Death To The RRR!

It’s been a long “winter” with the same repetitive forecast and weather pattern week after week since the season began. That leads people like me to go seek out someone that’s willing to tell us something different. Now that the mainstream media talks about drought and the high pressure ridge on a daily basis, we’ve been on the hunt for deeper answers. Although BA at Opensnow.com has a very admirable record over the years, we were happy last season to discover Paul at the TahoeWeatherBlog.com, who did a fantastic job of forecasting the big wet pattern that closed out 2012.

So what is the RRR? It’s the new moniker for the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge. We can’t take credit for the name. It came from forecaster Daniel Swain at the California Weather Blog. If you thought BA put intensive detail into his forecasts, check out the CWB at WeatherWest.com. Swain’s latest post has a great discussion about how the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge is not your typical high pressure ridge we experience during a normal dry spell. The CWB site has posts going back to 2006, and it’s clear that Swain has the knowledge and credentials. The site’s not pretty, unless you love the default WordPress theme from 2012. (We’re happy to help you out Daniel if you want to become a part of Unofficial!)

The good news is that the models are coming together to offer some hope for February. Several models are in agreement showing that the ridge will push to the far north near the end of the month. That may allow a jet to undercut the ridge and bring us some storms. This is not quite the same as the ridge backing up and allowing a trough to bring cold air and an Alaskan low to send us a bunch of storms. Instead, this forecast would bring warmer storms in a zonal flow. The bad thing is that flow could be cut off very quickly.

BA at OpenSnow.com has a detailed discussion of the possibility of what that could look like. There’s still disagreement as to whether that weather happens around the 26th of January or more like the 2nd of February. This change is not showing up yet on this afternoon’s run of the GFS, which only sends a very small blob or snow in around next Friday,

For now, we’re going to stand by our previous forecast based on the teleconnections. Here’s the summary version:

MJO: Looks about the same, with the MJO becoming weakly active and heading to Phase 6 and 7 in the next 2 weeks. These are the dry phases. Things start to get wet in Phase 8 and get “good” in Phase 1, 2 and 3. In a normal year  it would take another week or more to shift to the wetter phases. We hope it keeps moving.

AO Index: Remains neutral, which is better than positive.

PNA Index: Heading negative in the next couple of weeks, which is where we want it. This is usually our best indicator for the potential for storms, if we get the associated moisture to show up.

Based on the teleconnections, I would not expect any significant change until the first week of February at the earliest. So enjoy some spring skiing & find a buddy to bring along for a free day of skiing if you have an adult pass.

We’re pretty sure that its’ time to accept the weather for what it is – let’s start the spring music series on the deck now! With the Ice Bar looking unlikely any time soon, it’s time to set up a BBQ at the Chalet, put out a bunch of sunning chairs and play some good music.