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

[EastCoast NPZ]

10 hours ago, notvirga! said:

My mom still lived in Winchester during those years so I paid attention and I think at least 3 of those winters were 30 plus inches around Winchester is that about right? 

Where was I for those winters???  None of them were good.  There were some good stretches out In my part of the county where I was in '20 - 23 that I distinctly remember driving into snowless Winchester often.

[RevWarReenactor]

2 hours ago, Terpeast said:

to be fair, maybe they don’t have any good answers as to why the projected blocks vanished into thin air (literally). All we have is theories and poor LR model performance. My own theory is that the marine heat wave off Japan disrupted the wave train downstream, breaking up any attempt for the aleutian low to form and sustain itself, and also pushing the pac jet northward effectively broke up the blocks. 

Thats fair. I have no issue with discussion on what might have happened or maybe they don't know.

The problem I have is when METS fall into the JB trap of making overhyped declarative statements like "its going to get cold" "Only a could more weeks until an epic pattern" "things look amazing" etc. They stick to their guns so hard that some belittle the naysayers (like me) who turned out to be 100% correct. We are not even allowed to panic in the panic room, we are just being too "negative" when again, we were 100% correct.

Then when so called "Epic" pattern doesn't materialize. They simply move on. Nothing to see here! It was just an "idea" and not a forecast! Like you seriously believed us LOL? Who even looks at LR forecasts anyway? Who even trusts that?

Then the cherry on top is claiming that they are rooted in "science" when the entire LR thread the last few weeks was essentially a story of fiction. 

[Terpeast]

48 minutes ago, JenkinsJinkies said:

I mean the D in that stands for decadal and it’s only been in place for a few years.

Well, going by this chart, it's been mostly negative since 1998 with brief pos interruptions. Either the cycles are shortening, or we're going to flip to positive within 2-5 years.

 

[psuhoffman]

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

to be fair, maybe they don’t have any good answers as to why the projected blocks vanished into thin air (literally). All we have is theories and poor LR model performance. My own theory is that the marine heat wave off Japan disrupted the wave train downstream, breaking up any attempt for the aleutian low to form and sustain itself, and also pushing the pac jet northward effectively broke up the blocks. 

The whole jet ended up north and you're right IMO that is what effectively disrupted the blocking.  The vortex that was supposed to be under the block reinforcing it with wave breaking ended up right in the NAO domain and eventually phased with the TPV lobe to the west and consolidated into a +++AO/NAO.  

[psuhoffman]

3 hours ago, WVclimo said:

I am the farthest thing from a scientist, but I can't say that I can fully accept the suggestion that winters in our area have become so much warmer now that the likelihood of future snowy winters is past us.

I go on LWX's site and look at temperature records for the past century, expecting to see a hockey stick-like rise recently that bears that out.  And all I see are mean winter temps within the same range they have remained all of that time.  

Yes, the last 10 winters have been mild.  Not as mild overall as 1930-39, or 1995-2004.  But beyond the short-term cycles, what about this data leads one to subscribe to the idea that it's become too warm in our area to snow going forward?  There is a trendline dotted on the graph after all.

Well since I am the main torch bearer for the argument you seem to be refuting lets start by definig what I am and am not saying.  I am NOT saying that we wont ever get snowy winters or big snowstorms. 

I have said 2 things

1) I think the evidence is strong enough to suggest we are getting less snow, and the biggest % of that change is because -PDO cycles are becoming much worse.  I have said there is not much evidence that +PDO cycles have been affected yet.  

2) I have said we are getting less "cold" snowstorms than we used too and marginal events are leaving rain more often.  

As for what evidence I have...From 1964 when records began to 2010 IAD had 19 days with 4" of snow and a high temp 5 or more below freezing.  Since not once.  And worse, since 2003 it's only happened in one year, 2010.  That is a statistically significant trend. 

As for a PDO, its now been 24 years since we got an above avg snowfall -PDO season!  24 years.  This use to happen fairly regularly.  It happened 9 times between 1950 and 2000.  None since.  Again a statistically significant trend. 

