December 2024 - Best look to an early December pattern in many a year!

[SouthCoastMA]

Has the EC-AI shown any skill yet? That's the kinda evolution one could hope for if you don't want a grinch pattern around Christmas. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

The irony is that the immense preoccupation with CC that drives overattribution can also be interpreted as a lack of understanding.

[SouthCoastMA]

A low cutting through the Lakes never gave me snow before CC was a thing. Isn't CC more noticeable in marginal setups?  That being said, it was always marginal in the mid-atlantic so I could see it being more noticeable there. 

[WinterWolf]

12 minutes ago, SouthCoastMA said:

A low cutting through the Lakes never gave me snow before CC was a thing. Isn't CC more noticeable in marginal setups?  That being said, it was always marginal in the mid-atlantic so I could see it being more noticeable there. 

Absolutely.  

[mreaves]

50 minutes ago, mahk_webstah said:

I drive, but I think there are direct flights from New York and I’m not sure about Boston. You can always go to Montreal and take the train.

I drive too.  4.5 hours from here.  We've also started going to Ottawa, it's about the same distance in the other direction.  Different vibe but still a neat place to visit.

[ORH_wxman]

22 minutes ago, SouthCoastMA said:

A low cutting through the Lakes never gave me snow before CC was a thing. Isn't CC more noticeable in marginal setups?  That being said, it was always marginal in the mid-atlantic so I could see it being more noticeable there. 

Some argue that CC has changed the large scale pattern to a “new normal” where we are like 3-5F warmer than the 1991-2020 baseline winters. I don’t personally buy that theory but if you torch for 8 out of 10 winters then you might start wondering. We’ve had pretty warm stretches before compared to climo (late 40s/early 50s was somewhat similar…big western troughs many of those years too until it flipped in the mid-1950s)

You def notice it in the “tail distributions” too and not just marginal setups. For example, an extreme pattern that used to produce 60-65F in February might produce 70F now even though in the means we haven’t had 8 degrees of warming. 

But yeah, overall, December is a month you get a decent number of cutters anyway. Esp the first half of the month. 
 

Our big problem going forward isn’t cutters per se, it’s a positive WPO and expanding Aleutian low that is interfering with the flow in a negative way. The Aleutian low almost becomes a GOA low for a time which rolls the sharp PNA ridge over itself after about 12/22 and warms up the CONUS until the low retrogrades back west (which would prob be closer to the end of the month.) 

Guidance has been very volatile though on this. Even the 12/19-12/22 period is a lot colder now than a couple days ago on EPS. 

[Snowcrazed71]

1 hour ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

Is there an FU emoji yet?

You know man, that's a really good idea. Then you'd have a lot of them from everyone else.. lol

[tamarack]

4 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Getting 40" instead of 30" in a season does nothing for me...I'd rather not take the 12" dong to the face while everyone around me gets 2', but that's just me.

Me too.  Nemo was the poster child - a nice 11" here while PWM had 31.9", GYX 26.8"; I think Jeff had 25.5" and AUG 25.  A few miles south from AUG, Gardiner had 30.0". (In our 13 winters there, 85-86 thru 97-98, their biggest was 16", though I measured 17.5 for Dec. 20-21, 1995.) 

Five hours of lgt snow brought 1.6" last night, total to 24.0".  By the time the downpour commences, we'll have about 3" SWE in a 15" pack.  My guess is that we lose about half; if it all goes, it would bring at least moderate flooding, maybe worse, though GYX has been consistent in contrasting this event with last Dec 18, not comparing.

[wx2fish]

10 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Some argue that CC has changed the large scale pattern to a “new normal” where we are like 3-5F warmer than the 1991-2020 baseline winters. I don’t personally buy that theory but if you torch for 8 out of 10 winters then you might start wondering. We’ve had pretty warm stretches before compared to climo (late 40s/early 50s was somewhat similar…big western troughs many of those years too until it flipped in the mid-1950s)

You def notice it in the “tail distributions” too and not just marginal setups. For example, an extreme pattern that used to produce 60-65F in February might produce 70F now even though in the means we haven’t had 8 degrees of warming. 

But yeah, overall, December is a month you get a decent number of cutters anyway. Esp the first half of the month. 
 

