February 2024 Weather in the PNW

[Deweydog]

So yeah, 10 years ago RIGHT NOW it was twenty one degrees outside and starting to SNOW.

[bainbridgekid]

UCLA getting 12.46" of rain in a DAY when LAX averages 14.25" per YEAR is truly mind blowing. 

Since their rainfall is so uneven annually, I am sure many years get less rain than they got yesterday.

[Omegaraptor]

21 minutes ago, bainbridgekid said:

UCLA getting 12.46" of rain in a DAY when LAX averages 14.25" per YEAR is truly mind blowing. 

Since their rainfall is so uneven annually, I am sure many years get less rain than they got yesterday.

Not many places have that level of precipitation variability. Especially not outside of the tropics (NE Brazil and northern Australia come to mind).

[Phil]

Beautiful retrograding Scandinavia ridge signal on the 12z EPS.

But thanks to screaming STJ/+dAAMt the end result is just a canonical late winter niño/+PNA regime.

This would likely have been a record breaking coast to coast arctic outbreak if it weren’t for that.

[Phil]

Man that February sun is getting strong. Can comfortably wear short sleeves w/ temps in the low 40s now.

[Timmy Supercell]

Just now, Phil said:

Man that February sun is getting strong. Can comfortably wear short sleeves w/ temps in the low 40s now.

Having another mild February. these red wasps have been making daily visits in the house. 

Snowless Feb #3 unless it changes late month.

[Doinko]

53 minutes ago, Deweydog said:

So yeah, 10 years ago RIGHT NOW it was twenty one degrees outside and starting to SNOW.

Only time I had seen snow in the teens here before last month. I think we had 5-6" with the first storm and maybe 8-10" total

 

 

 

[Meatyorologist]

13 minutes ago, Phil said:

Beautiful retrograding Scandinavia ridge signal on the 12z EPS.

But thanks to screaming STJ/+dAAMt the end result is just a canonical late winter niño/+PNA regime.

This would likely have been a record breaking coast to coast arctic outbreak if it weren’t for that.

Still not too late to build a massive, eight mile high brick wall on the dateline, divvying the Pacific in two. We could make the blocking ourselves...

[Omegaraptor]

Just now, Meatyorologist said:

Still not too late to build a massive, eight mile high brick wall on the dateline, divvying the Pacific in two. We could make the blocking ourselves...

Literal blocking!

[Anti Marine Layer]

1 hour ago, Phil said:

Man that February sun is getting strong. Can comfortably wear short sleeves w/ temps in the low 40s now.

What about in the shade?

[Deweydog]

8 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Still not too late to build a massive, eight mile high brick wall on the dateline, divvying the Pacific in two. We could make the blocking ourselves...

Mexico will pay 4 it.

[iFred]

19 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Still not too late to build a massive, eight mile high brick wall on the dateline, divvying the Pacific in two. We could make the blocking ourselves...

I'd spend that effort in relocating the mass of the Rockies over the Mississippi River valley. Would be a great one-two punch in allowing the air the pool and super heat the mid Atlantic when an ULL spins up and meets the power of Gulf Stream.

[Phil]

1 hour ago, Timmy Supercell said:

Having another mild February. these red wasps have been making daily visits in the house. 

Snowless Feb #3 unless it changes late month.

I’ll be shocked if you don’t see snow this month.

2/15 - 3/15 could be the best snow pattern since 2016. But that doesn’t preclude bad luck.

[Timmy Supercell]

1 minute ago, Phil said:

I’ll be shocked if you don’t see snow this month.

2/15 - 3/15 could be the best snow pattern since 2016. But that doesn’t preclude bad luck.

March can certainly deliver, my single largest snow event in the last few years occurred in middle of March in 2022. 

[Phil]

4 minutes ago, iFred said:

I'd spend that effort in relocating the mass of the Rockies over the Mississippi River valley. Would be a great one-two punch in allowing the air the pool and super heat the mid Atlantic when an ULL spins up and meets the power of Gulf Stream.

That’d make for some crazy EML action, though! Would put current tornado alley to shame.  

[Phil]

Just now, Timmy Supercell said:

March can certainly deliver, my single largest snow event in the last few years occurred in middle of March in 2022. 

Oh yeah, March is a bonafide winter month in these parts. More so than December.

