2024-2025 La Nina

[LibertyBell]

12 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

Obviously the Great Lakes are a different climate than the east coast, but im noticing the cold vs snow thing, especially this year since its been such a cold January with very little snow (in the north) outside the lakes. Weve done ok in SE MI- snow has been below avg and precip well below avg, but we have had some snow on the ground nearly all month. But west of the lakes (Chicago, Minneapolis, Green Bay, etc) its been frozen dry ground. I have no problem with people liking what they like, but im definitely finding some weenies contradicting themselves locally. All the complaining about recent mild winters...but really, in the post 2007-15 record snow era, snowfall has been largely around avg here before last winter. So I have to say to them, if all you care about is snow thats fine, but then you need to give those mild winters more credit and less bitching lol. (again im talking about the masses...I personally love snow AND cold).

Yes one of my favorite and most memorable snowstorms happened during a mild winter overall, 2015-16, over 30 inches of snow in one snowstorm and -1 on Valentines Day!  One of my favorite winters for those two reasons alone (we also had some other moderate snowstorms that winter.)

We had over 40 inches of snow that season with a seasonal average temperature over 40 degrees.

[LibertyBell]

57 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 I don’t disagree for the most part. But I was responding to CWG’s tweet saying this:

“MJO approach to phase 7 could flip pattern back to cold side for U.S. by 2nd week of February, similar to super-warm late December
to cold early January flip from this winter.”

 So, the tweet was referring explicitly to temperatures and said nothing about snow. Thus, my response was referring to just temperatures based on what 0Z/6Z model consensus was showing. I wasn’t at all addressing snow, which is much more unpredictable, especially 11+ days out, since it is so dependent on precise storm track and actually having a storm at the right time.

 Also, some do care about temps on their own.

Yes-- and we're more focused on snow instead of cold also because cold has become more rare as the years go by (regardless of enso state, warmer winters are canonical now....)

 

 

[PhiEaglesfan712]

Early look for mid-March: 

[LibertyBell]

31 minutes ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

Early look for mid-March: 

lol any reason why you're looking at Mid March? Winter will likely be over before then.

[purduewx80]

7 hours ago, MJO812 said:

@snowman19

 

7 is still warm in Feb. 

[MJO812]

4 minutes ago, purduewx80 said:

7 is still warm in Feb. 

Depends on the enso

[GaWx]

On 1/29/2025 at 7:13 PM, GaWx said:

 Both the CFS and the Euro Weeklies this winter have had the E (including the SE) with far BN temps several weeks in advance (and the coldest anomalies on the globe) and they remained consistent with the cold thereafter. These are just 3 examples of the many times they did with strong signals for cold in the E US:

Issued 12/28/24 for 1/13-19:

CFS 48 forecast mean (4 members, 12 runs 12/25-28) for 1/11-17:

 

CFS 48 forecast mean (4 members, 12 runs 12/29-1/1) for 1/15-22):

 

 In contrast, today’s significantly colder Euro map vs yesterday for 2/17-23 is at least as of yet nowhere near as cold:

 

Latest CFS 48 forecast mean for 2/20-7: still mild in E US

 

 Unfortunately for cold lovers like myself, today’s Euro Weeklies for 2/17-23 & 2/24-3/2 totally reversed yesterday’s much colder runs for those two weeks and are back to a solid mild signal:

2/17-23:

 All 6 weeks of today’s run are this warm or warmer in the E US. The implied Feb avg is ~4F AN NYC and ~5-6F DC south. Would be very close to March normals in SE. Many places in the area DC south would have a Feb ~13-15 warmer than Jan.

 Be that as it may, there still appears to be a good shot at a 2-3 day long cold period starting Feb 8-9.

[michsnowfreak]

45 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 Unfortunately for cold lovers like myself, today’s Euro Weeklies for 2/17-23 & 2/24-3/2 totally reversed yesterday’s much colder runs for those two weeks and are back to a solid mild signal:

2/17-23:

 All 6 weeks of today’s run are this warm or warmer in the E US. The implied Feb avg is ~4F AN NYC and ~5-6F DC south. Would be very close to March normals in SE. Many places in the area DC south would have a Feb ~13-15 warmer than Jan.

Is there a scale for colors and departures? Also, why do the 2m and surface temp maps differ so much? I always considered them one in the same.

[GaWx]

4 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

Is there a scale for colors and departures? Also, why do the 2m and surface temp maps differ so much? I always considered them one and the same.

-I thought 2m and surface were the same.

-Please show me where they’re different.

-Shades of red: anomalies in degrees C

1st: 0 to +1

2nd: +1 to +3

3rd: +3 to +6

4th: +6 to +10

5th: +10+

[michsnowfreak]

9 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

Obviously the Great Lakes are a different climate than the east coast, but im noticing the cold vs snow thing, especially this year since its been such a cold January with very little snow (in the north) outside the lakes. Weve done ok in SE MI- snow has been below avg and precip well below avg, but we have had some snow on the ground nearly all month. But west of the lakes (Chicago, Minneapolis, Green Bay, etc) its been frozen dry ground. I have no problem with people liking what they like, but im definitely finding some weenies contradicting themselves locally. All the complaining about recent mild winters...but really, in the post 2007-15 record snow era, snowfall has been largely around avg here before last winter. So I have to say to them, if all you care about is snow thats fine, but then you need to give those mild winters more credit and less bitching lol. (again im talking about the masses...I personally love snow AND cold).