I think there is ample evidence that we are getting less cold storms AND -PDO cycles are getting worse.   

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, Terpeast said:

Carrying this reply into this thread. 

The Jan 6-7 event this year is a perfect example of what could have been a 6-12” snowstorm in our area had it not been a couple degrees too warm. 

A lot of cases we point at may not be clear cut, but this Jan 6-7 one is the most clear cut to me. Unforgivable and inexcusable. After seeing that one fail, I basically threw my snowfall outlook out the window right then and there. 

Yea, I have two categories in my mind with this phenomenon.  The worst are storms that I can say most definitely should have been snow.  Storms where given the setup from the macro to the micro...everything about it says this was snow 90% of the time in the past...and then it just rains.  Those are the really alarming ones.  There have been a few of these over the last 5 years.  That was one of them.  

Then there is a second more ambiguous category.  These are good track waves in a really bad pattern.  Most of those would have been rain in the past too so this one is more tricky.  The thing is NOT ALL OF THEM were rain.  We used to luck into a fluke snow sometimes from a lucky track even in an otherwise totally shit pattern.  We NEVER seem to anymore.  It's too warm, frankly its too warm to even be close.  There was an example around the super bowl last winter.  Yea the pattern was shite, but it wasn't even close despite a perfect track storm.  It wasn't even snow at 4000 feet in the mountains!  It was way way way too warm in a system where it should have at least been close and had an outside chance.  This one is hard because its very easy to say "there was a lot wrong of course that wasn't snow" and that is correct.  This issue is they are not even close, and none not one is ever snow anymore when in the past some were.  

IMO we've now lost any chance at any of those second category of storms.  There is almost no way we can get a snowstorm in a really bad pattern just from a lucky track anymore.  Its just too warm in torch patters now.  And worse we are now losing some of the good track waves in a decent to good longwave pattern too...that one is more alarming.  

[JenkinsJinkies]

1 hour ago, Terpeast said:

Well, going by this chart, it's been mostly negative since 1998 with brief pos interruptions. Either the cycles are shortening, or we're going to flip to positive within 2-5 years.

 

If you look at that chart it was + for a bit in the mid 2010s.

[WEATHER53]

1 hour ago, RevWarReenactor said:

Thats fair. I have no issue with discussion on what might have happened or maybe they don't know.

The problem I have is when METS fall into the JB trap of making overhyped declarative statements like "its going to get cold" "Only a could more weeks until an epic pattern" "things look amazing" etc. They stick to their guns so hard that some belittle the naysayers (like me) who turned out to be 100% correct. We are not even allowed to panic in the panic room, we are just being too "negative" when again, we were 100% correct.

Then when so called "Epic" pattern doesn't materialize. They simply move on. Nothing to see here! It was just an "idea" and not a forecast! Like you seriously believed us LOL? Who even looks at LR forecasts anyway? Who even trusts that?

Then the cherry on top is claiming that they are rooted in "science" when the entire LR thread the last few weeks was essentially a story of fiction. 

Essentially we have broken and dull tools at our disposal.

Active weather sells. All media types know that. They hype it.  Then the hype spreads to “well we know what these indexes WILL do…oh, there’s a new index to try on”

Humility works and bombast declarations don’t.  The pronounced /hyped “mid to late Feb” was a travesty of misdiagnosis and arrogance .  Instead of reality too many wishes are presented as likely occurrent reality.  And the reality never arrives because it’s Always “15+ days away”

I said in December the delaying pattern we were  developing Had to change or we were in trouble . Much crying and chastising over that. 
I was right

We need  a new and different boat to float with. 

 

[RevWarReenactor]

5 minutes ago, WEATHER53 said:

Essentially we have broken and dull tools at our disposal.

Active weather sells. All media types know that. They hype it.  Then the hype spreads to “well we know what these indexes WILL do…oh, there’s a new index to try on”

Humility works and bombast declarations don’t.  The pronounced /hyped “mid to late Feb” was a travesty of misdiagnosis and arrogance .  Instead of reality too many wishes are presented as likely occurrent reality.  And the reality never arrives because it’s Always “15+ days away”

I said in December the delaying pattern we were  developing Had to change or we were in trouble . Much crying and chastising over that. 
I was right

We need  a new and different boat to float with. 

