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Miserable March

No doubt there's definitely a modest signal for something around Leap Day in the SE US.

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This winter, while being exceptionally warm overall, has been characteristically very opportunistic since mid-late January. Basically, every time we've turned cold the last several weeks, it has successively snowed or gotten very close to doing so (Jan 31, Feb 8, Feb 20-21). This honestly looks a lot like the early Feb storm pattern-wise, interested to see where we stand on this in a few days. Regardless, should give many of us another solid freeze before spring comes knocking on our doorstep.

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But still wet
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Do you think we are still headed towards another El Niño?


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I'm still leaning towards another NINO but if we don't see one, it's going to be a long, drawn-out, arduous process to get rid of this +ENSO event that's attempting to come on. We'll definitely have a nino-esque circulation pattern continue right thru this spring.
 
Sharpen the western ridge on the GFS and have that energy that drops into the States at 132 drop in near Idaho instead of nearly east of all of Montana and you'd probably have had something. As it is, it goes neutral/negative too late, and I believe later than the ICON.

I'd definitely focus on this first before anything behind that. There's something possible here, and with the way this year has gone, I don't care that it's relatively medium range. Something might "pop" to an extent again.
 
Sharpen the western ridge on the GFS and have that energy that drops into the States at 132 drop in near Idaho instead of nearly east of all of Montana and you'd probably have had something. As it is, it goes neutral/negative too late, and I believe later than the ICON.

I'd definitely focus on this first before anything behind that. There's something possible here, and with the way this year has gone, I don't care that it's relatively medium range. Something might "pop" to an extent again.
Yes there's definitely interesting times ahead
 
No doubt there's definitely a modest signal for something around Leap Day in the SE US.

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This winter, while being exceptionally warm overall, has been characteristically very opportunistic since mid-late January. Basically, every time we've turned cold the last several weeks, it has successively snowed or gotten very close to doing so (Jan 31, Feb 8, Feb 20-21). This honestly looks a lot like the early Feb storm pattern-wise, interested to see where we stand on this in a few days. Regardless, should give many of us another solid freeze before spring comes knocking on our doorstep.

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For a legitimate threat to actually materialize near the very end of February, we want this eastern trough slow/nudge westward towards the central US & western Atlantic ridge to provide more resistance. If you composite the 500mb height anomalies for every winter storm map I've made this season for NC, you can see exactly what I'm talking about here. May seem counter-intuitive, but we should root for a stronger SE US ridge in subsequent NWP runs around the day 7 time frame.

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Capital Weather Gang Article:


Sixty years ago, after a gentle start, winter took the South by storm


Capital Weather Gang
Sixty years ago, after a gentle start, winter took the South by storm


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Two men stand outside their car in unusually snowy winter in western North Carolina in the early months of 1960. (North Carolina Museum of History)

By Kevin Myatt
February 22 at 8:56 AM

Sixty years ago, a switch flipped on a fairly tame winter in mid-February, and snow piled up over cars and drifted higher than houses in some areas of the South that virtually never see that kind of snow.

Meanwhile, typically snowier locations farther north such as Philadelphia and Washington were missed or grazed. They were passed over not only by a single snow event, as happened Thursday when eastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia saw two to five inches of wet snow, but by several storms over a six-week period.

Nashville has had more snowfall so far this season than Washington. It also did when spring finally sprung in 1960.
Currently, the Music City, at 1.5 inches since November, has had almost an inch more than the paltry 0.6 inches for the nation’s capital. But Washington had a respectable two feet of snow in winter into early spring 60 years ago — while Nashville, incredibly, had more than a foot on top of that.

The winter and early spring of 1959-60 seemed to turn the eastern U.S. map upside down.

Nashville, with 38.5 inches, more than four times its annual average snowfall, also topped New York (34.1 inches) and almost equaled Boston (40.9 inches). Little Rock, likewise, topped Washington’s 24.3 inches, with 26.6 inches.

Knoxville, Tenn., buried all the East Coast cities with 57 inches — 15 inches more than it has gotten in any other winter. The 62.7 inches at Roanoke, Va., was similar to the annual average snowfall for Albany, N.Y. Mountainous Boone, N.C., topped 100 inches for the only time on record, more than 56 inches of which fell in March.

It was so much snow that railways and roads crossing the Appalachians were shut down for days as drifts several feet high piled up. National Guard helicopters had to be deployed to deliver food and supplies in western North Carolina.

Perhaps even more amazing than the sheer magnitude of such huge snow totals so far south was that the vast majority of that snowfall occurred in a little more than five weeks, from Feb. 12 to March 20.

Knoxville, Tenn., buried all the East Coast cities with 57 inches — 15 inches more than it has gotten in any other winter. The 62.7 inches at Roanoke, Va., was similar to the annual average snowfall for Albany, N.Y. Mountainous Boone, N.C., topped 100 inches for the only time on record, more than 56 inches of which fell in March.

It was so much snow that railways and roads crossing the Appalachians were shut down for days as drifts several feet high piled up. National Guard helicopters had to be deployed to deliver food and supplies in western North Carolina.

Perhaps even more amazing than the sheer magnitude of such huge snow totals so far south was that the vast majority of that snowfall occurred in a little more than five weeks, from Feb. 12 to March 20.


