December Medium/ Long Range

[87storms]

Other than the vodka cold in 94, I remember getting about 2” of fluffy snow on top of 3 inches of thick ice. My dad tried to drive his jeep up our driveway, he got only halfway up the hill and he slid all the way back down. 

We had a clipper that season that dropped several inches of snow in single digits temps, I think. Might have been 20:1 ratios. Somewhat similar to the low qpf high performer several years ago.

[Deck Pic]

6 hours ago, Ji said:

thats a huge step back. i dont know why we look at anything but the euro @Deck Pic

I havent looked at anything but the euro this year so far.  If we have a trackable event within 72-96, i'll look at other models.  We don't get snow in december anymore so I'm not really concerned.

[87storms]

21 minutes ago, 87storms said:

We had a clipper that season that dropped several inches of snow in single digits temps, I think. Might have been 20:1 ratios. Somewhat similar to the low qpf high performer several years ago.

Went through my archives…Feb 16, 2015…that was a low qpf producer. Those were smaller flakes, though. I don’t know how I remember this stuff lol

[TJ3]

26 minutes ago, 87storms said:

We had a clipper that season that dropped several inches of snow in single digits temps, I think. Might have been 20:1 ratios. Somewhat similar to the low qpf high performer several years ago.

Good call. It was the coldest day time snow I can think of having spent a lifetime in NOVA.

[pazzo83]

2 hours ago, MN Transplant said:

They still had the old wind chill scale back then and the numbers were insane back home in Minnesota.  -60, -70, -80.  We were out of school for a few days and I remember just sitting and watching tv coverage of the Northridge earthquake.

that is a level of cold that is basically impossible to imagine

[WEATHER53]

5 hours ago, Interstate said:

Ouch... 37 and rain

I think the majority of the ones that go our way start out 37 and rain. The push of colder is our friend . 

[WEATHER53]

3 hours ago, pazzo83 said:

we were actually in Baltimore during that 1994 cold outbreak.  It basically never got above zero on the drive there from VA - Staunton had a low near -20F that morning.  The Inner Harbor was frozen solid lol.

1994 wasn’t as long as 77 but it was coldest .  Only time in my life the precip started off st 23,and not one flake nor fleet. There were several weird ice events and that one day where I was 11at 7am and 11 at 11am and 1 at 5pm with my low record of -7 overnight

The  back to back Cold Sundays of 1982 are record makers also 

[WxUSAF]

GGEM gifts central MD a white Xmas miracle 

[WxUSAF]

Monday morning low temp forecast:

GGEM: low 0s (lol)

Euro: low-mid 10s

GFS: mid-upper 20s

[Interstate]

Also could get a little NE MD magic on Friday. 

[Scraff]

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

GGEM gifts central MD a white Xmas miracle 

1-2” for everyone would be a beautiful gift. Hoping it’s on to something and leading the way…

[Paleocene]

All the globals look like 30s-40ish for highs on xmas day. A normal christmas??

[Maestrobjwa]

18 minutes ago, Paleocene said:

All the globals look like 30s-40ish for highs on xmas day. A normal christmas??

That's what it looks like--and given what we've been facing the last 9 years, I don't think any of us should complain about that! Now a cold rain would be annoying tho...give me a cold dry Christmas over that any day, lol

[stormy]

21 minutes ago, Paleocene said:

All the globals look like 30s-40ish for highs on xmas day. A normal christmas??

From 1991 - 2020, my normal high was 44 and low of 26.

[psuhoffman]

One thing I find "interesting" is the guidance right now for early January has more of a nino than nina look.  Take that for what it's worth...something to keep an eye on as it get's closer.  If we can get the high latitudes to cooperate and even just some STJ involved it would increase the potential significantly.  

[CAPE]

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

One thing I find "interesting" is the guidance right now for early January has more of a nino than nina look.  Take that for what it's worth...something to keep an eye on as it get's closer.  If we can get the high latitudes to cooperate and even just some STJ involved it would increase the potential significantly.  

It is Nino-ish to a degree. Not sure about STJ contribution, but if this look verifies we have a mechanism between the EPO ridge and the stretched TPV for Polar air to chill Canada pretty quickly with cold moving southeastward from there. Maybe after this pattern reset and being further into winter we get better luck with NS wave timing. A little -NAO action certainly would help to slow the flow a bit and hold the cold in instead of exiting stage right as a storm approaches. AO/NAO looks neutral here.

[mattie g]

3 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

GGEM gifts central MD a white Xmas miracle 

And an inch or so in my neck of the Fairfax County woods.

Mother f***er...if my kids woke up on Christmas morning to an inch of snow on the ground with a few flakes still flying, I'd roll over and die a happy man (maybe bad timing to die then, but whatever).

[psuhoffman]

42 minutes ago, CAPE said:

It is Nino-ish to a degree. Not sure about STJ contribution, but if this look verifies we have a mechanism between the EPO ridge and the stretched TPV for Polar air to chill Canada pretty quickly with cold moving southeastward from there. Maybe after this pattern reset and being further into winter we get better luck with NS wave timing. A little -NAO action certainly would help to slow the flow a bit and hold the cold in instead of exiting stage right as a storm approaches. AO/NAO looks neutral here.

That is more Nina, but I'll be honest I'm not wasting much time on the extended post ensemble guidance, the skill beyond week 3 is so low it's really just for fun.  But the genesis of the January pattern is now within range on the end of the ensembles.  This is the look that had my interest on the EPS and its been there for a few runs...GEPS also...a little less so on GEFS but I think its just slower to get to it.  

