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Pattern General Wx/Pattern Disco

We have a huge energy imbalance right now of about 1W/m2 with the reduction of aerosols from cleaner shipping fuel and rising GHG concentrations. It's a giant climate experiment.


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From what I understand, having a ridge nw of Hawaii is very bad for cold weather chances that have staying power. Also, we had a -pdo, which went against us. Imo, without that, we would have been much colder than 15-16 winter. Dec 15 made that winter really warm because jan and Feb was much cooler
 
Itryatgolf said:
From what I understand, having a ridge nw of Hawaii is very bad for cold weather chances that have staying power. Also, we had a -pdo, which went against us. Imo, without that, we would have been much colder than 15-16 winter. Dec 15 made that winter really warm because jan and Feb was much cooler
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Alaska being cold never works either. Big lesson from this year
 
1300m said:
I actually was just speaking to the NC climate office this morning and they found (unsurprisingly) similar trends statewide. I don't want to share their research without permission, but I can tell you they plotted rolling average annual snowfall for Asheville from 1995-2024 and it went from ~15" to ~10", Greensboro from ~11" to ~7.5", Wilmington from ~2.5" to <1", Charlotte from ~7.75" to ~3.75". However, they also agreed with me that this is more than just climate change. @SD is onto something with the large scale pattern shift. Folks don't want to acknowledge it, but the NAO has historically been a monumental driver of winter weather in the eastern US, especially NC. The absence of that combined with the N PAC ridge is a death knell to winter weather chances.

Again, and the SCO agrees with me here, if we were seeing a lot of cold rain events in the 30s or suddenly we were seeing multiple sleet or freezing rain events instead of snow events with a small, consistent warm nose, then perhaps you look at warming temps. But this is a large scale, seasonal winter patten shift.

It's possible when we look back in 40 more years we flip back - Greenland has already shown a significant increased tendency for blocking the past few winters, maybe we turn it on with the TPV getting further east in winters to come. I don't think anyone truthfully has any idea. If they did, I'm pretty sure everyone's forecasts wouldn't have ended up in the same place as mine this February (dumpster fire).
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Honestly though wouldn't the freezing rain be the 1st thing we'd lose kind of like we are doing? That's the only type of wintry precip where it has to be 32 or below. No way to cheat that like we do with 38 degree sleet or 34 degree snow. The 31 degree ice storms are now 33 and rain. I know the last couple years haven't even been close but I'm speaking in general. The ice storms that were so common are gone. And it's been 31 years since GSP even had a double digit season. Dec 2018 and Jan 2022 both had a chance but we blew too much qpf on sleet. I know the low pressure in Jan 2022 ran back inland along 95 in NC and maybe that's why the warm nose pushed all they way to AVL, idk. But in general it seems like our double digit snowfalls we used to get are now 6 inches max due to massive issues in the column or at the surface that weren't as bad in the past. But I do agree a warming planet isn't the whole reason. This background state we're in now wouldn't have even produced in the 60s.
 
SD said:
Looking back the 1950s featured a similar pattern to what we have seen over the last few winters. The caveat was the 50s having a west based -nao while the last few were +nao.

Is this cyclical? Idk. But it's good to see history at least this pacific pattern isn't unheard of on a decadal time scale
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Just for fun this was the 60s

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I'd take that 500mb look for 10 years
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the 1950s and the 1990s were terrible snow decades for the Birmingham Al area. I just look at the historical data, wasn't around for the 1950's, but the 1990's outside of the blizzard of 93 was very uneventful. You guys are really making sense...
 
RainlessSnowless & Grumpy said:
Honestly though wouldn't the freezing rain be the 1st thing we'd lose kind of like we are doing? That's the only type of wintry precip where it has to be 32 or below. No way to cheat that like we do with 38 degree sleet or 34 degree snow. The 31 degree ice storms are now 33 and rain. I know the last couple years haven't even been close but I'm speaking in general. The ice storms that were so common are gone. And it's been 31 years since GSP even had a double digit season. Dec 2018 and Jan 2022 both had a chance but we blew too much qpf on sleet. I know the low pressure in Jan 2022 ran back inland along 95 in NC and maybe that's why the warm nose pushed all they way to AVL, idk. But in general it seems like our double digit snowfalls we used to get are now 6 inches max due to massive issues in the column or at the surface that weren't as bad in the past. But I do agree a warming planet isn't the whole reason. This background state we're in now wouldn't have even produced in the 60s.
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The background state is because of the warming. High SSTs are going to jack up the pattern immensely and may even shut down the AMOC.


