Good morning bloggers, Say what you will about the LRC, but I think I've found evidence that others believe in or use long-term, longwave patterns for long range forecasting. When I was in Lousiville Kentucky last week visiting family, WAVE-3 meteorologist John Belski
posted a 14 day forecast for the region they refer to as Kentuckianna (southern Indiana & Kentucky)
That got my attention, and started wondering on what is he basing this trend. Then low and behold, John lets it fly. "I think we'll still some cooler days ahead, as I believe the pattern is on a six week cycle." Wow! I've e-mailed John to see what if any long-term longwave pattern he is using. Hopefully he'll get back to me and I can share his thoughts with you. As for my thoughts on the LRC, which Scott has asked me about, I don't think you can deny the correlation between the occurence of long wave troughs over an "on-average" number of days. But here's what I've noticed. The surface reflection of these upper air patterns changes dramatically from Winter to Spring to Summer. For instance, and I'm keeping this simple on purpose,
Last year on March 22nd we had a strong low pressure area here and in Carroll Co. Missouri, there was a tornado warning. Last year's LRC was 42-45 days and we talked about a possible tornado outbreak here on May 5th, well the outbreak was in western Oklahoma and of course, Greensburg, KS. The long wave position was correct but this time the surface low was farther west and a little slower. We did, however, get heavy rain event out of that long-wave setup, just no severe weather. My point is, the LRC works for long-range forecasting; i.e. cold-ar outbreaks, heatwaves, wetter and drier periods or stormier periods, but just because it produced extreme weather one time doesn't mean it will happen in the same location with the same magnitude again. Well, there you have it.
Thanks for reading, have a great day,
Brett