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The All New 20/21 Weather Outlook Thread

 Poster: A snowHead
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Long way from the alps but probably of interest to many here. Potential tornado warning for the eastern Ireland and Wales! https://www.severe-weather.eu/outlooks-day1/weather-forecast-europe-aug19th2020-mk/
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It's going to be very tough out there, lot's of campers this time of year in SW Ireland, with hotels already near capacity.

Good summary vid here from Jo Farrow

https://www.netweather.tv/weather-forecasts/news/10426-storm-ellen-the-next-instalment-in-august-2020s-bizarre-weather-story
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GFS 06z getting carried away with the autumn theme in FI



Interesting that Storm Ellen broke the August records for low pressure (962mb) and wind speed (111kph)
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“The ENSO Outlook has moved to La Niña ALERT from La Niña WATCH. This means that although the El Niño–Southern Oscillation is currently neutral, the chance of La Niña forming in the coming months has increased to around 70%—roughly three times the normal likelihood.“

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/outlook/
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Little damp in Bischofstetten (near Melk)...

https://www.facebook.com/100000210293716/posts/3832656206751351/?extid=7UzcAKZtKPKYnUoR&d=n
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https://opensnow.com/news/post/did-anyone-accurately-predict-the-2019-20-winter-season

Taking a look at what the LRFs threw out for the 19/20 US season and what the stats threw back.


http://youtube.com/v/z5EQOpPaHhk
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Yes, that storm yesterday was pretty bad – several mudslides closed Zillertalstrasse, trapping a load of day trippers in the valley until they could be cleared, and two bridges have been taken out in Ötztal/Sölden which will take a while to replace. Roads were also closed for landslips in Kaunertal and Stubaital. Some videos here: https://www.tt.com/artikel/30748223/muren-hielten-einsatzkraefte-in-atem-hunderte-wanderer-waren-eingesperrt?slide-id=1

It also caught out a few hikers/climbers, some of whom were only dressed for the morning's hot weather, and made the rescue operations very difficult. Thankfully, no serious injuries. https://www.tt.com/artikel/30748421/mehrere-bergsteiger-in-tirol-von-unwetter-ueberrascht-schwierige-bergungsaktionen
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UKMO take on preciptation for the next week. Part of northern Italy indicating over 400mm totals.



CFS and GFS still showing a sharp rise in AAM for the first week or so of September, and the regular model output is now starting to hint at the jet stream moving back north again (instead of coming in from the west, and even digging SE into europe like this weekend).
Might get a brief cut off low over mainland europe but either way it should become a lot drier than it has been for the northern half of europe as azores high pressure builds and deflects storms NE.
Ex-hurriance activity in the atlantic may throw some spanners in.....but in general it's gonna be wet and windy (with some snow down to 2500m) until month end then much more pleasant, apart from the lack of snow, into the new month.
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Hurrah for azores high rolling eyes. This year we had a very wet and not very hot summer, but for winter... let's roll with Azore high which meant dry, warm winter for us...
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Wax up those skis!
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I dont believe I have seen a "SIG" - significant (higher than "High") in a weather warning before https://www.severe-weather.eu/outlooks-day1/weather-forecast-europe-aug29th2020-mk/ . Looks like some very unpleasant weather in store for the south side of the alps. Could also cause some disruption for the start of the Tour de France.
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https://www.estofex.org/cgi-bin/polygon/showforecast.cgi?text=yes&fcstfile=2020083006_202008282151_3_stormforecast.xml

“A level 3 was issued for the southern Alpine flanks and the northern Po Valley, roughly from Milano to Pordenone (Friuli) for potentially strong tornadoes, large hail, extreme rainfall, and damaging winds.

A level 2 was issued across North Italy, extreme southern Switzerland, western Slovenia, and South Austria for extreme rainfall, tornadoes, wind gusts and large hail.

A level 1 was issued across adjacent parts of the Alpine countries and the Northwest Balkans for very heavy rainfall, large hail and wind gusts and to a lesser extent for tornadoes.

