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Pattern Freezing Ferocious February

12z gefs looks anemic. However it is improved vs previous runs. This through day ten
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Rain Cold said:
Yep, agreed. I expect the modeling to correct as we move in. Storm opportunities are another matter. Your earlier post about the NAO was interesting. I haven't given any consideration to a -NAO, since it seems they have become so atypical now and usually get lost in the modeling as we close in. It would be nice to get a legit block and the resultant enhanced major winter storm threat.
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If we get a nice cyclonic wave break over the eastern seaboard we could produce a temporary -NAO and intraseasonal forcing w/ MJO propagating into the West-Central Pacific favors a negative NAO tendency due to its modulation of the extratropical waveguide and planetary wave juxtaposition, this should at least help destructively interfere with and dampen the background state which wants a strong Greenland/Icelandic Vortex
 
Webberweather53 said:
Yep, the GFS in general has been second or third rate at best this season. The last few winter storms (esp the one in early January) it tried to drop a trough into the Rockies in the medium-long range, only to eventually cave to other NWP models and suppress our storm from the midwest & Great Lakes into the SE US
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Have you followed the performance of the FV3 or whatever the replacement to the GFS is called? The few times I've looked at it, I haven't been very impressed, but I haven't monitored it's LR 500 performance at all.
 
Pattern isn't going to be good till the 15th anyway. So 10 days away don't matter
 
There's no reason to even think about getting all worked up over a day 9-10+ threat because a particular model suite looks anemic atm. Analogous to when it's stressed to look at the synoptic scale configuration instead of surface precipitation output from NWP models for a particular storm, you should mainly be focusing your attention on the planetary-scale pattern atm and not the details and individual storms for at least another 3 days or more.
 
I expect to see the cold air further south on future runs. Exact timing who knows, but I think winter is going to return to much of the upper and mid-south and perhaps even further south.
 
Rain Cold said:
Have you followed the performance of the FV3 or whatever the replacement to the GFS is called? The few times I've looked at it, I haven't been very impressed, but I haven't monitored it's LR 500 performance at all.
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The FV3 is just a tad better than the GFS operational but it's not by much from what I've gleaned it's better with east coast cyclones for sure and it tends to trend more quickly to the "right" solution but it's still inferior to the Euro obviously.
 
Webberweather53 said:
The FV3 is just a tad better than the GFS operational but it's not by much from what I've gleaned it's better with east coast cyclones for sure and it tends to trend more quickly to the "right" solution but it's still inferior to the Euro obviously.
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Ok, thanks. I hadn't noticed a big difference in accuracy, but I haven't looked very deeply either.
 
If we have a legit shot at a storm it's not going to show up on the models until 5 or fewer days out anyway.
 
12z Euro is much slower with the front late next week vs previous runs

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Yeah I'm with brick. I don't want snow showing up in MBY 6+ days out.
That's the kiss of death. Last minute trends are all that have worked for me so far this winter
 
Storm5 said:
So the last storm dictates how future storms will play out ?

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It's been like that for at least 90% of the storms we actually get here since I have been on the weather boards.
 
1300m said:
From a model performance framework, I actually completely agree with Brick. A lot of storms in the 7-10 day time frame are dramatically altered once they get into the higher performing time frame of 120 hours inward, which is what I think Brick is basically getting at.
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I see the point but You can still frame storm threat ideas outside the day 5 window based on model output . Obviously it's not gonna lock on a solution for a week and keep it the same . To say that a storm won t show up until inside the day 5 window seems kinda silly to me . Details obviously change a million times but you get an idea beyond day 5 based on the overall pattern. So if a model spits out a system at day 8 and the 500mb pattern supports it , it's its not far fetched that a system is possible

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I have seen plenty of storms show up outside of 5 days, disappear, and reappear. The general gist is that models are going to be less accurate in their depiction of a storm (or whether it exists at all) the farther out you go, which we all already know.

What is common, from my point of view, is that a model will show a storm depicting some form of wintry weather for some part of the SE in the 5-10 day frame. That storm will evolve or disappear for the next several cycles before coming into fairly good focus within 2-3 days. The end result may be A ) a miss (dry), B ) a rainy solution, or C ) wintry weather. Since wintry weather is generally less common than dry or rain, options A and B are the usual outcomes (giving rise to the notion that "we don't get snow from storms that show up 10 days out).

What is not common is that a model will show a major snowstorm 5-10 days out and then carry its depiction of that storm straight through to verification.

It is also common for storms (wintry or not) to pop up inside 5 days. We usually only care about this during the winter anyway. Anecdotally, I think many of our winter storms in recent years have come about in this category due to storm development over or near the area as opposed to long-tracking storm systems (think active STJ with plenty of cold available). I can't remember the last winter that was cold with an active STJ. I would think that would be a pattern where you'd be able to track systems from a farther distance out.

All of this should lead you back to the pattern. Phrases like "I don't believe anything 5 days out" or "Our storms only pop up at the last second" are somewhat misleading, because they are not necessarily in context with the pattern. If the 5-10 day pattern is supportive of wintry weather and the models show a "threat", then the "threat" is valid and shouldn't be discounted because it's outside the magical 5 day cutoff.
 
The ones that actually end up giving us a winter storm here rarely show up on the models the first time outside 5 days.
 
We've tracked many big storms from two weeks out. They don't always go over my backyard, but if the pattern indicates a big storm that shows up on the models, it usually happens somewhere. I believe the big Christmas/Boxing Day storm was like this. Quite a few ended up over DC.

