*today Have a test for micro meteorology followed by a test in synoptic

I have been putting ChatGPT Astra through a pretty ridiculous test of building broadcast weather software for NCSU. This kind of thing would have probably taken me 2-5 years of full-time development trying to learn Direct3D. I built this in a weekend.

Playing around with some QGIS mapping. It’s a chilly evening out there… according to the 00z GFS initialization

I love how people are reposting something I tweeted in 2020. Maybe this is my sign to go back on Twitter

Today’s a good day to have committed to NC State. Elite 8! 🐺

My computer died, and I lost most of my programming files. So, I took that as an opportunity to download the updated ERA-5 data back to 1940. I think most of us along the East Coast would be satisfied to see a March 1960 repeat - because I'm a weenie.

Once again, I decided to have a little fun in Python 🐍 today & created some Dec-Jan-Feb-Mar CONUS surface temp & 500mb height anomaly probability + mean composites for El Niños since 1855 using NOAA's 20th Century Reanalysis! Unlike the previous set of composites I showed in early October, these composites include more El Niño events (53 in total). Also, weights have been applied to account for El Niño strength (1x - moderate, 2x - strong-"Super"), a negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation (-PDO), Positive Indian Ocean Dipole (+IOD), Positive Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (+AMO, or a warm Atlantic), and appearance of a negative North Atlantic Oscillation (-NAO) in December As you can imagine, these new composites are more favorable looking for snow lovers over the Eastern US ☃️❄️

I've been experimenting with creating various ERA5 climatologies recently. To make sure the results look as expected, I plotted the daily change in average 2m temperature, nicely showing the contrast between land & water, as well as the change in seasons and monsoon/ITCZ:

Decided to have a little fun in Python 🐍 today & created some Dec-Jan-Feb-Mar surface temp & 500mb height anomaly probability + mean composites for moderate-strong or east-based El Niños since 1870! To provide a more apples-apples comparison for the near-150 years worth of El Niño events & account for climate change, I created a 30-year sliding base period in NOAA 20th Century Reanalysis Version 3 that lags significantly behind each year. This is typically how today's climate anomalies are perceived & forecasted (relative to the most recent 30-year climate period (e.g. 1991-2020)). #climate #ElNino

I finally found enough time today to analyze this past Christmas's cold wave in North Carolina. Widespread sub zero lows occurred in the mountains, w/ 0s & 10s in much of the piedmont + coastal plain Mt Mitchell was the cold spot, getting down to -21°F 🥶 #ncwx #wncwx #scwx

Here is the other Blizzard of '78 across the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes.

Okay, I just downloaded the Euro Runs for December 2010. Let's see what kind of analysis I come up with. Here's a run from 6 days out.

On the topic of ECMWF datasets, I discovered the CERA-20C, which goes back to 1901, and seems to be more reliable than ERA20C. I plotted the March 1927 Snowstorm. @webberweather you may appreciate this

A lot of weenies don't wanna hear this, but next week's pattern doesn't support big snow on the coast Nice deep trough over the OH Valley & -NAO yes, but there's no trough near Atlantic Canada & the ridge off the West Coast is too far west >> Interior NE US & Great Lakes favored