A level 1 was issued for parts of Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland for wind gusts and large hail.

A level 1 was issued for far Southeast France and Corsica as well as Northeast Spain and the Balearic Islands for heavy rainfall and to a lesser extent for large hail and wind gusts.”

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Snowy Val Thorens this morning.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
A couple of the Swiss passes closed, Nufenen & Furka plus a covering elswhere https://www.wetteronline.de/wetterticker/schweiz-paesse-gesperrt-wegen-schnee-202008306746817 . Likely to be all gone again in a day or two.
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Autumn almost upon us now. The summit of Ben Nevis looks to drop to about freezing by the end of this week. Normal for this time of year but I guess that in itself is ‘unusual‘ these days.
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Big East/West split across Europe temperature wise this morning.

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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Lovely cool northerly this morning indeed making it feel like late autumn, but temps likely to head back to average soon and continue with the variable theme.
Background signal continues for azores high pressure to slowly become more influential over NW europe into mid month. Here's the ECM and GFS 8-10day 500mb height anomalies, note some shallow lows over France too.



Persistent differences between the 2 models on how deep any troughing into UK / europe will be (wed-thurs looks wet in UK). GFS as is often the case is the more progressive with deeper lows tracking more SE than ECM has been showing. Other models aren't any clearer. Thought this FI chart from GFS 00z was noteworthy (seems to be a lot of energy hovering to the north).... however unlikely to verify as such.



There is constant battle going on with reading background signals and the models reflect that uncertainty. In simple terms I think the default season long La Nina pattern (which is now heading towards moderate strength) means the models want to retrogress high pressure into the atlantic. But every month or so we get a shorter term (weeks long) MJO wave that moves against the default pattern, depending on the MJO phase and amplitude. Just like early august such a wave seems to be behind the projected move north in the jet stream over the near term, which should then ease up and revert back to the default once again.

Another promising factor this year is the -ve IOD (indian ocean dipole). Don't know much about it, but it's tied in with the ESNO state, and last years extreme +ve IOD was blamed for Austrailian bush fires and even the +NAO winter in europe.
QBO is still a mess, mixture of easterly and westerly strat winds above the equator, so hard to say if there will be any clear impact on our weather. But the lower down the easterly winds reach the better for northern blocking etc.
Long range models are a mix of La Nina style mid atlantic high (-NAO) and also a few showing westerly mild +NAO. At least it's different to last year where these long range forecasts were more convinced of a +NAO. But lot's of time / updates to come for these LRF's.
Solar min was 2019 and the first year of the new cycle is well corrleated with -AO, northern blocking (credit GWV's).

So the default La Nina atlantic ridge pattern is often a great set up for snow in the alps as it brings a cool and unsettled N-NW flow down it's eastern flank. We have had some amazing early snow in the last few years but the La Nina event during Nov 17 was my favourite. It was such a good early season that by the time the lifts started running in earnest I was exhausted Toofy Grin

29th Nov '17


15th Dec '17


So, it's all to play for.....good NAO bad NAO blah blah blah. Autumn is my favourite season and this one is starting with some promising signs.
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My first seasonal prediction for the NH this season:
https://longrangesnowcenter.net/2020/09/06/early-september-seasonal-2020-21-winter-preliminary-outlook/

Western & Central US and the Northern Alps to benefit from a Canadian Vortex/Aleutian High and +NAO driven weather outlook for the winter ahead from the preliminary look of factors (still got more to loom at in coming weeks...).

