snow_wizard

Looks like it's there to me. Fabulous block! This pattern change has been extremely well advertised for a while now.

I sure hope so. Reading all of these nervous Nellie posts is about to drive me insane. How anyone can be gloomy about tonight's GFS is beyond my comprehension.

Nice analog composite tonight. This is day 11, but the day 8 composite is by far the best I've seen yet.

It's no mystery why I'm mostly avoiding the forum these days. The models get better and better but everyone seems to think they aren't.

Negative, negative, negative...wash rinse repeat.

I think the first half of Feb has a better chance than you think. I will admit there is quite a bit of uncertainty whether the coldest weather of the month will be early or more toward mid month though. Pretty hard to ignore the strong -PNA signal being shown on the Euro ensemble in early Feb. Looks like something that would persist.

I'm glad you restarted this thread. I hope people find it here.

Things are looking very promising today. Some good GFS runs, improvement on the ensemble, and continued improvement on the ECMWF ensemble. Looks like Feb could be our month.

I say we should leave it. We only have two threads in the NW section. Not good IMO.

I have to respectfully disagree. I'm not liking only having one thread in the NW section. We need it to branch out. There are certain points that quickly get buried in a big super thread and don't get a chance to be discussed. People almost never go to the sub forums outside of their regional one.

No question out of the 4 maps the most recent is the worst for you. I certainly hope we see that positive center jump NW over the next few years.

It really does seem there are no moderate views right now. My feelings on Feb is it will average below normal for temp...not sure how much below, but below is quite likely. At least a couple of lowland snow threats seem pretty likely also. We'll just have to see how it goes. Sometimes I may seem to be going more extreme than I really am because I am trying to offset the over the top pessimism on here lately. The ball will be in our court.

I just ran some composites for January 500mb anomalies for North America and the NE Pacific and the results ares stunning. It's incredible how certain anomaly patterns can lock in for decades and then drastically change to something different. To have such extreme anomaly signatures show up over such long time periods is pretty amazing. Anyway this clearly shows why January has sucked balls since 1980. The composite for 2007-13 is certainly an improvement from 1981-2006, but still a long way to go. The first two maps are from the cold phase. One is 1948-1980 and the other 1949-57. The next one is from the warm phase 1981-2006. The last map is from 2007-13. Obviously we need the positive center to move NW for things to get good.

I have been pretty lucky here to come up with 6 freezing low temps in the last week.

A major pattern shakeup is 80% or higher to happen. Even the ECMWF ensemble is adamant on that now.

There was some snow in this area in that time frame in 1985. The 1985 to 1990 time frame had 3 decent Februaries, but since then it's been pretty bad alright. It used to be normal to have lowland snow in at least half of our Februaries. Check out the average Feb snowfall for Seattle for each decade back to the 1880s. I'm not sure of the Feb average for 2000-09 due to no records begin kept. It was pretty bad though. 1880s - 8.4" (average is a collection of a few locations in the central Puget Sound) 1890s - 6.4" 1900s - 1.2" 1910s - 6.3" 1920s - 3.0" 1930 - 1.9" (in spite of some very cold Febs that decade) 1940s - 1.3" 1950s - 2.7" 1960s - 0.8" 1970s - 0.3" (the worst decade) 1980s - 1.4" 1990s - 1.4" 2000s 2010s - 0.5" so far (some places obviously are much higher due to 2011) Again these numbers are averages for each Feb in the given decade.

Hi, If you mean the ridge will be worse then you must mean the next week to 10 days. After that it's over.

Somebody had to of deliberately set it. It has been very wet due to the fog.

I sure can't figure out why some people are saying winter is over when pretty much every forecasting tool says Feb will be cold. But whatever floats their boats I guess.

Very nice 18z run. It's no surprise the run to run consistency is so horrible given the circumstances. All of the runs are fairly consistent around the Aleutians, but some dig the downstream energy toward us and some take it SW which results in a disastrous run. The big story IMO is the strong positive anoms the ECMWF has been setting up over the NW GOA in early Feb. If that verifies we should be seeing some pretty serious cold in the second week of Feb. Still can't rule out the first of week of Feb though. Some GFS runs have been fabulous in that time frame.

Already down to 30 here tonight.

Very nice GFS run. The best in a very long time.

Mini Arctic front on the 0z at day 11. Even some lowland snow. The retrogression is less convoluted on this run.

As I said pretty much everything says it will be colder than normal. We will see how the details work out. I just hate coming on here lately.

Try looking at the ECMWF weeklies, the ECMWF ensemble, the MJO forecasts, the CFS forecasts, the PNA/EPO forecast, etc, etc. A big pattern change is coming. A nice window of opportunity. If you want to be such a freaking downer all the time be my guest.