Btw post-niño springs are really good for thunderstorms on your side of the apps. I believe you’re in for the best convective season since you moved out there, by a significant margin.

[Meatyorologist]

3 minutes ago, Phil said:

That’d make for some crazy EML action, though! Would put current tornado alley to shame.  

If anything bothered to convect in such an environment! The eastern seaboard might be subject to Dubai-fication with torrid sfc conditions and an EML to cap it all nice and safely on the ground

[snow_wizard]

We are officially to big deal status on the upcoming SSW.  Way more impressive than yesterday's update.

[snow_wizard]

It was nice to see the ECMWF operational, the EPS control, and GEFS control all look a lot more interesting around day 8 on the 12z.  A few tweaks and the ECMWF could have gotten somewhere good.

[snow_wizard]

7 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

If anything bothered to convect in such an environment! The eastern seaboard might be subject to Dubai-fication with torrid sfc conditions and an EML to cap it all nice and safely on the ground

Say what?

[Meatyorologist]

10 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

We are officially to big deal status on the upcoming SSW.  Way more impressive than yesterday's update.

Holy crap Jim, you may be willing this one into existence

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, Meatyorologist said:

Holy crap Jim, you may be willing this one into existence

I try at least.

[Meatyorologist]

7 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Say what?

I think the air aloft would be too warm, and thunderstorms would never initiate. Just my two cents though and Phil probably has a few reasons to support the opposite idea...

[Meatyorologist]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

I try at least.

If late Feb/early March scores I'm singlehandedly crediting you.

[Phil]

21 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

If anything bothered to convect in such an environment! The eastern seaboard might be subject to Dubai-fication with torrid sfc conditions and an EML to cap it all nice and safely on the ground

If eastern Colorado can convect, then we definitely would. Especially with convergent flow from the Bermuda high and significantly higher boundary layer moisture.

Dubai is capped for the same reason the Sahara is. Large scale subsidence beneath subtropical high pressure. Has nothing to do with terrain.

Unless you put the Rockies right on the east coast or something. But then we’d be as snowy as Tahoe.  

[snow_wizard]

That upwelling cold bubble under Nino 1+2 is only 50 meters below the surface now.

#ninocrash2024

[Meatyorologist]

2024-25 is gonna be lit

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

That upwelling cold bubble under Nino 1+2 is only 50 meters below the surface now.

#ninocrash2024

Thank God. 4 La Nina's in 5 years, LETS FUCCKKING GOOO! MAYBE 5 IN 6 IF WE'RE LUCKY!

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

La ninas following strong el ninos are usually the best winters for us, right? Although there's probably only a small sample size for that 

[Timmy Supercell]

24 minutes ago, Phil said:

Oh yeah, March is a bonafide winter month in these parts. More so than December.

Btw post-niño springs are really good for thunderstorms on your side of the apps. I believe you’re in for the best convective season since you moved out there, by a significant margin.

I hope late summer doesn't crud out though, Aug 2022 was solid for lightning events, though marginally less rainfall than July of that year. 

Parts of early Fall was nice last year, but September was too dry for my liking. We had a nice severe potential in the first week of August, then storm activity came to a complete halt. 

[snow_wizard]

Hopefully we'll get enough clearing for frost tonight.  I'm on a really bad roll here for that.  At least the max temps have dropped to below normal.

[Meatyorologist]

12 minutes ago, Phil said:

If eastern Colorado can convect, then we definitely would. Especially with convergent flow from the Bermuda high and significantly higher boundary layer moisture.

Dubai is capped for the same reason the Sahara is. Large scale subsidence beneath subtropical high pressure with no forcing for ascent. Has nothing to do with terrain.

Unless you put the Rockies right on the east coast or something. But then we’d be as snowy as Tahoe.  

Interesting stuff, though to add an asterisk I'd hardly call the Sahara "capped." The majority of the desert is useless dry air all the way up and down the column. Large swaths of the desert possess a fully mixed profile. Though that could be a seasonal thing, I'm not sure. Perhaps low level moisture is advected north when the Savannas are in their wet season, or maybe Mediterranean moisture is advected south during NH winter, again I'm not sure.

