Mid to Long Range Discussion ~ 2024

[Met1985]

29 minutes ago, wncsnow said:

The big picture says wait at least 3 weeks

2 to 3 weeks yeah. It's a big reset. After the cold we just had I'm not surprised.  Everything pulled back to the arctic. 

[Met1985]

29 minutes ago, wncsnow said:

The weeklies also showed the whole month of January being great into February at one point. We all see how that turned out. One week of cold temperatures and some snow in the mountains

For the most part we have been at average or below.  We just haven't had a synoptic storm line up. But our friends to the west sure did make out nice. This warm up has been well advertised for over a month. This is not a surprise and people who act like this is a surprise do not follow this hobby well.

[wncsnow]

2 minutes ago, Met1985 said:

For the most part we have been at average or below.  We just haven't had a synoptic storm line up. But our friends to the west sure did make out nice. This warm up has been well advertised for over a month. This is not a surprise and people who act like this is a surprise do not follow this hobby well.

It was modeled about 7 to 10 days ago. Before that, the weeklies and long range ENS continued to say cold or average and stormy. Now the Pac Jet has taken over again. The fact is, this winter has been much like the last few. Temperatures have been slightly cooler but no synoptic storms, miller A's, ULL, etc. 

[wncsnow]

On 1/15/2024 at 1:47 PM, Leesville Wx Hawk said:

Need ridging in the west via Aleutian low (+PNA) so that cold air from Canada can move SE into our region. This should happen in about 2 weeks hopefully.



12 Z GEFS ensemble shows a ridge in the west that pushes the SE ridge.  While not perfect, this is a better synoptic pattern for our region and something to follow moving forward.

This was 9 days ago and looks nothing like the upcoming pattern. 

[Met1985]

34 minutes ago, wncsnow said:

It was modeled about 7 to 10 days ago. Before that, the weeklies and long range ENS continued to say cold or average and stormy. Now the Pac Jet has taken over again. The fact is, this winter has been much like the last few. Temperatures have been slightly cooler but no synoptic storms, miller A's, ULL, etc. 

I have to disagree on that. This winter has been nothing like the last few. Last winter we had what 2 cold spells? One minor snow. Yes snow wise things have been lacking but it's still only January 24th. Temp wise we have done much better. We've seen several weeks and days with below normal temps or near normal temps. Sure We've seen the 33 and rain but we are really close to scoring region wide.

This warm.up has been advertised since last month. The weeklies had flipped to a warm January for a few runs then came back down to reality.  Sure the weeklies have flipped here a d there but they have been the most stable out of the long range models to date. 

The eps has also done a great job noting the current pattern. It you watch run to run op solutions you are going to go crazy. Just the fact of things.

And now the mjo is showing signs of moving through the warm phases quicker so the actual cool down coming back is moving up at this hour. No can kicking that I can see. No pushing this pattern back at all at this stage. 

[Met1985]

The indices look like they are heading in the right direction in the mid to long range.

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[Met1985]

On the eps we go from torch on the 2nd to a much better look 5 days later heading in the right direction.

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[Met1985]

Also the GEFS agrees. Heading in the right direction.

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[Met1985]

The GEPS also agrees on the solution from the 2nd to around the 7th. Again all the ensembles are heading in the right direction.

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[Met1985]

Euro Weeklies. Heading into much better territory.

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[Leesville Wx Hawk]

Pretty obvious to most folks MET1985.  Good job making your point clear.

[BooneWX]

1 hour ago, Met1985 said:

Euro Weeklies. Heading into much better territory.

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And the timeline has moved up quite a bit! 

[eyewall]

2 hours ago, Met1985 said:

For the most part we have been at average or below.  We just haven't had a synoptic storm line up. But our friends to the west sure did make out nice. This warm up has been well advertised for over a month. This is not a surprise and people who act like this is a surprise do not follow this hobby well.

Exactly once an opportunity is blown it is hard to get it back in the southeast.

[Leesville Wx Hawk]

12z OP not raising spirits or glasses.  Hopefully Ensembles keep hope alive and well.