 

Exactly! Well said!

[WEATHER53]

A hobby has to be mostly rewarding 

90% of this winter has sucked  and has been poorly discussed and poorly predicted .  Reevaluation is underway 

[cbmclean]

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

Carrying this reply into this thread. 

The Jan 6-7 event this year is a perfect example of what could have been a 6-12” snowstorm in our area had it not been a couple degrees too warm. 

A lot of cases we point at may not be clear cut, but this Jan 6-7 one is the most clear cut to me. Unforgivable and inexcusable. After seeing that one fail, I basically threw my snowfall outlook out the window right then and there. 

And I fear that this one is one we're not getting back because even when/if the PDO flips we'll still have the pac puke.  This wasn't primarily a SER fail but the fact that the entire continent was taking weeks to recover from the near-record pacific onslaught that almost completely eliminated snow in the CONUS outside the high elevations. 

I think it is the tag-team effect of the PNA/SER and Pac Puke which has made this last period so hostile.  A pac puke comes along and scours the cold out.  Then once it shuts off the source regions begin to recover, but the PNA/SER tendency constantly fights against the cold making it to the eastern conus.  It takes weeks to slowly push the thermal boundary back over us and then it just gets wiped out by another pac attack and the whole things starts over. 

I have hope that a PDO flip can improve the PNA/SER tendency, but I don't see how it can help much with the jet stream/Hadley cell problem.  So at best we'll hopefully be able to recover faster from the pac attacks.  I hope I'm just being pessimistic.  

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, cbmclean said:

And I fear that this one is one we're not getting back because even when/if the PDO flips we'll still have the pac puke.  This wasn't primarily a SER fail but the fact that the entire continent was taking weeks to recover from the near-record pacific onslaught that almost completely eliminated snow in the CONUS outside the high elevations. 

I think it is the tag-team effect of the PNA/SER and Pac Puke which has made this last period so hostile.  A pac puke comes along and scours the cold out.  Then once it shuts off the source regions begin to recover, but the PNA/SER tendency constantly fights against the cold making it to the eastern conus.  It takes weeks to slowly push the thermal boundary back over us and then it just gets wiped out by another pac attack and the whole things starts over. 

I have hope that a PDO flip can improve the PNA/SER tendency, but I don't see how it can help much with the jet stream/Hadley cell problem.  So at best we'll hopefully be able to recover faster from the pac attacks.  I hope I'm just being pessimistic.  

It’s not that I’m not nervous about this. I’ve seen some things that bother me. There were times people were using the pacific as a blanket scapegoat and I pointed out at times we had the exact opposite long wave configuration yet the SER remained!  But our last +pdo it snowed plenty. On the whole 2014-2018 was extremely snowy. So we have no evidence yet that a pos pdo has been affected by this recent tendency. 

[JenkinsJinkies]

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

It’s not that I’m not nervous about this. I’ve seen some things that bother me. There were times people were using the pacific as a blanket scapegoat and I pointed out at times we had the exact opposite long wave configuration yet the SER remained!  But our last +pdo it snowed plenty. On the whole 2014-2018 was extremely snowy. So we have no evidence yet that a pos pdo has been affected by this recent tendency. 

In the future when the pdo flips heading into winter this place will be swamped.

[CAPE]

9 hours ago, Terpeast said:

to be fair, maybe they don’t have any good answers as to why the projected blocks vanished into thin air (literally). All we have is theories and poor LR model performance. My own theory is that the marine heat wave off Japan disrupted the wave train downstream, breaking up any attempt for the aleutian low to form and sustain itself, and also pushing the pac jet northward effectively broke up the blocks. 

One thing is for sure, the anomalously warm water in the Sea of Japan with Siberian air flowing across it is perpetually dumping snow in NW Japan. Not unusual ofc. These city folks probably can't wait for Spring, but I do love how they just keep going, business as usual. NBD. No effing road salt. 

