Totals toned down a bit after final looks at the models today. Still this is a decent storm for most. Now to see what the models do with the Early January storm with the NAO looking to try and go negative.
Dec 28 2012
Snowfall Prediction Map
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Tim
December 28, 2012 at 8:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yamahas
December 28, 2012 at 9:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Armando
December 28, 2012 at 9:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yamahas
December 28, 2012 at 10:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yamahas
December 28, 2012 at 10:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Armando
December 28, 2012 at 11:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yamahas
December 28, 2012 at 11:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 11:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I saw your question fro yesterday, and I’ll give you some of my thoughts on it.
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 12:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How often do you have 4 snowfalls before the new year in winter? That does not happen very often we had 2 snows in NYC in November, first time since 1938, then we had the clipper system come through before Christmas, then the most recent storm which also dumped snow, and now we have yet another storm coming this weekend, and behind that as we go into early January there is another storm system to follow which looks to produce even more snow. How could you possibly say this winter sucks or this is all hype? It seems that you fail to acknowledge reality and what has actually happened thus far this winter and fall, and by the way, an arctic outbreak is coming for the northeast to start January as the trough of low pressure that effects the region moves to the north and east towards Atlantic Canada gets stuck under a transient block to the east of the Hudson Bay, this will allow the very cold air currently over Quebec and Ontario to come southeastward, and along with it, even more chances for snow as clipper systems rotate at the base of the gyre of low pressure. To top it off, a stratospheric warming event is taking place already, and has started in Asia, and as a result of the last minor warming event that occurred earlier in the month, many areas of Russia experienced some of their coldest weather in several decades with temperatures that crashed below -50F over a widespread area. Now, you’re trying to tell me this is all hype or that this somehow sucks, because when you see an even more powerful warming event about to take place over the arctic, and with warm 100 millibar temps it looks poised to strike North America, given what happened earlier this month over northern Asia when only a minor warming event occurred, you have to wonder what will happen when the much larger warming event takes place and charges a lot of cold air into North America.
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dante is right, given the extremely snowy and cold winters of 2010-11 and 2009-10, people somehow think that is “normal” and now even when snowier and colder than normal weather takes over people down play it and say “this sucks” or “this is a bust” without even realizing that the many of the winters in the 80s and 90s were quite comparable to what we observed last year to some extent, and that if you area doesn’t see a huge snowstorm or blizzard then this winter is somehow a bust.
AutoFill Rob
December 28, 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
John Michael
December 28, 2012 at 12:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 12:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know if you are a weatherbell subscriber, but Joe D’Aleo made a very interesting post that gives many quite a reality check and heightens my concerns of the pattern turning very cold later in winter, perhaps rivaling 1984-85. The current snowfall today over the US is currently the most in over 10 years, even more than what we had on this date in 2009-10 and 2010-11 with well over 60% of the US snow covered. As you said, this increased snowpack helps to refrigerate the surrounding air and any arctic air masses that dive out of northern North America, and with the snowpack so high, and with the stratospheric warming event as I described in an earlier comment telling what happened under only a minor event in northern Asia “To top it off, a stratospheric warming event is taking place already, and has started in Asia, and as a result of the last minor warming event that occurred earlier in the month, many areas of Russia experienced some of their coldest weather in several decades with temperatures that crashed below -50F over a widespread area” and with an even larger event starting to take place, and with the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere temps warmest towards northern North America (This is important because it allows for the warming in the stratosphere to vertically stack and strengthen, which allows for even more surface cooling to occur) I’m quite concerned that we’ll see a very strong arctic air mass charge into North America as we get later into winter, perhaps as early as mid-late January, and this kind of pattern could last through February and perhaps even into March, but before then we have a few accumulating snows coming, an arctic air mass into the northeast towards the start of January, and a potential warm-up by the 2nd week of January as winter backs off some.
Yamahas
December 28, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
armando
December 28, 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 1:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Only 2 events covering the ground? Perhaps I need to jog your memory.
The storm nicknamed “sandy sequel” on November 8th produced a light coating of snow, (into New Jersey many areas reported over 6 inches of snow) the storm on the 28th of November was able to cover the ground in your area just west of Philadelphia, the clipper system that moved through just in time for Christmas dumped a nice 1-2 inch swath throughout much of the northeast, and although this recent storm did not “cover the ground” the precipitation started out as snow and accumulated briefly, so in all you have actually seen 3 storms that “covered the ground”. Just because your specific location did not see what you seem to quantify as a “snowstorm” you have to realize that these systems have been “snowstorms” in your region. In the storm that occurred in early November many areas that got hammered with Sandy only a hundred or so miles to your ENE got pounded with over 6 inches of snow, then with the most recent event, heavy snow occurred to your NW in PA, where areas reported heavy snow, with over 4 inch an hour snowfall rates at times, especially during the beginning of the storm.
