I don’t know that the GFS and GEFS add any value to the forecast for next week, in fact they may be making the forecast worse by inflating the odds of a ridge when the superior EPS has already dropped the ridge odds down to 20% or less.
I’m not as confident as you w/rt the downstream/PNW ridge, but agree the GFS solution near/south of the Aleutians is BS. That’s a classic GFS failure mode (phasing/deepening ULLs).
The operational CMC shows how a big western ridge could legitimately happen. Very different than the GFS over the NPAC.