Jan/Early Feb Medium/Long Range Discussion Part 3

[psuhoffman]

The main thing that changed is as the lead time shortened and timing differences between ensemble members became resolved we start to see more details like inevitably some ridging between waves. At longer leads it all got washed out making the troughs seem connected but there was always likely to be some temporary ridging between waves initially until the blocking really gets more established. 

[psuhoffman]

The same phenomenon happens when you look at a 10 or 30 day mean v a one day. As the waves slide under the block they will create lower heights along the whole track.  But if you look at any one moment in time it’s not “blue” from the southwest all the way across into the Atlantic at the same time. There are waves within there with troughs and ridges. 
 

At long leads on the ensemble it will look that way because the members don’t agree on where the waves will be and so they wash out the less frequent ridges. 

[Terpeast]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

The same phenomenon happens when you look at a 10 or 30 day mean v a one day. As the waves slide under the block they will create lower heights along the whole track.  But if you look at any one moment in time it’s not “blue” from the southwest all the way across into the Atlantic at the same time. There are waves within there with troughs and ridges. 

Yeah, that’s the main thing - this is not a pig SER standing wave stuck in there as we’d see in a nina. It’s a transient ridge between waves. Completely typical

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

The same phenomenon happens when you look at a 10 or 30 day mean v a one day. As the waves slide under the block they will create lower heights along the whole track.  But if you look at any one moment in time it’s not “blue” from the southwest all the way across into the Atlantic at the same time. There are waves within there with troughs and ridges. 

Exactly. This sort of thing has been brought up before- interpreting and gleaning useful information from a smoothed long range mean takes a bit of skill.

[brooklynwx99]

3 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Yeah, that’s the main thing - this is not a pig SER standing wave stuck in there as we’d see in a nina. It’s a transient ridge between waves. Completely typical

look at this crazy SE ridge. this was due to the La Nina base state at the time

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

Did @Ralph Wiggum just declare WAR??   I'm joking here of course!  But in all seriousness I always thought when people talk about the "western Atlantic ridge" (WAR) or "pig SE ridge", that it refers to a fairly long-lasting phenomenon that screws things for many days or more.  Not a transient feature in a natural progression.

[Kevin Reilly]

17 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

The same phenomenon happens when you look at a 10 or 30 day mean v a one day. As the waves slide under the block they will create lower heights along the whole track.  But if you look at any one moment in time it’s not “blue” from the southwest all the way across into the Atlantic at the same time. There are waves within there with troughs and ridges. 
 

At long leads on the ensemble it will look that way because the members don’t agree on where the waves will be and so they wash out the less frequent ridges. 

I like this post here.  The models can show varying degrees of where to place the vort out west in the Southwestern United States but how the models resolve how that comes out of the southwest really determines what goes on along the Mid-Atlantic Coast.

 

Case in point does the energy/ vorts all come out of the southwest all at once or does it come out of the southwest in pieces along with what kind of blocking is up top and cold air available too.  All of these factors we live and die every year.  

So, instead of saying "We just can't know yet".  I will go with I think we find out from modeling perspectives what way we are going here some time starting this afternoon to Tuesday 0z model runs. 

Also, I am in the camp that the SER is a transient feature. 

 

Good Luck to the Ravens fans here today!

[CAPE]

9 minutes ago, Scarlet Pimpernel said:

Did @Ralph Wiggum just declare WAR??   I'm joking here of course!  But in all seriousness I always thought when people talk about the "western Atlantic ridge" (WAR) or "pig SE ridge", that it refers to a fairly long-lasting phenomenon that screws things for many days or more.  Not a transient feature in a natural progression.

That's why I joke about him having a phobia. You are correct. A sustained WAR is not a feature showing up on guidance.

[Bob Chill]

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

I am ready though to see the mean trough setup in the east inside of D15. It’s been hovering just outside that range for a bit now. 

I hate doing it and always want it to fail but for some reason simply adding a week to any meaningful longwave pattern change (meaning the change puts us in a pattern that can snow a few times) nails it like 80% of the time compared to just using ensembles. When things degraded my stupid gut said the way out will be difficult.... gah

We're not really that close to discussing anything other than being in the game down the line imho. We can walk right into an event during the next 7-10 days but it's more climo than pattern driven (imo again). A stable pattern that keeps cycling us in the game has been quite elusive this year. Up and down the coast really. Sure would like to see that general personality change pretty soon. Otherwise I have a hunch storm track will continue to be a fight for the balance of remaining winter. Just spitballin but this is not a year for the east, period. The season has spoken loudly and it's basically Feb now. 

