Texas Winter 2013-2014

[Texas Snowman]

@BigJoeBastardi: EWMF weeklies colder each week against Thur run, but still are trying to get rid of cold air overall.Siberia-Alaska ridge
argues against

[richtrav]

Looks like the worst of it will miss us, upper plains to Tennessee - OUCH - that is some COLD AIR.

What the GFS giveth, the GFS taketh away. Completely gone out of the 18z run, we'll see if it gets back into the 00z run. I like the 18z run a lot better, after this cold spell ends just 3 days of 50s, the rest is mid-60s to upper-70s in LRGV. The only thing I'm sure of is that is subject to change.

By the way has anyone heard of a forecast after the New Year? I've heard rumors of an El Niño trying to develop but that's about it.

[Texas Snowman]

Photo late this afternoon from Vinny Rhodes, an assistant football coach in Denison. This is in front of one of our elementary schools. Four days of ice on the roads and yards of D-Town. Tomorrow will make five. Amazing storm and run of cold weather.

[Texas Snowman]

Looks like the worst of it will miss us, upper plains to Tennessee - OUCH - that is some COLD AIR.

What the GFS giveth, the GFS taketh away. Completely gone out of the 18z run, we'll see if it gets back into the 00z run. I like the 18z run a lot better, after this cold spell ends just 3 days of 50s, the rest is mid-60s to upper-70s in LRGV. The only thing I'm sure of is that is subject to change.

By the way has anyone heard of a forecast after the New Year? I've heard rumors of an El Niño trying to develop but that's about it.

IMO, forget the individual model runs. Look at the trends. Better yet, look at the drivers and/or signals that Ntxw and Portastorm have been talking about. Those are the things that the old fellas at Brownsville NWS used to watch. They were quite good at predicting cold shots into Texas...long before models became the talk of weather nuts.

[cctxhurricanewatcher]

Those Brownsville guys were some of the best. They knew patterns and the long term ramifications and didn't change tunes based on a model run or two.

[Tireman4]

Boy, I sure miss those guys...they do not make em like that anymore.

[Ntxw]

IMO, forget the individual model runs. Look at the trends. Better yet, look at the drivers and/or signals that Ntxw and Portastorm have been talking about. Those are the things that the old fellas at Brownsville NWS used to watch. They were quite good at predicting cold shots into Texas...long before models became the talk of weather nuts.

Someone give this man a beer!

Folks the EPO has tanked again after taking a slight reprieve (if you call -200s a reprieve). The Pacific has said to the Arctic and Atlantic "I don't give a crap what you say or want/do, if I want it cold it's going to be cold." SSW, AO's, NAO's is irrelevant at this point for Texas. Her Majesty the Pacific Ocean has no equal!

Fun tidbit
2009-10 (-EPO, -AO, SSW) = cold and snowy
2010-11 (+EPO, -AO,) = mild and somewhat stormy
2011-12 (+EPO, +AO/some SSW) = Torch
2012-13 (+EPO, -AO/NAO, SSW) = Torch, a little stormy
2013-present (-EPO, +AO, no SSW) = Cold

If you can predict the Pacific, particularly the NP.EP you are a rich man when it comes to Texas winter forecasting!

[Ntxw]

Btw don't sleep on this system this weekend. I suspect the models are playing havoc with it. You're talking multiple 5h vorticity merging and height falls in the southern plains. Someone could go from a rain to snow event somewhere if phasing occurs.

[Texas Snowman]

Very interesting video on the Wall Street Journal news show this morning from Joe B.

He says that the cold will remain entrenched the rest of the month and shows most of the U.S. below to well below average over the next 16 days.

He says that the cold will move towards the NE for a while, then come back down and center again in the Plains.