Trying to downplay this winter and what has occurred thus far is not smart, and the claim that ‘cold air in January it always tends to push storms to the south and out to sea leaving us high and dry” perhaps you would like to provide evidence to back that claim up? 2009-10 and 2010-11 were very cold in January, as was 1984-85, and even 1978-79, yet the snowstorms came and were quite strong. Also, trying to say this somehow sucks and good forecasters like Joe Bastardi somehow “hyped” the forecasts, just goes back to what Dante said about people thinking this is somehow a “bust” when in fact the US has the most snow cover at this time than in the past 10 years, and how do you explain what is coming down the road as I’ve explained above an arctic outbreak is coming for the northeast to start January as the trough of low pressure that effects the region moves to the north and east towards Atlantic Canada gets stuck under a transient block to the east of the Hudson Bay, this will allow the very cold air currently over Quebec and Ontario to come southeastward, and along with it, even more chances for snow as clipper systems rotate at the base of the gyre of low pressure. To top it off, a stratospheric warming event is taking place already, and has started in Asia, and as a result of the last minor warming event that occurred earlier in the month, many areas of Russia experienced some of their coldest weather in several decades with temperatures that crashed below -50F over a widespread area. Now, you’re trying to tell me this is all hype or that this somehow sucks, because when you see an even more powerful warming event about to take place over the arctic, and with warm 100 millibar temps it looks poised to strike North America, given what happened earlier this month over northern Asia when only a minor warming event occurred, you have to wonder what will happen when the much larger warming event takes place and charges a lot of cold air into North America.”
With similarities to 2009-10, 2010-11, 1984-85, and 2002-03, all of which were quite cold late in the winter and had a stratospheric warming event, (although 2010-11 did not have a major warming event, but shut down after mid-february, but some of the 500 millibar patterns look quite similar) there’s reason to believe this pattern will get much colder and snowier than it already is/
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 1:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, I’m glad to be back, and I am working on my response to you about some of my thoughts on this storm coming this weekend and what may be coming in early January, and as you can probably already tell by reading some of my comments, I have not changed my ideas on the cold really intensifying later in winter.
Bradley Folsom
December 28, 2012 at 1:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 28, 2012 at 2:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My thoughts on this upcoming storm are in fairly good agreement with the National Weather Service, as they seem to have a pretty good handle on this situation and I like the placement of the winter weather advisories towards the I-70 corridor and to the north into Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Also, to answer your concerns regarding Joe Bastardi potentially seeing something after New Year’s actually has some merit and it will be interesting to see the set-up involved in that storm system and what actually transpires.
First of all this storm system coming this weekend still looks interesting and I think that the main axis of snow will be south and east of the previous system (fits the snowfall accumulation pattern I’ve been talking about where increased snowpack forces the tracks of low pressures systems and their accumulating snows farther to the south and east with each successive system) and there will be a large area from the mountains of north-central West Virginia through northern Maryland, southern PA, into New Jersey, southern NY, and into southern New England that sees a general 2-4 inches of snow (potentially 6 or more towards southern new England), In general, this region should double the snowfall totals they experienced with the clipper system that came through on Christmas eve and into Christmas. Although, as this storm system intensifies off of the coast, areas of southern New England, like Connecticut, Rhode Island, south-central Massachusetts and reaching in towards Boston have the potential to see a little more snow possibly as much as 6 inches, but we will likely know more as we get closer to this event. Also, areas towards Washington, Baltimore, and along the I-81 corridor in Virginia will likely changeover to snow at the end, and some snow will likely occur at the onset of the storm. Those areas may pick up anywhere from a dusting or so, to perhaps as much as an inch or more in isolated areas, especially in the higher elevations.
