• Hello, please take a minute to check out our awesome content, contributed by the wonderful members of our community. We hope you'll add your own thoughts and opinions by making a free account!

Pattern Jarring January

it did feel like spring here today and a lot of humidity... we even had tornado warnings to go with lol

such a drastic change from a few days ago
 
These run-to-run changes on the NAM in Minneapolis are insane, the difference between 1-2 feet of snow or more and nothing at all in Minneapolis-St. Paul. As we often observe here in the SE US & east coast, a last second NW adjustment of the precipitation shield NW of the main surface cyclone could lead to a crippling storm in the MSP metro area. You can certainly learn a few things about winter weather in the SE US by observing how major winter storms like this unfold even if they're occurring over a thousand miles away. In some cases, it can allow you to potentially decipher certain biases and tendencies within NWP models as a regional or fundamental problem in the model. If other storms in general observe a similar last minute NW trend over the midwest, Great Lakes, etc. it certainly would suggest there is something fundamentally wrong in NWP models wrt failure to capture the northwesterly extent of precipitation NW of a parent cyclone and that this issue is probably not exclusive to our region of the US and east coast cyclogenesis events.
output_hWtAZs.gif
 
Last edited:
Lol this looks familiar, how many times have we seen this planetary wave configuration since 2012-13 and in those cases most NWP models completely botched the intensity of the ACWB event over the North Pacific (including the current one over the Bering Sea and NE Eurasia). Winter is likely far from over, we're one good storm away from taking this winter to the upper echelon of years, even against seemingly ancient winters of the early-mid 20th century & late 19th century which were under a significantly cooler (& more favorable) background climate for cold/snow in the SE US.
eps_z500a_nh_61.png
 
Webberweather53 said:
Lol this looks familiar, how many times have we seen this planetary wave configuration since 2012-13 and in those cases most NWP models completely botched the intensity of the ACWB event over the North Pacific (including the current one over the Bering Sea and NE Eurasia). Winter is likely far from over, we're one good storm away from taking this winter to the upper echelon of years, even against seemingly ancient winters of the early-mid 20th century & late 19th century which were under a significantly cooler (& more favorable) background climate for cold/snow in the SE US.
View attachment 3388
Click to expand...

The long range EPS is essentially a blend of January 2014 & February 2015.
fgGZ5bSE7K.png
Kocl7Z2uBp.png
 
tractor girl said:
Webber, generally how reliable are long range EPS models?
Click to expand...

The models tend to perform better in cases like this where there's a very robust and coherent MJO pulse in the eastern hemisphere, this large-scale circulation response is consistent w/ what you'd expect as an MJO event encroaches on the Pacific.
vp200.GFS.anom.KELVIN.5S-5N.png
 
Webberweather53 said:
The models tend to perform better in cases like this where there's a very robust and coherent MJO pulse in the eastern hemisphere, this large-scale circulation response is consistent w/ what you'd expect as an MJO event encroaches on the Pacific.
View attachment 3391
Click to expand...
If you have a second could you take a look at this? http://southernwx.com/community/threads/help-understanding-this-model-image.363/

Mods feel free to delete since this is borderline OT for the thread.
 
gotta love Texas... from snow to tornadoes to fire. Smoke is being seen 100 miles away from a fire west of Fort Worth.:confused:
 
What's so interesting is that despite the 3 big SE winter storms to date and the extreme SE cold of 12/31-1/20, the period Dec/Jan/first few days of Feb isn't going to average all that much below normal thanks to some lengthy very warm periods to counter it. So, this winter is liable to go down more as one of big ups and downs as opposed to consistently cold. But we still have to see what Feb overall may bring and how that impacts the DJF average.
 
Storm5 said:
Damn Minneapolis is getting hammered with snow

Sent from my SM-J320VPP using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Yep. Our office up there actually closed at 1:30pm and my co-worker said they are getting up to 15 inches in his area. Pretty crazy!
 
ForsythSnow said:
Yep. And the weeklies look cold rolling into March. It's going to be a fun February.
Click to expand...

Yep, the Siberian express kicks into gear later this week as a big blocking high goes up over NE Eurasia and the Bering Sea and goes right on thru to the end of February, dumping the coldest air in the Northern hemisphere straight into east-central Canada and the Great Lakes for several weeks straight. Fantastic looking pattern from February 5th & beyond.
 
does the fact that -80 F temps in Siberia were observed play into the strength of this upcoming arctic spell in Feb, if it indeed sets up?
 
