What a mess. At 102, you can see a very nice, well-placed high pressure migrating through the Plains, eastward toward the E-NE. There is a low pressure developing in Mexico. Where the low actually NEEDS to be is somewhere near the green X in the NE Gulf.
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Skipping ahead to 120, we see the high, still strong enough, has moved ENE. The actual area of low pressure is forming in the SW Gulf. What NEEDS to happen is the high needs to be farther NW and the low needs to be emerging off the SE coast, somewhere near the green X. As is, the high's strength and position would be too suppressive. Unfortunately, there's nothing there to suppress, as it is still way down in the Gulf.
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Jumping out to 162, we see the main high has moved well offshore, leaving behind a stale air mass. A new high, much weaker, is building in, and of course, it's not of sufficient strength for the time of year. The mountains help to delay the arrival of the next (and weaker) shot of cold air. Now, the storm is located in an optimal spot. For rain.
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And finally, at 192, the high in the Plains has strengthened, but has moved too far NE to do any good. It doesn't matter anyway, as the storm is long gone.
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You can see in the above images the suppressive nature of a strong high. They help to illustrate just how narrow the usual window is for us to get snow. A super-strong high, that has built in is usually going to suppress the storm too far south. While a weaker high, located too far north is going to allow a window for a storm, but the cold will be marginal or not nearly cold enough. The mountains help make it difficult. All of this gets magnified in November. We already all kind of know all this, but the images show it pretty well.
High pressure NEEDS to build in just ahead of the storm, which NEEDS to take an optimal track from the NE Gulf to off the SE coast. Rarely does this happen anymore. Highs blast in and blast out. And lows sit in the SW and follow the cold air's movement out. I think a lot of this has to do with the substantial lack of blocking and slowing down of the flow. We can't get an arctic front to stall south of the area anymore, which is what we need. Blocking would be very helpful at holding the window open wider for longer. So, we'll keep waiting.....
By the way, what happened to our super historic cold outbreak. Anybody seen it?
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