2024-2025 La Nina

[LibertyBell]

6 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

We never have a wall to wall cold snowy winter at our latitude-we had the later Jan thaw in 1996 for example and in 2011 we shut completely off after 2/1. The key is maximizing the snow output when it’s cold enough and the pattern’s favorable. Hopefully this upcoming Jan pattern has the pieces in place and we can have a good outcome. Our chances are better if we don’t have to rely on a fast northern stream to spawn something in time for our longitude, or be stuck with lousy SWFEs and we get help from the Gulf. 

I remember we had a severe weather outbreak with temps in the upper 60s and flooding with rapid snowmelt in the second half of January 1996.  But the thaw was short maybe 2 weeks and then it was right back to very cold and snowy.  February 1996 was the coldest month on record for many locations in the midwest.

 

[jm1220]

6 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

I remember we had a severe weather outbreak with temps in the upper 60s and flooding with rapid snowmelt in the second half of January 1996.  But the thaw was short maybe 2 weeks and then it was right back to very cold and snowy.  February 1996 was the coldest month on record for many locations in the midwest.

 

And that’s probably the best winter we ever experience unless we move to Buffalo or Syracuse. Hopefully we get a nice 2-3 week period where we make the opportunities happen, but almost certainly we’ll have to deal with the 2-3 week relaxed period after. In maybe another once in a lifetime period Newark had 60” in a one month period from the Boxing Day 2010 blizzard to the Jan 27 2011 thunder snow 18” event. That’s the king of making it happen winter! 

[LibertyBell]

Just now, jm1220 said:

And that’s probably the best winter we ever experience unless we move to Buffalo or Syracuse. Hopefully we get a nice 2-3 week period where we make the opportunities happen, but almost certainly we’ll have to deal with the 2-3 week relaxed period after. In maybe another once in a lifetime period Newark had 60” in a one month period from the Boxing Day 2010 blizzard to the Jan 27 2011 thunder snow 18” event. That’s the king of making it happen winter! 

We were so lucky to have experienced some awesome winters like that, not sure if we are going to have anything like 93-94, 95-96, 02-03, 09-10, 10-11, 13-14 and 14-15 again in our lifetimes.

[PhiEaglesfan712]

17 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

We never have a wall to wall cold snowy winter at our latitude-we had the later Jan thaw in 1996 for example and in 2011 we shut completely off after 2/1. The key is maximizing the snow output when it’s cold enough and the pattern’s favorable. Hopefully this upcoming Jan pattern has the pieces in place and we can have a good outcome. Our chances are better if we don’t have to rely on a fast northern stream to spawn something in time for our longitude, or be stuck with lousy SWFEs and we get help from the Gulf. 

JFM 2014 and JFM 2015 was wall-to-wall cold everywhere in the East. Those were the coldest JFMs since 1978.

93-94 was another wall-to-wall cold winter.

[LakePaste25]

6 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

And that’s probably the best winter we ever experience unless we move to Buffalo or Syracuse. Hopefully we get a nice 2-3 week period where we make the opportunities happen, but almost certainly we’ll have to deal with the 2-3 week relaxed period after. In maybe another once in a lifetime period Newark had 60” in a one month period from the Boxing Day 2010 blizzard to the Jan 27 2011 thunder snow 18” event. That’s the king of making it happen winter! 

Not in Buffalo but i live near Erie. We don’t really have “pure” wall to wall winters. 13-14/14-15 had some brief warmups in the 40s. I think 76-77 came close but even had a day or two of 50+ in December. We are quite prone to rapid warmups here west of the mtns. But, during our good, below normal temp winters will usually have snow on the ground all winter if not most of it, and the brief warmup periods will glaciate the snowpack before we cool down again and add more. 

 

For true wall to wall pure winters that don’t get above the 40s, you’d probably want to be somewhere like Caribou, International Falls, or Fairbanks. But even Caribou has been getting these brief warmups lately and even had a green Christmas last year. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

41 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

You didn't do well in either the January 1996 blizzard or the big February 1996 snowstorm either, I take it?

It was one of our few wall to wall extremely cold and snowy winters.

I did great in January 1996...Feb was meh.

[PhiEaglesfan712]

27 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

And that’s probably the best winter we ever experience unless we move to Buffalo or Syracuse. Hopefully we get a nice 2-3 week period where we make the opportunities happen, but almost certainly we’ll have to deal with the 2-3 week relaxed period after. In maybe another once in a lifetime period Newark had 60” in a one month period from the Boxing Day 2010 blizzard to the Jan 27 2011 thunder snow 18” event. That’s the king of making it happen winter! 