[Met1985]

21 minutes ago, eyewall said:

Exactly once an opportunity is blown it is hard to get it back in the southeast.

For yalls area I do understand your frustration. It is way harder to get snow down yalls way than up here in the mountains. But I still wouldn't completely take your area out of the probability to see some snow this year. 

[CaryWx]

7 minutes ago, Met1985 said:

For yalls area I do understand your frustration. It is way harder to get snow down yalls way than up here in the mountains. But I still wouldn't completely take your area out of the probability to see some snow this year. 

The "frustration" is a miss on even our annual average much less a drought coming up on 2yrs in a row.  And now looking at +300hr models for even a simple favorable pattern.  You can understand this, right?

[NorthHillsWx]

3 hours ago, wncsnow said:

The weeklies also showed the whole month of January being great into February at one point. We all see how that turned out. One week of cold temperatures and some snow in the mountains

It wasn’t even a week here. We had a cold day, 50’s the next day, near 60 the day after, then 2 days with cold 30’s highs and two days in the 40’s. Really just 3 cold days and two below average days. Very unimpressive in central NC. I have no doubt the pattern will change back, but to your point (and this goes back to last year too) models frequently have overestimated the duration of these cold periods. If the change in February is a big rainer followed by 3-4 days of cold then another warm up, we are cooked. No one outside the mountains should ever bank on snows past February 20 as they have become as rare as a direct hurricane landfall on coastal Georgia. We simply have punted too much winter to punt again past mid February 

[Met1985]

3 minutes ago, CaryWx said:

The "frustration" is a miss on even our annual average much less a drought coming up on 2yrs in a row.  And now looking at +300hr models for even a simple favorable pattern.  You can understand this, right?

I can understand that for sure. What I don't understand is people thinking this was not advertised in the mid range forecast.  Larry has posted some great statistics for a possible snowy February.  Tennessee has scored and hopefully the prevailing pattern to come will help us score as a state in whole. 

I'll state this again looking at op runs after op run will only get you more and more frustrated.  We all know that the time period for a significant change back to a much better pattern is going to be around February 8th and then some. So maybe use this time to take a little break and enjoy the weather we have.

[NorthHillsWx]

3 minutes ago, Met1985 said:

I can understand that for sure. What I don't understand is people thinking this was not advertised in the mid range forecast.  Larry has posted some great statistics for a possible snowy February.  Tennessee has scored and hopefully the prevailing pattern to come will help us score as a state in whole. 

The warmup was advertised. What wasn’t advertised originally was the short duration of the cold before. It was all wasted in the Tennessee valley. If you look at RDU this month, we’ve had 8 days above average, 11 near average days, and 5 below average days. Im sure this averages out to near average for the full month, but with a very warm end to the month and a very warm December, it’s extremely likely that 2 of our 3 main winter months will be above average. Now that’s somewhat expected during an El Niño year, but the last pattern change that led to the cool outbreak from a sensible weather perspective was really just a few post frontal passage cold days overshadowed by a massive warmup. The fact we’ll be close to 80 in late January is more impressive than two nights in the teens. Add in the snow drought and a 2-3 week wait for the next cold/possible wintry chance, and yea, these 3-4 day cold snaps bookended by weeks of average to average + temps don’t really cut it. We know we don’t get wall to wall cold ever but a front every 2 weeks would be nice instead of burning the better part of a month waiting on the next cold snap and praying it won’t just be 3 days long

[NorthHillsWx]

On 1/1/2024 at 10:13 AM, GaWx said:

 The latest Euro Weeklies (12/31 run) has normal or BN temps in the SE US throughout the run, including a strong signal for cold in its final week fwiw (not easy to do that far out on a 101 member run).

Not to say Larry was wrong, but if we go back three weeks, the weeklies were screaming this whole period would be below average. That ended up being the aforementioned 3-4 day cool snap. How are we to trust the same weeklies saying the same thing at the same range and expect different results? 

