• 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!

Misc Winter Whamby 2020, a New Decade

Status
Not open for further replies.
NOAA uses arbitrarily defined thresholds for ENSO criteria and only uses ERSSTv5 for their analyses (my ENS ONI is a lot better). There's definitely a pretty clear NINO lean to this winter that's not normally present even in "official" events & I've stated my case on here many times and on twitter and I certainly don't feel like repeating myself again.

You don't get extreme tropical +AAM spikes like this when ENSO is "neutral" (which it's clearly not this year), in fact the tropical +AAM was so strong that it was westerly in the means for the first time ever in the satellite era.



Nor do you see incessant dateline westerly wind bursts for several months in a row when ENSO is "neutral", the base state has to be advanced enough towards El Nino to do this, which it is this year.
View attachment 31685






As for a previous post where it was claimed 1939-40, 1951-52 2008-09, & 1979-80 were "neutral" ENSO winters

1951-52 was a weak-moderate NINO winter, 2008-09 was a La Nina winter, 1939-40 was a late blooming moderate El Nino, 1979-80 by some metrics was also an El Nino.

This is taken from my webpage & research on the Oceanic Nino Index which uses twenty six SST reconstructions and reanalysis datasets. The values derived here are more robust & meaningful than NOAA's which uses only ERRSTv5 (w/ no quality control of the data):
https://www.webberweather.com/ensemble-oceanic-nino-index.html

It's in really close agreement w/ NOAA's index over the latter portions of the record, only differences emerging from the fact that I use a lot more datasets and filter out bad/potentially spurious data.

View attachment 31682

View attachment 31686

View attachment 31684

View attachment 31683

I asked nicely, if you don't feel like repeating yourself then don't do so. Thanks anyway.
 
NOAA uses arbitrarily defined thresholds for ENSO criteria and only uses ERSSTv5 for their analyses (my ENS ONI is a lot better). There's definitely a pretty clear NINO lean to this winter that's not normally present even in "official" events & I've stated my case on here many times and on twitter and I certainly don't feel like repeating myself again.

You don't get extreme tropical +AAM spikes like this when ENSO is "neutral" (which it's clearly not this year), in fact the tropical +AAM was so strong that it was westerly in the means for the first time ever in the satellite era.



Nor do you see incessant dateline westerly wind bursts for several months in a row when ENSO is "neutral", the base state has to be advanced enough towards El Nino to do this, which it is this year.
View attachment 31685






As for a previous post where it was claimed 1939-40, 1951-52 2008-09, & 1979-80 were "neutral" ENSO winters

1951-52 was a weak-moderate NINO winter, 2008-09 was a La Nina winter, 1939-40 was a late blooming moderate El Nino, 1979-80 by some metrics was also an El Nino.

This is taken from my webpage & research on the Oceanic Nino Index which uses twenty six SST reconstructions and reanalysis datasets. The values derived here are more robust & meaningful than NOAA's which uses only ERRSTv5 (w/ no quality control of the data):
https://www.webberweather.com/ensemble-oceanic-nino-index.html

It's in really close agreement w/ NOAA's index over the latter portions of the record, only differences emerging from the fact that I use a lot more datasets and filter out bad/potentially spurious data.

View attachment 31682

View attachment 31686

View attachment 31684

View attachment 31683


I agree with all of this history except Don was referring to the Feb of 1979 storm, meaning he was referring to the neutral 1978-9 rather than the El Niño of 1979-80.
 
I asked nicely, if you don't feel like repeating yourself then don't do so. Thanks anyway.

I wasn't trying to be a ---- there btw, the discrepancies always emerge from subjectively defined thresholds of what's an El Nino or not and the definitions and indices used to define ENSO don't even explain a majority of the total variance. For ex, a seemingly insignificant +0.2-0.3C anomaly in the West Pac can have the same relative prowess globally as a +1C anomaly east of the dateline because the mean SSTs are cooler further east and don't readily support convection.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jon
Not all years had a continuation of a Nino or Nina.

Sent from my SM-A102U using Tapatalk

Just because the SSTs in some random region of the tropical pacific fall barely below a certain threshold value definitely doesn't mean El Nino is automatically over. ENSO's footprint on the global circulation often permeates for a few-several months after the SSTAs go away and 1951-52 was still characteristically a NINO in late winter.
 