2009-10 in the Baltimore/Wash DC area is another. Baltimore had 80 in of snow in 2 months (from 12/19 to 2/10 - they even had more snow than Syracuse at that point in the season), before the snow came to an end all of a sudden. March 2010 was very warm, and it was summerlike by the first week of April 2010.

[mitchnick]

@GaWx

[bluewave]

1 hour ago, jm1220 said:

We never have a wall to wall cold snowy winter at our latitude-we had the later Jan thaw in 1996 for example and in 2011 we shut completely off after 2/1. The key is maximizing the snow output when it’s cold enough and the pattern’s favorable. Hopefully this upcoming Jan pattern has the pieces in place and we can have a good outcome. Our chances are better if we don’t have to rely on a fast northern stream to spawn something in time for our longitude, or be stuck with lousy SWFEs and we get help from the Gulf. 

The closest wall to wall winter for snow and cold in the East at under at under 1000 feet elevation would probably be Caribou, Maine in 76-77. Every day from 12-1-76 to 2-28-77 had at least 1” of snow on the ground. The highest temperature over that stretch was only 37°. With a total of just 6 days going above 32° for a high. 

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, LakePaste25 said:

Not in Buffalo but i live near Erie. We don’t really have “pure” wall to wall winters. 13-14/14-15 had some brief warmups in the 40s. I think 76-77 came close but even had a day or two of 50+ in December. We are quite prone to rapid warmups here west of the mtns. But, during our good, below normal temp winters will usually have snow on the ground all winter if not most of it, and the brief warmup periods will glaciate the snowpack before we cool down again and add more. 

 

For true wall to wall pure winters that don’t get above the 40s, you’d probably want to be somewhere like Caribou, International Falls, or Fairbanks. But even Caribou has been getting these brief warmups lately and even had a green Christmas last year. 

JFM 1978, 2013-14, & 2014-15 were as close to wall to wall winter as you'll ever get at this latitude (Detroit). 1978 had the upper hand with cold but 2013-14 killed it with cold + snow + snowdepth. I wasn't around in 1978 but 2014 was insane. I don't consider a brief day or two of 40° before the next arctic front, with tons of snow on the ground, a break in the wall to wall nature of it. But other than that, even the best winters have breaks/thaws, they always have. We literally can get snow from Oct to May but you'll never see it continuous. 1976-77 was bitter cold but also had an extremely cold Fall...by Feb it warmed up big time and March was warm. The fact the the two deepest snow seasons in the entire record were back to back, 2013-14 & 2014-15 is insane. And even more insane that 2014-15 was so cold it did it with just barely above avg snowfall.

[snowman19]

Either the GEFS or the EPS is going to have an epic fail. They are 100% polar opposite with the January pattern

[michsnowfreak]

2 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

Either the GEFS or the EPS is going to have an epic fail. They are 100% polar opposite with the January pattern

Neither models ensemble suite goes past the first week of Jan yet? 

[mitchnick]

1 minute ago, snowman19 said:

Either the GEFS or the EPS is going to have an epic fail. They are 100% polar opposite with the January pattern

Or the Gefs is slower...or the Eps too fast!

[mitchnick]

Shame they retired the Dgex. They could use another acronym in the weather field with some flair.

[mitchnick]

Geps gives the nodd to the Eps unsurprisingly. 

[Maxim]

6 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

Neither models ensemble suite goes past the first week of Jan yet? 

The GEFS does. Going to be a warm month IMO

[michsnowfreak]

29 minutes ago, Maxim said:

The GEFS does. Going to be a warm month IMO

I forgot about the day-delayed extended gfs. Of course, you left out the bulk of the month with a colder look, so even the warmest model doesn't look warm.

[GaWx]

1 hour ago, mitchnick said:

@GaWx

 Wow, a rise of 0.4 more the last 2 days! NOAA equivalent daily is likely up to ~-1.64 vs a low of ~~-4 Oct 10! 

[mitchnick]

Man, did the Eps weeklies just get colder.

https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/extended-anomaly-2t?base_time=202412230000&projection=opencharts_north_america&valid_time=202412300000

[mitchnick]

15 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Wow, a rise of 0.4 more the last 2 days! NOAA equivalent daily is likely up to ~-1.64 vs a low of ~~-4 Oct 10! 