[tarheelwx]

The further out the models forecast, the less accurate they are.  Think of the climate models from 10-15 years ago showing us embarking on a dustbowl, yet here we are being quite wet overall in the southeast over the last 5 years.  

TW

[BooneWX]

This sub forum needs a blockbuster storm like a fish needs water. We’ve never been collectively down this bad as a group.

 

fwiw, I see both sides being right. The cold dumped east, just not east enough. Unfortunately for us, the trough didn’t dig into our area which kept it mostly seasonal - save a few days - and bottled it up west of the apps. We really were just a few hundred (less in many cases)miles from an all-time week here. It just didn’t pan out. 
 

Two things we appear to be getting that we haven’t had consistently in a while:

 

- a +PNA

- one that pushes into Alaska and makes the energy more likey to dig where we need it. We haven’t had a good synoptic storm in so long because the pacific pattern sucks. An -NAO is useless if the PNA is junk. Hang in there!

[NorthHillsWx]

1 minute ago, tarheelwx said:

The further out the models forecast, the less accurate they are.  Think of the climate models from 10-15 years ago showing us embarking on a dustbowl, yet here we are being quite wet overall in the southeast over the last 5 years.  

TW

Right and that’s the problem. The pattern this year stinks. We have nothing in short term to go off of. Supposedly El Niños are backloaded here and indices are trending great for that time period but it absolutely has to produce or we are out of time. It’s been so bad the last 6 years we haven’t had anything to track within 5 days. Haven’t even had anything we could lose in that period. Long range ensembles and indices are the only thing that have shown favorable patterns, short range guidance hasn’t even needed to be used

[Met1985]

Lol rough crowd guys, rough crowd.  I do understand yall outside the mountains.  Hopefully everyone can score.

[jpbart]

Personally I have given up, getting snow in these parts is damn rare and appears to be less likely every year.  Especially around the Columbia, SC area for crying out loud.  I just decided getting frustrated and angry over failed storms was silly and not good for my blood pressure.  I keep an eye on things for fun and to know when I have to go buy milk and bread in larger quantities than usual.  I still hope for that one storm to arrive and hell the Detroit LIons won a playoff game.  anything can happen.

[GaWx]

2 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

Not to say Larry was wrong, but if we go back three weeks, the weeklies were screaming this whole period would be below average. That ended up being the aforementioned 3-4 day cool snap. How are we to trust the same weeklies saying the same thing at the same range and expect different results? 

1. The Euro Weeklies (EW) from late Dec were overall WAY off for mid Jan to early Feb but it wasn’t just in the too cold direction.

2. The week of Jan 15-22 ended up WAY too warm on the EW in late Dec, less than 3 weeks out. It later corrected and ended up ~6 BN at RDU, very accurate:

3. Here’s the map I was referring to (in the post you quoted) with a strong signal for cold in the final week of the 12/31/23 EW (for Feb 5-12), which as of now is likely to bust way too cold:

 

4. The EW from many late Dec/very early Jan runs for Jan 22-29 will end up busting WAY too cold as many runs had NN well inland to BN nearer to the SE coast. However, as Jan 15-22 corrected much colder, Jan 22-29 soon after started correcting much warmer and has since been warm for many runs. It is almost as if once the Ninalike (coldest Plains/MW) extreme cold of Jan 15-22 was seen, the outlook to much warmer following it started to also be seen soon afterward.

5. The week of Jan 29-Feb 5, which was also NN well inland to BN nearer to coast on runs in late Dec/very early Jan is still in some doubt as a good number of recent GFS runs have been no warmer than NN in much of the SE, largely helped by cold CAD. You even said this just 2 days ago:

“Well the idea of 3 weeks of solid warmth is getting derailed at least in the ops. Canadian actually first to pick up on the cooler first week of Feb (it’s backed off somewhat). GFS has trended way colder.”

6. The Weeklies from late Dec/early Jan weren’t quite screaming BN the whole period in the entire SE, but rather mainly NN well inland to BN nearer to coast other than all solidly BN Feb 5-12. Still way off though (much too cold Jan 22-29 and probably Feb 5-12 and much too warm Jan 15-22 with Jan 29-Feb 5 still in doubt).

