Winter 2012/2013 early look

Pretty good article relating to the upcoming Winter. Found it this morning. Would love to see it pan out.

Big, white, cold. whiskey drinking Winter ahead?

From everything I have been reading here and abroad, the upcoming winter basically hinges upon what our friend(s) the NAO/AO decides to do. With a weak EL Nino upon us (and considering how benign last year was), it’s probably a given that this winter will be stormier than last year, at least in our neck of the woods. But will there be a cold air supply? If our NAO doesn’t do a repeat of last year and flip to a strong positive signal, then yes, we’ll have plenty of cold air. And with more storms present, anywhere from the interior southeast, and the Southern Appalachians up the East Coast could have a memorable winter. If the NAO doesn’t cooperate, a wet, mild winter will probably be the result. Either way, this winter will certainly at the very least be more interesting than last year. The winter of 2011-12 was an anomaly, and will probably go down in the record books as one of the mildest and driest winters of this decade.

Grandpa Nasty wrote:Pretty good article relating to the upcoming Winter. Found it this morning. Would love to see it pan out.l]

Nice quote from the article:

Pastelok thinks the Southeast could actually get the worst of it this winter. He can envision flooding in the late fall followed by snow and ice this winter all the way down to the Gulf Coast. “Tallahassee could have some snow and ice issues this winter,” he forecasts.

The author likes 02/03 and 53/54 as analogs.

Grandpa Nasty wrote:Pretty good article relating to the upcoming Winter. Found it this morning. Would love to see it pan out.

Big, white, cold. whiskey drinking Winter ahead?

Thanks for sharing that article Nasty, it was an encouraging read!

The CFSv1 has been trying to develop a neutral/positive NAO for December the last 10-20 runs or so.

It has been suggesting normal temps for December for a while now. Not so much a raging positive NAO.. but just the loss of any high latitude blocking we see this fall.

One thing weak El Nino's are known for around here is really cold Febuary.

I noticed today that snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere was the lowest since 1968. Next week it will likely fall below 2 million square miles for the first time since records started being kept in 1966. 1968 was somewhat similar to this year with a late developing El Nino. But the summer wasn't epically hot like this summer has been. It did have a +NAO most of fall that went negative in November and stayed mostly negative until October. '68-'69 set snowfall records in several spots in both the East and West.

yeah jackson had its biggest snowfall on record back in 1968... 18 inches on ground march 21.

CFS1 continues to suggest Febuary is the coldest month of this coming winter in the eastern US. Its been very bullish with this for a couple of months now. NAO goes positive in November and December..then it trends back negative in January and deeply negative in Febuary.

Toot, ive heard the cfs1 will be replaced or eliminated totally. Do you have an idea what cfsv2 shows? Another thing we need to focus on is the GOA vortex this winter. Its very important,esp the stronger it is. A friend of mine told me today that it will usually setup where the warmest pool of water is located,and we dont want to see it get too strong, ala last winter. I dont know how any model, especially this far out can predict the nao status. I suppose the more talented mets may can, but thats a rarity! The thing that concerns me is if the nao does turn positive in november, it may not turn negative once it changes. It would be nice to see it stay negative through january and then take my chances.

Mrgolf wrote:I dont know how any model, especially this far out can predict the nao status. I suppose the more talented mets may can, but thats a rarity!

The CFSv1 predicted last winter's NAO pretty acurately about this time last year. It predicted a pos NAO for pretty much the whole winter..and that's basically what we got!! Again..there is no human that can predict the NAO with any skill involved past two weeks ..lol

The NAO has finally went positive.


I have a good feeling that it will stick around in positive territory for a while. Its not been this positive since last winter. IMO this is a pretty good sign that we wont have a raging positive NAO this winter

Toot, dont get so excited quite yet until there is a pattern of the nao remaining positive, b/c the other day u said the nao was going negative again. If i was u, i would post the euro charts and supporting ensembles and see what they are trending with the nao. I would like to see the nao go positive now if we could see it stay neg thru most,if not all winter. Also, i want to add that i got my scenarios out of whack when i said the GOA low likes to plant itself on the COLDEST SST's, not the WARMEST.

Mrgolf wrote:Toot, dont get so excited quite yet until there is a pattern of the nao remaining positive, b/c the other day u said the nao was going negative again. If i was u, i would post the euro charts and supporting ensembles and see what they are trending with the nao. I would like to see the nao go positive now if we could see it stay neg thru most,if not all winter. Also, i want to add that i got my scenarios out of whack when i said the GOA low likes to plant itself on the COLDEST SST's, not the WARMEST.

Im always excited this time of year!! Im not really excited over anything to do with the NAO at this point though. Its just too early in the season to be excited about the current state of the NAO! I was just stating my thoughts above on the probabilities of the NAO being mainly positive over the next couple of months.

