Sorry, Rudolph. You're gonna need a muchmuch bigger nose!

The previous post re: What appeared to be a modification of the usual winter weather attack on BosWash (the Northeastern Corridor, NEC), that is, an Alberta Clipper headed south, enhanced and directed straight south by the Fermilab/Argonne axis, caught by Huntsville/Oak-Ridge and turned around up into and along the Appalachians packing extra moisture from the Southeast, ultimately dumped on the NEC.  The modification appeared to be the impossible kinking of the jetstream, evident on the CWRS Jetstream Map, on December 14 (see CRWS Jet Stream Map Menu), which looked like the eastern half of that kink, being pulled out of the warm waters off the Mid-Atlantic Coast by the Princeton Propulsion Lab, was being diverted over the NEC to dump a pile of snow that would endanger the NEC's infrastructure.  That's not gonna happen ... but that's not really good news for the NEC.

The subsequent jetstream path has, since the 14th, expanded enormously into what the Weather Channel (TWC) calls a "Record Breaking Pattern" (RBP) because there is NO precedent for what the jetstream is doing (there is, quoting, "nothing to compare it to") and, therefore, no computer model for what might happen as a consequence.  The TWC meteorologist spent some time explaining why they don't know what's going on with the respect to the enormous system pushing Pacific moisture over almost all of the West Coast.  Weak.  He then went on to the RBP which, shown by the animated map behind him, was taking a U-turn several hundred miles in width, veering northward into Canada, as far north as the northernmost Hudson Bay coast of Quebec (Map of Canada), and, then, turning straight west ... the RBP and the shuck/jive about how much meteorologists rely on computer models of past patterns should be heard as being TWC-speak for "We don't know WTF is going on, because this shit is just impossible."

Stepping into it (the shit, that is), the jetstream folded over on itself is the huge tail on the end of the equally historic rain-making system being supplied w/cold, wet air driven north from Alaska by Elmendorf AFB, then turned by a tight counter-clockwise system off the Vancouver coast, directed by the Pacific Northwest National Lab.  The super-severe-weather-geek of TWC, Dr. Greg Forbes, showed a satellite image of this confluence which looked exactly like what it was (and as of this moment, is), a paddle wheel propelling the stream of moisture off the Pacific onto the entire West Coast, carried by the jetstream blowing straight eastward, as of yesterday, the 16th, and enhanced by Area 51, pushing through as a width WC footprint (the entire West Coast), and predicted to drop 15 FEET of snow on parts of the Rockies.  TWC believes that wave after wave of similar systems a waiting their turn off the Pacific in a series of storms that will last through next Wednesday, the 23rd; meaning, if the weather bombers are able to keep this jetstream pattern in place, the NEC will be targeted for a series of snow emergencies w/multiple feet of snow through X-Eve and X-Day.

Today, the jetstream was bent south, apparently to mass the Pacific moisture and combine that with the significant rainfall pattern in the Southeast, as well as the continuing "lake effect" snowfall of the past week over Western NY.  The huge U-turn over Canada could become the 4th stream of moisture if the normal Coriolis Effect takes hold over Hudson Bay and turns the jetstream again, only in the southward portion of a great counter-clockwise pattern over the cold water of the Hudson, driving it into the same confluence of the eastward jetstream, another paddle wheel, with the moisture from the rainy system in the Southeast and that of the lake effect snow system.

If the weather bombers' aim and control are spot on, all 4 moisture-laden systems will converge on the NEC.  At that point, that ultra-wet-train-wreck is, a few days out, going to be rumbling straight into a collision with the big jetstream U-turn, called by the TWC, "a blocking pattern."  Blocking pattern for the east, widowmaker out of the west.  These are trix that were tried out successfully during the summer (see the previous weather-bomber posts), resulting in weeks of record heat, four direct hits by tornadoes (3 on NYC, 1 on Phillie), and a near miss by Earl.  The melting run-off from these veritable mountains of snow which will gush this spring into the Schoharie Reservoir, tenuously held back by the Gilboa Dam, that supplies NYC w/over half of its water, are going to majorly stress the NYC aqueduct system, back to front, just when it doesn't need a climate migraine (like the dump-out of snow at the Minneapolis Metrodome, only reallyreallyreallywayway bigger).  See the post "Pearl Harbor under the Hudson" for the way-too-wet=way-too-dry scenario.

Rudolph.  In that bag of goodies, duz Sandy Claus have any more bright red noses, the infrared heater w/super foglight beam models, for the rest of us?