Jan Medium/Long Range Disco: Winter is coming

[Ji]

I take some of the blame. I ran my mouth about a big snow winter for months. I promised everyone rotating comma heads full of torrential  snow. Then PSU educated me about the base state issues........and that jukebox just trailed off like the grinch pulled the plug.

Let me educate you about the base state

[WinterWxLuvr]

@Ji

[Ji]

So the truth is…..deep down…no one thought this winter would be like this so far

The vision was

A cold late November early December with a snow window

A mid month warmup but not bad +2 at the worst but the pattern would be changing by Dec 20

Then our best chance for our white Christmas in years

A chance for a winter storm late December early January with the best of our Nino winter still ahead of us

40 inch winter on the way

I can handle this all going south. What I can’t handle is the first 3 threats in January leaning rain. Sure Dec blowtorch fine. The seasonals has it…but January?

[aldie 22]

The change seems so abrupt...I know I know PSU you saw it coming 3 weeks ago but you didn't want to say anything 

[SnowGolfBro]

Winter weather advisory in Canaan tonight/tomorrow. Hoping to see a couple inches anyway

[brooklynwx99]

22 minutes ago, Ji said:

I can handle this all going south. What I can’t handle is the first 3 threats in January leaning rain. Sure Dec blowtorch fine. The seasonals has it…but January?

can we at least get to NYD before all of this? lmao

[brooklynwx99]

the meat of your guy’s season (and really anyone south of NYC) is like Jan 20 through Feb 20. anything before that in a strong Nino is gravy. you guys can hit your averages in 48 hours 

different story if you’re in New England 

[Shad]

there is always next year.....thankfully thats in 3 days

[Ralph Wiggum]

1 hour ago, Allsnow said:

@Heisy 

The WAR rages on

[clskinsfan]

We need to score on the 4th or the 7th. The GEFS is getting pretty ugly for mid month.

[NorthArlington101]

4 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

We need to score on the 4th or the 7th. The GEFS is getting pretty ugly for mid month.

I'd feel pretty good about you having something trackable at least for one of those. The lowlands... we've got work to do. Most important 18z of our lives. 

[Heisy]

We need to score on the 4th or the 7th. The GEFS is getting pretty ugly for mid month.

That’s pretty much the consensus it seems. We have two semi long shots, both sort of thread the needle on the dates you mentioned. Then after that 7-8th wave there’s a warm spell for 1-3 days between 8-10th. Then we latch our hope on the AO and see how far S and E that western Canada cold dump can go.

Sound about right?


.

[Ralph Wiggum]

6 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

We need to score on the 4th or the 7th. The GEFS is getting pretty ugly for mid month.

I don't think this is all that horrible. Thumb ridge above Alaska with CPF coming around the back of the TPV near Baffin, pos height anomalies in nao domain, some SER to stop systems from sliding off the SE coast. That is a cold look with nowhere for stj moisture to come but N. Alright PSU, permission to 'roast' me 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

We just don't do well in trend when there is a High pressure near the Aleutians. As we get closer, The relative SE ridge undercuts and the cold air gets cutoff. I have seen this so much in the last few years, that I would call it a small to no chance that this threat (Jan 7th) becomes snow. We need the Pacific to change. The only thing I can think of is that models have a equilateral wind reversal happening over Nino 3.4, and this is rushing them to develop a -PNA.

 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

12 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

the meat of your guy’s season (and really anyone south of NYC) is like Jan 20 through Feb 20.

Coldest day of the year is Jan 27th. Precip does slightly uptick in the 2nd half of Winter vs the 1st.

[Chris78]

3 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

I don't think this is all that horrible. Thumb ridge above Alaska with CPF coming around the back of the TPV near Baffin, pos height anomalies in nao domain, some SER to stop systems from sliding off the SE coast. That is a cold look with nowhere for stj moisture to come but N. Alright PSU, permission to 'roast' me 

That's most likely a storm track to our west. Looks alot like the last several years. 

I don't think PSU is exaggerating. It will take some time for the pattern to reload if that look is reality.

[nj2va]

7 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

I don't think this is all that horrible. Thumb ridge above Alaska with CPF coming around the back of the TPV near Baffin, pos height anomalies in nao domain, some SER to stop systems from sliding off the SE coast. That is a cold look with nowhere for stj moisture to come but N. Alright PSU, permission to 'roast' me 

Now you’ve done it, get ready for a 10 paragraph essay about how winter is over if that happens. 

