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Pattern Jammin January 2023

I really wish I could find more positive things to say about this pattern to make everyone happy/less angry at me. I guess I'll keep looking.

At least it's not going to torch the entire time for early-mid February, and people are absolutely right to criticize me about that (and even more so for how overly optimistic I've been this winter so far). Oth, the cold shot is not a huge surprise in all honesty. This is how La Nina winters love to behave, even in February; occasionally strong cold shots emanating from episodes of high-latitude N Pacific/Alaska blocking, interspersed into prolonged periods of warmth.

You're riding a razor thin line between being cold & dry or warm/wet with a huge height gradient over east-central N America, and no blocking anywhere to speak of to maintain some sort of day-to-day consistency in the large-scale features that would favor cold/snow down this way. You can score in this pattern, but (& I know a lot of people don't want to hear this), it's just a lot harder than it normally would be with a nice -EPO/+TNH, all things considered. If we had some ridging out west, a -NAO, a ripping, juiced-up Nino-esque subtropical jet stream, or we had this look inside day 3-4, something, anything to hold onto that look we're getting on the GFS for more than just a few frames (so that we'd have a much bigger margin of error to work w/), I'd be jumping all over this.

I just can't get that excited for a day 9-10 storm on the models that's embedded in a crappy pattern, that's also more vulnerable than most to changing sensible weather impacts very dramatically when extremely small changes in the placement of the circulation features at the continental scale mean the difference between 70s-80s & cold/dry w/ 30s + 40s (much like what happened in Feb 1989 mind you where Henderson, NC reached 80F within 48 hours of 12-18" of snow on Feb 17th). If this is still here at least 4 days from now, I may be singing a different tune. I feel cautiously pessimistic at best.

I truly felt like the best shot we've had this winter so far was right after Christmas when a legit (big dog) storm signal crept into the medium range (near-inside day 5) & we had about most everything in our corner for something substantial across most of this board (not just one or two specific areas like what could happen if everything was absolutely perfect late next week.) We just couldn't get the individual pieces lined up in our favor, outside of a light snow event over AL & GA.
 
Webberweather53 said:
If there was something positive to talk about with this pattern I would have mentioned it by now.

As fickle as winter storm setups already are around here, whatever is coming down the pipe next week is that times 10. It's like trying to ask the Dallas Cowboys not to choke in the playoffs or trying to hit a full court shot in basketball while being blindfolded and spun around several times. Sure it could happen, and yes it is not easy to get snow here, but we're making it that much tougher on ourselves than it really needs to be.
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That Cowboys comment hurt me bad ?
 
I come in here to 5 pages thinking we have some type of model fantasy storm (kinda do) and it's the usual suspects fighting about whether or not it's going to snow based on models lol. Simple fact is models are just one part of forecasting, they have their biases, struggles at certain ranges, issues with certain type of patterns, etc.

Are we in a pattern conducive for winter storms? No. But just like when we were in a pattern for strong chances of cold and winter weather and didn't get anything, patterns and models are not God lol. You can get snow in the worst pattern imaginable, is it more difficult? yes, but it happens and has happened a lot. Right now you have a swing of extremely cold air in Eastern Canada and the Northeast potentially with a SER flex supplying the warm moist air for precip. It's a delicate balance between too much SER and also too much TPV overtop as well.

I just don't get why everyone tries to speak in absolutes here? It doesn't matter if it's been above average the entirety of winter so far. That has nothing to do with whether or not you can get a winter storm. It doesn't matter if the pattern isn't perfect because you can score during the worst of them. It doesn't matter if the 240 hour GFS shows warmth or cold because it's going to change 100x.

What I do know is right now cold air in eastern Canada and flexed SER. The right combination = either snow or ICE. Or cold rain again. The usual suspects can weenie tag all they want because they're here to troll 10/10x, fact is the players are on the field to POTENTIALLY (Key word here) to get some type of frozen and people are allowed to discuss it on a weather forum.
 
rburrel2 said:
12GEFS is absolutely loaded with winter storms from 192-288hr timeframe. A lot of the members that miss with the first wave hit us hard a few days later.
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If we actually converted all those nice 192-288 hour looks into winter storms at the 0 hour, we'd have one of the snowier winters in recent memory. That late December miss still stings.
 
Webberweather53 said:
I really wish I could find more positive things to say about this pattern to make everyone happy/less angry at me. I guess I'll keep looking.

At least it's not going to torch the entire time for early-mid February, and people are absolutely right to criticize me about that (and even more so for how overly optimistic I've been this winter so far). Oth, the cold shot is not a huge surprise in all honesty. This is how La Nina winters love to behave, even in February; occasionally strong cold shots emanating from episodes of high-latitude N Pacific/Alaska blocking, interspersed into prolonged periods of warmth.

You're riding a razor thin line between being cold & dry or warm/wet with a huge height gradient over east-central N America, and no blocking anywhere to speak of to maintain some sort of day-to-day consistency in the large-scale features that would favor cold/snow down this way. You can score in this pattern, but (& I know a lot of people don't want to hear this), it's just a lot harder than it normally would be with a nice -EPO/+TNH, all things considered. If we had some ridging out west, a -NAO, a ripping, juiced-up Nino-esque subtropical jet stream, or we had this look inside day 3-4, something, anything to hold onto that look we're getting on the GFS for more than just a few frames (so that we'd have a much bigger margin of error to work w/), I'd be jumping all over this.

I just can't get that excited for a day 9-10 storm on the models that's embedded in a crappy pattern, that's also more vulnerable than most to changing sensible weather impacts very dramatically when extremely small changes in the placement of the circulation features at the continental scale mean the difference between 70s-80s & cold/dry w/ 30s + 40s (much like what happened in Feb 1989 mind you where Henderson, NC reached 80F within 48 hours of 12-18" of snow on Feb 17th). If this is still here at least 4 days from now, I may be singing a different tune. I feel cautiously pessimistic at best.

I truly felt like the best shot we've had this winter so far was right after Christmas when a legit (big dog) storm signal crept into the medium range (near-inside day 5) & we had about most everything in our corner for something substantial across most of this board (not just one or two specific areas like what could happen if everything was absolutely perfect late next week.) We just couldn't get the individual pieces lined up in our favor, outside of a light snow event over AL & GA.
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Agreed. I wouldn't even trust a 9-10 day model storm in an epic pattern. We have seen modeled snow events fail in the 2-3 day range. If it isn't at least 5 days or under I'm not really paying it any mind.
 
NickyBGuarantee said:
It’s a tough pill to swallow right now but this is what we’re dealing with.. snowfall so far this winter. I still believe this map will looks slightly different come the end of the season with our best shot coming late February and early march but maybe it’s wishful thinking. We’re technically still one event away from having more snow on the season then New York or DC .. pretty crazy snow drought we’re all in.View attachment 131206
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Pretty crazy that most of Tennessee has had more snow then the costal area’s of DC, Philly and NY on January 25th.
 
Tough watching the GFS trend toward a persistent SER. Looks like some CAD to take the edge off but future runs may even kill that. We can only hope for an ENSO neutral look in early March but we haven’t had that in two years. So…yeah.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Webberweather53 said:
If we actually converted all those nice 192-288 hour looks into winter storms at the 0 hour, we'd have one of the snowier winters in recent memory. That late December miss still stings.
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The late December miss, multiple misses I might add was a real bummer both for the time of year and knowing had we managed to score on the front end, it would have had massive staying power.

Sucked hard.
 
500hv.conus.png
 
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