"@BigJoeBastardi - Arctic Air Blast From Canada Ready to Reload on.wsj.com/1jDJcZj "

http://live.wsj.com/video/arctic-air-blast-from-canada-ready-to-reload/EC6C963A-B468-403B-B7FA-1D9ADD4663C4.html

[Texas Snowman]

Given what Ntxw has been saying for several days now, I suspect we are heading towards a memorable Christmas time cold event. (Whether or not there is snow or ice, that remains to be seen).

Whether it will be as severe as 1989 and 1983 and/or as long lasting as 1983 was, well, those were historic events that occur very rarely.

Still, I think we may be in the neighborhood of such events a week or two from now.

And for what it's worth, I've still got nearly two inches of compacted sleet in my front yard - four full days and counting. Pretty good cold shot going here right now.

[GRAYSONCO.WX]

Btw don't sleep on this system this weekend. I suspect the models are playing havoc with it. You're talking multiple 5h vorticity merging and height falls in the southern plains. Someone could go from a rain to snow event somewhere if phasing occurs.

Are you talking about the Thursday night through Friday/Saturday system? I saw the NAM was showing borderline wintry precip temps as the precip moves in, around 84 hours out, for the Red River Counties. However, we know the NAM can be crazy that far out

[Texas Snowman]

Meanwhile, in Antartica earlier this year (August I believe):

"BradNitzWSB: NASA announced today coldest temp ever recorded on earth: -135.8° Fahrenheit (-93.2° Celsius). http://t.co/hKajPblajx"

[Texas Snowman]

PERFECT bike riding weather, don't you think?

[Ntxw]

Does anyone on here follow Ryan Maue on Twitter? He posted some monthly height anomalies but I have no idea how to interpret them. It shows positive height anomalies across most of the country. Does that mean higher pressures which means more cold?

It would mean the opposite (assuming he was plotting 500 mb height anomalies), higher heights correspond to higher mean column temperature (technically virtual temperature)

Actually this does not tell the whole story. Wxbell has received the Euro weeklies maps as Portastorm noted. If you look at the run entirely two things stick out from the ensemble members.

1. Dominant ridging persists over the Northeast Pacific signal.

2. Heights begins to rise over Canada/Eastern Canada later in the run which is consistent with lower heights over the US. That means blocking and a southern jet undercutting. Higher heights over the northern latitudes is not a warm signal down south in the winter months. Ridging would have to be in the southern US for that to be so.

So basically what the latest Euro weeklies show is a very cold period follow by a very stormy one

[BigB0882]

Great explanation, Ntxw. Thank you. I always enjoy reading your posts!

[ronyan]

I'm a lurker to this board and have been reading the last few pages about possible cold coming before Christmas. The correlation between the EPO and colder winters in recent years is interesting. How long have records for the AO/NAO and EPO been kept?

[Portastorm]

I'm a lurker to this board and have been reading the last few pages about possible cold coming before Christmas. The correlation between the EPO and colder winters in recent years is interesting. How long have records for the AO/NAO and EPO been kept?

Thanks for posting! To my knowledge, indices on the EPO, WPO, PNA, and NAO have been recorded since 1948.

[BigB0882]

Has anyone looked at the kind of winters we have had with -EPOs in the past, further than the few mentioned up thread? What were 1983 and 1989? What about other frigid winters? How many of those had -EPOs?

[Ntxw]

Has anyone looked at the kind of winters we have had with -EPOs in the past, further than the few mentioned up thread? What were 1983 and 1989? What about other frigid winters? How many of those had -EPOs?

1983, 1989 were mega -EPO's. 1983 was off the charts negative (for the great outbreak periods). 1989 was the second strongest negative, both occurred during a +AO. If you have been following my posts the -EPO tank years feature strong warm SST anomalies in the gulf of Alaska, of which this year we have beaten 1989 since 1950.

There is no EPO data going back to 1899 but SST reanalysis suggest the gulf of Alaska region had a warm pool likely stronger than that of 1989 which suggest a big -EPO was likely

[ravyrn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iehOvkO54g

Snow: Make it so.