I tend to believe some of the models (like the GFS) more in the 6-10 day period more than I do the day 2-6 period. I'm not sure why they deviate so much during the 2-5 day period. There are known biases that haven't been addressed I guess, along with sorting out all of the new sampled data that gets ingested during that time. Whatever happens, we track and hope for the best! :)
 
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Brick Tamland said:
Anything we've seen on the models that first show up 7 to 10 days out turn out to be duds or go poof. The last storm didn't show up until 5 days out.
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Even when storms do show up 300+ hrs and later verify, its not because a given model is super smart.
A broken clock is still right twice a day.
 
tractor girl said:
Even when storms do show up 300+ hrs and later verify, its not because a given model is super smart.
A broken clock is still right twice a day.
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I don't know. I would give some kudos to a model that locked on to a storm signal 300+ hours out that verified. There are many details that would have to have been close to being correct for that kind of consistency.
 
Some of my biggest memories of storms since I've been tracking first showed up in the long range, but we had a lot of twists and turns before go time outside of seemingly, the winter storm around 1/10/11. Past 240 is just too long imo outside of pattern talk.

My favorite is still when the GFS (and I think more models?) was taking a trip to Cuba with the 2/12/10 L.
 
Storm5 said:
So the last storm dictates how future storms will play out ?

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Models tease and take back..it's true that we need to get within 5 days to start nailing things down...but even one day out we've had a lot of surprises.On the last one, I remember someone saying that it never was going to be an Alabama storm, then parts of even south Alabama got hit hard.
 
It'll be 4 years on February 14th since my county (Lexington County) has been under a WSW or even came close to hitting WSW criteria. February, 2014 was the last time it happened. Clinging to hope that by Mid February we will have a favorable pattern and storm track across central FL or a CAD event (even though that normally brings us ice) to bring us something. Come on Freezing Ferocious February!
 
Glenn Burns
1 hr ·


The arctic invasion still on all the models first week of Feb. Looks like we may not make it above freezing on some days...
and before you ask...yes...models are also showing snow but I cannot buy into any specifics right now.
 
Stormlover said:
Models tease and take back..it's true that we need to get within 5 days to start nailing things down...but even one day out we've had a lot of surprises.On the last one, I remember someone saying that it never was going to be an Alabama storm, then parts of even south Alabama got hit hard.
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The discussion isn't about " mailing down things " it's about bricks comment that said storms only show on the models inside day 5

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Truthfully we see theirs a chance are okay for a storm the first week of febuary but it's still just a potential until we get to the 28 or 29th and then we can figure out what's gonna happen if anything is going to happen
 
One monster cold shot after the other on the Euro starts lining up by day 6-7 upstream over the Canadian Prairies as the ridge over NE Eurasia, the Bering Sea, and Alaska drains all the ridiculously cold air in Eurasia straight into northern Canada. Depositing Siberian air into the base of the trough that will be over the Canadian Rockies in the medium range will inherently deepen it and force it to move southeastward into the contiguous US and should set off this barrage of arctic air masses that will follow as we get into February. Details are still largely unknown wrt precise timing and intensity but a large proportion of the continent is going to be absolutely frigid by next week.
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Rain Cold said:
We need to line some systems up to take advantage of all of this cold that is coming. No less than two good snowstorms in February would be appropriate!
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Hmmm....Taco or buffalo chicken?
That map Webb posted looks great, could be cold and stormy for a lot of the South!
 
Tarheel1 said:
Hmmm....Taco or buffalo chicken?
That map Webb posted looks great, could be cold and stormy for a lot of the South!
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Everything monster!

Webb's map is the 850s. Doesn't tell us much about storm oppys, except maybe that the trough axis is not too far east to allow something to develop in time.
 
Tarheel1 said:
Hmmm....Taco or buffalo chicken?
That map Webb posted looks great, could be cold and stormy for a lot of the South!
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It may be but we don't really know that for sure atm. You can take it to the bank that Canada and the northern tier of the US will get sent into the freezer and it will get colder here, we really need to get inside day 5-7 before we get concerned about particular storms. It seems probable that the subtropical jet will intensify as this MJO wave goes on by into the W Hem and Indian Ocean but we can't ascertain any details for at least several more days.
 
Webberweather53 said:
It may be but we don't really know that for sure atm. You can take it to the bank that Canada and the northern tier of the US will get sent into the freezer and it will get colder here, we really need to get inside day 5-7 before we get concerned about particular storms. It seems probable that the subtropical jet will intensify as this MJO wave goes on by into the W Hem and Indian Ocean but we can't ascertain any details for at least several more days.
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Pragmatism ... ;):cool::p:D
 
Webberweather53 said:
It may be but we don't really know that for sure atm. You can take it to the bank that Canada and the northern tier of the US will get sent into the freezer and it will get colder here, we really need to get inside day 5-7 before we get concerned about particular storms. It seems probable that the subtropical jet will intensify as this MJO wave goes on by into the W Hem and Indian Ocean but we can't ascertain any details for at least several more days.
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After 240 though most of the model ensembles keep higher heights in the south and east. Do you think that's another mirage like they showed around Christmas time? Or based on other factors may we be dealing with a more muted artic invasion in the SE?
 
Neat how the GFS has moved towards a day 5 coastal. Cold chasing the precip though.

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