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Misc Winter Weather Support Group

weatherfide said:
That would be some significant snow pack to the north if correct. One of the key ingredients for a better second half of January, first of February.
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There has to be some substantial cold to keep it there. I know snow acts as its own cooler, but damn we need some cold.
 
SnowNiner said:
Everything is going EXACTLY according to plan......until it's supposed to snow in the southeast, then everything that can go wrong will. lol.
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So, Troutman is in Iredell County, right? You're in a pretty good spot to see snow this Winter imo.
 
MB22 said:
So, Troutman is in Iredell County, right? You're in a pretty good spot to see snow this Winter imo.
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Yep, hope so. Being 30 miles north of CLT helped me in Jan 2022, I got a good thump of snow/sleet when CLT got less. 2018 I got in on the December snow for about 6 inches. Snow/rain line seems to be following me up 77 though...lol.
 
Brent said:
But I thought the climate didn't support snow anymore anyway so what's the surprise ?
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Yeah we (the east coast) have had so much snow and awesome patterns lately I can't imagine why anyone would be upset about it not snowing in the east. I mean we're only about 50% of our average over the last 5 years but the snow drought is just made up.
 
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I read on another forum that strong El-Nino winters are typically backloaded yet in the 1997-98 winter all of our snow came in December.
 
Rain Cold said:
I don't care whether there's snow pack to the northwest or not, tbh. I mean, it's more of a + than a - for sure, but we've had many snowstorms in the southeast where there wasn't abundant antecedent snow cover to the northwest. What we actually need is legitimate cold air up in Canada. Not above normal anomaly Canada cold, but legitimate cold air. And we need a high pressure to drop down and feed it in. Above normal (for their area) chilly air to our northwest isn't the best way to snow here. And it's not the best way to keep a snowpack around in the Midwest either.

Our climate is warming. We all know this. Average temps are going up. We have more above normal winters (temp-wise) than below. Snowfall averages are dropping. Now, you can make the argument that, well, a few decades back in the mid-1900s exaggerated our averages, and that's fine. But a warming climate is absolutely NOT conducive to more and/or easier snow here.

What is also happening (which is the reason our winters have been warmer here) is that something about the climate cycle we're in now is creating more of a propensity for a mixture of western troughing and a strong Pac jet. Whatever state ENSO is in, we seem to end up with bad MJO, PNA, and NAO phases throughout the winter. The strat never helps either.

Maybe we're just going through a few bad luck years. I mean Shane posted a snow graphic the other day going back to 1800 BC or something, and it showed clusters of good and bad winters, so maybe we're good. But I know we all follow this stuff every year and almost without exception, we have to punt December and then January and then hope for a good February (and by the way, late February into March is pretty much game over for most of the Southeast - it didn't used to be, but it almost always is now). We can't be in a strong El Nino every year. So there must be a reason for this (and I think we did have a pretty cold December last year). We see the NAO stay neutral or positive. We see the PNA stay negative. We see the MJO spending 80% of the winter in 3-6. Why is that? Something is driving this. Until whatever it is changes, I don't see how we can expect anything different than above normal temps in the winter, on average. Maybe we get an anomalous exception to this once every 5-10 years, but it definitely would be an exception.

Anyway, all it takes is one well-timed event to hit the average. I don't think anybody should give up on that possibility at this point. And historically speaking (whether you can go by historical norms or not in today's climate is a topic for another time), El Ninos offer the highest probabilities for snowfall here. But until we see legitimate cold actually showing up in Canada, followed by a mechanism to drive it into the Southeast, it's really hard to be enthusiastic about winter storm chances outside of a narrow area. I think we'll have a shot, regardless of snow cover. But we need to see the cold start showing up first. Otherwise, we're talking about a very, very tiny eye of the needle to thread.

There are and always will be exceptions to every rule. As good as we are at research and getting masters degrees and all of that, there is a lot more about the weather and climate that we don't understand than what we do understand. So, we will hope for the best and hope that the next series of better winters are either upon us or just around the corner, and we will try and continue to learn something along the way and resist the temptation to jump off the cliff just because a variable or two isn't in our favor right this moment.
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TLDR but congratulations or I'm sorry for your loss.
 
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