Jan Medium/Long Range Disco: Winter is coming

[NorthArlington101]

Crawling up the coast - western and central VA doing alright through 213. Couple of inches

Doesn’t make it. T-2” down from Winchester to Cville, more as you go SW with 6-8” around Roanoke.

[Alfoman]

9 minutes ago, Heisy said:

12z cmc and gfs have better TPV positioning and cold press out ahead of the potential Jan 6-8 wave. Like i mentioned both with more phasing with the N stream. Could be good here we’ll see 

Stronger energy off the NW coast doesn't allow that ridge to build out west and drive out the TPV earlier. Don't think the weak 1030 High in Canada as the 12z GFS shows will be enough for the interior regions, but an improvement nonetheless. 

[Ji]

1 minute ago, NorthArlington101 said:

Crawling up the coast - western and central VA doing alright through 213. Couple of inches

the Canadien is definitely snow and much colder

temps well below freezing with precip

[osfan24]

Too warm and the system goes from a slug of moisture to much weaker by the time it gets up here.

[Ji]

1 minute ago, osfan24 said:

Too warm and the system goes from a slug of moisture to much weaker by the time it gets up here.

lol its 222 hours out....and it actually has made a gradual improvement over the last few runs.

[Weather Will]

3 minutes ago, Ji said:

the Canadien is definitely snow and much colder

temps well below freezing with precip

If you squint the next weekend storm may give us us a flake on the WB 12Z Can.

[osfan24]

3 minutes ago, Ji said:

lol its 222 hours out....and it actually has made a gradual improvement over the last few runs.

Sure, it's better and certainly worth monitoring. This was always the time period/storm I thought had the best chance to produce before the mid-January relax period.

[Alfoman]

10 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

Too warm and the system goes from a slug of moisture to much weaker by the time it gets up here.

Lots of vorticity flying around is going to make this a "noisy" look this far out - these interactions are delicate and will probably cause a significant amount of variability. Nino makes things more difficult to track in the 5-7 day range for this reason.

Looks like on the 12Z GFS the NS energy interaction from behind shears the hell out of it as it hugs the coast versus the CMC with a more ideal look if we can slow down the NS overhead and better time any sort of interaction.

[nj2va]

12 minutes ago, Ji said:

the Canadien is definitely snow and much colder

temps well below freezing with precip

Yeah, looks like a couple inches but 200+ hours out, I don’t really care what the snowmaps show.  Just nice to see the threat at this stage.

[North Balti Zen]

10 minutes ago, Ji said:

lol its 222 hours out....and it actually has made a gradual improvement over the last few runs.

You seriously troll with a 700 hour non-weekly temp map and then get mad when the mood you engender is bad? Literally, you are the hot dog costume guy meme.

[Terpeast]

Now the trend we want to look for is whether it gets colder up top as lead times shorten. Right now it's a few degrees to warm at the surface up to 950 mb for both systems, but the second system has trended colder. Just a little nudge is all it takes.

[Ji]

1 minute ago, North Balti Zen said:

You seriously troll with a 700 hour non-weekly temp map and then get mad when the mood you engender is bad? Literally, you are the hot dog costume guy meme.

the 700 hour map is part of the weeklies...i just showed a 5 day snapshot instead of 7. But apparently we cant show the weeklies anymore because they show a crappy late January?

[Heisy]

Pretty good agreement between 12z OP and 6z ensemble with how pattern progresses. Probably get a couple day warm up ahead of the cold push. Then we hope that trough can push east and a block forms.



.

[psuhoffman]

5 hours ago, Ji said:

Euro snow chart gives me a 3 inch mean. Highest I've seen this year

Sent from my SM-A515U using Tapatalk
 

It was an improvement but remember you want to use the probabilities not the mean to bet a better idea. Last year I did those probabilities after each run because the mean maps give an inflated idea that makes the ensembles look like they are predicting snow when they aren’t.  Them people claim they suck and are always over predicting snow. 
 

for example the probability of 1” is only about 30% on that run. The mean is skewed high by the big hits. That was an improvement though so worth noting. 
 