If you scroll down. You will see 2m first and then surface. They are always different. 

https://charts.ecmwf.int/?facets={"Product type"%3A[]%2C"Parameters"%3A[]%2C"Type"%3A[]%2C"Range"%3A["Extended (42 days)"]}

[GaWx]

22 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

If you scroll down. You will see 2m first and then surface. They are always different. 

https://charts.ecmwf.int/?facets={"Product type"%3A[]%2C"Parameters"%3A[]%2C"Type"%3A[]%2C"Range"%3A["Extended (42 days)"]}

I never noticed there was a different Euro Weeklies chart for surface! I always look at 2m. 
 
 For determining frost on ground, I’d think surface would be more important than 2m. On good radiational cooling nights, you may already realize that surface is sometimes couple of degrees colder than 2m due to colder air being heavier. But 2m is official. And thus I’ll continue to use those.

 On nights after a cold front has just come through and the cold winds are advecting colder air, I’d think sfc would tend to be slightly warmer.

 When sun is out, the ground should be warmer than 2m, especially in summer.

[GaWx]

On 1/29/2025 at 10:08 PM, so_whats_happening said:

These have all been tropospheric driven events meaning the troposphere reacted first most likely due to tropical forcings that took place. The SPV reacted as such with a weakening the issue is the SPV is strong for this time year so it could not weaken significantly so the pattern was not able to lock in like one would typically hope so we had our cold spell and reverted quickly back. The warming and weakening of the SPV is a reaction to what is going on down below now if the events taking place below are quite strong the better it translates to the SPV weakening and creating potentially a longer lasting effect into the 500mb pattern. We can connect but it doesn't always mean it will last especially with how strong the SPV is right now.

This event coming up will probably be no different where initially the pattern will be driven from what takes place at 500mb the subsequent warming will ensue in the lower to upper stratosphere and maybe this could significantly disrupt the SPV going forward considering in about a month we start to talks of final warmings. Now will this make the pattern last probably not but as of now there seems to be quite a shakeup showing up that should start around mid February and provide the last little bit of winter like pattern for many areas. 

Edit: Forecast right now for this eddy heat flux is rather impressive so something may actually try to come of this.

vtn_50_2024_merra2.pdf 22.8 kB · 3 downloads

 You may be onto something that I wasn’t paying attention to til just now when I saw this on the 0Z GFS 168 for Feb 7: check out the strength of this Scandinavian-Greenland Dipole! Is this what you were looking at yesterday?

 

 This paper was written by Dr. Simon Lee and others about the 2/12/2018 major SSW that was not forecasted beyond 12 days:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019JD030940

 He talks about a S-G Dipole pattern (strong high over Scand/low over Greenland) often being predictive of major SSWs before models actually do so (they’re still not). This dipole peaked ~2/6/2018, or only one day prior to the forecasted peak of ~2/7/25! Aside: the major SSW of 2/16/23 was also preceded by a similar early Feb S-G Dipole!

Dr. Lee’s latest tweets:

 

 Despite the models still not showing even a hint of a major SSW, I’ve been wary about it based on Joe D’Aleo’s study showing a heightened chance during high solar/+QBO. I took his idea and looked at the actual #s. I considered high solar for DJF to be 135+. DJ will be ~145. If Feb ends up 115+, it would qualify. Check this out:

 

Solar DJF 135+/west QBO:

57-8: SSW 1/31/58

59-60: SSW 1/17/60

69-70: SSW 1/2/70

78-9: SSW 2/22/79

80-1: SSW 2/6/81

90-1: no SSW

99-00: SSW 3/20/00

01-02: SSW  12/31/01, 2/18/02

 So, a whopping 7 of these 8 winters had at least one major SSW! Just food for thought. The progged strong Feb 7th S-G Dipole is consistent with a potential major SSW on or near Feb 13th if it were to actually occur with similar timing to 2018. If so, look for hints on the EPS/GEFS starting this weekend. IF there were to be one ~Feb 13th, look out for the potential of a colder E US pattern starting ~Feb 27th and lasting through at least ~Mar 15th and quite possibly the entire month or further. Anything to keep the bugs quiet would be a winning pattern for me!

 

[GaWx]

Further to the above fwiw, the 0Z 1/29 GFS (latest available) brought the mean wind down to 19 m/s on Feb 13th and 13 m/s on Feb 14th:

 In comparison, the prior run (0Z 1/28) had it bottoming out way up at 28 m/s on Feb 13th:

 So, the GFS had a significant drop on 1/29. I’ll be watching the GFS closely because it was ahead of the ensembles in advance of 2 major SSWs since 2023.