7. I never trust models in week 2, much less extended models. I just use them as guidance in combo with climo, analogs, etc.

8. The main purpose of this thread is supposed to be to discuss what each of us sees down the road as possibilities, whatever they may be. We’ll always have different takes, which makes for good discussion as long as it doesn’t deteriorate into too much confrontation/negativity toward each other. The posts made out of frustration have a better place, the Sanitarium thread. The most enjoyable part for me is to try to sniff out pattern changes well in advance by using history/climo as a guide.

9. Most of NC missing SN mid Jan has little bearing on their chances of getting it mid Feb to early Mar imho, especially in a moderate+ Nino.

[Met1985]

13 minutes ago, GaWx said:

1. The Euro Weeklies (EW) from late Dec were overall WAY off for mid Jan to early Feb but it wasn’t just in the too cold direction.

2. The week of Jan 15-22 ended up WAY too warm on the EW in late Dec, less than 3 weeks out. It later corrected and ended up ~6 BN at RDU, very accurate:

3. Here’s the map I was referring to (in the post you quoted) with a strong signal for cold in the final week of the 12/31/23 EW (for Feb 5-12), which as of now is likely to bust way too cold:

 

4. The EW from many late Dec/very early Jan runs for Jan 22-29 will end up busting way too cold as many runs had NN well inland to BN nearer to the SE coast. However, as Jan 15-22 corrected much colder, Jan 22-29 corrected much warmer and has since been warm for many runs. It is almost as if once the Ninalike (coldest Plains/MW) extreme cold of Jan 15-22 was seen, the outlook to much warmer following it was also seen.

5. The week of Jan 29-Feb 5, which was also NN inland to BN coast on runs in late Dec/very early Jan is still in some doubt as a good number of recent GFS runs have been no warmer than NN in much of the SE, largely helped by cold CAD. You even said this just 2 days ago:

“Well the idea of 3 weeks of solid warmth is getting derailed at least in the ops. Canadian actually first to pick up on the cooler first week of Feb (it’s backed off somewhat). GFS has trended way colder.”

6. The Weeklies from late Dec/early Jan weren’t quite screaming BN the whole period in the entire SE, but rather mainly NN well inland to BN nearer to coast other than all solidly BN Feb 5-12. Still way off though (much too cold Jan 22-29 and probably Feb 5-12 and much too warm Jan 15-22 with Jan 29-Feb 5 still in doubt).

7. I never trust models in week 2, much less extended models. I just use them as guidance in combo with climo, analogs, etc.

8. The main purpose of this thread is supposed to be to discuss what each of us sees down the road as possibilities, whatever they may be. We’ll always have different takes, which makes for good discussion as long as it doesn’t deteriorate into too much confrontation/negativity toward each other. The posts made out of frustration have a better place, the Sanitarium thread. The most enjoyable part for me is to try to sniff out pattern changes well in advance by using history/climo as a guide.

9. Most of NC missing SN mid Jan has little bearing on their chances of getting it mid Feb to early Mar imho, especially in a moderate+ Nino.

Excellent post Larry and some of what I was alluding to but you put it in a much better context than me. Keep it up warm or cold.

[wncsnow]

38 minutes ago, GaWx said:

1. The Euro Weeklies (EW) from late Dec were overall WAY off for mid Jan to early Feb but it wasn’t just in the too cold direction.

2. The week of Jan 15-22 ended up WAY too warm on the EW in late Dec, less than 3 weeks out. It later corrected and ended up ~6 BN at RDU, very accurate:

3. Here’s the map I was referring to (in the post you quoted) with a strong signal for cold in the final week of the 12/31/23 EW (for Feb 5-12), which as of now is likely to bust way too cold:

 

4. The EW from many late Dec/very early Jan runs for Jan 22-29 will end up busting WAY too cold as many runs had NN well inland to BN nearer to the SE coast. However, as Jan 15-22 corrected much colder, Jan 22-29 soon after started correcting much warmer and has since been warm for many runs. It is almost as if once the Ninalike (coldest Plains/MW) extreme cold of Jan 15-22 was seen, the outlook to much warmer following it started to also be seen soon afterward.

