What Is An Ssw Event?

[Milhouse]

Hi all,

I'm not much of a contributor in winter but i do still look through the model output discussion, despite a fair bit of it being too technical for me. But one thing thats bugging me is not knowing what people mean when they refer to an 'SSW' or 'SSW event', usually used in relation to forecasting snow potential. Would anyone be able to tell me what it stands for, how to spot one in the models, the last time one occurred and any other info.

Thanks in advance.

[feb1991blizzard]

Hi all,

I'm not much of a contributor in winter but i do still look through the model output discussion, despite a fair bit of it being too technical for me. But one thing thats bugging me is not knowing what people mean when they refer to an 'SSW' or 'SSW event', usually used in relation to forecasting snow potential. Would anyone be able to tell me what it stands for, how to spot one in the models, the last time one occurred and any other info.

Thanks in advance.

Im a novice myself when it comes to this but it stands for Sudden stratospheric warming and it basically means the temperature in the stratosphere rises very sharply in a short space of time, people are refering to the polar regions in this forum because when it happens it can split or even shred the polar vortex causing height rises to the North of the UK which as you probably know is conducive to cold and snow, you cant really spot the actual warming itself on the normal model output but you can see the effects of one down the line but there are all manner of charts from all models specific to the profile of the stratosphere, the thread is here and the best posts to follow are from GP and chionomaniac although there are other knowledgeable people too.

http://forum.netweat...watch-20112012/

http://en.wikipedia....spheric_warming

Edited December 3, 2011 by feb1991blizzard

[Milhouse]

Thanks Feb 1991 for the explanation. At first i thought it referred to the wind direction but then thought differently as it wouldn't be in the slightest bit conducive to snow.

Edited December 3, 2011 by Milhouse