go, but this is where we are at h5 on the means roughly 10 days from now..

Compare it to around the same time Nov of 2009-

 

And this is where the pattern ended up  a few weeks later-

So your saying expect I should expect 70 inches this year? I like your thinking. 

[CAPE]

3 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

So your saying expect I should expect 70 inches this year? I like your thinking. 

Not sure about that, but it should be a little better than an inch or whatever fell there last winter lol.

[Chris78]

5 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Not sure about that, but it should be a little better than an inch or whatever fell there last winter lol.

Lol. Close. It was 2" and by far the lowest total I've ever had in Smithsburg. 

[Ji]

Not sure about that, but it should be a little better than an inch or whatever fell there last winter lol.

09-10 was Doug Kammerer main analog till recently. Now it’s 65-66

[nj2va]

35 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Yeah, let it be mild in Nov. Who cares. Only point I am making is the longwave pattern can look like crap in mid to late Nov in a developing Nino, and there is not much to be gleaned from that wrt the character of winter as a whole. I really don't expect this Dec to be anything like 2009, but it could be decent. My thinking is mid Jan through Feb will be the favorable period where we may get just enough cold with a more favorable HL look, in conjunction with an established STJ.

We have a similar thought on this winter.  Best chances we’ve had for an AN snowfall in years, and I think we have a real shot at a KU - best in 7 years.