January Weather In the PNW

[snow_wizard]

One thing I like about the 18z is more high latitude blocking and the timing of the trough arrival has moved up.

[MossMan]

Thanks buddy!

Happy Birthday!

[snow_wizard]

I am definitely feeling a good foothill snow pattern developing at some point in the coming weeks.

 

Not great for the rest of us of course. But I will take typical Niña cold NW flow over this split flow and ridging.

 

Man...nobody has any faith in what I'm saying.

[snow_wizard]

That is some serious on the 18z as far as very deep troughing and strong surface lows tracking pretty far south.

[MossMan]

This has been a persistent bugger of a cz. Has rotated from light rain, to drizzle, to moderate rain and back again all day!

[Kayla]

One very remarkable thing about some places in the northern third of the state on that side of the mountains is the ratio of annual snowfall to annual precip.  I seem to recall seeing places that have like 14 inches of annual precip but 70 inches of snowfall.  That has to be one of the highest ratios in the country.  Places with similar annual precip east of the Rockies have more summer precip and less winter snow.

 

More common than you think, I think. Bozeman MT sees 90" of snowfall with 18" of precipitation on average yearly.

 

20:1 or even 40:1 ratios (like we had last month) are a beautiful thing.

[Kayla]

Any good news from you today? For my birthday.

 

This forum in general has just been depressing to read lately.

 

Happy Birthday!! 

[MossMan]

That is some serious s**t on the 18z as far as very deep troughing and strong surface lows tracking pretty far south.

Noticed that, not far from getting pretty darn good!

[Phil]

What I suspect you fail to recognize is we come "close" and have terribly bad luck pretty frequently. In fact it's not luck, it's climatology. Top shelf cold patterns here are generally fleeting and require quite a bit of atmospheric specificity. To think you can foresee these coincidences at such a long lead and accurately predict sustainability to probably a once or twice a century level is pretty hard to rationalize.

I can acknowledge that the specific inner workings of your climate are well beyond my pay grade. I just look for favorable longwave patterns using analogs and thermodynamic climatology, and do my best to extrapolate from there using said boundary conditions. That’s the gist of long range forecasting, really.

[Jesse]

Happy Birthday! I remember the year I was 22. Good times!

Lol. Ten years off. But I feel 22 at heart!

 

Thank you.

[Phil]

Any good news from you today? For my birthday.

 

This forum in general has just been depressing to read lately.

Happy birthday, man. Sorry to disappoint, but maybe I’m screwing up again somewhere. We’ll see.

[TT-SEA]

This has been a persistent bugger of a cz. Has rotated from light rain, to drizzle, to moderate rain and back again all day!

Totally dry here today... when you are in c-zone hell then its usually better here and vice versa.

[Gradient Keeper]

That is some serious s**t on the 18z as far as very deep troughing and strong surface lows tracking pretty far south.

I definitely see that. Tons of mountain snow too. Jet suppression!

 

--

0z NAM in 2 hours 45 minutes

[Brian_in_Leavenworth]

One very remarkable thing about some places in the northern third of the state on that side of the mountains is the ratio of annual snowfall to annual precip.  I seem to recall seeing places that have like 14 inches of annual precip but 70 inches of snowfall.  That has to be one of the highest ratios in the country.  Places with similar annual precip east of the Rockies have more summer precip and less winter snow.

Yes, colder temps lead to higher snow ratios.  Sometimes we get our snow right at or even just above freezing, so it doesn't accumulate as much as it could.  Like on the 19th, we had enough precip for 8-10 inches of snow, but the snow was a bit wet and ended up at 6 inches.  Up north would be colder, and the same amount of precip would lead to higher snow, or the same amount of us even with less precip.

[snow_wizard]

More common than you think, I think. Bozeman MT sees 90" of snowfall with 18" of precipitation on average yearly.

 

20:1 or even 40:1 ratios (like we had last month) are a beautiful thing.

 

I thought Montana might be one of the places that has good ratios also.  Once you get far enough east though much more of the annual precip falls during the summer.

[VancouverIslandSouth]

Well once again having lots of ridge amplification directly over the PNW has more or less proven a failure for getting real Arctic air down here. I'm sure it's possible to get a regression, but it seems to be incredibly rare. The overall pattern seems to have favored progression over regression. I like our chances better with what the GFS is showing in 10 days from now.

 

[snow_wizard]

Yes, colder temps lead to higher snow ratios.  Sometimes we get our snow right at or even just above freezing, so it doesn't accumulate as much as it could.  Like on the 19th, we had enough precip for 8-10 inches of snow, but the snow was a bit wet and ended up at 6 inches.  Up north would be colder, and the same amount of precip would lead to higher snow, or the same amount of us even with less precip.

 

I was referring to the annual precip vs annual snowfall ratios.

[Jesse]

Happy birthday, man. Sorry to disappoint, but maybe I’m screwing up again somewhere. We’ll see.

I think you underestimate the power/influence of global warming in your forecasts.

[snow_wizard]

Noticed that, not far from getting pretty darn good!

 

Yup...I really like where this is going.  Even the thing a few days from now comes pretty close to bringing cold air this far south.  Too bad there isn't a better bond between the high latitude and mid latitude blocking.

[snow_wizard]

I'm just going to continue to say I like our chances even though 90% of the people on here are ignoring me.  I just don't get it.

[snow_wizard]

I literally think I could say I'm going to give everyone here a million dollars and they wouldn't reply favorably.  It's getting kind of discouraging.

[snow_wizard]

Drunken Uncle having some fun with that odd little "cutoff high" that splits off northward around Hour 240 and ends up spinning right over the North Pole.

