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Pattern December, Make analogs relevant again

If we keep seeing the repeating block and tanking AO I would be willing to bet December will produce for many. I had a cached image of the AO forecast from last week and when I refreshed it today it was even more in the tank. Something has to give!

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Considering that most wintry events here feature marginal near surface temperatures and the bgd climate isn't getting any more conducive, any variable that makes these temperatures less marginal including but not limited to) a feeble snow pack to our northwest which allows incoming arctic air masses to modify appreciably more quickly will hurt our chances for wintry weather. Similar to the argument wrt major tropical volcanic eruptions, ENSO, AO, SSWEs, etc. yes while no single variable guarantees or completely eradicates the potential for a winter storm here, the probability distributions are heavily skewed towards less frequent, large winter storms when you don't have a deep snow cover to the north particularly when the bgd climate is getting warmer...

The 50th percentile snow extent for winter storms in the Carolinas since 2000 is in/around the I-70 corridor (w/ a lot of event-event variability of course), but you'd be very hard pressed to find any major storms that occurred when the snowpack was locked almost entirely into Canada as it is now and will be for the next week or so
 
BillT said:
the deepest single snowfall i have seen was in 1993 here in bama, without even checking i am certain there was NO snowpack anywhere near us when that snow started falling.
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This isn't true at all, in fact as I mentioned earlier the snow cover extent in the week leading up to the March 1993 superstorm had snow cover extending down to about the I-80 & I-70 corridors which is where you should at least expect it to be when a winter storm may threaten the SE US...
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NorthGaWinter4 said:
JB said on his twitter that this December setting up like, 1950, 95 and 2010!
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Not now of course since it isn't, but for once I'd love for JB to say that a current winter month is setting up like a cr*ppy winter month from the past. Just for something different. Has he ever done this? If only Mack would take over his twitter!
 
The entire premise of bringing forward the snow cover argument is to tamper expectations at least in the first week-several days of this pattern change for something substantial to show up in our neck of the woods. Yes we have an amazing looking pattern but this doesn't automatically mean that we'll magically pull a storm out of the hat as soon as a big trough shows up over the east-central US in the midst of a fantastic high latitude blocking pattern...
 
wow Webber, amazing you call my post not true at all then post a picture showing NO SNOW cover anywhere near alabama.......my post was ACCURATE as your own post showed.
 
Webberweather53 said:
The entire premise of bringing forward the snow cover argument is to tamper expectations at least in the first week-several days of this pattern change for something substantial to show up in our neck of the woods. Yes we have an amazing looking pattern but this doesn't automatically mean that we'll magically pull a storm out of the hat as soon as a big trough shows up over the east-central US in the midst of a fantastic high latitude blocking pattern...
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since you corrected my already correct post i must ask what does the word "tamper" mean, i would use temper expectations and have not seen any poster here claim there will be an immediate storm.......
 
BillT said:
since you corrected my already correct post i must ask what does the word "tamper" mean, i would use temper expectations and have not seen any poster here claim there will be an immediate storm.......
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You know that old saying it's not about what you said but about what you didn't say? Yes, no one (besides maybe weatherwatch earlier in the past week or so) has come out and said there could be a storm as soon as the pattern changes, but the overall vibe by many and those aren't as familiar w/ general pattern evolution (even when a great setup is likely abound somewhere down the road) need to lower their expectations a bit...
 
BillT said:
wow Webber, amazing you call my post not true at all then post a picture showing NO SNOW cover anywhere near alabama.......my post was ACCURATE as your own post showed.
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Pulling '93 as a example is about as crazy as you can get. Webb is right that you need some snow pack across the central US for nearly all snow in Bama. It's just the way it is. You can probably find examples where it happened without it, but using an event that will not happen again in our lives is a horrible example anywho.
 
BillT said:
wow Webber, amazing you call my post not true at all then post a picture showing NO SNOW cover anywhere near alabama.......my post was ACCURATE as your own post showed.
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If you actually read the arguments and statements I've put forth on this forum, I explicitly stated (even in my response to you) that the median of events usually has a snow cover somewhere around the I-70 corridor, which is about where it was before the March 1993 event (which I also mentioned), thus there's nothing unusual or dismal about the snow cover extent leading up to the March 1993 superstorm in context of other winter events (as you were trying to tout)... However the snow cover extent going into the pattern change that sets in next week is definitely on the lower end of the distribution preceding winter storms that hit the SE US
 
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