CMC, GFS, and EURO are completely different first few days of February. CMC wants to cut off, GFS wants to dig trough further east, and the EURO wants to dig it deep in the west. I’m not sure what EURO, and CMC ensembles show, but I do know that the GFS has some ensembles in favor of the operational EURO. Should the operational EURO, and few GFS ensembles transpire then we will have a pretty active pattern for severe weather setting up soon.
I saw somewhere that towards the end of the first week of February temps may drop again significantly. I guess this would be leading up to that.
There may be a conditional severe weather threat towards the beginning of February, but I'm not holding my breath too much for that until the synoptic setup gets more clear. However, after that, we are definitely going to plunge into winter again. The last 2/3rds of February are not going to be favorable for severe at all, and this may continue on into the beginning of March.. and potentially after. This Nina pattern may decay and die off extremely fast here over the coming weeks, and that could cause big questions marks about the spring pattern and it could lock us into another 2014-2015 type look.. especially since this western ridging pattern seems like it's beginning to become a semi-permanent climate feature..
Just saying, the PNA (western ridging) was quite positive during January and then March of 2011... 2014/2015 was driven by an anomalous warm pool in the NE Pacific that broke records. We don't have that...and we've been deeply in a La Nina driven pattern since October/November...I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Which was one of the main causes of the 2012-2015 severe weather lapse. If this does become permanent it could mean a decrease in overall severe weather patterns. This is definitely a good thing for the people in areas which are normally in the sights of severe storms, but pretty frustrating from the perspective of an aspiring storm chaser.
Admittedly, I did get a little knee-jerkish with my post the other night. I had a discussion with one of our former members (and this echoes Kory's thoughts above) who still lurks around and saw my post, and he pointed out to me that this is actually to be expected with La Nina winters and this is nothing unusual.. and that an above average season is something that may very well be in the works for us this year. Granted, I am a little jaded after the flopfests of 2012-2017, but we aren't dead in the water by any means.
It was a long shot, and I was pulling for it, but it was a long shot, and it’s not happening. The real pattern setting up doesn't look good for severe weather. We were below average for January, and February will likely be below average. Maybe March-May will be above average, but this pattern is stubborn, and I’m concerned rolltide is right about another 2014-2015.
I’ll have to look, but it seems that our March-May period isn’t that active when we have a very quite January followed by a very quite February. I could be wrong in some instances though. If I am, I wonder what years?
2003 is one that comes to mind that had zero tornadoes for January and 12 for February. That turned out to be an active April and prolific May. That is just one off the top of my head.
Most of Feb is probably going to come in pretty quiet. Huge North Pacific block and downstream pattern likely won't be favorable (have you seen the MJO is raging in unfavorable severe wx states). Background Nina state is still there though...
I have heard rumblings the MJO will flip to Phase 2 in early March which could open the gates for both some quenching rains for the SW/Plains and a more active pattern here. That will be something to watch..
Speaking of severe weather, today is the 10th Anniversary of the Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak that hit the Mid South.
Yeah. Ef4! Hit right here Jackson tn that evening. I was on top that one ... I’m ready for active spring. Think we will have one finally. Due to mjo movement . End February think we start see some west triughing finally. I have more on this later
At the time, a lot of people thought that's about as bad as it could get, and that April 3, 1974 was an anomaly we'd never see again in our lifetimes. And we all know how that worked out..
That's kind of how I felt about the April 14-16, 2011 outbreak...the sheer number of tornadoes, that event was crazy.