4 hours ago, CAPE said:

It's not a good look, but sometimes we put too much emphasis on smoothed ens snapshots of the longwave pattern and seemingly assume it remains stationary. 'Game over' is a bit hyperbolic.  Even that composite h5 anomaly, which is a 'bad' overall look, is somewhat misleading as some of those winters(2017, 18, 22) featured enough of a shift in the pattern at times to produce cold periods with one or more big snowstorms for the MA and NE. Some winters we end up with consistently 'good'  patterns that produce little to nothing. Ultimately our snow chances always require good wave timing in conjunction with cold air.

I meant game over to get a truly snowy winter. Game over for my winter forecast.  Not game over to get any snow at all.  We would be back to the same place we’ve been the last 7 years trying to make a horrible long wave pattern work and praying to get table scraps and if we’re super super lucky maybe enough have an outside shot at having a not horrible winter. No thanks. 

3 hours ago, CAPE said:

He did say he didn't buy the GEFS look. Ofc he then proceeded to make multiple posts describing what he thought the result would be if it went down that way, driving weenies to the ledge.

I do think it’s wrong. But I took issue with some posts trying to minimize what the gefs was showing. Some “it’s not that bad and would be temporary” comments. It was that bad and wouldn’t be temporary. It wasn’t the transient ridge issue Chuck was freaking out about. That period came a week before the period we’re discussing. The forcing at the end of those gefs runs indicated the tropical forcing was stuck in the MC and going ape. Same issue we’ve had. The pac trough was retrograding completely out of the picture and the central pac ridge was going nuts. Also later when it updated the gefs extended confirmed my suspicions and locked that in for weeks!  It was an awful run. And it wasn’t nearly as bad at day 16 as the runs were discussing!  I was trying to drive home that even though I think it’s wrong don’t sugar coat the turd the gefs was spitting out. And even though I think it’s wrong I don’t want to see anything showing that crap look. That h5 is what I wake up at 4am screaming “good God Nooooo” 

3 hours ago, aldie 22 said:

Part of me thinks he wanted the GFS to be right

No I love snow. But I do want to lay the groundwork so if we do fail I don’t have to hear more excuses from the “it’s just bad luck stick my head in the sand” contingent. We’re already in unprecedented snowless territory. Every major east coast city has set a bunch of snowless streak records recently. The obvious thing tying all this together is tap dancing on our face and some are like “we just can’t know”. So no I want us to get a ton of snow. But at the very least if we don’t I want the consolation prize to be that I don’t have to hear anymore “everything’s fine” excuses. 

2 hours ago, cbmclean said:

Something similar happened in 2019.  The El Nino never Ninoed.

EXACTLY…that’s the best example of what I don’t want. We had some chances in Dec and early Jan that year before the Nina pac state set in. And in a Nina type pattern often early is our best shot. We had some snow and chances early in several of our awful winters recently. At least west of 95 did. It’s been too warm early in the coastal plain.  But once the pac ridge took over in January it was game over. 2019 that one fluke storm that bullseyes DC came early Jan during the transition. Once the pac ridge went nuts we were left trying to get those progressive boundary waves that mostly went northwest of us to work. We got some snow. But the chances of a good Nino like period or a hecs were over.

 

Lastly I think this is moot. I Think it’s wrong. But don’t pretend that look wasn’t a total disaster if we want any chance of ever getting a classic truly snowy winter where we aren’t just praying for progressive wave table scraps like the last 7 years. I’d rather fail like the eps weeklies with too much Nino!  At least that leaves the door open that the pac can be altered!  

[psuhoffman]

8 minutes ago, Heisy said:

Pretty good agreement between 12z OP and 6z ensemble with how pattern progresses. Probably get a couple day warm up ahead of the cold push. Then we hope that trough can push east and a block forms.



.

That ridge in AK and trough to the west combined with the -AO argues the trough should broaden and extend east. 

[BristowWx]

jeez...474dM line in southern Canada late in the 12z run.  guess the cold is on our side...in fantasy land of course..still nice to see it

[North Balti Zen]

29 minutes ago, Ji said:

the 700 hour map is part of the weeklies...i just showed a 5 day snapshot instead of 7. But apparently we cant show the weeklies anymore because they show a crappy late January?