[snow_wizard]

4 minutes ago, Sunriver Snow Zone said:

La ninas following strong el ninos are usually the best winters for us, right? Although there's probably only a small sample size for that 

They usually have a pretty hefty Arctic blast like 2010-11 or 1998-99.  For that matter you can add 1983-84 to that list in fairly recent times as well.

[Meatyorologist]

5 minutes ago, Sunriver Snow Zone said:

Thank God. 4 La Nina's in 5 years, LETS FUCCKKING GOOO! MAYBE 5 IN 6 IF WE'RE LUCKY!

Phil says that will accelerate global warming by 0.03644°C because La Niña is an endothermic process

[Meatyorologist]

9 minutes ago, Sunriver Snow Zone said:

La ninas following strong el ninos are usually the best winters for us, right? Although there's probably only a small sample size for that 

I see ENSO transition or lack thereof thrown around here a lot as a statistically significant signifier for seasonal speculation (huh), but I'm not so sure it really means anything. What probably matters more are the basic fundamentals at play regardless of what happened the season prior. And with -ENSO, +QBO, and our forum's very own Strat-o-Warmer, I think next winter has some promise. Note how each major cold snap has gotten more and more harsh with time since February 2019...

[MossMan]

40 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

We are officially to big deal status on the upcoming SSW.  Way more impressive than yesterday's update.

Phil says our time to shine will be late March when we will get some 35 degree mixed showers at times but will pop back into the 50’s with sun breaks! Can’t wait! 

[Phil]

23 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Interesting stuff, though to add an asterisk I'd hardly call the Sahara "capped." The majority of the desert is useless dry air all the way up and down the column. Large swaths of the desert possess a fully mixed profile. Though that could be a seasonal thing, I'm not sure. Perhaps low level moisture is advected north when the Savannahs are in their wet season, or maybe Mediterranean moisture is advected south during NH winter, again I'm not sure.

I mean, the Sahara is capped in the sense the BL is deep/well mixed, but not deep enough to condense the water vapor that is present (cloud bases would be crazy high if it were, lol).

Dubai is “capped” in a similar sense. Boatloads of low level moisture from the Persian Gulf but large scale subsidence and limited forcing for ascent precludes cloud formation.

But that kind of capping has nothing to do with mountainous terrain.

The US Plains aren’t capped now. If you moved the Rockies to the longitude of the Mississippi valley, this region would probably convect even more easily, because we have much deeper boundary layer moisture and convergent low level flow from the Bermuda high.

Already, we have a Lee trough that forms east of the Appalachians in the summer under strong solar heating, which enhances convection similarly (veers low level flow to S/SE in the afternoon, advecting in additional low level moisture.

And those mountains are very close in proximity. If the Rockies were situated at the longitude of the Mississippi valley..damn. Those soundings would be insane.

[Meatyorologist]

3 minutes ago, Phil said:

I mean, the Sahara is capped in the sense the BL is deep/well mixed, but not deep enough to condense the water vapor that is present (cloud bases would be crazy high if it were, lol).

Dubai is “capped” in a similar sense. Boatloads of low level moisture from the Persian Gulf but large scale subsidence and limited forcing for ascent precludes cloud formation.

But that kind of capping has nothing to do with mountainous terrain.

The US Plains aren’t capped now. If you moved the Rockies to the longitude of the Mississippi valley, this region would probably convect even more easily, because we have much deeper boundary layer moisture and convergent low level flow thanks to the Bermuda high.

Already, we have a Lee trough that forms east of the Appalachians in the summer under strong solar heating, which enhances convection similarly. And those mountains are very close in proximity.

Oh no dude I got your point about the terrain and sfc convergence over the eastern seaboard. I just didn't know the Sahara wasn't fully mixed. My comment was specifically about the Sahara

[Phil]

FYI, the SOI has tanked below -40 now. Easily the most niño-like regime of tropical circulation this far.

[Phil]

5 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Oh no dude I got your point about the terrain and sfc convergence over the eastern seaboard. I just didn't know the Sahara wasn't fully mixed. My comment was specifically about the Sahara

Ah. I mean for all that is practical, yes, the Saharan boundary layer is “well mixed”. But because moisture is so limited, it still isn’t deep enough for cloud formation. Technically.

So I still consider it capped, in that sense. But it depends on the semantics applied w/rt the definition of a “cap”. Many would disagree with me on this.