Not so great for the Southern Alps or Southern Europe in terms of snowfall, and a pretty mild and wet outlook for the UK.
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@Jellybeans1000, Forgive the rather pertinent question; How did your predictions pan out last season? If it's better than 60/40 I'll gratefully read through your future missives.
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@esaw1, not overly amazing (at least for the seasonal prediction, the long range outlooks do better) Northern Alps was alright IIRC, Southern Alps not so. But you live and you learn. It’s a work in progress, as forecasting always is.
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@Jellybeans1000, Thanks.
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Snow coming to the Rockies this week.

https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/2020-09-06-rockies-front-range-snowstorm-september-denver

Meanwhile California continues to burn. Sad
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Fresh snow at Big Sky, MT this morning


http://youtube.com/v/mPy_tLqoVrc&feature=youtu.be
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West coast of USA is burning up Crying or Very sad Brother just sent me a text that he is evacuating his place just SE of Portland. Fires burning all over CA, WA, OR. Not good.

https://twitter.com/jachristian/status/1303775642303913984?s=21
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La Nina is here
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Toadman wrote:
West coast of USA is burning up Crying or Very sad Brother just sent me a text that he is evacuating his place just SE of Portland. Fires burning all over CA, WA, OR. Not good.

https://twitter.com/jachristian/status/1303775642303913984?s=21


Jesus wept. That looks ominous Shocked
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A mid September heatwave coming to the UK and most of Europe next week, should see 30c in many parts. ECM 00z shows Mon-Wed at 8-12c above average.



Looking further out, high pressure remains in charge for northern Europe, with a low developing over Iberia. Some signs of the blocking getting far enough north (Scandi) to allow a colder unsettled undercut of low pressure into central Europe, but not much support yet.



Typical September weather I guess on the whole. And I read there are now 7 active tropical storms in the Atlantic, so the models will struggle to figure out what impact any of them may have with the weather here.
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Almost half a million evacuated in Oregon. Air quality is listed as hazardous. It's like a thick fog here in Central Oregon. I can't imagine what people with asthma are having to deal with.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/us/wildfires-live-updates.html

Authorities found seven bodies in Northern California on Thursday as firefighters battled multiple ravaging wildfires, raising the total number of victims in the state to 10.

At least five others have been killed in Washington state and Oregon this week amid a series of out of control wildfires.

[Previous story, published at 9:40 p.m. ET]

The deadly, fast-moving wildfires ravaging across multiple West Coast states on Thursday have forced about 500,000 people in Oregon to flee their homes, state officials said.

The Oregon Office of Emergency Management estimates that about half a million people — more than 10% of the state’s population, according to the Census Bureau — have been evacuated and “that number continues to grow.”
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You know it makes sense.
Stay safe @Toadman.


http://youtube.com/v/x_m9TUP_t_Y

Interesting piece by Jim Steenburgh on how downstream events in the Pacific are fuelling West Coast weather patterns.

https://wasatchweatherweenies.blogspot.com/2020/09/why-this-is-such-exceptional-event.html?m=1

Which echoes @polo’s point about tropical storms in the Atlantic creating uncertainty in Europe.
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We need rain. Badly! It's the only thing that will help slow the spread of these fires. I'm gutted by the stories of loss of life. I have co-workers who have space, that are taking families in who have lost everything but their lives. Homes, cars, businesses, livestock, etc. all gone. Crying or Very sad

The air here is so bad, even wearing an N95 mask or equivalent just doesn't help much. It looks like sunset here with a layer of fog, but it's mid-day. Everyone driving with headlights on.

Forecast wind directions will have the fires shifting back on themselves, which will help as those areas have already burned. But make things worse South of Portland, where it is driving the fires to smaller towns on the Western slopes of the Cascades.

My brother might not have any place to go back to after this weekend, along with thousands, if not tens of thousands of Oregonians.
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 Poster: A snowHead
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Meanwhile here’s some background on those Atlantic systems.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/11/tropical-storm-paulette-sally/
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@nozawaonsen, wow that Steenburgh guy sure can spin a story around random weather interactions, I really need to up my game.
Combination of La Nina and very warm Atlantic is fueling the active storm season, so as always around this time of year model reliability is poor, as there so many paths these storms can take and interact with the jet stream etc

Saw an interesting comment about the incredible amounts of energy in tropical storms.... "during its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs," says NASA. A standard bomb is a 1000tons of TNT, so 10million tons of energy per hurricane. Or as one poster on netweather tried to calculate (unverified) that would be 200 times the daily global electricity output.

