What Can Turn This Winter Around?

As you all have probably noticed in the last two months, this winter has, to be quite honest, this winter has sucked for snow and cold lovers, and also for businesses that depend on the snow. This winter has been dominated by extremely warm temperatures for the entire CONUS, as illustrated above. I don't even want to look at how bad my winter forecast has been temperature wise, because I know it's been terrible, although many other have as well.

There are a few key reasons why this winter has been so warm. The stratosphere is largely responsible for the first one, because of nearly record cold temperatures throughout all levels of the stratosphere. However, this has changed recently, and has been slowly warming the last week or so. Another SSW is expected to occur around mid-month, as shown by the GFS and ECMWF:

(click to see animation)

The ultimate goal for this is to split the polar vortex, which would lead to a -AO, and ultimately ending this terrible pattern of warmth. However, I don't like the looks of what the MJO continues to do, which is constantly avoid any good phase for cold weather (1-2, & 8). Obviously it would be ideal to have the MJO in phase 8, but if not, I would like to see the MJO in the COD, to avoid as much interaction with the weather pattern as it has had recently.

Even without an SSW, it looks like there will be at least a temporary shift to cooler weather in the next week, as the AO and EPO finally start to tank. As I've mentioned before, the AO has been horrendous this year (near record high December) and finally looks to be shifting to primarily negative. The Alaskan Vortex also looks to be significantly weakened, and will allow ridging to build in Alaska, leading to a -EPO. This should allow cold air to start building in the Northern Plains and Great Lakes, but it will be a slow process. But any change is better than what the pattern has been like this year, and I fully believe the worst of this winter is over (it can't get much worse, can it?). After mid-January, I would expect the pattern to start to get colder and snowier. I think February could still end up below average, but not nearly as cold as I forecasted in my winter outlook.

My attention is also drawn to another cut-off system coming around the 12th. Cut-off lows are extremely difficult to model (and subsequently forecast), so not much can be taken verbatim more than 24-48 hours out. We've seen surprises from the frequent cut-offs this year (November 30th, and a lot of December storms), so anything can happen. However, without a good phase with the progressive northern stream branch, it appears unlikely to give anyone frozen precip. There have been a couple runs of the GFS that have looked decent, along with a couple other foreign model runs, but the overall consensus has been either a complete miss or a warm, rainy storm. Again, things could change very quickly as the northern stream wave gets sampled.

Again, the pattern is slowly changing. The key word is slowly, but it is changing nonetheless. Hopefully, a major storm or two can develop later this month or February, saving snow totals for the season.