What Went Wrong in Winter 23-24/Base State/Will It Ever Snow Again??

[fujiwara79]

As bad as our winter has been relative to expectations, the entire country has experienced one of the warmest and snowless winters on record.  Last year, at least significant chunks of the west experienced a great winter.  This winter has been a blowtorch everywhere other than a brief cold snap in January.  At least we cashed in somewhat on the very few opportunities we had.

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, fujiwara79 said:

As bad as our winter has been relative to expectations, the entire country has experienced one of the warmest and snowless winters on record.  Last year, at least significant chunks of the west experienced a great winter.  This winter has been a blowtorch everywhere other than a brief cold snap in January.  At least we cashed in somewhat on the very few opportunities we had.

But the fact it’s warm everywhere isn’t good either lol 

[fujiwara79]

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

But the fact it’s warm everywhere isn’t good either lol 

Agreed, it's very disconcerting.  Getting perfect track rainstorms in Minneapolis in January & February is...not normal.

 

 

[WEATHER53]

I can accept that winter sucked

What isn’t acceptable is the suckage of how it was continually predicted.  That stems for the models themselves and the off the wall  continual worship here of “15 days away”  The death blow  was the cocky “mid to late Feb we guarantee”. I am hoping maybe this can become a true weather Discussion board again with a decrease in the fantasy gossip.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

5 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

But you’re discounting the link between enso and the epo.  It’s rare for a strong Nino not to impact the pacific pattern more than it did. 

The PDO actually has a high correlation with the EPO-WPO (even with lead time)

Here's a post

[psuhoffman]

4 hours ago, WEATHER53 said:

I can accept that winter sucked

What isn’t acceptable is the suckage of how it was continually predicted.  That stems for the models themselves and the off the wall  continual worship here of “15 days away”  The death blow  was the cocky “mid to late Feb we guarantee”. I am hoping maybe this can become a true weather Discussion board again with a decrease in the fantasy gossip.

I asked you how to Improve and you said stop forecasting 7+ days. So is your issue that we have a long range thread at all?  We are all open to a better way of long range forecasting if you have one.  You make  seasonal forecasts don’t you?  Aren’t they wrong sometimes?  We are not good at that yet. Even the best bust a lot at long range.  Can’t you accept we just don’t have the ability to be accurate all the time yet?  

[PrinceFrederickWx]

22 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Because we are in a -QBO strong Nino. Baltimore averages 42” of snow in -QBO moderate or stronger ninos. Even the median is close to 40”!  Every other category of seasonal pattern drivers is under 20”!   

What’s your sample size for a -QBO strong Nino? How do you know either of those were the reason for the high snowfall? How do you know it wasn’t something else?

I’m not trying to troll you. Just looking at this from a statistical viewpoint and trying to give you a possibly different angle. I’ve always had a problem with the bimodal distribution of ENSO (with weak Nina and moderate Nino allegedly being the best).

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

What’s your sample size for a -QBO strong Nino? How do you know either of those were the reason for the high snowfall? How do you know it wasn’t something else?

I’m not trying to troll you. Just looking at this from a statistical viewpoint and trying to give you a possibly different angle. I’ve always had a problem with the bimodal distribution of ENSO (with weak Nina and moderate Nino allegedly being the best).

When I did my winter forecast I tried to come up with as broad a sample size as possible. But keep in mind the further back you go to get more example the less relevant they may be. 
 

For QBO research says the direction it’s moving is as important as the numerical value. For enso I combined the mei and oni and the modoki index to come up with comps. 
 

If we include all Ninos that came in between 1.2 and 1.8 on my combined mei oni value, and all QBOs descending entering winter with a value near neutral or negative it gave us 7 years since 1950. 6/7 were above avg snow. And not just above avg but way above avg. And they all featured remarkably similar patterns to get there. The one outlier 1992 had a well known excuse, research showed the eruption that year threw off the pattern. I know 6 is a small sample size but it’s the best we will ever get in analog based forecasting. And when the sample shares a strong pattern commonality…I think it was fair to expect above normal snow this winter based on that data. 