Our big problem going forward isn’t cutters per se, it’s a positive WPO and expanding Aleutian low that is interfering with the flow in a negative way. The Aleutian low almost becomes a GOA low for a time which rolls the sharp PNA ridge over itself after about 12/22 and warms up the CONUS until the low retrogrades back west (which would prob be closer to the end of the month.) 

Guidance has been very volatile though on this. Even the 12/19-12/22 period is a lot colder now than a couple days ago on EPS. 

That's one thing I've kept thinking about. We've dramatically outpaced the background warming trend over the past several winters. Is that a sustainable trend?

The persistentance of torched DJFs has been pretty remarkable, however, I'm in the same camp and feel there will be some reversion back toward baseline in the not too distant future. 

[dendrite]

Tuck in full force. 28.7° at home

[mahk_webstah]

The denouement of the current run. 8-9 on the ground in the woods

[ORH_wxman]

7 minutes ago, wx2fish said:

That's one thing I've kept thinking about. We've dramatically outpaced the background warming trend over the past several winters. Is that a sustainable trend?

The persistentance of torched DJFs has been pretty remarkable, however, I'm in the same camp and feel there will be some reversion back toward baseline in the not too distant future. 

This has been our mean pattern since 2016…obviously there’s a couple of good winters in there but that pattern is pretty familiar at this point. The flat Aleutian ridge with some poorly placed weakness in the Bering/WPO region and the western troughing of course. 

When the mean ridge anomaly in the east is on top of our head, it’s gonna be tough sledding  

 

[ROOSTA]

CC should be on a timescale much greater than the mesoscale seasonal effect of IMBY. The snap to warmer, wetter, stronger, never seen severity without question is occurring. The balance or unbalancing is precariously close to that scale tipping.
I have no idea of what I'm talking about... all I know is it's happening in realtime. Honest! 

[Prismshine Productions]

Really can't complain about this 10 day stretch... Quantity over quality in this rare case

Sent from my SM-S146VL using Tapatalk

[ORH_wxman]

I do think there is room to try for an event in that 12/20-12/22 period or so. @Typhoon Tip laid out the larger scale argument already…there’s probably going to be some decent antecedent cold available. Just a question of getting a shortwave to dive into the mean trough and amplify. EPS looks better than GFS suite on this but both offer some support. 

[MJO812]

Gfs and cmc has a cold Christmas week now. Flip flop.

[Typhoon Tip]

27 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Tuck in full force. 28.7° at home

my mini splits all shut off for a 15 minutes and the indicator panels switched readouts to "dF" which means defrost mode.   it's the 30 f air with a dp of 29.5

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

The irony is that the immense preoccupation with CC that drives overattribution can also be interpreted as a lack of understanding.

meh ...don't read in too deep on that.  it was for droll snark.  Das got it.  it's like laugh a little

 

[leo2000]

21 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Gfs and cmc has a cold Christmas week now. Flip flop.

Never seen so much flip flopping before. I think the models are having a hard time capturing the pacific pattern which I think should based on the Wpac temporarily cooling off should allow for more -EPO, -WPO and more +PNA. 

[Typhoon Tip]

54 minutes ago, wx2fish said:

That's one thing I've kept thinking about. We've dramatically outpaced the background warming trend over the past several winters. Is that a sustainable trend?

The persistentance of torched DJFs has been pretty remarkable, however, I'm in the same camp and feel there will be some reversion back toward baseline in the not too distant future. 

i think it could be ...   

"could be"  - not looking for anyone to shish kabob any nuts over it.   it's just that for those of us open to the research, we're getting bombarded by articles like this,

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-ai-earth-peak-hottest-years.html

 ... and sometimes the shoe fits?  

the trend you observed has been happening in all dimension, at the scale of the integrated planetary system.  the huge T surge in 2023 .. well that list is huge and growing where at both wholesale, and quadrature, empirical/registered data is outpacing 'well-informed' anticipation basis'

it just seems reasonable enough that if the whole world is doing this, there are likely regions of quadrature that also do irregularities along a general upward modality in climate.  

having said that, yeah... there could be several years of a fractal that sort of like, don't outpace ... but it ain't like we're going to "inpace" either - it seems abundantly more wise to assume we are rising regardless, but is a matter of whether it is subtle or gross.  when ever there is bias to rise(fall) the anomaly behaviors/extremes will tend to favor which .    it's interesting 

i'm personally "testing" this year.  we've had a so-far early cooler expression, thanks to a -epo--> +d(pna) about a month ago.  it struck at  perfect solar calendar time, right as we were entering the solar minimum.   you get one of these on feb 1 and you may not get a month out of it before it starts moderating on you...   ( this is part of why my personal druthers likes the front loaded winter variety )       my test is to see if this wasn't just a seasonal prelapse like we've seen in recent years, just happening to have occurred a month later... or if this is leading to a front loader - not sure but it feels ( if not altogether rationally LOL ) like we're at the threshold of determining over these next couple of weeks.  