Now, the set-up that we are going to see with this storm coming this weekend will be the merging of two disturbances over the midwest and Ohio Valley, with one system ejecting out of the southern Rockies and the other coming out of the northern Rockies and into the north-central plains where some light snow accumulations may occur. These two disturbances will meet up towards the central Ohio Valley and form and initial surface low pressure system that will move ENE and produce more snowfall over some of the same areas that were recently effected by the blizzard from Arkansas to Ohio. This storm, like the after Christmas system will be forced to transfer energy to the coast as the trough approaches the Atlantic. This is due in part that with the cold being laid behind by the recent storm system, and with that cold air residing over the warmer waters of the Atlantic, this creates instability and storms try to form, but with higher pressures aloft in the wake of the storm system, these storms are suppressed and are limited to nothing more than low level cloudiness. However, as the next trough comes by, still with relatively cold air temperatures in relation to water temperatures fueling instability, this oncoming trough forces lower pressures aloft and allows for thunderstorms activity to quickly build over the water, and with water naturally having 1000x the energy capacity than the atmosphere, the differences in friction from water to land, and the natural instability off of the east coast created by the strong differences in water temperature over a short area thanks to the meeting up of the Gulf Stream and Labrador currents. All of these factors help to induce low pressure near the coast, and as the trough continues to move north and east, the developing low pressure moves in a similar direction in relation to the trough, and as the storm intensifies, so does it’s movement in a poleward direction as it intensifies. This more poleward movement allows for the axis of the trough to become more negatively tilted, thus allowing the low pressure area to strengthen even further, but eventually, as we will see in this case, the storm should begin to decay as the airmass in its surrounding environment modifies, and the amount of available instability and moisture drops as it enters much colder airmass. With the transient blocking just to the east of the Hudson Bay, this storm system may get stuck over and just east of eastern Canada. This will cause the jet upstream to buckle in response and force the current trough over the southwestern US to come out underneath the strengthening block over western North America. Also, the low pressure area meandering around in this area for an extended period of time will allow it to take on more characteristics of a gyre-like feature, and around these gyres of low pressure, disturbances, such as Alberta Clippers rotate in a counter-clockwise motion around their base, and these clipper systems, as you already know help to reinforce cold air masses. This will be the case for the northeastern US as a series of clipper systems and shortwave disturbances move out of Ontario and Quebec and southeastward into the northeast. The concern with any potential winter storm system in early January that meteorologists like Joe Bastardi have is that with this clipper system enforcing arctic air from Ontario, Quebec and from areas north of the Baffin Bay, along with the active subtropical jet stream being enhanced due in part to the Kelvin Wave and the Rex Block pattern, what could happen is that these two features may phase together, and what could happen is that with the phasing of these two systems, a rather strong trough or storm system (superstorm) could be the result due to the enormous amount of available instability and dramatic differences in pressure and temperature over a short distance. This is the concern, and knowing the ECMWF is usually very slow with systems in the southwestern US, it is concerning that if the southern branch disturbance is faster (as it should be knowing the ECMWF’s tendencies) this could allow for a phasing event with a disturbance carrying arctic air at the base of the gyre of low pressure near eastern Canada and the disturbance over the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern US carrying warm air, and moisture, even from the NW Caribbean. However, as I said in an earlier comment these kind of events are somewhat rare due to the fact that you have to get both the polar jet and subtropical jet to align with disturbances over the same area, and (due to the Coriolis effect) storms move generally east at the poles, and west in the mid-laitudes. With these two disturbances usually separated by large distances and moving in opposite directions, it makes this kind of set-up very difficult to come by, however when these types of set-ups do occur, the result is usually quite extreme, with a very powerful (sometimes devastating) storm system produced as a result.
Armando
December 28, 2012 at 3:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Jordan R.
December 28, 2012 at 4:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
John Michael
December 28, 2012 at 5:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
John Michael
December 28, 2012 at 5:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 29, 2012 at 10:12 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think that is overdone, I think 2-4 is probably a safe bet at this point, and the transfer of energy with this system to the coast will force a region of lower snowfall totals near eastern PA, and your region will be on the edge of that, but I think you’re far enough east to be in the slightly heavier snowfall. Now, as far as the storm around New Year’s I’m not too impressed with it, but that storm could produce some light snow or flurries, but not much accumulation, and the reason that storm will be weakening is because there will be a strengthening area of low pressure over the southwestern US, which will pump a ridge to the east, and flatten the associated trough with the storm around New Year’s, thus weakening it. This system over the southwestern US will be very interesting to watch as it could dump a considerable amount of snow over New Mexico, west and southTexas, including areas like El Paso, Midland-Odessa, Lubbock, Laredo, San Angelo, and Fort Stockton, possibly even towards San Antonio. Snow could even fall into Mexico, possibly as far south as Monterrey, and with the storm so far south, should emerge into the Gulf of Mexico. The question from here will it phase with the northern branch of the let (that is carrying arctic air from Ontario and Quebec), and this remains a question for the time being as the models still seem to be struggling with the handling of the region of low pressure that will be in the southwestern US, and that can be attributed to a limit of surface observational data in that region and the fact that the trough associated with this system is still off of the northwest coast of the US. I actually don’t see the NAO being a helping factor in this instance, as the polar vortex is severely weakened due to the developing stratospheric warming event over northern Asia, it will be forced to retreat towards the extreme north Atlantic and Greenland, and of course we know, even with a weak polar vortex, that low pressure in this region is a sign of a +NAO, but even if the NAO is positive, the weakened state of the vortex will limit the NAO from going strongly positive, thus I really am not considering it in this instance.