[Jebman]

Damn that new base state and the hadley cells.

If you enjoy summer you are in luck, we are also going into a Nina. Should be super hot with lots of severe hurricanes.

[psuhoffman]

I think in some cases I didn’t weight the right factors enough and I didn’t correctly calculate how some would influence the pattern. 
 

I under valued the PDO. Severely. I also thought the pacific base state would mute the very strong basin wide nino into a moderate basin wide nino. Which is a good pattern. But what happened is we got a hybrid with the worst of both. The Nina like base state showed up with a western pac ridge. This acted to shift the Nino trough east so that it acted more like an east based Nino. It also supercharged the jet due to the compression between the western pac ridge and the trough to its northeast. This  continually flooded the US with pac puke. It also shifted the jet north and ran destructive interference with attempts at blocking.  
 

In summary we got some of the shitty long wave features of a Nina but with enhanced warmth of a Nino.  

[Stormchaserchuck1]

3 hours ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

What’s your sample size for a -QBO strong Nino?

There's a really strong 10mb correlation with -QBO/Stronger Nino and +QBO/Stronger Nina.. but that's about as far as that goes. 

QBO is an upper atmosphere wind index. 

[Ji]

I think in some cases I didn’t weight the right factors enough and I didn’t correctly calculate how some would influence the pattern. 
 
I under valued the PDO. Severely. I also thought the pacific base state would mute the very strong basin wide nino into a moderate basin wide nino. Which is a good pattern. But what happened is we got a hybrid with the worst of both. The Nina like base state showed up with a western pac ridge. This acted to shift the Nino trough east so that it acted more like an east based Nino. It also supercharged the jet due to the compression between the western pac ridge and the trough to its northeast. This  continually flooded the US with pac puke. It also shifted the jet north and ran destructive interference with attempts at blocking.  
 
In summary we got some of the shitty long wave features of a Nina but with enhanced warmth of a Nino.  

lol…in other words we benefited from the worst of Nina combined with the worst of Nino. This winter is truly heartbreaking. Waited forever for a Nino but deep down I was worried that if this failed it would be a disaster sign for future winters. We are cooked

[Daniel Boone]

19 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I think in some cases I didn’t weight the right factors enough and I didn’t correctly calculate how some would influence the pattern. 
 

I under valued the PDO. Severely. I also thought the pacific base state would mute the very strong basin wide nino into a moderate basin wide nino. Which is a good pattern. But what happened is we got a hybrid with the worst of both. The Nina like base state showed up with a western pac ridge. This acted to shift the Nino trough east so that it acted more like an east based Nino. It also supercharged the jet due to the compression between the western pac ridge and the trough to its northeast. This  continually flooded the US with pac puke. It also shifted the jet north and ran destructive interference with attempts at blocking.  
 

In summary we got some of the shitty long wave features of a Nina but with enhanced warmth of a Nino.  

Good analysis man ! 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

lol.. you guys.. Raleigh, NC is going to go 1000 days without any snow, no flurries, nothing. Richmond hasn't snowed in 2 years. 

[Maestrobjwa]

22 minutes ago, Ji said:

lol…in other words we benefited from the worst of Nina combined with the worst of Nino. This winter is truly heartbreaking. Waited forever for a Nino but deep down I was worried that if this failed it would be a disaster sign for future winters. We are cooked

I hope not...if so, it's not just us...what about the rest of the Northeast that did worse than we did? Had the entire east coast gotten a drastically cut in climo? Smh Never thought it would go to crap THIS quickly. I mean 2016 happened and boom...right off a cliff. For us, over the course of 4 years we had a 1.2 inch winter and a 0.2 inch winter. Never before did that happen in a short span...mercy.

