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Pattern December 2023

Euro Wk Jan 1 to Jan 8 850mb Temp Anomalies. Thing is, what makes this a bit more believable than normal is that we are in El Niño vs La Nina…the El Niño is strong but hasn’t established itself as a super & east-based Nino from a tropical forcing standpoint over the past several months leading in…and the MJO supports this type of pattern progression. At a minimum, potential for pattern improvement should increase late Dec / early Jan. We shall see

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griteater said:
Euro Wk Jan 1 to Jan 8 850mb Temp Anomalies. Thing is, what makes this a bit more believable than normal is that we are in El Niño vs La Nina…the El Niño is strong but hasn’t established itself as a super & east-based Nino from a tropical forcing standpoint over the past several months leading in…and the MJO supports this type of pattern progression. At a minimum, potential for pattern improvement should increase late Dec / early Jan. We shall see

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Hopefully we can maintain it or get even colder moving forward. Be nice to be cold around the holidays here
 
griteater said:
Euro Wk Jan 1 to Jan 8 850mb Temp Anomalies. Thing is, what makes this a bit more believable than normal is that we are in El Niño vs La Nina…the El Niño is strong but hasn’t established itself as a super & east-based Nino from a tropical forcing standpoint over the past several months leading in…and the MJO supports this type of pattern progression. At a minimum, potential for pattern improvement should increase late Dec / early Jan. We shall see

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Yeah grit. I am really liking the late December into early January period …
 
griteater said:
Euro Wk Jan 1 to Jan 8 850mb Temp Anomalies. Thing is, what makes this a bit more believable than normal is that we are in El Niño vs La Nina…the El Niño is strong but hasn’t established itself as a super & east-based Nino from a tropical forcing standpoint over the past several months leading in…and the MJO supports this type of pattern progression. At a minimum, potential for pattern improvement should increase late Dec / early Jan. We shall see

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Just out of curiosity, what do think has caused caused the tropical forcing to not be matching what is typically seen with a strong, east based El Niño? Does it possibly have anything to do with go into the Nino after a 3 year La Niña?
 
18z GFS trying hard for next wed. Has a nice little thump for the mtn folks. Been seeing some scattered chatter on a few ens frames for this time frame. Look close and Check out the blue New Bern as coastal deepens on way out. Maybebwe can get the trough to sharpen a bit ,get rid of the pos tilt. Assuming this actually unfolds.
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18z gfs is northern OBX flurry watch lol. Couple ens members agree but really the first run that’s had anything to ? at.
 
Chazwin said:
Just out of curiosity, what do think has caused the tropical forcing to not be matching what is typically seen with a strong, east based El Niño? Does it possibly have anything to do with go into the Nino after a 3 year La Niña?
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This El Nino started on the coast of Peru and the warm anomalies have expanded west thru this year (similar to 57-58 & 65-66) - can view a loop of it here: https://psl.noaa.gov/map/clim/sst.anom.anim.year.html

The big east-based Ninos (82-83 & 97-98) started out with the warmest anomalies to the west, then moved strongly east via big, low-level westerly wind bursts (WWBs) across the central Pacific. This year, we haven't seen nearly the WWB activity as 82 and 97, though we recently had the first big WWB in the C Pac. So, I think that is part of it just in terms of how the nino formed. Also, climate change may be a factor as nowadays it is more common for warm water to hang back in the W Pacific, whereas in 82 and 97, there was more of a slosh of evacuating the warm water out of the W Pac and move more of it east into the E Pac....and accordingly, the nino base state in those years had more convection / nino forcing in the E Pac compared to what we are seeing this year.

Those are my thoughts on it. I think we are going to see this nino strengthen just a little more over the next month, but my take is that the base tropical forcing pattern won't change much. I suspect we will see a mixuture of patterns in Jan-Mar. Some -EPO and +PNA episodes, and some with low pressure / trough off & along the west coast
 
Last Night Euro below: Mtns still look good on previous frames We will at least get a quick in and out cold shot again next week, just like this week. But most likely our warmest weekend in December should be the weekend of the 9th it appears, BUT I must say The latest CFS doesn't agree with this. We would all cash out with the latest CFS run for December as it is a beaut throughout. Hopefully the weeklies Grit posted and the cfs all hang on to a much improved pattern over the Holidays, where we can keep the cold around for more than 48 hours.

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Snowlover87 said:
It's going to be incredibly warm this weekend. Some areas will have lows in the 60s which is very warm for December.
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That's not uncommon at all. Watching the highs, though. Any break in the precip and some sun breaking through and we may get up in to the mid 70's. That's pretty warm for December but quite welcome by me.
 
Snowlover87 said:
having low temps warmer than the average high is not uncommon ?
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It's not really that uncommon. Although it seems to happen way more frequently and more than it should these days. But this is just a pulling a random year at GSP and that year had lows of 54 m, which is probably close to the average high.
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It’s definitely going to be mild for the foreseeable, hopefully some of this rain pans out over the weekend.
 
Gonna be a teeth grinder this winter, figuring out how to get the polar jet to cooperate, come on down. I guess if we could ever cook up a deeping wave on the SS, maybe it could yank it down for a phase. But right now these waves forecasted to come, while numerous, are weak sauce. Its early, so thats the silver lining. And we knew this would be the issue that has to be resolved and caveat to possibly having to punt December Away.
 
Myfrotho704_ said:
Gonna go with post Christmas being a pattern change to a +PNA with chances across the SE. gefs extended especially hints at this
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How many weeks of chances are we looking at? Any guesses? Hopefully more than the 1-2 week window as usual.
 
Stevo24 said:
How many weeks of chances are we looking at? Any guesses? Hopefully more than the 1-2 week window as usual.
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14.5 weeks
 
Myfrotho704_ said:
Gonna go with post Christmas being a pattern change to a +PNA with chances across the SE. gefs extended especially hints at this
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That time frame seems reasonable to me though I might go right around New Year’s and a few days after. I don’t think we want the PNA to be too positive though. Remember last December when it decided to go beast mode and we ended up with vodka cold at Christmas but no moisture to speak of because everything was getting squashed into the GOM. It’s been positive since early last week and honestly I think that with the teleconnections the way they have been, I think it would have been likely we would have scored something during a better climo period.
 
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