Down But Not Out...

This has been one tough battle this winter. I was talking with my wife this morning about how disappointing the winter has been so far this year, especially with such an optimistic forecast going into it. But the stars just haven't lined up so far for us, and we're headed down the home stretch.  

All season long we've had storms that wanted to pull north and west, when the expected and normal Nino track was south of us. These tracks have led to many rain events and some near misses, but these type of systems rarely work out for us in Georgia. The Euro brings a low across central to north Georgia on Monday,  where the ideal track would be across the Gulf coast and up across the south georgia area. Most of the systems so far have been clippers riding northern branch of the jet stream southeast and then east.  So far, we haven't had a single system develop in the favored region of southern California/Mexico.  the map below shows the favored Nino storm tracks. Notice, most of ours have been somewhere around the green line, while out best winter storms follow the light blue line.  Looking at these tracks, it starts to become apparent to me that the speed of the flow shears these systems out and forces them further north and west. Given more time to develop, they would dig further south before turning east. The orange line is also a good line for us depending on the strength of the cold, but rarely do the lines above the green one bring us anything in the way of winter weather. 

---

​For the longest time we had wave after wave crashing into the west coast and overwhelming any block that tried to develop. Lately, we have developed some blocking, but the waves that eventually become our weather maker come over the top of the block, and not underneath. 

I think part of the problem is that the pattern has been SO progressive and fast flowing, nothing ever gets a chance to develop. Even the cold shots that looked so promising in the medium to long range, break down quickly and move on out to sea. Without a mechanism to lock in the cold and slow down the progression, we are going to be hard pressed to get a big winter system it appears.  It's looking more and more like we need a strong -NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) during winters that are strong Nino's, and a -NAO block is never a bad thing. 

​​There are signs that winter is not over and that it may persist into March, but as time goes on, our chances get smaller and smaller.  I still remain optimistic that we're going to catch a break as the Nino rapidly weakens and warming is still occurring in the stratosphere over the pole and the Euro and Canadian ensembles are still showing a return to winter.

I'm still not giving up yet on the Monday system, the potential is still there for a major winter event in the southeast, exactly where is to be determined... we may be down but I don't think we're out. ​