[Maestrobjwa]

Given all this, why anybody has any intention on tracking next winter is beyond me. It must be for the science part of it...because if it's looking for snow? No point. We've seen the ugliest of this PDO cycle, so what more is there to find out? Already seen everything, and there have been no positive surprises in 8 years. So I don't get it...Now I also sense a loyalty for some similar to fanbases of teams that have been losing for a long time (somebody literally said "I've been hear since 2001-02). I mean hey, whatever floats ya!

[Ji]

Given all this, why anybody has any intention on tracking next winter is beyond me. It must be for the science part of it...because if it's looking for snow? No point. We've seen the ugliest of this PDO cycle, so what more is there to find out? Already seen everything, and there have been no positive surprises in 8 years. So I don't get it...Now I also sense a loyalty for some similar to fanbases of teams that have been losing for a long time (somebody literally said "I've been hear since 2001-02). I mean hey, whatever floats ya!

There will probably be a few tracking windows next winter

[PrinceFrederickWx]

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

I think in some cases I didn’t weight the right factors enough and I didn’t correctly calculate how some would influence the pattern. 
 

I under valued the PDO. Severely. I also thought the pacific base state would mute the very strong basin wide nino into a moderate basin wide nino. Which is a good pattern. But what happened is we got a hybrid with the worst of both. The Nina like base state showed up with a western pac ridge. This acted to shift the Nino trough east so that it acted more like an east based Nino. It also supercharged the jet due to the compression between the western pac ridge and the trough to its northeast. This  continually flooded the US with pac puke. It also shifted the jet north and ran destructive interference with attempts at blocking.  
 

In summary we got some of the shitty long wave features of a Nina but with enhanced warmth of a Nino.  

I agree with all this. As I had said earlier in this thread, I have a suspicion that ENSO is weighted too highly and other factors are underrated (I’d put PDO and Pacific base state down as some of those needing higher weight too). It was a red flag to me early on when we seemed to get the same Dec. Pac puke pattern IMBY year after year, no matter what ENSO state we were in.

And FWIW, I’m an admitted climate doomer so you’ll get zero argument from me on the elephant stuff. I think we’re completely screwed but who knows, maybe I’m wrong?

[psuhoffman]

When I look at this I think warm. It’s definitely not ideal. But I don’t think 3rd warmest winter ever across the US!  Warm yes. Not close to warmest ever. 
 

@Ji shame we can’t talk about this in the main thread, it would distract from the one whole post there today!  

[cbmclean]

14 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

lol.. you guys.. Raleigh, NC is going to go 1000 days without any snow, no flurries, nothing. Richmond hasn't snowed in 2 years. 

RDU record is 1,164 days from December 1989 to Feb 1993:

https://abc11.com/north-carolina-snow-nc-drought-last-time-it-snowed/14449555/

[WEATHER53]

Way less time and effort on messing with trying to fix what is now clearly broken

Let the brains start looking into the “Why”.  Why don’t we get Miller  As anymore   I think one this season.

My history is DC used to be at least 50/50 As versus cutters and transfer crap but no more.  More like 80/20 for what’s no help nowdays.  Why?   Start answering that and things like that and may see why our existing predictive methods mostly fail 

 

[psuhoffman]

14 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

lol.. you guys.. Raleigh, NC is going to go 1000 days without any snow, no flurries, nothing. Richmond hasn't snowed in 2 years. 

Makes total sense. I showed by the numbers DC had had the same snow climo as used to be typical for central SC the last 8 years.  Since 2010 it’s had the same snow avg as central NC.  So places like southern VA and NC would be southern GA or Northern Florida now. 

[psuhoffman]

8 minutes ago, WEATHER53 said:

Way less time and effort on messing with trying to fix what is now clearly broken

Let the brains start looking into the “Why”.  Why don’t we get Miller  As anymore   I think one this season.