It's going to keep rising imho. Look at the surface temp forecasts for the Pacific, specifically the cooling waters around Japan and warming in Gulf of Alaska over the next few weeks, especially so when comparing week 1 to 6.

https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/extended-anomaly-t?base_time=202412230000&projection=opencharts_pacific&valid_time=202412300000

[mitchnick]

1 hour ago, Maxim said:

The GEFS does. Going to be a warm month IMO

Umm, that's the 0z run and not the 12z which we were discussing. 

[GaWx]

7 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Man, did the Eps weeklies just get colder.

https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/extended-anomaly-2t?base_time=202412230000&projection=opencharts_north_america&valid_time=202412300000

 Indeed, it is easily the coldest overall yet!

Jan 6-12 is a whopping 5-7 F colder in the N Rockies to N Plains to Chicago vs yesterday as the strongest cold now aims to come into the US further west with the H5 ridge now a bit further offshore the W coast (stronger -EPO/weaker +PNA) and a further S piece of the TPV into N Hudson Bay. Temps in the NE are slightly colder and the SE is ~same as yesterday.

 Jan 13-19 is also significantly colder vs yesterday/easily coldest overall yet especially NE US to Midwest with the H5 ridge also a bit further offshore.

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

2009-10 in the Baltimore/Wash DC area is another. Baltimore had 80 in of snow in 2 months (from 12/19 to 2/10 - they even had more snow than Syracuse at that point in the season), before the snow came to an end all of a sudden. March 2010 was very warm, and it was summerlike by the first week of April 2010.

2010 had my favorite summer of all time.

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, bluewave said:

The closest wall to wall winter for snow and cold in the East at under at under 1000 feet elevation would probably be Caribou, Maine in 76-77. Every day from 12-1-76 to 2-28-77 had at least 1” of snow on the ground. The highest temperature over that stretch was only 37°. With a total of just 6 days going above 32° for a high. 

Reading some of the old records, something like this happened during the late 1700s and 1800s at NYC and Philadelphia..... ones I remember reading about offhand that were like this were 1782-83, 1804-05, 1842-43, 1866-67  Snowcover from Thanksgiving through St Paddy's day and around 100 inches of snow in those winters for both cities.

 

[so_whats_happening]

6 hours ago, mitchnick said:

@GaWx

 

4 hours ago, mitchnick said:

It's going to keep dropping imho. Look at the surface temp forecasts for the Pacific, specifically the cooling waters around Japan and warming in Gulf of Alaska over the next few weeks, especially so when comparing week 1 to 6.

https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/extended-anomaly-t?base_time=202412230000&projection=opencharts_pacific&valid_time=202412300000

https://psl.noaa.gov/map/clim/sst.anom.anim.week.html

If we continue with a pattern of hurricane force after hurricane force winds over the warm pool it will continue to spread out. I do not see a flip yet maybe for next winter? The 12z Euro showed if we have a pattern that continues like this fun could be abound.

[Maestrobjwa]

5 hours ago, mitchnick said:

It's going to keep dropping imho. Look at the surface temp forecasts for the Pacific, specifically the cooling waters around Japan and warming in Gulf of Alaska over the next few weeks, especially so when comparing week 1 to 6.

https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/extended-anomaly-t?base_time=202412230000&projection=opencharts_pacific&valid_time=202412300000

Did you mean it's gonna keep rising?

[mitchnick]

3 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Did you mean it's gonna keep rising?

Yes! Oops

[GaWx]

 The bc GEFS and EPS continue to predict an MJO that would be weak left side of diagram for early Jan (see below). As mentioned, 7 of 8 similar cases during Jan for cold ENSO during last 50 years were concurrently cold dominated in the E US. Weak MJO (near or inside circle) has tended to be concurrently colder than strong for all phases in Jan after all cases were averaged. So, my hope would be for it to remain weak when later coming around on the right side:

 GEFS:

 

EPS:

 

[MJO812]

[GaWx]

 Every one of these 5 indicators is at the coldest of the season to date clearly indicative of a rapidly strengthening La Niña to near weak/moderate Niña border on the dailies and suggesting equivalent RONI dailies probably at least high end moderate to quite possibly bordering on strong. This means a Nov to Dec cooling likely one of the strongest back to 1950 though not near the 0.8 record shattering cooling suggested by many earlier CFS runs:

OISST: -0.98 C

 

CRW: -0.95 C

CDAS: -1.43 C

 

Buoys: coldest below -1.5 C near equator along entire Nino 3.4:

 

OHC: 0.6 C plunge just since late Nov to -1.1 C