[North Balti Zen]

1 hour ago, Ji said:

So the truth is…..deep down…no one thought this winter would be like this so far

The vision was

A cold late November early December with a snow window

A mid month warmup but not bad +2 at the worst but the pattern would be changing by Dec 20

Then our best chance for our white Christmas in years

A chance for a winter storm late December early January with the best of our Nino winter still ahead of us

40 inch winter on the way

(Looks at the snow prediction thread)

(clears throat)

whelp - this just isn’t true at all. Not for everyone. Not even for at least a dozen of us or more.

[SnowenOutThere]

1 hour ago, Terpeast said:

Cutter > fropa > cold/dry 

What I’m interested in is what happens after

So we are waiting on a pattern change … two days into a pattern change? I feel like we should focus on the two “long shots” before pattern chasing again.

[87storms]

Let me educate you about the base state

In Celsius, no less.

[brooklynwx99]

9 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

So we are waiting on a pattern change … two days into a pattern change? I feel like we should focus on the two “long shots” before pattern chasing again.

agreed, although the 7th is low probability it’s still worth the most focus

[SnowenOutThere]

Just now, brooklynwx99 said:

agreed, although the 7th is low probability it’s still worth the most focus

I just feel like tracking anything no matter how long shot is better than going back to pattern change tracking

[Jersey Andrew]

1 minute ago, brooklynwx99 said:

agreed, although the 7th is low probability it’s still worth the most focus

Does it appear the seasonal EURO and CANSIPS will be incorrect and that the colder and snowy turn will not occur later in January into February?

[cbmclean]

12 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

So we are waiting on a pattern change … two days into a pattern change? I feel like we should focus on the two “long shots” before pattern chasing again.

The pattern has changed, but the thermals must recover.  I think it's fair to watch for that.

[Ji]

This actually wasn’t as bad as you all make it out to be…those who checked the ensembles

[Ji]

This actually wasn’t as bad as you all make it out to be…those who checked the ensembles

That’s actually the best chart I’ve seen this season in terms of how many members at least show something

[stormy]

Whether its the 4th or 7th or the 13th. The amount of gloom is amazing.  50 years ago before all the nonsense with models, folks didn't worry about all of this crap, and it occasionally snowed.

The historical sweet time has always been Jan. 15 to Mar. 15.  Considering all the possibilities I don't believe we will be disappointed.  Many will be hilariously happy with 5".  We don't need 18 inches. 

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, Terpeast said:

I hear what you’re saying. Even in a great pattern, and even if we have plenty of cold air, we still wouldn’t expect to get a hit with every storm. Take the 1980s for example, it was plenty cold but many storms were misses, suppressed, or badly timed that we got rain or sleet. In those cases, cold air wasn’t a problem. Something else was. Now? Cold air is sorely lacking after the canada torch and in this specific case, we DO need 10,000 things to come together right for it to snow. 

Maybe later in the season cold air will be more abundant and we’d only need a few more things to go right.

And by the way, we already got snow in a bad pattern this season. Dec 10th, I believe. 

Excellent post. But my example was a 4-8” storm and yours was a slushy coating for most. I guess I should have been more specific. Remember when we could luck into a warning snowfall in a bad pattern if enough meso factors broke our way. In my case study of all the 4” plus bwi snows I saw plenty of lucky fluke’s in an otherwise god awful pattern. You know what all of them had in common?  They were a long time ago!  

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Look at this massive Pacific ridge on the CPC ensembles

https://ibb.co/yQxk7bS

I'll bump my roll forward from yesterday since it's trending more probable to happen as a dominant pattern

Quote

 

majority of ENSO analogs show that the pattern usually changes shortly thereafter (initial is N. Pacific ridge Jan 5-13)  

I took all -PNA in El Nino minus all +PNA in La Nina years since 1948 for that time (Jan 5-13), and came up with 15 analogs:

The roll-forward shows the Pacific pattern usually flips quickly after 1/14.  By 1/19 it's +PNA. And by 1/25 it's -EPO.

https://ibb.co/xzVYnx5

 

[cbmclean]

I'm stuck with tropical tidbits on my phone.  Who has the 411 on the 12z GEPs and EPS?