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Pattern Freezing Ferocious February

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Let's do it. Go big or go home. I've said a few times that we really need to watch the time period around 2/12/18 considering what's happened the past two every 4 years on 2/12/18. If it actually happens I'm a prophet...hahaha.
 
We will take that look in north east Tennessee but of course its fantasy land attm!!!

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I am really surprised at the set-ups that have produced for us this winter. The typical snowstorms that come from California seem to be absent so far. This year we have seen a glorified clipper diving down with a negatively tilted trough, a positively tilted trough all the way back to Texas and a coastal low that caught our eastern folks. I still think the "big dog" will come out of the southwest at some point before winter is over. I saw a post that targeted the 12th of February as a time frame to watch. I will say that this is a climo favored period and something to keep an eye on.
 
January brings the all snow events their usually lighter totals and bring the powder snow. February seems to always have the big storms sometimes they can be a mix but their big. March no matter what it seems to always be big it may only come once every 5 years but it's the biggest storm in that 5 year span. That's what it always seems like at least for middle Georgia
 
Fab Feb is on its way. This thread title might be changed as we get closer to Feb. It should be a rule that the February thread is always fab feb
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This pic reminds me of being in the Cascades in February a few years back. Crazy amounts of snow!
 
I am really surprised at the set-ups that have produced for us this winter. The typical snowstorms that come from California seem to be absent so far. This year we have seen a glorified clipper diving down with a negatively tilted trough, a positively tilted trough all the way back to Texas and a coastal low that caught our eastern folks. I still think the "big dog" will come out of the southwest at some point before winter is over. I saw a post that targeted the 12th of February as a time frame to watch. I will say that this is a climo favored period and something to keep an eye on.
When you're in a NIÑA with a feeble subtropical jet you can create these setups wherein a trough comes out of the southwestern US if your northern stream wave enters the US at the right spot and divebombs far enough to the south and west to generate a decent moisture fetch off the Gulf. The early December event was the closest to a classic SE US setup with a s/w that dove south along the west coast and came into California along the spine of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada instead of the Pacific. The longwave pattern that favors SE US overrunning events is also least favorable for s/ws to smack into California or the Baja Peninsula. This feature is often a missing key element in NIÑA winter overrunning threats, while the SE Canada vortex is usually absent during El Niños even though we tend to have more southern stream systems to work with. In a nutshell this means in a relative sense against climatology, moisture is often lacking during La Ninas relative to normal, while cold air is the missing relatively more often in NINOs even if the seasonal surface temperatures are colder than La Niñas. As discussed several weeks ago, while the observational record may not necessarily flesh this out due to sampling issues, if you assume the pattern will be cold in a La Niña and likewise in an El Niño and/or could reproduce a wide array of NINO and NINA winters hundreds of thousands of times and select the subset of years in both background states, you'd probably find that arctic outbreaks in the coldest NINA winters are actually more intense than those in the coldest El Niños thanks to the tendency for a blocking high epicenter near Alaska, the Bering Sea and NE Eurasia in La Ninas that's not favored as frequently in El Niños and allows Siberian air to be dumped into North America. The seasonal ENSO mean patterns from modern observations don't tell the entire story.
 
When you're in a NIÑA with a feeble subtropical jet you can create these setups wherein a trough comes out of the southwestern US if your northern stream wave enters the US at the right spot and divebombs far enough to the south and west to generate a decent moisture fetch off the Gulf. The early December event was the closest to a classic SE US setup with a s/w that dove south along the west coast and came into California along the spine of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada instead of the Pacific. The longwave pattern that favors SE US overrunning events is also least favorable for s/ws to smack into California or the Baja Peninsula. This feature is often a missing key element in NIÑA winter overrunning threats, while the SE Canada vortex is usually absent during El Niños even though we tend to have more southern stream systems to work with. In a nutshell this means in a relative sense against climatology, moisture is often lacking during La Ninas relative to normal, while cold air is the missing relatively more often in NINOs even if the seasonal surface temperatures are colder than La Niñas. As discussed several weeks ago, while the observational record may not necessarily flesh this out due to sampling issues, if you assume the pattern will be cold in a La Niña and likewise in an El Niño and/or could reproduce a wide array of NINO and NINA winters hundreds of thousands of times and select the subset of years in both background states, you'd probably find that arctic outbreaks in the coldest NINA winters are actually more intense than those in the coldest El Niños thanks to the tendency for a blocking high epicenter near Alaska, the Bering Sea and NE Eurasia in La Ninas that's not favored as frequently in El Niños and allows Siberian air to be dumped into North America. The seasonal ENSO mean patterns from modern observations don't tell the entire story.
Frankly, I'm excited at the prospect of the next time it gets cold. Let's get a California s/w when that happens asap! I think the bigger storms come with those, like the Atlanta Snowjam 82', the amazing 2011 winter storm, etc. Bring it on!
 
The EPS throws the entire kitchen sink at North America. Incessant ridging in the North Pacific will likely deposit Siberian air into the continent for at least the next 3 weeks (or more). Be mindful that most NWP models tend to oversell the SE US ridge beyond the medium range in a pattern like this, as we most recently observed in December.
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