This is more so a nino pacific look, along with the correlated Atlantic side blocking and a split flow across N Amer.  This would be a rare look in a cold enso season.  But enso has not been as reliable lately so who knows.  I am not making any definitive calls on anything yet, this is all way way way out there...but I've taken heat for pretty much debbing on everything this season so far...so I thought it was worth it to say this is the first time I've seen anything that at least peaked my interest and made me take a second look.  

[CAPE]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

That is more Nina, but I'll be honest I'm not wasting much time on the extended post ensemble guidance, the skill beyond week 3 is so low it's really just for fun.  But the genesis of the January pattern is now within range on the end of the ensembles.  This is the look that had my interest on the EPS and its been there for a few runs...GEPS also...a little less so on GEFS but I think its just slower to get to it.  

This is more so a nino pacific look, along with the correlated Atlantic side blocking and a split flow across N Amer.  This would be a rare look in a cold enso season.  But enso has not been as reliable lately so who knows.  I am not making any definitive calls on anything yet, this is all way way way out there...but I've taken heat for pretty much debbing on everything this season so far...so I thought it was worth it to say this is the first time I've seen anything that at least peaked my interest and made me take a second look.  

That would be a pretty good NA look by traditional standards/ if we looked at it in isolation. Specifically in this case what that panel represents is a step in the transition from the prior Pac puke onslaught with a torched Canada to the pattern being advertised a few days later on the latest EPS weeklies. That is the same look depicted on Jan 1 of the weeklies, and it ends up like this by the 6th-

 

[poolz1]

So far the 12z GFS and CMC look a bit sharper and diggier for the Fri system.  Would be nice to back ourselves into a light event.

 

[Weather Will]

Can only go up from here....WB 12Z GFS for Saturday.

[rjvanals]

6 minutes ago, poolz1 said:

So far the 12z GFS and CMC look a bit sharper and diggier for the Fri system.  Would be nice to back ourselves into a light event.

 

Coastal is a loss at this point but maybe we can get some mood flakes with the system dying in the Ohio Valley 

[CAPE]

Just now, rjvanals said:

Coastal is a loss at this point but maybe we can get some mood flakes with the system dying in the Ohio Valley 

That's the difference on the latest runs for western areas- the low associated with the weak clipper stays more intact. For eastern areas the inverted trough thing never works out at our latitude, and if some light precip does manage to fall temps are warmish, so probably light rain or maybe a snow tv mix.

[Maestrobjwa]

4 minutes ago, CAPE said:

That's the difference on the latest runs for western areas- the low associated with the weak clipper stays more intact. For eastern areas the inverted trough thing never works out at our latitude, and if some light precip does manage to fall temps are warmish, so probably light rain or maybe a snow tv mix.

I always wonder what these things would be like if we didn't have mountains, lol

[poolz1]

24 minutes ago, rjvanals said:

Coastal is a loss at this point but maybe we can get some mood flakes with the system dying in the Ohio Valley 

Yeah, the ceiling is about as low as it gets especially for west of the Bay.  I'd be happy with a solid coating kind of like the other day.

[bncho]

3 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

One thing I find "interesting" is the guidance right now for early January has more of a nino than nina look.  Take that for what it's worth...something to keep an eye on as it get's closer.  If we can get the high latitudes to cooperate and even just some STJ involved it would increase the potential significantly.  

Maybe we can get a miracle like Jan 22-23, 2016 or  Jan 6-8, 1996.

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

That would be a pretty good NA look by traditional standards/ if we looked at it in isolation. Specifically in this case what that panel represents is a step in the transition from the prior Pac puke onslaught with a torched Canada to the pattern being advertised a few days later on the latest EPS weeklies. That is the same look depicted on Jan 1 of the weeklies, and it ends up like this by the 6th-

 

My thought process in ignoring the extended guidance is that over the last several years they’ve had a tendency to want to revert the pattern to a generic enso look almost immediately so that by the end of week 3 they always look like whatever the mean composite for the current enso is. That’s not been working out so well though and twice recently it completely busted when those products wanted to establish a canonical Nino pattern.  Will that day 15 Nino look immediately progress towards a classic Nina pattern by day 20, maybe. But based on recent performance and trends I’m not assuming so. 
 

 

[psuhoffman]

Let’s hope the extended guidance isn’t correct. Yes it’s a cold look but assuming those day 20-30 looks are correct I don’t like the long wave configuration at all to get a meaningful snowstorm. Maybe a clipper or a weak wave but there is no STJ and the trough axis is too far east to amplify a NS wave in time. It would be a frustrating pattern imo. 
 

Let’s hope the day 15 is correct and it doesn’t roll forward to that. 

[cbmclean]

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Let’s hope the extended guidance isn’t correct. Yes it’s a cold look but assuming those day 20-30 looks are correct I don’t like the long wave configuration at all to get a meaningful snowstorm. Maybe a clipper or a weak wave but there is no STJ and the trough axis is too far east to amplify a NS wave in time. It would be a frustrating pattern imo. 
 

Let’s hope the day 15 is correct and it doesn’t roll forward to that. 

You'll get dry cold, with some warm/wet interludes, and like it.

[cbmclean]

I see we have finally made it into phase 6 on the MJO as of yesterday.  We had spent the entire month in 5.  Looking to pick up speed and head into 7.  Will that do anything meaningful for us?  I have no idea.