 

Of course anything that's good is drunk uncle.

[Brian_in_Leavenworth]

I was referring to the annual precip vs annual snowfall ratios.

I think generally they have good qpf/snow ratios compared to other parts of Eastern WA  due to them being colder.  Snow at 25 degrees will pile up faster than snow at 32, which a lot of areas in the central and southern parts of Eastern WA get when we get snow.   But everywhere on this side of the state pretty much has good annual precip vs annual snowfall due to our spring, summers, and fall being so much drier than Western WA/OR and a higher percentage of winter precip as snow, but of course the north even more so than the rest of us.

[Front Ranger]

Yeah, I was, but I honestly thought I was on the correct path and would verify. West-Pacific > Phil.

 

Your cold January call is in huge trouble, though.

 

Way too soon to say.

[Phil]

Well once again having lots of ridge amplification directly over the PNW has more or less proven a failure for getting real Arctic air down here. I'm sure it's possible to get a regression, but it seems to be incredibly rare. The overall pattern seems to have favored progression over regression. I like our chances better with what the GFS is showing in 10 days from now.

 

Wait, is that a -AO? Nah..those don’t happen anymore.

 

Definitely a jet extension coming. Probably not going to morph into anything more than that, though, assuming it makes it into the west, and I suspect we will probably return to -EPO/Midwest troughing afterwards for awhile during late January and/or early February, before stuff starts flipping around again in the middle of February.

[snow_wizard]

Wait, is that a -AO? Nah..those don’t happen anymore.

 

Definitely a jet extension coming. Probably not going to morph into anything more than that, though, assuming it makes it into the west, and I suspect we will probably return to -EPO/Midwest troughing afterwards for awhile during late January and/or early February, before stuff starts flipping around again in the middle of February.

 

Sounds like you've given up on us.  A blocky Nina winter almost always delivers in the long run.

[Phil]

I think you underestimate the power/influence of global warming in your forecasts.

Honestly, I think it’s mostly because I don’t understand your climate as well. I’ve never had a cold bias when forecasting for my region (actually the opposite..I thought this would be a warm winter here).

 

The globe has warmed by ~ 2*F since 1950. That’s a very modest climate change by geologic standards, and it doesn’t explain why the Arctic blast missed you to the east.

[Deweydog]

I literally think I could say I'm going to give everyone here a million dollars and they wouldn't reply favorably. It's getting kind of discouraging.

You're coming off a little psycho, my man.

 

It's okay to watch it play out and acknowledge we're not sure what's gonna happen over the next two months.

[TT-SEA]

I'm just going to continue to say I like our chances even though 90% of the people on here are ignoring me.  I just don't get it.

 

 

I literally think I could say I'm going to give everyone here a million dollars and they wouldn't reply favorably.  It's getting kind of discouraging.

 

 

What the hell do you want?

 

1) Its a long way off and there is nothing in the reasonable range.

 

2) You have been wrong many times before when you demand that everyone match your enthusiasm.   Then you throw your usual tantrum and leave the forum for a couple months.

 

3) Even if a great pattern does develop... we can get totally screwed by the details as you should know but always seem to forget.

 

 

I think you might have literally blocked all your past tantrums and failures from your mind.   You honestly might not remember them.   As you mentioned... it is sort of like the Twilight Zone.  

[Phil]

Jesse (and others) would probably be having a panic attack if he/they were alive before/after the younger dryas. Sea levels rising 6”/yr, global temperatures spiking over 10*F within a decade. That’s scary stuff.

[snow_wizard]

The QBO really is acting weird.  A switch to negative has always propagated from the 40mb to 50mb level in one month's time, but this time it's been negative at 40mb for three months and is still decently positive at 50mb.  That together with skipping the negative last winter really puts us in uncharted waters for the modern era on that index.

[Front Ranger]

I think you underestimate the power/influence of global warming in your forecasts.

 

Well, that could be true but I'm pretty sure global warming is not what kept a full retrogression/Arctic blast from occurring in the past couple weeks.

[snow_wizard]

You're coming off a little psycho, my man.

 

It's okay to watch it play out and acknowledge we're not sure what's gonna happen over the next two months.

 

I'll just stop posting then.  Nobody is listening anyway.

[Phil]

The QBO really is acting weird. A switch to negative has always propagated from the 40mb to 50mb level in one month's time, but this time it's been negative at 40mb for three months and is still decently positive at 50mb. That together with skipping the negative last winter really puts us in uncharted waters for the modern era on that index.

Yeah, it’s a big bowl of wtf. Especially after such a rapid start aloft w/ the SAO —> 30mb descent it’s weird to see the wave suddenly become so lazy.

 

[Deweydog]

I'll just stop posting then. Nobody is listening anyway.

You can post it but trying to dictate responses seems pretty desperate. It's also kind of sad knowing the likely outcome.

[Front Ranger]

I'm just going to continue to say I like our chances even though 90% of the people on here are ignoring me.  I just don't get it.

 

What do you want people to say? I don't think people are ignoring you just because they aren't agreeing enthusiastically with your every word.

[Phil]

I'll just stop posting then. Nobody is listening anyway.

Don’t stop posting, dude. Tim needs you!!

[HighlandExperience]

I'll just stop posting then. Nobody is listening anyway.

We are listening to you. Maybe take a break for 2-3 days and come back. Let’s see how it plays out

[luvssnow_spokane]

Man...nobody has any faith in what I'm saying.

Nope...

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Jim, this is a good time to take a chill pill. It makes no difference to the outcome whether people believe you or not.