 

[cbmclean]

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

It’s not that I’m not nervous about this. I’ve seen some things that bother me. There were times people were using the pacific as a blanket scapegoat and I pointed out at times we had the exact opposite long wave configuration yet the SER remained!  But our last +pdo it snowed plenty. On the whole 2014-2018 was extremely snowy. So we have no evidence yet that a pos pdo has been affected by this recent tendency. 

Sure, but I was more referring to the fact that a +PDO might not have saved the Jan 6-7 event.  But perhaps it might reduce the probability of such events because the cold wouldn't have to constantly fight against SER and thus it might take only 1 - 2 weeks for thermals to recover from pac puke instead of 3 - 4. 

It's all speculation of course.  We simply watch and wait.

[JenkinsJinkies]

20 minutes ago, CAPE said:

One thing is for sure, the anomalously warm water in the Sea of Japan with Siberian air flowing across it is perpetually dumping snow in NW Japan. Not unusual ofc. These city folks probably can't wait for Spring, but I do love how they just keep going, business as usual. NBD. No effing road salt. 

 

Because Hokkaido has the climate of Canada.

[CAPE]

Just now, JenkinsJinkies said:

Because Hokkaido has the climate of Canada.

It has a persistent mechanism for snow Dec through early March. Like lake effect on steriods.

[PrinceFrederickWx]

8 hours ago, RevWarReenactor said:

Thats fair. I have no issue with discussion on what might have happened or maybe they don't know.

The problem I have is when METS fall into the JB trap of making overhyped declarative statements like "its going to get cold" "Only a could more weeks until an epic pattern" "things look amazing" etc. They stick to their guns so hard that some belittle the naysayers (like me) who turned out to be 100% correct. We are not even allowed to panic in the panic room, we are just being too "negative" when again, we were 100% correct.

Then when so called "Epic" pattern doesn't materialize. They simply move on. Nothing to see here! It was just an "idea" and not a forecast! Like you seriously believed us LOL? Who even looks at LR forecasts anyway? Who even trusts that?

Then the cherry on top is claiming that they are rooted in "science" when the entire LR thread the last few weeks was essentially a story of fiction. 

Idk why, but the tone was much different here this season than in years past. I noticed the same stuff you did. It started back in Nov. with the “guaranteed cold” posts and ended with the “Feb. 2010 redux” debacle. The usual skepticism from years past (which was a good thing) was replaced with arrogance and outright weenie wishcasting at times.

[psuhoffman]

32 minutes ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

Idk why, but the tone was much different here this season than in years past. I noticed the same stuff you did. It started back in Nov. with the “guaranteed cold” posts and ended with the “Feb. 2010 redux” debacle. The usual skepticism from years past (which was a good thing) was replaced with arrogance and outright weenie wishcasting at times.

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”!  
 

There was legit reason for the optimism. You know I’m usually pessimistic. I’ve usually predicted low snowfall lately.   But I got fooled this year too. The sad thing is we just wasted a type of winter where we almost always go way above average on snow.  And it’s rare. Only happens once every 15 years on average.  This was a true disaster!  

[Ji]

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”!  
 
There was legit reason for the optimism. You know I’m usually pessimistic. I’ve usually predicted low snowfall lately.   But I got fooled this year too. The sad thing is we just wasted a type of winter where we almost always go way above average on snow.  And it’s rare. Only happens once every 15 years on average.  This was a true disaster!  

Now we need all that with apparently a modoki moderate Nino with a positive pdo

Sent from my SM-A515U using Tapatalk

[Stormchaserchuck1]

I don't think it was a true disaster because we had 4 Stratosphere warmings (if you include the one projected to come in March). The QBO does not effect the surface directly, all of its linear correlations are weak. It's an upper atmosphere oscillation. 

I did pick the -QBO/Nino, and record global precipitation in the Fall to have high totals in the snowfall forecast. I did not really think we would be that cold, but I thought our opportune times (When -NAO's came in El Nino) could give us big storms (in contests you do not want to not be near the majority).  I underestimated the effect of the PDO, and that the global pattern is very stagnant right now (High pressure systems). 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

57 minutes ago, Ji said:

Now we need all that with apparently a modoki moderate Nino with a positive pdo

Sent from my SM-A515U using Tapatalk
 

The differences between weak and stronger ENSO events, are because there's more happening all the time than just ENSO. A small sample size gives skewed results because of coincidence, or it lining up with other factors.

