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January Medium/Long Range: A snowy January ahead?


mappy
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2 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Beats the avocado. 

Hold on...I spoke too soon.   I keep looking only at H5 and not sfc

It's a little warmish so far.   Nice slug of moisture surging from the southwest.

ETA:  Yeah, it's warm for us at the onset...but honestly, we know the thermal boundary gonna change a trillion times.   I'm please with the Canadian. 

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2 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

Hold on...I spoke too soon.   I keep looking only at H5 and not sfc

Stronger trough out west on Canadian pumps the ridge a bit more than 12z, so it's warmer. But at 9 days, who cares. At least there's a storm.

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0z Geps and Eps both show 4" snowfall all after day 7 and 6z Gefs is 4.5" all after day 7. That is really impressive from this range and for such a short period on ensembles. 6z Gfs operational is what you'd expect to see (finally) with its ensemble results. 

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Couple random thoughts 

1) we want the cold. The trough is centered to our NW and there is no blocking. Any amplification that takes place will easily shift the baroclinic boundary north. 
 

There have been lots of examples of similar patters to this. Some were very snowy. Some not. And the difference in most cases was how much cold was in the pattern. Early Feb 2018 was an example of a mostly fail (we did get one 2-4” snow event but the rest were rain) and it’s because we were coming off a 10 day torch and there just wasn’t that much cold injected into the pattern and so each wave easily tracked north regardless of how far south the boundary might have been a day before. 
 

Think of 2015 in comparison when we had arctic air injected into the pattern and we managed a warning snowfall from a wave that tracked way to our west!  Unless we want to be rooting for extremely weak waves we want a very cold airmass in place which will allow amplification to still have a chance to work out. 
 

2) looking even further out I am becoming more convinced we also end this season with a bang in March regardless of what happens between now and then.
 

when I made my seasonal forecast March was a wildcard. But as I start to adjust the analogs for how this season is actually going the years with a warm March have all fallen away and the ones where we had a cold snowy ending are left. 
 

We likely get some kind of relax period between now and then. How lucky we get during this upcoming -epo TNH pattern and then in March plus how long the relax in between is probably determines how good this winter goes down in terms of snowfall. But it’s been and probably will continue to be way more fun than I expected.
 

Unfortunately snowfall is really fluky and doesn’t always align with pattern expectations. There are plenty of years you can look at the longer pattern and say “how did we only get that much snow 2011”

IMG_6833.png.80e9459173400e20fff17de3043630e9.png

or even “how did we get above normal snow in that 2000”

IMG_5115.png.0fcea181ce2c1c09b0f57826ecce4777.png
If you didn’t know the dates and were asked which of those years above was the snowier winter you would never guess it right lol

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25 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

how did we only get that much snow 2011”

One of my top 5 storms was in 2011  Big closed ull bowling ball with some of the craziest dynamic snowfalls we have ever seen.  I got slammed with well over a foot of snow in less than 8 hours… 

Nothing sticks out for 2000… 

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16 minutes ago, MDScienceTeacher said:

One of my top 5 storms was in 2011  Big closed ull bowling ball with some of the craziest dynamic snowfalls we have ever seen.  I got slammed with well over a foot of snow in less than 8 hours… 

Nothing sticks out for 2000… 

Was this the one the LWX down played?

 

Started as heavy rain and quickly turned to a paste bomb?  Basically closed 83 in the city and people were walking home?

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My take a ways from the 0z and now 6z runs is the models are and have continued to show a potential snowstorm for the period January 19th-21st and more to follow I’m totally fine with that at this lead.  Like psuhoffman and others have said good luck with the exact details beyond even day 4 because it will change often.  I think we are in a buckle up phase of model watching and it seems likely to me that our cold dry pattern that we havd been enjoying (crap snow totals) up here in Southeastern Pennsylvania is about to change even if we dance a bit with the baroclinic zone or amplification to allow a northern shift or warm air to intrude it’s how we roll but the forementioned details we will not know until the earliest Thursday or do this week especially in a shifting pattern. 
 

looks like we are entering that South to southwesterly flow aloft regime gotta keep the cold air nearby and hope the southeast ridge directs the storms here and overwhelm us with warmth. 

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1 minute ago, Interstate said:

Was this the one the LWX down played?

 

Started as heavy rain and quickly turned to a paste bomb?  Basically closed 83 in the city and people were walking home?

Yes.  It was a great storm. I made a lucky call on that one from like 7 days out. But it was a below avg snowfall winter despite a great pattern for long stretches. 2000 was an above avg snow year despite a shit the blinds pattern 90% of the time because we hit huge multiple times the one week we had any hope. 

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