5. The week of Jan 29-Feb 5, which was also NN well inland to BN nearer to coast on runs in late Dec/very early Jan is still in some doubt as a good number of recent GFS runs have been no warmer than NN in much of the SE, largely helped by cold CAD. You even said this just 2 days ago:

“Well the idea of 3 weeks of solid warmth is getting derailed at least in the ops. Canadian actually first to pick up on the cooler first week of Feb (it’s backed off somewhat). GFS has trended way colder.”

6. The Weeklies from late Dec/early Jan weren’t quite screaming BN the whole period in the entire SE, but rather mainly NN well inland to BN nearer to coast other than all solidly BN Feb 5-12. Still way off though (much too cold Jan 22-29 and probably Feb 5-12 and much too warm Jan 15-22 with Jan 29-Feb 5 still in doubt).

7. I never trust models in week 2, much less extended models. I just use them as guidance in combo with climo, analogs, etc.

8. The main purpose of this thread is supposed to be to discuss what each of us sees down the road as possibilities, whatever they may be. We’ll always have different takes, which makes for good discussion as long as it doesn’t deteriorate into too much confrontation/negativity toward each other. The posts made out of frustration have a better place, the Sanitarium thread. The most enjoyable part for me is to try to sniff out pattern changes well in advance by using history/climo as a guide.

9. Most of NC missing SN mid Jan has little bearing on their chances of getting it mid Feb to early Mar imho, especially in a moderate+ Nino.

Thanks for verifying this. All I have been trying to say is the weeklies should be taken with a grain of salt. They are slightly better than searching for a black wooly worm.

 

 

[wncsnow]

5 hours ago, Met1985 said:

I have to disagree on that. This winter has been nothing like the last few. Last winter we had what 2 cold spells? One minor snow. Yes snow wise things have been lacking but it's still only January 24th. Temp wise we have done much better. We've seen several weeks and days with below normal temps or near normal temps. Sure We've seen the 33 and rain but we are really close to scoring region wide.

This warm.up has been advertised since last month. The weeklies had flipped to a warm January for a few runs then came back down to reality.  Sure the weeklies have flipped here a d there but they have been the most stable out of the long range models to date. 

The eps has also done a great job noting the current pattern. It you watch run to run op solutions you are going to go crazy. Just the fact of things.

And now the mjo is showing signs of moving through the warm phases quicker so the actual cool down coming back is moving up at this hour. No can kicking that I can see. No pushing this pattern back at all at this stage. 

Your looking at a strictly IMBY viewpoint. Last winter we had a similar cold stretch in December to the one we just had. We also had a decent NWFS in January which you just had this month. We also had no snow or even legitimate snow threats within 5 days for the foothills and piedmont last winter and that's been the case this winter too. It's been wetter overall since late December than last winter which has helped keep the temps down. 

 

Yes it has been a little colder overall but its not like this winter has been a complete 180 from last. The temperature departures in January are going to look like a La Nina, not an El Niño  (cold upper Midwest). The system that brought TN valley snow was more like a La Nina system not El Nino. Most of the mountains and ski areas are still pretty far below their 30 year average for snow but obviously doing better than just east. 

[GaWx]

 1. I’ve got my flame-proof suit on! Take the following new (1/24) EW maps with a HUGE grain. They may end up way off like the late Dec/early Jan runs. They’re far from trustworthy.

2. So, fwiw, the last 3 weeks of the run are each the coldest yet of their respective weeks. Even though they’re not even close to being trustworthy, I still prefer seeing them with BN dominating and like seeing the cold signal strengthening, especially since El Niño climo would support it.

Feb 12-19: only 1 close to this cold is 1/21 run:

 

Feb 19-26: by far coldest run going back 2 weeks

 
 

Feb 19-26 precip: ~1” ATL, 1.5” Gainesville, FL (fwiw)