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A weather map on Feb. 13, 1960: A coast-hugging low near Hatteras, N.C., is dumping heavy snow on the Appalachians. (National Weather Service)


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Children stand amid piles of snow along Route 460 near Christiansburg, Va., in late winter 1960. (Dean Mook)
Many residents of the Carolinas and Virginia recall it snowing every Wednesday for a number of weeks.
The 1959-60 winter was in many ways the diametrical opposite of the current winter in terms of the large-scale atmospheric phenomena affecting North America.

Many residents of the Carolinas and Virginia recall it snowing every Wednesday for a number of weeks.

The 1959-60 winter was in many ways the diametrical opposite of the current winter in terms of the large-scale atmospheric phenomena affecting North America.

In the 2019-20 winter, the Arctic Oscillation (AO) has been unrelentingly positive, signaling a strong polar vortex that is keeping the deepest cold air bottled up over the North Pole and far northern latitudes, not allowing it be exported southward into the contiguous 48 U.S. states.

In 1959-60, the AO went negative at Christmas and reached strongly negative levels by late January and early February, not moving back into positive territory until early April. The weaker winds aloft around the pole allowed Arctic air masses to penetrate far southward.

The snow surge of 1960 began with a classic storm that moved out of the Gulf of Mexico and curved up the East Coast in the Feb. 12-15 time frame.

Houston was first to know there was a problem, as the Gulf storm delivered four inches of snow to the city. Houston had not seen so much snowfall since getting 20 inches in the famous 1895 Arctic outbreak and has not seen as much in any event since. Several inches of snow fell over much of the interior South, with more than a foot in the Appalachians of North Carolina and Virginia.

Over the Northeast, however, the low’s track cut inland, west of Boston, where only an inch fell before changing to rain.

Additional small-to-medium storms moved along a suppressed storm track across the South in the latter half of February, depositing more snow on regions not accustomed to seeing so much

By mid-March, high pressure over the western United States helped augment the movement of Arctic air into the East. This led to March average temperatures that were among the coldest on record in many locations in the central and eastern parts of the country. It was Charlotte’s only March to average less than 40 degrees at 39.7, colder than an average January in the Queen City and capping the snowiest fall-to-spring period on record with 22.6 inches.

Washington had its second-coldest March on record, averaging 35.6 degrees, behind only 34.9 in 1885.

A second storm originating near the Gulf of Mexico occurred in 1960 through March 2 and 3. Like the mid-February storm, the early March storm dumped several inches on the interior South and more than a foot on parts of the Appalachians. This one made a curve up the coast far enough out to sea to include the Eastern Seaboard cities in its bounty — eight inches fell in Washington, a foot in New York and almost 20 inches in Boston, half of its seasonal total, enough to move Beantown barely ahead of Nashville for the season

As far away as it may seem in this winter of 2019-20, a pattern somewhat similar to 1959-60 — delivering rounds of cold and snow deep to the South — remains a possibility for future winters.

Although climate change predicts that, in general, winter snowfall totals will continue gradually decreasing in the South and that winters will tend to be milder more often, none of that entirely precludes a blocking pattern with a suppressed storm track similar to the 1959-60 winter developing for a few weeks.

The infamously snowy 2009-10 winter had many of the same characteristics for an even longer time, but the storm tracks somewhat shifted northward compared to 1959-60
 
Clippers bring high ratio snows like 15 even 20 to 1 type ratios.


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Close call but no cigar on the 12z Euro, but there's definitely a signal for mischief around leap day. The evolution of details the next few days will make all the difference in the world but there's more than enough time for things to trend in our favor and a storm to appear.

Every major 12z model run (ECMWF, ICON, GFS, & CMC) has at least a threatening look around day 7, the overall agreement between these operational models is actually impressive given how far out this is from verifying. Again, considering how active the southern stream has been this winter & that nearly every time we've turned cold the last several weeks it has snowed, I'm fairly upbeat our chances in a relative sense.

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12z Euro was able to get a smidge of frozen precip on the Lee side of the mountains. Encouraging View attachment 36218
Despite how crappy 2019-20 has been in general, it definitely seems like when there’s even a hint of the pattern becoming favorable, this winter has our number. The pattern generally looks more like the early Feb storm than the recent case in NC, another low-moderate event would push this winter into at least C- territory locally imo.
 
The temps here in Anderson SC are expected to be in the 50s next weekend. I don’t see any way this affects us with any winter weather even if it does happen.
 
Despite how crappy 2019-20 has been in general, it definitely seems like when there’s even a hint of the pattern becoming favorable, this winter has our number. The pattern generally looks more like the early Feb storm than the recent case in NC, another low-moderate event would push this winter into at least C- territory locally imo.
Yeah, this winter doesn’t feel like it’s over yet. Greenville has been a snow magnet this month. Sometimes it just wants to snow. Now let’s see if we can get minor event #4 in under a month.
 
The temps here in Anderson SC are expected to be in the 50s next weekend. I don’t see any way this affects us with any winter weather even if it does happen.
The highs next weekend could be in the 30s for all we know. Or they could bust into the high 60s! We just don't know when its 7 days out
 
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