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Pattern Jammin January 2024

Rain Cold said:
I guess the good and obvious thing is that it can still get plenty cold around here. As long as that's possible, snow is possible too. As I've said before, I believe whatever is going on with the climate now is making conditions more difficult than usual for our part of the world to see a lot of snow. On the other hand, it could just be a string of very bad luck. I don't like using luck as an excuse, but I suppose you have to acknowledge it as being within the realm of possibility. I still maintain that there is a lot more about the weather and climate that we do not know than that which we do know. Only time will tell how things will shake out.
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I blame Aliens
 
Rain Cold said:
I guess the good and obvious thing is that it can still get plenty cold around here. As long as that's possible, snow is possible too. As I've said before, I believe whatever is going on with the climate now is making conditions more difficult than usual for our part of the world to see a lot of snow. On the other hand, it could just be a string of very bad luck. I don't like using luck as an excuse, but I suppose you have to acknowledge it as being within the realm of possibility. I still maintain that there is a lot more about the weather and climate that we do not know than that which we do know. Only time will tell how things will shake out.
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I think at our latitude there's a luck component to it but not in the same sense luck was getting tossed around here earlier in the week. Thinking back over the last 5 years we do have a long list of near misses in patterns that were at least marginally supportive but they didn't work out. Even some of our better storms Jan 18, Jan 22 had sky high potential but ended up as good storms but nothing over the top. I'd be far more concerned if we were just sitting here with endless SE ridges and no cold at all.

Edit to add before someone says it, yes there were SERs in the past few winters but they were expected with enso/background state. Even 22-23 could have been big on the back end of the Christmas cold shot but the energy driving on the back of the western ridge came through flat
 
Rain Cold said:
I guess the good and obvious thing is that it can still get plenty cold around here. As long as that's possible, snow is possible too. As I've said before, I believe whatever is going on with the climate now is making conditions more difficult than usual for our part of the world to see a lot of snow. On the other hand, it could just be a string of very bad luck. I don't like using luck as an excuse, but I suppose you have to acknowledge it as being within the realm of possibility. I still maintain that there is a lot more about the weather and climate that we do not know than that which we do know. Only time will tell how things will shake out.
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I think you're correct that the Climate changing has caused it to become much more difficult to get cold on our side of the continent and really on our side of the country because Western Canada and the west coast have seen winter on going every year. But many have pointed to periods where you get several years of very little to no snow. The late 80's thru early 90's being the biggest one. So it definitely has to be acknowledged that it also could just be a slump. But I do know our luck when it comes to timing has been awful of getting the moisture and cold to align. I mean my neck of the woods saw probably 10"+ of rain the last month and as soon as we get a lobe of cold air to finally sink south the STJ shuts off for a week. so far this El Nino and the other El Nino winters in 19 and 20 were awful. Maybe we just need to stick with La Nina's where we are more likely to get Arctic outbreaks and a 2-4 week stretch of good pattern and a torch feast the remainder of winter vs trying to win get an active STJ with marginal cold air and lots of 40 degree rainy days while mixing in a few periods of cold air.

I think we need more things to have a marginal forcing with in our weather patterns for us to win. Being in a neutral state vs having one ENSO state vs the other or living in the COD in terms of the MJO vs rotating around both favorable and unfavorable phases. I've come to terms with the less variables at play in driving the pattern the better and that includes things that we thing are favorable to be cold and stormy pattern. JMO but we still have 2 months left of realistic climo to score and 1 storm can easily make us go from this stinks to winter of 22-23 saw arctic outbreaks, both west and east of the apps got a snow storm, lots of below average days and ended up being pretty good.
 
SD said:
I think at our latitude there's a luck component to it but not in the same sense luck was getting tossed around here earlier in the week. Thinking back over the last 5 years we do have a long list of near misses in patterns that were at least marginally supportive but they didn't work out. Even some of our better storms Jan 18, Jan 22 had sky high potential but ended up as good storms but nothing over the top. I'd be far more concerned if we were just sitting here with endless SE ridges and no cold at all.

Edit to add before someone says it, yes there were SERs in the past few winters but they were expected with enso/background state. Even 22-23 could have been big on the back end of the Christmas cold shot but the energy driving on the back of the western ridge came through flat
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Charlotte Magazine put out an article (more of an editorial) last year after interviewing Brad P regarding snowfall in Charlotte. Someone posted it here. The magazine tried its best to put their spin on it, but the general idea from Brad was that the jet stream is becoming more chaotic, so cold shots are shorter lived than they were in the past. We can debate the cause, but I think the preface is that we are getting in more of a position where we have to thread the needle to make things work out (which is where luck comes in). Otherwise, we need mechanisms to make things slow down, such as prolonged periods of blocking like what happened in January 2022.
 
CltNative90 said:
Charlotte Magazine put out an article (more of an editorial) last year after interviewing Brad P regarding snowfall in Charlotte. Someone posted it here. The magazine tried its best to put their spin on it, but the general idea from Brad was that the jet stream is becoming more chaotic, so cold shots are shorter lived than they were in the past. We can debate the cause, but I think the preface is that we are getting in more of a position where we have to thread the needle to make things work out (which is where luck comes in). Otherwise, we need mechanisms to make things slow down, such as prolonged periods of blocking like what happened in January 2022.
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January 2022 really didn’t have great blocking. The pattern was actually very progressive after the first storm that month… if we had better blocking to slow things down, one of other two storms especially the third one could have been huge.
 
Chazwin said:
January 2022 really didn’t have great blocking. The pattern was actually very progressive after the first storm that month… if we had better blocking to slow things down, one of other two storms especially the third one could have been huge.
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#1 thing for snow here is that western ridge rooted to a Alaskan ridge. It’s a far stronger correlation then Greenland blocking69246479-C5AA-4CFC-8DE2-F9269CCCAD11.jpeg
 
Chazwin said:
January 2022 really didn’t have great blocking. The pattern was actually very progressive after the first storm that month… if we had better blocking to slow things down, one of other two storms especially the third one could have been huge.
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Yeah I remember even the big first one we got was a Miller B cutter, but we had such a strong wedge it worked out, timed it just right.
 
I think for us to know what’s really going on with our climate we can’t just look at our area. Ie: Southeast, or for most of us the Carolinas. We need to look at the global changes going back decades to see the differences and compare then and now. What external factors are contributing to the changes and how to decrease them. None of us here now, know for sure what happened 500 years ago, I mean yes there are core samples and other indicators but as far as the microclimate patterns we simply don’t know. It may only be a cycle, a very bad cycle that we are going through.


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SnowNiner said:
Yeah I remember even the big first one we got was a Miller B cutter, but we had such a strong wedge it worked out, timed it just right.
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Yeah I remember the models did a good job with the strength and depth of that CAD from a week out and the GFS still tried to plow the parent low straight into it before transferring to Cape Hatteras… the coastal of course formed just off Charleston
 
Chazwin said:
January 2022 really didn’t have great blocking. The pattern was actually very progressive after the first storm that month… if we had better blocking to slow things down, one of other two storms especially the third one could have been huge.
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I think what I was trying to say is that we need longer windows to score, whether that's created by a prolonged -NAO or a stubborn western ridge (or both), obviously with ample cold also injected into the pattern. The windows have been very short recently, with the exception of 2018 and 2022, and the type of cold we need just doesn't seem to want to lock in in the east for more than three or four days at a time.

It's never been a walk in the park around here, but certain factors, such as a more chaotic jet, poor trough orientation, etc., make it more difficult. We get one thing to go right but two things go wrong. We need more stars to align than before, but it will happen again, hopefully soon.
 
BHS1975 said:
How? The source region is torched.


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Scroll through that run of the GFS looking at actual 2m temps. 99% of Canada never goes above freezing during that whole run. Just because warm anamolies are showing up there doesn’t mean that it’s warm. Still lots snowpack and they’ll be continuing to build it. Also if you notice when that wedge is showing, one of the coldest regions on the continent is east and southeast Canada…temperatures 25-35 degrees below zero and that’s the airmass that CAD high is tapping into. I haven’t looked at the 18z GEFS but it wouldn’t shock me to see some ice storms showing in the individual members
 
cyclogent said:
Not a bad signal 9 days out for the CAD crew.

View attachment 142873

View attachment 142872
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This is exactly what I meant earlier that after the definite torch we get for a few days after Monday, the pattern may not become perfect but it’s far from definite shut out either. As long as that PV is set up in eastern Canada it at least keeps cold air close by.
 
Brent said:
We just dropped below freezing again til Sunday. Yay

Totally dry front though
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Yea we had wet pavement from overnight. Someone tell the cold air it can come back in ( and it will) now that the moisture is off to the east. I'd hate to see the two show up at the same time just for once lol.
 
I you have been tracking the wave storm the past few days you can see the trend, it is slowly moving east with the higher totals. Good to see.
gfs_apcpn_seus_64.png
 
Chazwin said:
Scroll through that run of the GFS looking at actual 2m temps. 99% of Canada never goes above freezing during that whole run. Just because warm anamolies are showing up there doesn’t mean that it’s warm. Still lots snowpack and they’ll be continuing to build it. Also if you notice when that wedge is showing, one of the coldest regions on the continent is east and southeast Canada…temperatures 25-35 degrees below zero and that’s the airmass that CAD high is tapping into. I haven’t looked at the 18z GEFS but it wouldn’t shock me to see some ice storms showing in the individual members
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1706918400-dKb84oT5tzE.png
Asking to lower heights over the NE and northern Atlantic while we hold the EC ridge is not really some big ask at all. It's a very workable scenario. Source region is still cold even with above average anomalies and as posted above we are still dropping snow off in the NE and Eastern Canada. Easily could trend our way into a nice overrunning/CAD type of system around the first of the year. We can still get wintry weather even when the 500mb setup looks trash, specifically here east of the apps because it's easier to get CAD setups in that type of pattern.
 
iGRXY said:
1706918400-dKb84oT5tzE.png
Asking to lower heights over the NE and northern Atlantic while we hold the EC ridge is not really some big ask at all. It's a very workable scenario. Source region is still cold even with above average anomalies and as posted above we are still dropping snow off in the NE and Eastern Canada. Easily could trend our way into a nice overrunning/CAD type of system around the first of the year. We can still get wintry weather even when the 500mb setup looks trash, specifically here east of the apps because it's easier to get CAD setups in that type of pattern.
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You’re right, but I will say that any wintry weather would be more likely to be sleet/ice perhaps mixed with snow this far south. This look actually has some similarities to February 2003.
 
Snow pack lost a few inches yesterday but still have about 4 inches. Snow showers have been falling off and on since 5AM. Outside of 2-3 years The Winters have been absolutely incredible here Since 2015. At some point it will shift and those who have missed out will get theirs. The First 8 years I lived here I remember many heartbreaks and near misses Watching places 200 miles south of me get 8-10 inch paste bombs.
image.jpg
 
Nice flakes on the Gatlinburg cam

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