Another swing and a miss?

Before I get into the woods....here is the system precipitation that impacted some of the area with rain and snow on the 14th.  At least it was something.

Another strong storm will impact the southern High Plains this holiday but largely miss the central and northern parts of the HP.  This sign is both discouraging but encouraging.  Why encouraging?  Because the atmosphere is capable of intensifying storms "nearby". 

Looking at this morning's upper air map

An intensifying and strong upper system over Wyoming was dropping south.  Unfortunately for much of the high plains of Kansas/Nebraska it will "dig" way too much to benefit much of our area.  It will, however, likely bring very heavy precipitation to west Texas (and some of the panhandle) into Oklahoma.  Some of this will be very heavy snowfall too.  This will be the 3rd or 4th time this fall that a system has behaved in this manner.  That "could" benefit the rest of us later this winter and into the spring.  More on this in later posts. 

The exact track and behavior of this system is still unknown, even though it's 24 hours away!  These types of developing and intensifying systems are just plain unpredictable in terms of location and specifics

Computer models will be ALL OVER THE PLACE!  This leads me into a topic that I have discussed numerous times.  Social Media is a platform that misinformation will be shared routinely.  Computer models struggle mightily.  Here is an example of a computer model solution generated on 11/15 and valid for this week (ending Saturday).

Look at those ridiculous snowfall amounts!  And the placement (WAY OFF).  Just 6 hours later when the same forecast model generated data for the same period, this is what it was showing.  

This type of behavior is not unusual.  The models forecasting many days out just can't be trusted.

In later posts I'll do late next week or the following week, I will dive into the outlook going into spring.  I'm starting to see signs that the first cycle of this year's pattern is about to be set.  I should know more in a couple of weeks or three.