December 4-8 Potential Significant Winter Storm

As the image above shows, there will be a rather deep area of negative height anomalies over East Asia for November 28th, as exhibited by the dark blues in the top left of the left-hand panel. There is a knwon correlation that indicates storm systems or ridges of high pressure over East Asia can be reciprocated in the United States 6-10 days after the event's occurrence in East Asia. As we see a stormy period begin in East Asia over November 28th, I would expect December 4-8 to be the timeframe for a winter storm in the US as a result of this East Asian correlation. There are already a couple of guesses put out by the ECMWF control run. The most recent forecast has an absolutely colossal trough emerging over the Plains, possibly of historical proportions:

This geopotential height anomaly forecast from the ECMWF ensemble control run has this massive trough really ramping up between December 4-5, before getting to its peak on the evening of December 5th. The sea level pressure forecast for this storm would put it below 980 millibars, meaning this potential storm system would have a MSLP value in the 970mb range. That is the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane, judging solely by MSLP values.

Please bear in mind that such a solution has a very slim chance of working out as it is shown. The reason is because it is still quite a ways away, but the East Asian correlation means that a storm system somewhere in the Plains (or East US, for that matter) is possible. To this magnitude? Probably not. But a storm system somewhere in the US? Very possible.

Just as a little eye candy, here's the snowfall forecast from that mega-storm forecast. USE WITH CAUTION!!

Andrew