TSG

Might be memory bias on my part but I think it was doing similarly weird things late Dec/early Jan when this past week's pattern was coming over the horizon. And we did get a couple massive mid-continent storms/cutters before the current cold

From my hobbiest perspective it seems like the heavy axis of precip continued to shift south after 9-10am until it was centered over NoVa more so than Central MD where a lot of guidance showed it midday. Why? No idea. I'd would love to have a pro met give us some details on what they think happened. It's still snowing in Charlottesville despite radar showing next to nothing down here. Fluffy dendrites too. Guidance had us partly cloudy by 10am when I went to bed last night. Wild.

What is going on with this storm?? Look at the returns from Richmond to Fredericksburg back over to Albemarle right now vs what the HRRR or 3k NAM are showing

and it's now been almost an hour of light to moderate parachutes. Only accumulating in cold spots and on top of the remaining snowpack but what a great surprise, it looked like we were too far south for anything more than midday flurries last night

WOW sudden burst of dendrites all the way down here in Cville. Was not expecting the back end to make it this far south at all! That has to be a good sign for you all near the metros.

Okay loins have been girded. Ready for the 00Z NAM and battle with the Hittite Empire, anything else?

Haven't measured at my place but reports around me are all in the 2.5-4" range. We had some light ZR around dawn as those last bands came through, should glacier up nicely tonight. We're running a few degrees below forecast down this way. Last night's short range guidance had central VA making it almost to 40F before the front arrives this afternoon. Seems like that's going to bust low. 30/25 with thick overcast in Hooville.

36/8 in Charlottesville

How do they handle ratios? 10:1? and is this showing snowfall or depth?

Book worthy if it actually happens

If we wake up to 8" of snow blowing around in single digit temps next Wednesday I might just explode

That heavy band crossing Albemarle right now is legit. Heaviest rain I've seen in a long time 1.65" as of a few mins ago. Could be closing in on 2" at this point

Because the human brain is hardwired for negativity and that's what you end up remembering more often than not. Shifts in the other direction happen too. Being positive takes work There's also inherent cold bias in the long range afaik Your best bet would be to stop paying attention to D7+ model output

Iowa to Southern Indiana in 5 runs? It'll be on the NC/VA border by tomorrow night

Okay but being able to enjoy outdoor activities is exactly what I'm talking about? short vs long term gains. 2-3 weeks of real cold to not worry about coming home with 10 ticks every time you go hiking for the next 12 months

Absolutely not, give me 2-3 weeks of frigid and no snow if it has to be that way. Ticks are out of control the past few years. We need some real cold to knock their numbers down

What is going on in Orange, VA? Why can't Cville get the peninsula of hope? 18z 3k NAM has this area under moderate/heavy sleet for 7-8 hrs Saturday.. I hope that's wrong

it's REAL funny to me how quiet the debs get once guidance start showing something positive. It only takes one bad cycle for them to return though, stay vigilant out there y'all!!!

Said it 2 years ago and I'll say it again: It blows my mind how many non science-minded folks we have shouting their useless opinions on this forum these days. Go to banter or even better, Twitter, if you want to masturbatorily tell everyone their analysis or forecast is wrong (while offering no real counterpoint or useful critique). It's so effing weird and it's gotten worse the last 10 years with the "spread" of the internet. I'm starting to believe social media was a mistake. And I share Bob's sentiment. There's some previously decent posters who have lost their marbles the last few years. We need a lot less "OMFG look at the GEFS #WinterCancelled" repeated ad nauseum every 6 hrs. Post's like Bob's latest used to be much more the norm. Not living or dying by the latest model runs, but taking days/weeks worth of output as a whole and drawing higher level conclusions until those features got into the medium range. Thank you @psuhoffman and @CAPE (and a few others) for being voices of reason in here when a lot of others have exited over the years. That being said, my ignore list got a bit longer this morning

oh come on PSU... we both know that was not a comparable setup. First, positively (Jan 3rd) vs negatively (Dec 11) tilted troughs. Second, the storm on the 11th had another piece of energy over the GL pressing that cold into the backside which gave us a couple hrs of changover, instead of the 0-15 mins we're used to with cold chasing precip. There is no such mechanism available for the storm on the 3rd, at least not as currently depicted.

Yeah, no, the onus is not on everyone else in the room to go look and see if you're claims are true. That's your job. Bring some evidence to the show or expect that you'll be ignored. the GFS looks pretty accurate to me for this period. What are you looking at? Dec 19th 12z GFS, valid 00z Dec 27 12z GFS today, valid 00z Dec 27

Not sure I understand the macro comment. Typo? meant micro? I am certainly on your side when it comes to it being more difficult for us to see snow now than in the past. I've been called out multiple times for supporting it. I don't think this specific case can be attributed to that much if at all though. The SW flow at the surface up to ~900mb starts on the 30th/31st when that shortwave is still exiting Canada, not when it digs into the South and starts coming East on the 1st/2nd. There is NOTHING to resist that flow. No sign of a high pressure to our North anywhere. This is such a classic way for us to fail it's making my head spin that people are acting like it would normally work 10+ years ago. There's a friggin GLL (Great Lakes Low).... what I learned to be our #1 enemy for snowfall around here. IMO this setup sucks and would still suck if it was in the distant past.. And if we weren't all so traumatized from years of low snow I think more would be calling it for what it is. If you do have a specific example of where this worked previously I'll happily eat crow, but thinking back on past seasons this just seems like a stinker of an opportunity top to bottom.

I think a lot of people are ignoring the 48 hrs leading up to that point. Sure we have subzero 850s, but that doesn't matter if we've had SW flow at the surface for 2.5 days. This is not a good setup for snow anywhere below high elevation. Would you really expect snow in Winchester on the 3rd looking at this setup on the 1st? I wouldn't.

I don't understand the doom and gloom over this setup on the 3rd. This just isn't a good look for MA snow and never was. There's no real cold in the East to work with yet, it's all behind the storm. We need it in front.

i'm going to disagree pretty strongly on this point. The boundary layer up to ~900mb is torched from 2.5 days of Southwest/South flow starting on the 31st. Yeah these kind of storms can bomb out and make up for less than ideal temps, but there's no real cold for the storm to pull down from the N/NW. The panel below says it all, >0C 850s all the way to Maine... 45-50F surface coming in at 20kts off the Atlantic over NJ/DE. That's just not a recipe for snow in the Mid-Altantic in my experience, bombing cyclone or not.