Here's the Euro weeklies through the end of February. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet of high-latitude north Pacific blocking through mid-late February. The very coherent, robust MJO signal in the eastern hemisphere and relatively frequent appearance of this anomalous planetary wave pattern since the 2012-13 winter lends confidence to its verification even after week 2.
output_25zYwk.gif
 
Webberweather53 said:
Here's the Euro weeklies through the end of February. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet of high-latitude north Pacific blocking through mid-late February. The very coherent, robust MJO signal in the eastern hemisphere and relatively frequent appearance of this anomalous planetary wave pattern since the 2012-13 winter lends confidence to its verification even after week 2.
output_25zYwk.gif
Click to expand...
Thanks, Webb!
A dose for snoozing ...
Best!
Phil
 
Tarheel1 said:
I thought you said at one point , we were going to roast in February and were on borrowed time in January!?
Click to expand...

I think he was one of the posters that was posting stuff from the Twitters about how "don't expect a permanent change to a La Nina pattern" any time soon.

Edit: The folks that predict long range here, I think they've decided they're likely going to be wrong this time.
 
GeorgiaGirl said:
I think he was one of the posters that was posting stuff from the Twitters about how "don't expect a permanent change to a La Nina pattern" any time soon.

Edit: The folks that predict long range here, I think they've decided they're likely going to be wrong this time.
Click to expand...

There's not a whole lot you can go off of several months in advance other than seasonal forecasting signals which argued for a warm winter overall although a small subset of years supported a cold December and possibly a near-below normal January w/ some North Atlantic blocking early on (verified) and suppression of the Alaskan ridge later in winter thanks to the EQBO (likely won't verify). The inter annual persistence of the ridge over the Northeastern Pacific & Alaska, and anchoring of this feature by the anomalous NE Eurasia/Siberian vortex and alterations in background tropical forcing due to Hadley Cell expansion isn't captured by most canonical NINA or cold neutral ENSO analogs and is a dynamical adjustment most forecasters should make in seasonal outlooks. However this feature has been far more intense than even I would have suspected. As a result, instead of being blowtorch warm in February, we may see a return back to what was observed in February 2014 & 2015, wherein much of the SE US was bitterly cold for appreciable periods of time in those months, w/ plenty of snow & ice to go around. Obviously we don't know when, where, or how many more winter storms we'll see next month (if any) but the large-scale pattern is about as favorable as you could possibly get it for February during a La Nina.
 
Tarheel1 said:
I thought you said at one point , we were going to roast in February and were on borrowed time in January!?
Click to expand...
Trying figure out your point . You say you " thought " when in reality you already know the answer to your question . Many people thought we would be warm the second half of winter and that it would be front loaded . Just trying to figure out if you're being an ass and calling him out or if you're actually trying to learn why we might end up colder vs what we previously thought and the reasons behind it

Sent from my SM-J320VPP using Tapatalk
 
Storm5 said:
Trying figure out your point . You say you " thought " when in reality you already know the answer to your question . Many people thought we would be warm the second half of winter and that it would be front loaded . Just trying to figure out if you're being an ass and calling him out or if you're actually trying to learn why we might end up colder vs what we previously thought and the reasons behind it

Sent from my SM-J320VPP using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
honestly, he's half-trolling,half trying to be cute.. I'm guilty of the same thing sometimes, so I recognize it when others do it..
 
whamby said:
honestly, he's half-trolling,half trying to be cute.. I'm guilty of the same thing sometimes, so I recognize it when others do it..
Click to expand...
I've done it before as well. I was just trying to understand what the end game was for the question. Maybe it's just late and I didn't read it correctly

Sent from my SM-J320VPP using Tapatalk
 
One thing is for sure, if you don't put your thoughts out there for everyone to see, you can never be wrong (or right for that matter). That is the real reason I still pay some attention to JB, he doesn't hesitate to take a stand and is pretty good at pattern recognition. Local or area forecasting, meh not so much
 
Just saw this on facebook from RAH.

1200 pm... We're getting several reports of trees falling in the Triad and Person County with wind gusts of 35 to 45 MPH. Those strong winds will spread east this afternoon. We will be issuing a Wind Advisory for much of central NC through 600 pm. #ncwx
 
GaWx said:
Fwiw since so far out: the 12Z EPS says don't sleep on the period around 1/3-4 for a possible THIRD SE wintry threat, including near the coast due to still another surface low that is modeled to track well offshore the SE coast along with a possible wedge preceding that and continued ample supply of cold.
Click to expand...

I'm bumping this 12/25 post to show that the EPS had a run 9 days in advance of the 1/3/18 historic coastal winter storm showing that threat. Actually, it had hints of snow just offshore going back several days even before that! Those even older runs, which went back some 12-13 days prior to the 1/3 storm, kept showing snow offshore far NE FL/GA/SC about 50 miles out into the Atlantic.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top