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2020-2021 Winter: Early Thoughts

Myfrotho704_ said:
Winter is over View attachment 49623View attachment 49624View attachment 49625
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Solar min/west QBO/La Nina is the solar, QBO, & ENSO combo that favors the least perturbed and strongest polar vortex state. Not to mention persistence and our basic state climate changes are skewing the odds more in favor of +AO/NAO. Chips are stacked against us this year even more so than usual, but the last 2 nina esque winters (2013-14 & 2017-18) were the best ones of recent memory around here in the Carolinas while most of the El Niños have been utter flops, so who the heck knows anymore.

Gonna need some big time high latitude N pacific blocking (-EPO/-WPO) to save us yet again & push a lobe of the PV right over us. We will probably need to see some winter threats materialize early and often in December and January before the door slams shut on us in February as it often does in La Ninas.
 
The way I see it, nothing is etched in stone right now. Yes if you had to bet on an outcome, you might pick a cooler start to winter and then a warm ending; with an overall warmer than normal temperature average. But just looking at the past la nina years, gives me hope for a good winter. Heck even a great winter:

aaaa1.jpg
Some bad years, and some really good one in this list.
 
FallsLake said:
The way I see it, nothing is etched in stone right now. Yes if you had to bet on an outcome, you might pick a cooler start to winter and then a warm ending; with an overall warmer than normal temperature average. But just looking at the past la nina years, gives me hope for a good winter. Heck even a great winter:

View attachment 49654
Some bad years, and some really good one in this list.
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When you break down years and individual winter storm cases, many of the seriously big storms that deliver RDU-I95 bullseyes (instead of GSO and pts NW) are often in La Ninas. El Niño winters can be snowy but typically are fraught with RDU screwjobs.
 
Webberweather53 said:
When you break down years and individual winter storm cases, many of the seriously big storms that deliver RDU-I95 bullseyes (instead of GSO and pts NW) are often in La Ninas. El Niño winters can be snowy but typically are fraught with RDU screwjobs.
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It's been some time since there has been a big I-95 storm (like March 1980). It's funny, the farther east you go the less chance of wintery precip for an average winter; but when a storm occurs it can be historic (for anybody's book).
 
Webberweather53 said:
When you break down years and individual winter storm cases, many of the seriously big storms that deliver RDU-I95 bullseyes (instead of GSO and pts NW) are often in La Ninas. El Niño winters can be snowy but typically are fraught with RDU screwjobs.
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Yeah El Niño snow gradients blow, I wanna try out a Nina, weird part is we’ve had a El Niño the last few years, but it seems as if we get into this nina like H5 pattern with a ridge under Alaska and cold bottled up around the high plains/NW, but have the active STJ
 
Myfrotho704_ said:
Yeah El Niño snow gradients blow, I wanna try out a Nina, weird part is we’ve had a El Niño the last few years, but it seems as if we get into this nina like H5 pattern with a ridge under Alaska and cold bottled up around the high plains/NW, but have the active STJ
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Yeah I’ll admit we don’t get as favorable looking patterns as often in la ninas, but when we do we are much more likely to see a CLT-RDU or coastal plain bullseye. I’m not sure if that’s because the subtropical jet is weaker and therefore it’s harder to get really strong coastals that bomb out and pump WAA well into the piedmont, or I think a more reasonable assumption is that when we get sufficiently cold air masses to have winter storms in La Ninas, the air is colder. This, if true, would be thanks to NE Pacific blocking highs seeding the N American continent with Siberian air, whereas in El Niño we get more frequent cool-mild air but since in most instances the continent is flooded with mild, pacific air, those air masses are weaker, continental polar instead of being truly “arctic. Just a hypothesis anyway...

I have so many examples of these kinds of storms in my archive lol
 
Webberweather53 said:
Yeah I’ll admit we don’t get as favorable looking patterns as often in la ninas, but when we do we are much more likely to see a CLT-RDU or coastal plain bullseye. I have so many examples of these kinds of storms in my archive lol
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Yeah, one could even looks back to 2018, which had snow all along the coast!
 