[Terpeast]

4 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I hate doing it and always want it to fail but for some reason simply adding a week to any meaningful longwave pattern change (meaning the change puts us in a pattern that can snow a few times) nails it like 80% of the time compared to just using ensembles. When things degraded my stupid gut said the way out will be difficult.... gah

We're not really that close to discussing anything other than being in the game down the line imho. We can walk right into an event during the next 7-10 days but it's more climo than pattern driven (imo again). A stable pattern that keeps cycling us in the game has been quite elusive this year. Up and down the coast really. Sure would like to see that general personality change pretty soon. Otherwise I have a hunch storm track will continue to be a fight for the balance of remaining winter. Just spitballin but this is not a year for the east, period. The season has spoken loudly and it's basically Feb now. 

Normally I love your insights, but this time I’m not quite getting where you’re coming from. I don’t see a can kick and the ensembles are in lockstep with a more favorable pattern by Feb 12-15, with a shot at a trackable event in the Feb 3-6 timeframe. Am I missing something that you’ve caught onto?

[Weather Will]

I like to keep it simple since I am stupid, for the next 5 days the only game in town is the midweek clipper.  WB 12Z 12K NAM.

Will trust in the snow gods for a BECS in the remaining 7 weeks or so of tracking.....

[Bob Chill]

13 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Normally I love your insights, but this time I’m not quite getting where you’re coming from. I don’t see a can kick and the ensembles are in lockstep with a more favorable pattern by Feb 12-15, with a shot at a trackable event in the Feb 3-6 timeframe. Am I missing something that you’ve caught onto?

The pattern is flipping around and mostly on schedule from what I see. I just don't like what I see under the hood. Storms have been curling early and easy this year and cold has mostly just been a blast that moderates without a cycles of reinforcement (except for the 10 days we got 2 quite lucky storms). Basically, guidance never shows a good spread of ingredients that hang out for a few cycles in the east. 

I haven't been a fan of analog guidance at all this year except for the 1 period where it snowed. Always showing mixy/messy when ens guidance shows something much more promising. Idk. I'm mostly going off my gut instincts to what I see. My personal algorithm has only been set off once this year and that's 8 weeks of tracking lol. When it goes off again, I'll be here shotgun posting lol

Eta: Important detail... I'm talking about bigger storms in a real pattern. Not a normal climo choas event or any moderate event. Something that checks off boxes and pastes the coast is about the only thing that can turn this winter around for the majority. Not feelin that yet 

[40/70 Benchmark]

8 hours ago, frd said:

You really think that's possible?  

Yes. Likely? TBD...

[Terpeast]

3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

The pattern is flipping around and mostly on schedule from what I see. I just don't like what I see under the hood. Storms have been curling early and easy this year and cold has mostly just been a blast that moderates without a cycles of reinforcement (except for the 10 days we got 2 quite lucky storms). Basically, guidance never shows a good spread of ingredients that hang out for a few cycles in the east. 

I haven't been a fan of analog guidance at all this year except for the 1 period where it snowed. Always showing mixy/messy when ens guidance shows something much more promising. Idk. I'm mostly going off my gut instincts to what I see. My personal algorithm has only been set off once this year and that's 8 weeks of tracking lol. When it goes off again, I'll be here shotgun posting lol

Gotcha, thanks. 

I do like what I see coming up ahead, the only thing missing is the NAO. I do want to see that get stronger by mid Feb, so we’ll see

[frd]

23 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

The season has spoken loudly and it's basically Feb now. 

 My only concern is time. Simply put when the improved pattern arrives and is established let's look at the date.  The later the date,  the less likely to possibly achieve seasonal snowfall, or above. Caveat a MECS in which odds are higher in a Nino .

[Bob Chill]

Just now, Terpeast said:

Gotcha, thanks. 

I do like what I see coming up ahead, the only thing missing is the NAO. I do want to see that get stronger by mid Feb, so we’ll see

I'd be happy with a -ao of any strength, neutral NAO, and +pna. Just give us 14 straight days of that. It may not end up like 2003 but that type of pattern is what i personally think is most likely to deliver at this point. If we were going to get real nao help, we've typically already had several cycles or one long one. The hit and run we just had was a bubble buster for me. Stable blocks in general don't do that. They oscillate with a bias. This winter hasn't shown any of that from how i look at things. 