You know EXACTLY what you did and why you did it - and you predictably drew sad people to you and then take weird umbrage when they are pessimistic on a 220 hour prog. I mean, come the fuck on. It is well past time for you to grow up.

[Ji]

You know EXACTLY what you did and why you did it - and you predictably drew sad people to you and then take weird umbrage when they are pessimistic on a 220 hour prog. I mean, come the fuck on. It is well past time for you to grow up.

lol are you serious? Not one person was saddened by that post. Plus talking about a long wave pattern is much different than talking about a specific storm and how it’s a hair too warm. Chill it out dude.

[WxUSAF]

38 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Now the trend we want to look for is whether it gets colder up top as lead times shorten. Right now it's a few degrees to warm at the surface up to 950 mb for both systems, but the second system has trended colder. Just a little nudge is all it takes.

I never thought this period between today and the 7-10th would be frigid. But I have to say I’m disappointed that it’s not even seasonable. The storm on the 4th and 7th “should” at least be frozen majority for the N/W burbs.

[aldie 22]

2 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

I never thought this period between today and the 7-10th would be frigid. But I have to say I’m disappointed that it’s not even seasonable. The storm on the 4th and 7th “should” at least be frozen majority for the N/W burbs.

Isn't low to mid 40's seasonal for January in DC?

[Weather Will]

WB 12Z GEFS.  One big hit for the storm on the 4th.

[Terpeast]

2 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

I never thought this period between today and the 7-10th would be frigid. But I have to say I’m disappointed that it’s not even seasonable. The storm on the 4th and 7th “should” at least be frozen majority for the N/W burbs.

It still can be. Maybe not a pure all-snow event, but if timed right (happens at night, NS vort leads a bit bringing a push of colder air) we could maybe get a mixed R/S event on the lowlands with elevation snowfall. 

[North Balti Zen]

8 minutes ago, Ji said:

lol are you serious? Not one person was saddened by that post. Plus talking about a long wave pattern is much different than talking about a specific storm and how it’s a hair too warm. Chill it out dude.

If you literally are not that self-aware, I am sad for you. But, luckily, I am  positive you know what you are doing and are not nearly as funny as you think you are. Grow up.  your drive-by shitty posts to start each day 100% fuck up the mood of this place, and most of the time it is cherry-picked trolling bullshit. You suck.  At least you got the Jan. 2022 storm in your area, a lot of us did not, north of you,  and are going on six or seven years since we've seen a four plus inch storm, but at least we don't start every GFS cycle with the worst possible snapshot in time to set the discourse. Post better. 

[WEATHER53]

Around 8th still looks like a coastal to me and it needs to be. We get another cutter and all 20”+ forecasts for DC area are doomed. It nonsensical to keep in denial and default to “late season is Nino” Most Ninos feature below average temps from mid Dec thru end of Feb. One 10” snowstorm in mid Feb preceded and followed by 50 F does not a good winter make. We may be in a position where decades long prediction factors like Enso  and NAO/AO just don’t work. We do see a lot of grasping about SSW and MJO but they are unproven. 

[WEATHER53]

1 hour ago, Ji said:

the Canadien is definitely snow and much colder

temps well below freezing with precip

Darn near perfect positioning 

[NorthArlington101]

Just now, WEATHER53 said:

Darn near perfect positioning 

the real trouble (rather than a cutter, at least on recent ens runs) is suppression/just not a strong enough storm. Nothing really climbs past the NC/VA border

[nj2va]

I like seeing these run over run changes at 500 on the GEFS for the possible threat next weekend.  Deeper trough over the SE.  

[WEATHER53]

1 minute ago, NorthArlington101 said:

the real trouble (rather than a cutter, at least on recent ens runs) is suppression/just not a strong enough storm. Nothing really climbs past the NC/VA border

Maybe evolving from cutter to out to sea to good?

[nj2va]

Also, looks like continued run over run improvements in the NAO domain on the GEFS. 

 

[EastCoast NPZ]

23 minutes ago, Ji said:

lol are you serious? Not one person was saddened by that post. Plus talking about a long wave pattern is much different than talking about a specific storm and how it’s a hair too warm. Chill it out dude.

I cried.