Webberweather53 said:
Yeah the 2 storms in January 2018 are good examples, the upper low in mid January was the first good storm in a while to put RDU in the bullseye
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I've just about converted my allegiance over to nina vs nino. It's like fantasy football, nino's might have a safe floor but Nina's have a mega high ceiling.
 
SD said:
I've just about converted my allegiance over to nina vs nino. It's like fantasy football, nino's might have a safe floor but Nina's have a mega high ceiling.
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What specifically do you mean when you imply that La Niña has a higher “ceiling” than El Niño? How many winters of data is this based on? Are you talking specifically about the Raleigh area?
 
GaWx said:
What specifically do you mean when you imply that La Niña has a higher “ceiling” than El Niño? How many winters of data is this based on? Are you talking specifically about the Raleigh area?
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He means that with ninos, you get cool shots but often times you compete with a STJ, which pumps in milder air at the sfc/aloft at times, but when there’s a Nina, you can get better cold shots due to a more dominant N/S and the snow events tend to be better due to the lack of a gradient vs a nino winter in winter
 
Webberweather53 said:
Yeah I’ll admit we don’t get as favorable looking patterns as often in la ninas, but when we do we are much more likely to see a CLT-RDU or coastal plain bullseye. I’m not sure if that’s because the subtropical jet is weaker and therefore it’s harder to get really strong coastals that bomb out and pump WAA well into the piedmont, or I think a more reasonable assumption is that when we get sufficiently cold air masses to have winter storms in La Ninas, the air is colder. This, if true, would be thanks to NE Pacific blocking highs seeding the N American continent with Siberian air, whereas in El Niño we get more frequent cool-mild air but since in most instances the continent is flooded with mild, pacific air, those air masses are weaker, continental polar instead of being truly “arctic. Just a hypothesis anyway...

I have so many examples of these kinds of storms in my archive lol
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Yeah, I think that's it. The Ninas are more northern stream dominant so when we get a nice -EPO with an east coast trough, it gets COLD. The problem is it's northern stream dominant and all we here on the PBP is "dig", "if only the shortwave would dig more". Then it doesn't dig. But sometimes it does and we get a nice winter storm.

I'll take that over the last few years.
 
GaWx said:
What specifically do you mean when you imply that La Niña has a higher “ceiling” than El Niño? How many winters of data is this based on? Are you talking specifically about the Raleigh area?
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Myfrotho704_ said:
He means that with ninos, you get cool shots but often times you compete with a STJ, which pumps in milder air at the sfc/aloft at times, but when there’s a Nina, you can get better cold shots due to a more dominant N/S and the snow events tend to be better due to the lack of a gradient vs a nino winter in winter
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What he said.

Honestly no I haven't done a lot of research and it's hard to find good data points nearby since RDU is too far NW and FAY is too far S to really be representative of MBY. That being said when you sit back and look at the overall setups that are favored in a nina/nino I feel like nina's are going to offer the potential to get into the high end totals. All it takes is a late blooming clipper or a tall western ridge to bias the trough axis far enough east and you are looking at a 8-16 type event here. When you start getting into the more likely mixed phase wedge nino events generally we are going to mix and have a mediocre snow total.

When it all boils down if I want to see a little snow each winter I would say go nino go but if I want to see an event that I would actually consider memorable I am going to go with a nina.
 
One thing that we have been seeing in recent winters is favorable tracked ULL's. But every time it's wwith NO COLD AIR so we have rain and 50 degrres, or when it's cold, the ULL magically is moisture starved. :mad:
 
I haven't done this in a while, since things haven't been looking really interesting, but this is Yesterday's EPS run for all the members that have at least 1 member with snow in the SE. About what I would expect through mid-November.
Snow #2.png

The last graphic I made only included NC/TN/VA/WV.

2020-2021 Winter: Early Thoughts

I'm really looking forward to opening up the 2020-2021 archive thread in the next month or two. Last year was somewhat experimental, so this year should be exciting! I started it early-mid October, but I suspect it may be earlier with the 00z GEFS extending 30 days.
southernwx.com
 
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