My history is DC used to be at least 50/50 As versus cutters and transfer crap but no more.  More like 80/20 for what’s no help nowdays.  Why?   Start answering that and things like that and may see why our existing predictive methods mostly fail 

 

A lot of the factors we’ve been discussing are what is causing that. I just haven’t worded it the same way.   We’ve discussed how the pacific had key cell has been expanded shifting the jet north and accelerating the NS. This runs interference on getting a southern storm to phase and come up the coast. If the jet never digs south…if instead it’s racing among to our north constantly throwing SWs across the lakes it both screws up our thermals and suppresses any southern wave. 
 

Additionally the warm waters near the MC keep causing the MJO to stall and go nuts in the Nina hostile phases. This acts to suppress the STJ. 
 

Like I said we’ve discussed how these things are killing our snow but not necessarily worded it the way you just did. 

[WEATHER53]

32 minutes ago, WEATHER53 said:

Way less time and effort on messing with trying to fix what is now clearly broken

Let the brains start looking into the “Why”.  Why don’t we get Miller  As anymore   I think one this season.

My history is DC used to be at least 50/50 As versus cutters and transfer crap but no more.  More like 80/20 for what’s no help nowdays.  Why?   Start answering that and things like that and may see why our existing predictive methods mostly fail 

 

Why is it now rare for a clipper to cut and even cut and curl underneath of us.  Average winter would happen 2-4 times, great one 5+, lousy one 1-2, recently 0-1.

Why?

Instead of  assailing me for stating the status quo is not a useful tool, let’s find some answers but first gotta drop The Denial 

[psuhoffman]

21 minutes ago, WEATHER53 said:

Why is it now rare for a clipper to cut and even cut and curl underneath of us.  Average winter would happen 2-4 times, great one 5+, lousy one 1-2, recently 0-1.

Why?

Instead of  assailing me for stating the status quo is not a useful tool, let’s find some answers but first gotta drop The Denial 

Are you reading a different forum then I am?  We’ve been discussing the death of clippers a lot!  At least 3 times this winter that discussion came up. And it’s some of the same reasons I just discussed for the lack of coastals. The jet being displaced north. There are still clippers but they hit Vermont now. The northern streak is too far north for us to get those. 
 

As for why…we’ve theorized the expanded Hadley cell, Nina base state and MJO in the pacific. But I’m open to other factors if you have a different theory. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

When I look at this I think warm. It’s definitely not ideal. But I don’t think 3rd warmest winter ever across the US!  Warm yes. Not close to warmest ever. 

+EPO/+WPO floods the surface CONUS with warm air. The number 2 on record, I think? 01-02, had a similar pattern. 

https://ibb.co/VLCJDVG

We are also shattering previous records for global temperature, the chart is starting to move more exponential. 

 

[psuhoffman]

8 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

+EPO/+WPO floods the surface CONUS with warm air. The number 2 on record, I think? 01-02, had a similar pattern. 

https://ibb.co/VLCJDVG

We are also shattering previous records for global temperature, the chart is starting to move more exponential. 

 

That 2002 is a much stronger AK vortex though with more conus ridging. So was 1998. So were the other examples. Again I’m NOT saying it shouldn’t be warm. But it’s taking less to cause crazy torch patterns anymore. 

[cbmclean]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

That 2002 is a much stronger AK vortex though with more conus ridging. So was 1998. So were the other examples. Again I’m NOT saying it shouldn’t be warm. But it’s taking less to cause crazy torch patterns anymore. 

Do you find that unexpected or surprising?

[WEATHER53]

A broke  tool rarely fixes a broke tool 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Here is what I accidentaly posted in the long range thread.. I left it there because PSUhoffman replied quoting it. 

I think the reason for less clippers and Miller A's is lack of +PNA, although even when that pattern is present, those two storm types are happening about 30% less of the time.

Basically.. I don't have a good answer for you. The pattern has been more zonal, vs major troughs.. now, the -PNA that we have seen since 1998 and then 3x more since 2016 is a real anomaly, and not a product of global warming.