It does look like the NAO will go negative in a few days which will likely send a strong cold front our way next weekend!! That said.. it is my opinion that the NAO will likely be in more of a consistently positive formation over the next couple of months.

That's not to say there wont be brief bouts of negative values during this mainly positive phase though. This is just my opinion based on climatalogical tendencies of the North Atlantic Oscillation to be mainly positive during fall after a deeply negative NAO during summer.

Ive been scrutinizing historical NAO data for the last couple of months and have seen many interesting trends. I think there is much to be gained in the study of historical NAO data and sooner or later.. I think we might be able to predict the NAO further than two weeks out!! This will be due to recognizing related trends in the text data.

That would be be great if that can happen toot! Like i mentioned the other day, im afraid once the nao trends positive, it may not go back negative when we want to see it, which is obviously winter. I am wondering whats the main thing that mets and forecasters look at to tell what may trigger the ao and nao to be more neg and or pos during winter. I guess everyone would like to know that. It wasnt negative at all last winter. Toot, do u have any idea why it never switched over?

Mrgolf wrote: I am wondering whats the main thing that mets and forecasters look at to tell what may trigger the ao and nao to be more neg and or pos during winter. I guess everyone would like to know that. It wasnt negative at all last winter. Toot, do u have any idea why it never switched over?

Yeah..the polar vortex become too strong and basically stayed strong all winter. A strong Polar Vortex tends to be more concentated near the pole and circular in shape... it will generally keep the cold air bottled up near the polar regions.


A strong PV similar to the one above will not allow higher heights to build into the higher latitudes because the PV is dominating the region with lower heights which is where the NAO and AO regions are located. If you cant build heights into the NAO/AO regions you cant have a negative NAO/AO

A weaker Polar Vortex will become less concentrated near the polar regions and will become elongated and may even split into several smaller vorticies. These smaller vorticies tend to move away from the higher latitude regions and this allows higher pressures and higher heights to settle in near the polar and arctic regions.

As higher pressures and heights take hold near the Arctic and polar regions.. lower pressures/lower heights and Arctic air are transported southward via the smaller vorticies.

This is how the NAO/AO and the PV are related to each other. During Autumn/Fall I monitor the PV's behavior trends because it tends to behave somewhat similar during winter as it did in Fall.

Fun factoid of the day

In June..July and August of 2011 the NAO was negative. The NAO went positive in September then briefly negative in October before returning to positive for pretty much the whole winter.

This year the NAO was negative in June..July and August. Its now September and the NAO has went positive just like last year.

Of course.. one cant really draw any conclusions from this..but it is interesting to see the NAO behaving very similar to last year!

Toot, that is interesting if it actually materializes like that! Could u post the euro model to see if the nao is indeed going positive? I believe the euro over any other model. I always have. I guess im rooting for the nao to go back to negative? So toot, if we end up having a cental or modoki based elnino or perhaps even west based, what would that mean for us during late fall and winter? Would that have any effect on the nao and ao? Ive heard differing opinions. We had blocking last winter with the SSW event that happened, but the cold air that developed, went overseas instead of down here. Thats the most interesting part of last winter IMO.

The NAO is already slightly positive (some people call slightly positive or slightly negative a neutral NAO)...here is the 0z euros forecast for the NAO index as the 12z didnt update for some reason



As far as the Nino goes..a weak one favors a negative NAO but it dont always work out. That said..a majority of the coldest winters here in TN were weak El Ninos. Im not really sure what hour and graphic you are wanting to see regarding the euro?

i really like what i see on this up coming winter... west based weak el nino looks likely to me... that will favor about 90 percent of time a neg nao, should see some good blocking over alaska this year... storm track should ride from the sw. towards the gulf coast and turn up the apps... that would be a perfect tack for us snow lovers in midsouth... for what i have been studying n reading, that track looks very plausable.

Toot, the cpc has upgraded elnino to 0.9 fwiw in the central 3.4 range. Also, they are still declaring it a modoki type elnino. I guess just like most on here, im pulling for more blocking in the main regions to bring down the cold air a little more often

ok, since i don’t understand of of the stuff here means. but i think i get some of it. and that is, that the winter is still some what up in the air as to being like last year or being nice and cold and snowy?...

i’m crossing my fingers for a really nice cold and snowy winter. maybe kinda like ’10’11. i love the cold and snow more than anything.

Yep...its still up in the air Zach. Us winter wx nerds like to think we have it figured out though! Sometimes we get a clear signal about what the winter will be like..but its still pretty foggy right now!

John1122 wrote:http://firsthandweather.com/blog/all-posts/firsthand-weathers-20122013-preliminary-winter-forecast#more-13094

Interesting read. Like father like son it looks like. That would be one helluva cold winter for this area.

FWIW CFSV1 Has came back to a colder than average winter with January and Febuary REALLY cold! It pretty much says that summer weather is all but over and October and November below normal tempwise...with alot action in October.