I not poo poo'ing anything though. Things look totally fine for winter wx in Feb. I'm just not excited with what ens are showing irt big storms. Weekly and monthly guidance leading into this winter had plenty of stable blocking ideas and they still do but we haven't actually had any yet lol. And winters with stable blocking show their hand earlier than Feb 1st in general. I understand that Feb has always had the strongest signal. No argument from me. But it's perfectly logical for me at this point to assume the NAO prob isn't the feature that pushes this winter into the "big" category. I'd pay money to be wrong tho hahaha

[clskinsfan]

I started a thread for the Wednesday clipper. If it fails blame me. 

 

[Terpeast]

12 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I'd be happy with a -ao of any strength, neutral NAO, and +pna. Just give us 14 straight days of that. It may not end up like 2003 but that type of pattern is what i personally think is most likely to deliver at this point. If we were going to get real nao help, we've typically already had several cycles or one long one. The hit and run we just had was a bubble buster for me. Stable blocks in general don't do that. They oscillate with a bias. This winter hasn't shown any of that from how i look at things. 

I not poo poo'ing anything though. Things look totally fine for winter wx in Feb. I'm just not excited with what ens are showing irt big storms. Weekly and monthly guidance leading into this winter had plenty of stable blocking ideas and they still do but we haven't actually had any yet lol. And winters with stable blocking show their hand earlier than Feb 1st in general. I understand that Feb has always had the strongest signal. No argument from me. But it's perfectly logical for me at this point to assume the NAO prob isn't the feature that pushes this winter into the "big" category. I'd pay money to be wrong tho hahaha

Yeah, I understand where you’re coming from now. I may not agree 100% completely, but I hear what you’re saying. It would have been great if the nao block that led to the 1 week of wintry weather sustained itself longer to keep us colder longer, giving us a chance for another hit or two instead of torching to 70s the other day. It was kind of surprising how quickly that block broke down. And considering that the second storm could have been much bigger had it not been for a lead wave that tamped things down for the second wave. 

But we did have that wintry week, something we haven’t seen in so long, and the pattern ensembles+weeklies have been spitting out for Feb is way better and has a ton more upside for a bigger hit. One look at those maps and I’m thinking, “someone is going to get walloped. Pummeled. Obliterated.” 

Not saying it will actually happen, or that it’ll come down in one big hammer. It could be a few moderate events spread out over a month. It could be a miss to the south. It could be a mixed event. As CAPE would say, we just can’t know yet. You’re not liking what your gut feeling is telling you (and you could be right). I, otoh, see more upside in the coming pattern than we’ve seen all winter, that one wintry week included. 

Keep posting, Bob. We all value your input!

[winter_warlock]

15 hours ago, Fozz said:

@ravensrule just imagine if the Ravens win the Super Bowl and then the following day we get a 12-18" storm

That would be like winning the lottery!!!!!

[Heisy]

Cmc still pretty different with its handling of the ULL near Ne in the long range


.

[fujiwara79]

It's just surreal that, in late January, we've just had two storms that had deformation rain bands in the upper Midwest.  Those storm tracks should at least produce white rain even in April up there.

Omega blocks are rare but they would typically happen in April or May.  Just a bizarre pattern all the way around.

[Heisy]

If we want a snowstorm the cmc offers a lot better chance. GFS we have no shot with the shredder sitting over us…


.

[Maestrobjwa]

Just now, Heisy said:

If we want a snowstorm the cmc offers a lot better chance. GFS we have no shot with the shredder sitting over us…


.

I find whenever we gotta look to the cmc...nah, ain't gonna work, lol

[CAPE]

And there it is

[brooklynwx99]

3 minutes ago, CAPE said:

And there it is

bowling ball phases with the backside of the TPV lobe. wonderful

[Heisy]

And there it is

Yea actually has the same phase that euro showed yesterday just a little sloppier. That’s our path to victory it seems, unless models start moving that ULL much farther E


.

[brooklynwx99]

look, give me a bowling ball, a juiced STJ, and confluence in a strong Nino February and it can be worked out

[NorthArlington101]

And there it is

Agree for shorter-term. Mid-Long range… basically anything is on the table

Meant to respond to @Maestrobjwa

[Terpeast]

3 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

bowling ball phases with the backside of the TPV lobe. wonderful

Yeah, we just need part of that TPV to phase with the ss wave. That’s the path to victory on Feb 4-6

My gut feel is that other models will come north

[MillvilleWx]

That southern stream wave is juiced. Any appreciable phasing would make this a significant event somewhere east of the Appalachian front. Going to be a tight case, but the bigger events are always about timing. CMC shows a path to victory. GFS still disconnected, but that southern wave is a beast.