October 14, 2024
Updated October 15,2024
First Major Storm of New Pattern
Our first good snow of the season will hit Thursday and Friday for Utah and Colorado. This year is a little later than last year, Oct 12, but not as late as the year before. That record setting years first snowfall in ’22 was October 24th. In 21 it was Oct 12 and ’20 was October 25th. Finally, ’19 was October 10th to round out the last five years.
Surface, Hemisphere, and North America 500 mb charts, click to enlarge
First Long-Range Predictions
I have been diving into the new cycling pattern, for the last month, and am ready to try my luck with the new cycle length. Last year’s length was 45-days that generally oscillated between 43 and 47 days.
I am going to put out our first long-range forecast for the next 4 weeks. Of course, I am probably wrong on the Cycle length, it has never been correctly discovered this early, but I think I have it down, at least harmonically.
What are harmonics? When you think about a wave pattern, like the wave pattern to the left, a harmonic would be a similar pattern that is part of the bigger pattern.
When we talk about waves, or contours, as they are called on the 500 millibar chart, the pattern they form, whether straight (zonal flow), curving up (ridge), or curving down (trough) the pattern that they follow across the globe is a wave pattern.
Check out this next two charts. The first chart has a ridge-trough-ridge-trough pattern, and the next chart is similar. One chart has a tight pattern and the other is wider.
These two charts are 20 days apart and could be a third harmonic if it were a 60-day pattern. A half harmonic if it were a 40-day pattern. When you get the harmonic length, such as 20 days in this example, there would be a similar pattern at 10 days. Let’s say that you think the cycle length is 50 days, when in reality it is 60 days, but you get the harmonic length correct. Storms will line up with your length, but will be just a little off, because the length is slightly off. With that scenario you would likely be able to predict with an accuracy around 75%.
This is not a great example but look at the following two charts. The first chart represents a cycle length of 35 days and has completed 3 cycles. The second chart represents 55 days and has completed two cycles. The colors on the chart represent certain types of data. The shorter cycle length chart has much more agreement than the longer length chart. There are several things that align on each chart, but you would be much more accurate by predicting based on the other first chart.
This is a long-winded explanation that basically says if I don’t have the correct cycle length, then I’m close–at least, I hope.
GFS thru October 30th
The GFS is pretty good about 7 days out and then it falls off pretty quickly. It has a storm for UT and CO for this Friday then possibly a weak storm the 26th and then a moderate storm for Monday the 28th. I’m going out 50 days.
LONG-RANGE TEST FORECAST +/- 2 days tolerance
October 29th, the GFS is correct, Utah and Colorado
November 2 and 4th (2 Waves), Utah and Colorado
November 8-9th, Utah and Colorado
November 13th, Pacific Northwest
November 17th, Utah and Colorado
November 22nd, Utah and Colorado
December 3rd, Utah and Colorado
Lets see what hits and what misses. If they all hit than I have the cycle length right. If I miss some, then the harmonic is off. If I miss a lot, its back to the drawing board.
From Monday
Hurricane Charts and the Power of the LRC
Verified Hits in Blue, the chart below was published to my X page @holmmike on June 10, 2024. The preliminary chart was published on FutureSnow.co on April 19, 2024. You can find it here https://futuresnow.co/fire-at-timberline-lodge/
Another successful year in hurricane prediction. Six storms predicted with three storms hitting the Trifecta of date, location and path. Corpus Christi, Florida West Coast (2) and our first predicted Typhoon all hitting the correct location within the +/- 5 days of the predicted date.
We hit the bullseye on Typhoon Krathon, date location and path and Hurricane Debby, also date, location and path. Hurricane Beryl we hit the location and path but was late, still within tolerance July 7th. Hurricane Francine, we predicted the correct date but missed the landfall location. We expected this to hit the Florida panhandle but instead missed by about 500 miles hitting Louisiana.
Thank you for reading the blog and as always if you have any questions, please email me at Mike@FutureSnow.co. We have received many great questions, and it is a pleasure to answer them, so don’t hesitate to ask.