Armando
December 29, 2012 at 10:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 29, 2012 at 10:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, it is worth it, and I’m even learning so things from Joe Bastardi and Joe D’Aleo, and if it wasn’t for Joe Bastardi, I would have never recognized the Kelvin Wave and its important role in this pattern, and relation to the polar vortex, QBO, stratospheric warming events, and the subtropical jet stream, all of which are important factors in determining how the PNA, AO, and NAO will play out. Now, this cold coming later this week is going to be quite severe, the higher elevations of MA, NY, PA, NH, and VT are probably going to drop below zero for overnight lows during the height of this event, with some areas, especially towards northern PA and west-central NY seeing lows drop below -10, and of course the cold will also effect areas of the midwest, and even Chicago could drop below 0. You certainly are well aware of what is going on, as there will be some kind of warm-up towards the 2nd week of January, now how significant it will be is another question, probably not as strong as what we saw at the beginning of December, but certainly significant enough for people to notice. i am unsure though, as to precisely how long this would last, but with the stratospheric warming event taking place near the arctic, I suspect we’ll see an end to the mild pattern once this warming event loads cold air into northern North America, and once we see the troughing pattern shift back to the eastern US again, and I think based off of this information, and using history, February is probably going to be a very cold and snowy month. Also, I should hopefully make a new post within the next few days or so, and interestingly, I’ve found a nice correlation with some of the analog winter patterns and the hurricane season.
Eric
December 29, 2012 at 10:53 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If we can get the southern branch to catch up with the northern branch of the jet and the clipper system associated with it, then things could get interesting, but regardless, I think the subtropical jet stream energy will catch up with the energy in the polar jet, its just a matter of whether it occurs over the eastern US over over the open Atlantic, and if we get a storm over the Atlantic, due to the strengthening cyclone, it would move poleward and in the vicinity of Greenland, which would force the NAO positive. Also, the cold air being loaded over the arctic should keep the NAO predominantly positive in the longer ranges, and over time, this cold air should force the pressures to rise, so eventually at some point the AO and NAO should crash considerably negative, but this probably won’t happen for quite a while. Even if the NAO went negative in the short range, it is not going to be overwhelmingly negative, (very close to neutral), and with the NAO staying within one standard deviation of normal, any effects of it going either positive or negative will be minimized, thus I am not even concerned about the NAO at this point in time, as there will be other factors having greater influence on this pattern.
Eric
December 29, 2012 at 1:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I know you want it to snow in your area as much as I do, but I think Macon, GA is a little too far south with this one, I think if anywhere gets snow, it will be from the I-20 corridor and to the north including (but not limited to) areas like Tupelo, Birmingham, Huntsville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Greenville-Spartanburg, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro-Winston-Salem, Richmond, and Norfolk. Check out my comment on Jason’s blog where I explain this potential winter weather over the south (as I’ve been saying since December 23rd)
derickeugeneree
December 29, 2012 at 2:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 29, 2012 at 5:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have never really completely bought into a large storm around New Year’s like Joe Bastardi, and although things could change, I have doubts anything significant will transpire. In fact, the first shortwave system around New Year’s looks to be relatively weak, and should dump most of its snow over Kansas through the Ohio Valley, into some of the areas that currently don’t have much snow on the ground at the moment. The storm Joe Bastardi and I were alluding to was after New Year’s towards Jan 3-5 or so, but I think that storm will most likely effect primarily the southern US, and could bring more winter weather to areas of Texas, and snow even into northern Mexico, but other than that I don’t see any big systems coming towards your region for the foreseeable future. How much snow did you receive from this most recent storm?
Derickeugeneree
December 29, 2012 at 6:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric
December 29, 2012 at 6:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow, that’s pretty good then, lol, don’t I feel somewhat accomplished, especially with the dynamical situation of the storm transferring energy to the coast and the possibility of precipitation shutting off in east-central PA, but it seems like your area fared pretty well with this storm then, closer to Harrisburg I think they got near 3 inches, (maybe I’m wrong).
John Michael
December 29, 2012 at 11:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment