Two words to keep in your minds as we roll into January: Daughter vortexes! 
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Kylo
Member
Nino January's can be cold and in fact our best snowy nino's had BN January's, I think frustration is warranted. I think if we had BN temps coming up folks would be not as pessimistic. There isn't a lot of great analogs for AN Januarys that flip to cold and snowy (80/66)? Those are the ones I could find. Feb 07 was brutal cold but not snowy but would take my chances with that again.
But I totally get it...enso climatology says our best chances are in February so we have to suck it up for a month.
ATLwxfan
Member
You said what I couldn’t. Bless youI think I like y’alls old relationship better
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ATLwxfan
Member
I’m not sure I trust analogs much anymore. Climate change has altered the playing field.
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pcbjr
Member
Go back and look at the 1930's ...
Kylo
Member
Agee’s, I don’t like going back much past 1980. But, 03, 10 and 15 is reasonable.
I totally get your first sentence, but I don’t understand much of the rest of it. I consider warm snowstorms rain.
The sentiment is on the right track, but personally I think overall is actually missing the mark, especially in the south where getting a mechanism to deliver the sufficient cold air supply in the presence of WAA is not the norm. Because you need warm air advection to produce lift, condensation and precipitation, you have to have an adequate and consistent enough feed of cold/dry air to offset this intrusion of warm, moist air in the form of evaporational cooling and that requires some special circumstances at our latitudes.
Webberweather53
Meteorologist
You can & should still use ancient analogs, you just have to know how to use them. Any signal you're trying to attain by using years in the past 30-40 years is more likely to be riddled with noise that has little or nothing to do w/ ENSO, than if you used all years because event-event variability is as large or larger than the basic state changes in the climate you're acknowledging by changing the analyzed subset of years. Studies by Garfinkel et al noted that a record of at least several hundred years length is required for ENSO-derived signals to be larger than internal variability! Adjusting ancient analogs to a modern climate period is one of the better ways to use them.
Climate change has altered some aspects of the circulation response to ENSO but most of its key features have resonated for hundreds-thousands of years in the Holocene & very likely will continue to do so long into the future.
Very few people or professional mets actually know what to do w/ ancient analogs, how to utilize them responsibly or understand the basic caveats associated with them, leading to instances over over and misuse like we see w/ JB et al, and on the other end of the spectrum, being overly critical of those who take advantage of them properly.
I regularly look at years in the late 19th & early-mid 20th century because while I know the climate has changed significantly since then, I also understand the modern observed record is far too short to capture most or even sizable portion of sub-interannual variability that's legitimately possible in our current climate and looking at data only after 1980 severely misrepresents extreme events that both have the biggest impact on society, yet occur w/ such finite regularity that a 30-40 year record is less likely to identify them at all.
Henceforth, not at least looking and grappling with some of the basic messages that ancient years "teach" you actually limits your capabilities as a forecaster/enthusiast, leads to an over-funneling of perceived, permissible modern weather/climate variance & will make you more apt to respond with excessive, blind fervor to extreme events when they do occur.
I kind of agree. And yeah, I think some frustration is warranted. Many of us wait all year long for winter to get here, and it sucks just a little bit when large chunks of it in a row are wasted waiting for the better pattern or period to arrive. Being disappointed by not getting wall to wall cold (which I agree is silly) is a different thing than being discouraged by a long period of warm weather, having only the hope of something that is supposed to happen actually happening. I think it will turn cold and wintry. At the same time, I’m disappointed that we are burning precious time waiting for it to show up. I believe we’ll get there.
Jessy89
Member
Why isn’t there more cold air funneling down with a high this strong?
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Yep, I gotcha on that. Thanks for the clear explanation. I was just having trouble with warm snowstorms. Terms like warm and cold get thrown around frequently, but they’re pretty subjective. You often hear that it’s too cold to snow. That’s not really true here. It’s just that the conditions that lead to bitter cold here are often unfavorable to producing snow, kind of like what you were saying.
Webberweather53
Meteorologist
Out of all NINOs since the turn of the 20th century, 1888-89, 1905-06, 1913-14, 1914-15, 1918-19, 1929-30, 1930-31, 1951-52, 1953-54, 1991-92, 1994-95, 1997-98, 2004-05, & 2006-07 had significantly warm Januarys and of this group 1991-92 is the only true "detestable" winter & even then it was largely thanks to the Pinatubo Eruption and NC barely missed getting a big dog in mid January.
Out of all these winters, I'd argue that 1888-89 had the biggest flip from January to February and of the few available records and reanalyses suggest a sudden stratospheric warming event occurred in January 1889, we eventually scored a big dog on February 20th-21st, 1889 with 10" at Raleigh, & about 8" in Charlotte.
Webberweather53
Meteorologist
1951-52 had nearly wall-to-wall ridging in the southeastern US for most of the winter (ew), even this ugly NINO winter couldn't resist producing in February.
This article talks talks about "warm snow storms." https://www.iweathernet.com/educational/weather-myths/too-warm-for-the-snow-to-stick
Stormlover
Member
oh brother....smh
Kylo
Member
Be nice if esrl sites were up. Looks like 1914 and 1915 were both snowy too. Would love to see the Jan patterns in those and what they flipped too.
Where is all the talk about the snow and ice potential in TX and OK this week ? The western part of the south needs some attention too !
EastAtlwx
Meteorologist
Not really sure why your Smh’ing.. were clearly in a warmer background state. To deny this is pure ignorance. The data and research is abundant and easily accessible..