• Hello, please take a minute to check out our awesome content, contributed by the wonderful members of our community. We hope you'll add your own thoughts and opinions by making a free account!

Wintry January 3rd-6th, 2018 Winter Storm The ARCC/Xtreme Weather Special

93Storm said:
Not necessarily, the southeast US can score a big winter event with temps. well below normal. If the pattern is right to allow a storm system, it surely can happen with temps. well below normal. I would love to see a weather system being some moisture into the deep cold. More colder it is, equals higher snow ratios. Don't get me wrong, I see what you're saying though.
Click to expand...
Well like to "old time Southern saying"... "It s too cold to snow"...LOL
 
Webberweather53 said:
If I say so? We already have done it once this winter in early December when there was hardly any arctic air to be found, it wouldn't be half as hard to do it in mid January when climatology is a few degrees colder and there's a persistent vortex over SE Canada/New England.
Click to expand...
This is great stuff Eric, so what's it gonna take in our pattern to get a s/w to come in to the west coast instead of down through Canada, I'm sure there is a rosby wave, Pac jet correlation? Maybe to get something underneath the Pac ridge? I'm showing my ignorance I know lol

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 
It
CentralGAColdFront said:
I think that it had been brutally cold for a few days back in December 1989 leading up to the main event for Savannah/far Southern Georgia on Christmas Eve night.
Click to expand...

It was and my location had some cursory ZR/IP events lighy leading up to this event with a monster high with what brought down some record cold air into the country. In fact, the storm wasn't even picked up real well until the event basically developed. Everyone played catch up all day. Actually right now isn't quite far off from what happened in 1989
 
Cross posting this here from banter also so everyone sees:

Okay. The warning system has been enabled. Once you get to 25 points, you will not be able to post for a couple days. 25 points is generous, don't make me lower it.
 
Webberweather53 said:
Just as another example in case you still think I'm full of crap, here's a 500 hPa animation preceding the March 1927 snowstorm via the 20th Century ECMWF Reanalysis (ERA-20C). Notice a few days before the storm, a healthy shortwave crashed into southern California....
March-1-2-1927-US-500-hPa-vorticity-wind-gph.gif



A few days later, this happened...
View attachment 2396


You want to sit here and talk about there being no cold air around and that it would get too warm before the shortwave got here, how about a majority of the southeastern US experiencing their warmest February on record leading up to the March 1927 blizzard in NC? There was one measly shot of cP that got injected into the pattern at the right time and that's all it took. February 1927 was even warmer than last February for many including for Birmingham, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Columbia, and Fayetteville, NC!!
View attachment 2395
Click to expand...
Ok. I stand corrected. Sorry.
 
Stormsfury said:
It


It was and my location had some cursory ZR/IP events lighy leading up to this event with a monster high with what brought down some record cold air into the country. In fact, the storm wasn't even picked up real well until the event basically developed. Everyone played catch up all day. Actually right now isn't quite far off from what happened in 1989
Click to expand...
Yep, I remember it well, we were in the teens with only some high clouds while you folks were getting crushed. This is the type of pattern that favors a repeat of that storm. I also remember Wilmington NC getting down to 0 degrees after the storm.
 
Stormsfury said:
It


It was and my location had some cursory ZR/IP events lighy leading up to this event with a monster high with what brought down some record cold air into the country. In fact, the storm wasn't even picked up real well until the event basically developed. Everyone played catch up all day. Actually right now isn't quite far off from what happened in 1989
Click to expand...
I had just turned two years old whenever this event occurred, but my location was about 30 miles north of where the precipitation stopped and we ended up with nothing at all while locations along the FL/GA line received up to five inches. I can only imagine just how frustrating/shocking it was for most people who ultimately missed out on the storm and those that received snow. The only time that I can ever remember places like Brunswick, GA receiving even snow flurries since that event was the February 12, 2010 storm.
 
metwannabe said:
This is great stuff Eric, so what's it gonna take in our pattern to get a s/w to come in to the west coast instead of down through Canada, I'm sure there is a rosby wave, Pac jet correlation? Maybe to get something underneath the Pac ridge? I'm showing my ignorance I know lol

