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NWS 2016 / 2017 Winter forecast!

Tin

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For those who really care...

For the past two weeks there has been strong evidence that mid to late November is going to be abnormally cold. The Polar Vortex is forecast to split in a way that is unusual (borderline historic) for this time of the year. We've seen this coming for a while now.


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Quite amazing the evidence has supported it for nearly a month with little change. Looks like just cold air though, correct?
 

yeggous

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dlague

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I am getting excited. Will be able to shut up all the people who though skiing before thanksgiving was overly optimistic!

Optimistic? 4-6 days of skiing if not more can be had before Thanksgiving. I think a few on this forum are at 3-4 days already. Sadly, I am at 1 and hopefully 2 this weekend.
 

yeggous

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I am getting excited. Will be able to shut up all the people who though skiing before thanksgiving was overly optimistic!

We're still talking about November here. What the mass media dubs the Polar Vortex is really the break-down of the vortex. The vortex typically keeps cold air locked in the arctic. When it breaks down and splits, cold air is able to split out to lower latitudes. Just don't expect this to bring below zero temperatures in November.
 

4aprice

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I am getting excited. Will be able to shut up all the people who though skiing before thanksgiving was overly optimistic!

JB has talked about this for a while this fall. About a 1 1/2 weeks ago he said 3 weeks warm then the bottom falls out. MJO prediction looks favorable too. Back in the fall of 2007 we got a cold snap that allowed a lot of places to open up before or at Thanksgiving including down here in the Pocono's where Camelback was open Thanksgiving weekend. I will be interested to see if we can get a repeat. Would make 2 times in just shy of a decade which is not bad.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ
 

yeggous

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Just saw this article, talking possibly several polar vortex outbreaks for us this year .
http://unofficialnetworks.com/2016/11/study-climate-change-east-coast

Yes, that is consistent with most studies to date. Records indicated that winter has been shrinking in duration at both ends, but the core of winter is not warming. There is evidence to suggest that snowfall may even be increasing, though a lack of a consistent snowfall record complicates this conclusion. All of this is consistent with a warming global climate, especially in the Arctic. The hypothesized connection is that a warmer Arctic Ocean is leading a less stable polar vortex. When the polar vortex splits you get rapid, dramatic warming in the Arctric and a cold air outbreak to mid-latitudes. New England is one of the favored locations of these outbreaks due to a coincidence of geography.
 

Tin

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Yes, that is consistent with most studies to date. Records indicated that winter has been shrinking in duration at both ends, but the core of winter is not warming. There is evidence to suggest that snowfall may even be increasing, though a lack of a consistent snowfall record complicates this conclusion. All of this is consistent with a warming global climate, especially in the Arctic. The hypothesized connection is that a warmer Arctic Ocean is leading a less stable polar vortex. When the polar vortex splits you get rapid, dramatic warming in the Arctric and a cold air outbreak to mid-latitudes. New England is one of the favored locations of these outbreaks due to a coincidence of geography.

Awesome info Yeggous.
 

Puck it

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I am so sick of the media buzz words. They make it sound like a polar vortex has never happened before. IT is called a f'in artic low with a high pressure ridge blocking it.
 

benski

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I am so sick of the media buzz words. They make it sound like a polar vortex has never happened before. IT is called a f'in artic low with a high pressure ridge blocking it.

Without the buzz word it would be commonly known as "that time it was really fucking cold for a month"
 

yeggous

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I am so sick of the media buzz words. They make it sound like a polar vortex has never happened before. IT is called a f'in artic low with a high pressure ridge blocking it.

It's true that the media has perverted the term polar vortex, but it is a real thing. It's not an arctic low. Those (a.k.a., polar lows) are essentially hurricanes where it is really cold. Thermodynamically there is practically no difference between a tropical hurricane / typhoon / cyclone, and and a polar low.

A polar vortex split differs from a typical cold air outbreak in its dynamics. The polar vortex has a deep coupling all the way up into the stratosphere. It should up very clearly on a potential vorticity map. Where the vortex become distorted due to wave disturbances around its periphery, this is your typical cold air outbreak while the center of the vortex remains centered in the arctic. What we're talking about is a vortex breakup / split where you end up with two (or sometimes more) distinct vortex centers which typically wander more equatorward over the continents. This vortex split is associated with a "sudden stratospheric warming".

For extra credit, the sudden stratosphere warming is caused by breaking a planetary-scale waves called Rossby waves. These waves are observable and forecastable well in advance due to their large scale. When we forecast a polar vortex split so far in advance, it is usually because we can see a large Rossby wave breaking event coming and know what comes next. The dynamics of Rossby wave are complicated "and will be left for the reader", but involve the rotational forces of the Earth.
 

dlague

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I find this interesting.

A polar low is a small-scale, short-lived atmospheric low pressure system (depression) that is found over the ocean areas poleward of the main polar front in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

A polar vortex is a large pocket of very cold air, typically the coldest air in the Northern Hemisphere, which sits over the polar region during the winter season.

1024px-Polarvortexwinter.jpg

I also find this interesting too!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-climate-change-extending-winter-study-finds/
 
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