Coming up on the 20th anniversary of the Carolina Crusher. Discussion from CAE that day is incredible. Goes from a chance of flurries to a sudden snowstorm.
 
This storm really hurt my feelings bad. I was one state away from total snow bliss. 3. FEET. OF. SNOW! Can we please get one of these in East Central NC?!

 
If we get another "once in a lifetime Superstorm" that gives me a dusting of snow for the second time, I will break something.

That GFS run basically just tried to do its best impression of the March 93 superstorm w/ 3 separate shortwaves phasing into the base of the trough over the Gulf coast.

View attachment 31697
 
Last edited:
Coming to you soon...

(This was from the 18z GFS last week, Wednesday) I'd expect to see something similar, but maybe not as extreme with snow totals. We shall see!
21d6bc9dab9affd4009cabcdc4b2ca35.jpg


Sent from my SM-A102U using Tapatalk
 
How is this low not producing snow!? It's literally a perfect track
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20200122-135011.png
    Screenshot_20200122-135011.png
    745.8 KB · Views: 41
Now glad my wife shut down the mountains trip for this weekend. Looking like next weekend might be the better weekend for the mountains anyways.
 
This storm really hurt my feelings bad. I was one state away from total snow bliss. 3. FEET. OF. SNOW! Can we please get one of these in East Central NC?!


We got sleeted in Greensboro. It would've been kind of cool if the DC area didn't get their third snowmageddon in the last 6 years with that storm. In comparison, it was awful. And worst of all that's the last time I saw more than an inch of snow on the ground. What does snow even look like?
 
Now glad my wife shut down the mountains trip for this weekend. Looking like next weekend might be the better weekend for the mountains anyways.


yep, I’m a little disappointed with how things have trended for this weekend, but it’ll be nice to get away with my family. Maybe the nw flow snow showers will surprise us, but I’m not counting on it.

I also wouldn’t count it out to go back again next weekend with the wife if things trended towards a nice event. It sure would be nice to score at home though.
 
yep, I’m a little disappointed with how things have trended for this weekend, but it’ll be nice to get away with my family. Maybe the nw flow snow showers will surprise us, but I’m not counting on it.

I also wouldn’t count it out to go back again next weekend with the wife if things trended towards a nice event. It sure would be nice to score at home though.
I am hoping for the best for you all. I have a 5 year old and a 2 year who love the Frozen movies and have been begging for snow. Hard to explain to them that Daddy can't control mother nature haha.
 
So, why do I have this sky cover right now, and the local weather station reports "Fair" for the current weather conditions. I would have thought it should qualify as overcast. Am I missing something here?
06fe3ba84c98ed20f6646f9c7e01e8ca.jpg


Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 
This storm really hurt my feelings bad. I was one state away from total snow bliss. 3. FEET. OF. SNOW! Can we please get one of these in East Central NC?!


That bad boy gave mby this beaut!!
 

Attachments

  • DD1AEF27-2FD6-49CE-8329-89F715A8A6AC.jpeg
    DD1AEF27-2FD6-49CE-8329-89F715A8A6AC.jpeg
    747.4 KB · Views: 24
  • 3D1D2EB7-4A6B-4206-A2C9-2A523DD33EB8.jpeg
    3D1D2EB7-4A6B-4206-A2C9-2A523DD33EB8.jpeg
    682.4 KB · Views: 25


Coming up on the 20th anniversary of the Carolina Crusher. Discussion from CAE that day is incredible. Goes from a chance of flurries to a sudden snowstorm.


That's a neat find -- you can easily iterate through the forecast discussions and see how the event unfolded. Really fascinating reading the forecasts catch up to the storm in real-time:

 
Bingo! Without a big high all we have is a marginal set up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Marginal temp profiles are part of some of the biggest snow storms of the south, for instance February 25 2015 and December 8 2017. We live in the south and it’s just something we deal with.
 
300+ hrs away? Don’t fall for it again. Get it within 3 days and I’ll bite. Good to see something positive though.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I want one good reason why i should believe a cold forecast for 14+ days out. How many times have we seen this play out this year alone, let alone last year?

I HOPE i'm wrong, but i'm not holding my breath.
 
For one thing, there no high pressure entrenched to the north.
There doesn't always need to be a high to the north. Does that help bring the cold air supply? Sure it does. I would rather have marginal temps then cold and dry with suppression. Sometimes you have to look at things at a different perspective.

Sent from my SM-A102U using Tapatalk
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top