KEEPING THE TRAIN ON THE TRACKS...
Ladies and gentlemen, the last few days have been nothing but madness and pure chaos on the weather models. Big changes from run to run and model to model. No discrimination, just wayward solutions across the board. To give you an idea of how bad it's been, these are the last 4 runs of GFS snowfall forecasts. These came out within 6 hours of one another.
The 0z GFS:
The 6Z GFS
The 12z GFS
The 18z GFS. In essence, my area went from feast to famine in a hurry. Easy come easy go...
Particularly amazing was the 6Z GFS last night painting 35 inches of snow in SC Minnesota...12 hours later the 18Z run less than an inch! The deterministic models are having monumental struggles defining and handling the energy stream coming off the Pacific. If data is initialized and plugged into the algorithms wrong, the whole model run goes off the rails. Gotta keep that train on the track!
So what do we know tonight? For one it appears the models are going to a solution next Tuesday which is less amplified and further south than earlier in the week. A little less phasing and digging reduces the intensity of the system which impacts moisture, intensity, track, and a few other key factors. More important to us forecasters, we are getting a general consensus that a wave of energy will generate a storm as it crosses the Midwest Tuesday. We're closer on a solution but we still have some important issues to resolve. The 0Z GFS is weaker with the wave and further south Tuesday evening.
The EURO is a bit more phased, stronger, slightly slower, and further north for the same time period.
As you will see, this makes a big difference in snow potential. The southern GFS has this for snow amounts.
The northern based EURO has this for snow totals.
Again, the models have the same general idea, they just have the snow band in entirely different areas. So we've made progress but are far close on the outcome of where snow falls and its impact on pre-holiday travel. I would tend to lean more EURO with the lack of cold air in place ahead of the system. Still plenty of time to get it resolved but I would not be surprised to see another curve ball before it's said and done.
So after the Tuesday system departs, it's well supported that the western trough digs and amplifies once again. That in turn builds a stout ridge over the central U.S. that will be in place until the end of the Thanksgiving week. That will lead to highs that are near to above average. Holiday travelers should be fine until rain returns at some time over the weekend. At this point no freezing precipitation is expected over my part of the Midwest. Here's the trough ridge couplet forecast Thanksgiving day that should make for an uneventful feast.
This mild period of weather Wednesday-Saturday night lines up well with phase 2 MJO expectations, which is what the cycle.will be in.The EPO is also positive, a good indicator of respectable temperatures.