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

We need to give time for the ridge over the Northeastern Pacific to break and retrograde westward towards NE Eurasia and the Bering Sea and for the tropical forcing to shift around to the western Indian Ocean and/or Maritime Continent to drop a trough into California. While the pattern is generally pretty cold, we need the axes of the planetary waves to shift about 5-10 degrees westward from their current positions so we can drop a shortwave down the west coast of the US or into California. Essentially we need forcing that promotes a warmer pattern because it's during this transition period to a warmer pattern that moist southwesterly flow off the Gulf and tropical eastern Pacific is most likely and thus we would have moisture to work with for once... Another way we can generate a favorable pattern for wintry weather is to throw a high latitude blocking ridge over Greenland, this would slow the flow down enough to where these shortwaves entering the US from the northern Rockies and Pacific NW would have time to dig and generate southwesterly flow out ahead of them to overspread moisture over top of the cold air that currently has engulfed most of the US east of the Rockies. The former is more plausible and likely than the latter although if we got a huge bomb off the eastern seaboard as the EPS control showed we could generate just enough forcing downstream to momentarily create a -NAO
 
Webberweather53 said:
We need to give time for the ridge over the Northeastern Pacific to break and retrograde westward towards NE Eurasia and the Bering Sea and for the tropical forcing to shift around to the western Indian Ocean and/or Maritime Continent to drop a trough into California. While the pattern is generally pretty cold, we need the axes of the planetary waves to shift about 5-10 degrees westward from their current positions so we can drop a shortwave down the west coast of the US or into California. Essentially we need forcing that promotes a warmer pattern because it's during this transition period to a warmer pattern that moist southwesterly flow off the Gulf and tropical eastern Pacific is most likely and thus we would have moisture to work with for once... Another way we can generate a favorable pattern for wintry weather is to throw a high latitude blocking ridge over Greenland, this would slow the flow down enough to where these shortwaves entering the US from the northern Rockies and Pacific NW would have time to dig and generate southwesterly flow out ahead of them to overspread moisture over top of the cold air that currently has engulfed most of the US east of the Rockies. The former is more plausible and likely than the latter although if we got a huge bomb off the eastern seaboard as the EPS control showed we could generate just enough forcing downstream to momentarily create a -NAO
Click to expand...
Yeah man I know some Greenland blocking would benefit us greatly right now and your other post clearly explained the sw flow needed over top the cold air to score... thanks. I was really curious about what was needed to get the short waves into Cali instead of down through Canada thanks for the explanation. Any sign of planetary wave shifting in near future to help out? I'm still hopeful of a decent glancing blow from a late bloomer next week... as always great stuff thanks

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 
metwannabe said:
Yeah man I know some Greenland blocking would benefit us greatly right now and your other post clearly explained the sw flow needed over top the cold air to score... thanks. I was really curious about what was needed to get the short waves into Cali instead of down through Canada thanks for the explanation. Any sign of planetary wave shifting in near future to help out? I'm still hopeful of a decent glancing blow from a late bloomer next week... as always great stuff thanks

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
To get shortwaves into California in this background we need the large-scale pattern upstream over the North Pacific to be in the process of reshuffling because the current configuration and forcing isn't conducive, in fact a pattern w/ a deep trough over SE Canada & ridge in Alaska (+TNH) is the least favorable for California receiving any appreciable rainfall. There are signs of this potentially breaking down in the medium range over eastern-northeastern Asia as the seemingly semi-permanent trough begins to re-intensify, favoring a deep trough of low pressure offshore to form and break off the coast of Eastern Asia. This trough will disperse Rossby Wave energy downstream to the eastern Pacific and will briefly extend the Pacific jet. At the onset of the Pacific jet extension, large waves are created downstream due to turbulence and the rapid influx of kinetic energy caused by the jet extension. This can provide the impetus to "kick" an upper level trough (or a piece of it) forecasted to lurk off the coast of California in the medium range, to move onshore California and later get captured by the strong westerly flow underneath the base of the trough in SE Canada and the lakes, potentially leading to an overrunning event here. Most NWP currently hint that this could happen as soon as 8-9 days from now however this is a very fickle forecast and we shouldn't expect much confidence in a particular NWP solution for at least several more days.

eps_z500a_npac_27.png

eps_z500a_npac_37.png
 
Storm5 said:
Nam being the nam and being way more aggressive New Year’s Eve
bd50fc1a7c9b95b607fce763bacda476.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
My NWS FFC forecast has had snow icons in it Sunday/ Monday for 3 days now... not so sure we are kaput with this system... probably a light event if anything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top