Weak Nina's were always cold in the composite, until a few years ago, when they started to go warm.

If it's a modoki Nino, the stronger the better... you will say, well, 91-92, but that's a total of 0/1 all time.. I think we want forcing out of the western-ENSO regions to amplify above it a +PNA and maybe -EPO.  

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

This was a true disaster!  

I think you underestimate the EPO/WPO.. when they are +, they are some of our worst Winters. 

Yeah, -PNA's can be wet.. but precip plus temps in EPO patterns is the highest of all patterns (+snow), by a pretty good margin!  I said before 1 reason they didn't show up in your research, is because the average cycle of a flux there is 7-12 days at a time, The PNA and NAO regions last much longer (can go 30-40+ days, which makes them more visible). 

[Terpeast]

Glimmer of hope out in the Pacific? According to WCS, the PDO has been the highest it’s been in years at only -0.20, pretty close to neutral. 

[psuhoffman]

8 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

I think you underestimate the EPO/WPO.. when they are +, they are some of our worst Winters. 

Yeah, -PNA's can be wet.. but precip plus temps in EPO patterns is the highest of all patterns (+snow), by a pretty good margin!  I said before 1 reason they didn't show up in your research, is because the average cycle of a flux there is 7-12 days at a time, The PNA and NAO regions last much longer (can go 30-40+ days, which makes them more visible). 

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. 

[psuhoffman]

27 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Glimmer of hope out in the Pacific? According to WCS, the PDO has been the highest it’s been in years at only -0.20, pretty close to neutral. 

Or is that worse because it implies the current mess we’re in (a torched -QBO Nino Feb) might be more than just the PDO. My worst nightmare is the PDO flips and the pacific continues to flood North America with puke anyways. 

[Terpeast]

16 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Or is that worse because it implies the current mess we’re in (a torched -QBO Nino Feb) might be more than just the PDO. My worst nightmare is the PDO flips and the pacific continues to flood North America with puke anyways. 

Either we’ll find out soon once it goes + or the incoming nina will continue the -PDO

[psuhoffman]

19 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Either we’ll find out soon once it goes + or the incoming nina will continue the -PDO

How confident are you things improve significantly once the PDO flips. I honestly do think so…but I really want that to be true and I’m aware of my bias. 

[Terpeast]

12 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

How confident are you things improve significantly once the PDO flips. I honestly do think so…but I really want that to be true and I’m aware of my bias. 

How confident am I? 

Low-medium. 

Just because we have a +pdo doesn’t automatically mean we get colder winters. I see plenty of warm winters that happened during a +pdo. 

But a +pdo makes it easier to sustain a more classic +pna ridge instead of getting bullied over by constant western troughing. 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Terpeast said:

How confident am I? 

Low-medium. 

Just because we have a +pdo doesn’t automatically mean we get colder winters. I see plenty of warm winters that happened during a +pdo. 

But a +pdo makes it easier to sustain a more classic +pna ridge instead of getting bullied over by constant western troughing. 

There is no evidence yet since we’ve been in a -pdo recently. And it was quite snowy the last +pdo period. But…the last few years there were short periods where we got a +pna and because the pac was flooding so much warmth into the western ridge it just spread east and all we ended up with was a full conus ridge centered west but still way too warm east to do any good. 
 

The only times we’ve been able to get truly cold is when there was a perfectly centered epo pna full latitude ridge.  My fear is if that continues even in a +pna…well on the bright side years like 2014 and 2015 would still work. But those are incredibly rare. In the last 50 years only 3 featured that kind of full lat epo/pna ridge combo. 1994, 2014 and 2015. Yes that would definitely work. But it’s not a common thing even in a +pna. I want to see evidence we can get cold without a super rare long wave configuration where 8,000 things are all lined up perfect.