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, leo2000 said:

Never seen so much flip flopping before. I think the models are having a hard time capturing the pacific pattern which I think should based on the Wpac temporarily cooling off should allow for more -EPO, -WPO and more +PNA. 

The ops will always flip flop. 

Looking at the ensembles prior to 12z, the issue is more in the Pacific and the flattening of the NAMR ridge at times. 

[CoastalWx]

32.3F. Like a 40/70 Wilmington, MA. ZR event. LOL.

[brooklynwx99]

7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

The ops will always flip flop. 

Looking at the ensembles prior to 12z, the issue is more in the Pacific and the flattening of the NAMR ridge at times. 

looks like the ridge tries to pump around the 20th (hence the potential storm), ridge rolls over and warms us up into Christmas (naturally), and then we see the trough retrogression towards the Aleutians into NYE. that's how I'm looking at it, anyway

[40/70 Benchmark]

54 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

This has been our mean pattern since 2016…obviously there’s a couple of good winters in there but that pattern is pretty familiar at this point. The flat Aleutian ridge with some poorly placed weakness in the Bering/WPO region and the western troughing of course. 

When the mean ridge anomaly in the east is on top of our head, it’s gonna be tough sledding  

 

Unless of course you are willing to risk injury to the grandchildren to drag the taboggan through the mud...like Ginxy lol

[leo2000]

2 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

looks like the ridge tries to pump around the 20th (hence the potential storm), ridge rolls over and warms us up into Christmas (naturally), and then we see the trough retrogression towards the Aleutians into NYE. that's how I'm looking at it, anyway

In earlier runs the trough was retrogressing towards the Aleutians a few days before Christmas. not saying that will happen but I am not writing it off yet. Coastalwx, of course they do but its interesting its still showing colder outcomes before Christmas and continuing into Boxing day. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

Tuck in full force. 28.7° at home

Still 30.4 IMBY coming up on 1pm.

[TheSnowman]

4 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Don't think it will, but if it does, oh well....I had decent snowfall in January 2022 and last January I had one of the best events of my life. I expect a shitty season overall, but just going to take whatever I can get.

Where the heck do you live Ray?  You live but 50 minutes from me, and I’ve seen 31” of Snow Total, in 2 FULL SEASONS.

I haven’t seen Even a 10” snowstorm since January 2022!!  Almost 3 Years!  

 

If I don’t see an ACTUAL full on 20” Storm this year I’m going to Absolutely go F-ing Ape S***.  And of course like every year, I’ll be in LA January 19-February 4th for NAMM & Grammys.  So you might as well book a storm somewhere inside of that time frame.    

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, TheSnowman said:

Where the heck do you live Ray?  You live but 50 minutes from me, and I’ve seen 31” of Snow in 2 FULL SEASONS.

I haven’t seen Even a 10” snowstorm since January 2022!!  Almost 3 Years!  

 

If I don’t see an ACTUAL full on 20” Storm this year I’m going to Absolutely go F-ing Ape S***.  And of course like every year, I’ll be in LA January 19-February 4th for NAMM & Grammys.  So you might as well book a storm somewhere inside of that time frame.    

 

I'm right on the NH border in Methuen.

I'll be in the hospital from Jan 3 through like the 7th, so book one then, too.

[Spanks45]

8 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Still 30.4 IMBY coming up on 1pm.

It has even 'tucked' a bit down here....my high for the day was around midnight at 40, only 39 currently. If we had any of the cold from last week, it would have been at least interesting to start tonight and tomorrow

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 minute ago, Spanks45 said:

It has even 'tucked' a bit down here....my high for the day was around midnight at 40, only 39 currently. If we had any of the cold from last week, it would have been at least interesting to start tonight and tomorrow

Still near 40 in Tolland, but rest assured, Kev is "tucked"....