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Rain Cold said:
Maybe by summer it will be killed and influence the pattern. Feels like this has taken all winter.
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Feels like it for us east of the apps. Delivered for areas west though, and don’t forget the - temps in Tennessee, back in jan. H5 this time is hostile to rooting lower trop-mid trop has lots of +NAM
 
Myfrotho704_ said:
Feels like it for us east of the apps. Delivered for areas west though, and don’t forget the - temps in Tennessee, back in jan. H5 this time is hostile to rooting lower trop-mid trop has lots of +NAM
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Would love a cooler summer, I think everybody agrees with that
 
RainlessSnowless & Grumpy said:
Honestly though wouldn't the freezing rain be the 1st thing we'd lose kind of like we are doing? That's the only type of wintry precip where it has to be 32 or below. No way to cheat that like we do with 38 degree sleet or 34 degree snow. The 31 degree ice storms are now 33 and rain. I know the last couple years haven't even been close but I'm speaking in general. The ice storms that were so common are gone. And it's been 31 years since GSP even had a double digit season. Dec 2018 and Jan 2022 both had a chance but we blew too much qpf on sleet. I know the low pressure in Jan 2022 ran back inland along 95 in NC and maybe that's why the warm nose pushed all they way to AVL, idk. But in general it seems like our double digit snowfalls we used to get are now 6 inches max due to massive issues in the column or at the surface that weren't as bad in the past. But I do agree a warming planet isn't the whole reason. This background state we're in now wouldn't have even produced in the 60s.
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The thing about the number of freezing rain events going down is that it’s mostly been from the column being colder than forecast as opposed to warmer. Look at how many major ice events that were forecast in the last 20 years that ice amounts busted because we ended up with primarily sleet. That’s seemed to have been the case for the CLT metro area since the December 2002 storm
 
Chazwin said:
The thing about the number of freezing rain events going down is that it’s mostly been from the column being colder than forecast as opposed to warmer. Look at how many major ice events that were forecast in the last 20 years that ice amounts busted because we ended up with primarily sleet. That’s seemed to have been the case for the CLT metro area since the December 2002 storm
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Yeah that's a good point. I do remember Feb 2014 was like that. But honestly that's the last one I remember but that's not saying there wasn't others. I do remember around 2020-2021 there were several modeled that didn't pan out and ended up being 33-34 rainstorms. But I do remember the high pressure being too far north for my liking and remember having some disagreements on this board with some posters about that. So honestly as others have mentioned here it's going to take the a reshuffle in the background state for us to really know how much the warming that has occurred is actually affecting us. The background state may have started changing in the 90s, but seemed to really hit a different gear around 2015, about the time of the Super Nino. Since then its been really Nina dominant. I don't know but this thread is great. Some of the best posters on here are now trying to figure out what's wrong after 2 disasters in a row now. It was easy to understand why last year ended up like it did, but this year is baffling.
 
Chazwin said:
The thing about the number of freezing rain events going down is that it’s mostly been from the column being colder than forecast as opposed to warmer. Look at how many major ice events that were forecast in the last 20 years that ice amounts busted because we ended up with primarily sleet. That’s seemed to have been the case for the CLT metro area since the December 2002 storm
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That's certainly a good thing as ice storms suck.
 
RainlessSnowless & Grumpy said:
Yeah that's a good point. I do remember Feb 2014 was like that. But honestly that's the last one I remember but that's not saying there wasn't others. I do remember around 2020-2021 there were several modeled that didn't pan out and ended up being 33-34 rainstorms. But I do remember the high pressure being too far north for my liking and remember having some disagreements on this board with some posters about that. So honestly as others have mentioned here it's going to take the a reshuffle in the background state for us to really know how much the warming that has occurred is actually affecting us. The background state may have started changing in the 90s, but seemed to really hit a different gear around 2015, about the time of the Super Nino. Since then it’s been really Nina dominant. I don't know but this thread is great. Some of the best posters on here are now trying to figure out what's wrong after 2 disasters in a row now. It was easy to understand why last year ended up like it did, but this year is baffling.
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I think you meant the February 2015 storm, but also January 2016 and January 2022 were both forecast to be major ice storms in the CLT metro. January 2016, things just kept trending colder the last 24 hours into the storm and it actually had a southeast trend. January 2022 ended up having that strong FGEN forced band that caused primarily sleet after a few hours of snow when ZR was primarily forecast… I remember the afternoon before that one, GSP and local TV mets were using some very dire wording and were making comparisons to December 2002. Now I will agree that it seems like the number of nuisance events have really dropped off… you could use to bet the house that at least once or twice a winter, we would see a light icing event that would bring just enough of a glaze to cause some issues on bridges.
 
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