I’d honestly much rather torch for the first part of December or even most of it. I worry about starting off December with massive cold fronts and then flipping to warm to start off January when that’s our best time for snow average wise. I know a cold December doesn’t necessarily mean a warm January and vise versa but it does seem like when we are cold in late December and early January that the warmth ends up coming to us at the worst time. Just don’t give me the 2016-2017 winter #worst winter ever.
Actually as you may have even hinted, there’s a pretty good partial positive correlation of Dec to Jan temps and a good bit higher correlation than that of Nov to winter.
The last time I posted (yesterday), the two major ensembles had been trending significantly colder for 12/4-10 since Tuesday/Wednesday runs. Suddenly, the last couple of runs have reversed a lot of that, especially latter portion, though some of that cooling remains in the 12/4-7 period. And now the end of the runs going to 12/12 are warmer (AN to NN). So, was that a big tease?
So, not good trend for cold lovers but I just read some posts looking forward to a warmup due to so much cold this month. So, they’ll be happy though not me as I almost always root for cold/BN regardless of month. Plus, models go back and forth. So, we’ll see if they reverse back again.
Looking to mid to late Dec, the wonderful MJO runs continue to suggest a path that would be favorable for cold to return to the SE for much of mid to late December if the PMA/AO/NAO would cooperate. Before that, the 4 indices strongly favor warmth in the SE. So, warmth then should be expected. Today’s runs do suggest the PNA may return toward the current + in two weeks. That would be a big help.
Note that the current cold is accompanied by a great combo of +PNA, -NAO, and slight -AO and thus it is solidly cold in the SE despite having an MJO on the right side of the diagram (though it being low amp inside circle right side vs high amp right side keeps it from being a warm forcing as that’s more neutral).
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the current cold!