Regarding SST's, normally there's a cold blob of water south of Greenland which helps to fire up the jet stream and lead to +NAO, but this year the whole Atlantic is warm, so maybe we'll see a weaker jet.
And surely the strat vortex can only be weaker than last year as well, which set several date records (for wind speed) in Jan and Fen '20. CFS is certainly predicting a weaker than average vortex for November, so that's another straw in the bag.

@Toadman, don't see much improvement until the end of the week....main 3 models below show the trough/ridge sliding east by fri/sat to hopefully cool things down and bring some showers.



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@polo, he’s a Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Utah and I find him interesting to listen to.
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It is interesting, and on a different level, don't mean to undermine anyone. I suppose the only difference for me is that I tend to read about predictions of the various interactions as opposed to descriptions of what happened, but it's all educational and relevant if you are into that. For instance, I've read all of jellybeans posts for the recent winter in the southern hemisphere and learned a bit more about how teleconnections can be interpreted.
And I often go on about the phasing of low pressure and how tiny differences can have a huge impact on weather in say the alps.....can't wait for the first few 'dawns' to show up, false or otherwise.

Also interesting in it's own right is how so many weather heads interpret, post, comment, blog, tweet.....many with different agendas, professional or enthusiast....it's a cultural rabbit hole that I'm happy to just scratch the surface of.

GEM Op in Fi shows a nice option for the east, low odds but hey, I really hope next week is the last time we see 30+ for the next 6-9 months

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@polo, too true! Always so many people to learn from!

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Looks like some actual weather is on the way....think CFS model was the first to hint at a breakdown on their 2-3 week charts for the last third of Sep, although I'm not seeing any longer term signs yet that this will be anything more than a temporary break in the general high pressure theme.

GEM 00z the most dramatic of the bunch. Mean ECM and GFS charts have the low further west, but either way all models suggest an autumnal breakdown next week for NW europe.



GFS 00z ensembles for Avoriaz show the chances of heavy rain approaching. The Op (black line) is a cold outlier, dropping the FL to 1200m, but on the flip side some members keep a 3000m+ level......I'd go with the mean of 2400m at that range for now.



Good article here explaining the link between strat vortex, QBO and ENSO states.
Interesting that La Nina can lead to milder than average winters.....but with a westerly QBO the chances of an SSW increase to 60-75%
https://www.severe-weather.eu/long-range-2/polar-vortex-formation-winter-2020-2021-fa/
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polo wrote:

@Toadman, don't see much improvement until the end of the week....main 3 models below show the trough/ridge sliding east by fri/sat to hopefully cool things down and bring some showers.





Finally getting some relief from the smoke and dry, humid conditions from Friday mid-morning into Friday evening with low pressure moving in.

Woke up to an AQI of 475. Sad Can't wait to breathe fresh air again.
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I know this is the weather forum, but if you want a gut wrenching read about surviving the belly of the beast, this will do it.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he-survived-an-oregon-wildfire-by-perching-on-a-rock-in-a-river-fending-off-embers-with-a-chair/ar-BB1997x6?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
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GFS 00z today forecasting over a meter of snow below 2000m next weekend in the NW....with the mean FL now dropping to 1600-2000m.


Good agreement from ECM and GFS 00z Op runs. This is the sort of La Nina type chart I hope we'll see occasionally during the winter, namely blocking reaching up from the mid atlantic into greenland (-NAO), another block over NW russia into Scandi and a deep trough in the middle bringing northerly flow to the alps.




However, the GEM shows how it can all still go wrong if the ex tropical feature in the atlantic doesn't reach (phase with) the main trough, you pull in a blob of high pressure from the azores.

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That shift of temperatures across the Alps around 25/26 September is looking even firmer this morning.

Here’s 00Z GFS for Chamonix

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