Scarlet Pimpernel

Hey, I've seen gnats around already on a few occasions! And it's almost time for the 'Nats to play as well!

Glad to hear that, Mappy! Good news indeed, and glad she's recovering...

Hey Bob...(and also indirectly to @Maestrobjwa)...you are pretty well spot-on here. Obviously, nobody can control the weather (at least not yet, haha!), but we can control how we react or what we make of it. For instance, I cannot stand extreme heat and humidity. Upper 90s to 100+ for days on end are just wilting to me. But I also know that's what you can expect here most summers at some point during JJA. It is what it is. Short of moving, can I do anything when we have a string of 95 for several days? Can I stop it from happening? Hell no. But you deal with it, and I know it's not something that goes on for 6 months. That's just an example. I love snow. Snowstorms. Cold. Always have. Though I'm kind of at the age now that "extreme" cold is not exactly something I'd care for (and we don't get much around here anyhow, haha!). Give me 25-30 for a high and heavy snow over 10 and dry cold any day. I also know that here, "good" winters are a bonus for the most part, as are big events (by big, I mean 12" or more, just to throw a number out). I'll echo you and say that sure, I get disappointed (even really ticked off at times!) when things don't go right in a given winter or if what looked to be a good snow event turns into nothing or we get rain instead. But not so much to rule my life, and I try to avoid dumping any frustration in here clogging up main discussion threads with negative comments about how we suck. I save that for the Panic Room or Banter...and usually, I'll be humorous about it. Honestly, I love the Panic Room and just making fun of the stuff in there, going along with it, or laughing at the situation when our snow chances suck. Best thing you can do, I think, to defray any disappointment. There's so much else in "real" life to worry about (and to be happy about too!) than a snow event or winter gone awry. This is the 19th winter I've been in this area. Not the longest compared to some, sure...but a decent amount of time. Through those years, there are on the order of 6 winters that I found truly memorable/interesting...as in winters that I'd love to see again or experience again: 2002-03, 2006-07, 2009-10, 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16. And of those, only 2002-03 and 2013-14 were consistently cold and "wintry" throughout, or "door to door" one might say. The others were mostly compressed into discrete time frames, and/or were back-loaded. Even the Most Holy of All Winters (2009-10), was really two distinct periods...one in mid-December, and a 12-day stretch from Jan. 30-Feb. 10. But damn, did we ever maximize those periods of good opportunity! That's how it is. Most of the other winters I've been here, little that was memorable, or maybe an event or so here and there. Not bad winters per se, just nothing that stood out (you could say "average"??). As for complete, utter duds...2001-02, 2011-12...and if this year does nothing more, it may top that list. I feel fortunate that I've experienced four 20"+ events since I've been here, in that 19 year time frame...add to that a couple of 12"+ ones, and several solid moderate events. Going by the "informal" definition of what people call a HECS, I've seen five of those.

...or "fuggedaboutit"!!!

Well, I only read what @Bob Chill mentioned about the 12Z GEFS ensembles, that they basically ran the gamut of possible outcomes with no consensus (good hits, rain, suppressed/nothing). So not overly surprising that a deterministic op run would now show us getting rain whereas before it was suppressed. So yeah, basically, the model saying "Who the F knows?" Can a model drop the F bomb??

Take care of yourself, Mappy...and your sister, however you can! I know it's not offering much, but from a distance know that people in here (myself included) are thinking of you and your sister, and hoping for the best. Give your little (or not so little, now!) girl a hug, and remember all that's good in life!

Spending a day at the beach??

Sounds like the Iowa Caucus results!!

Thanks. Oh, and BTW, I didn't see the mention about your sister being in an auto accident until looking back in here a bit more. So sorry to hear that, and hope all will be OK!

Totally cute!! And yeah, they don't stay little forever. Here's my daughter, from early Feb. 2007 (that really cold Feb!!), she was 3 at the time. Now she's a junior in high school!!

Yeah, #6 would be one of those that @Bob Chill would want to kick in the nads!! (Recalling his comment from weeks ago, when one day nearly all GEFS ensemble members had good or great snow over us, except for one!!!)

I'll give a loose definition of these here, others can expand on it as they see fit. Actually, I don't think there's any "technical" definition of these acronyms that are used, they're really just related to the scale of a snow event. So here goes... MECS: Major East Coast Snowstorm...usually refers to a solid moderate event that exceeds warning criteria. You can think of this as your standard 4-8" or 6-10" event (there's also "SECS", Significant East Coast Snowstorm, which is somewhat lesser than a MECS). Examples would be many of the events in 2013-14, March 2015, Jan. 30, 2010. HECS: Historical East Coast Snowstorm...sometimes referred to as a "KU" storm (Kocin-Uccellini, authors of the famed East Coast Snowstorms book). These are...well, historical in nature! Typically covering a wide region with major winter weather. In terms of amounts, I always considered anything more than a foot over a large area, but more typically pushing 20"+. You could get a HECS if there's blizzard conditions but not excessive snow here. Examples would be the "big 3" in 2009-10, PD-II, 1993 Storm of the Century, January 2016, January 1996. BECS: Humorously, this would be a Biblical East Coast Snowstorm. This is kind of mythical, and I suppose would mean getting a ton of snow, end of the world blizzard kind of deal! It's usually an exaggeration, like when one model is giving 30-40" over DC in one of its runs, that sort of thing! The rest of this winter? I certainly wouldn't be hoping for a HECS or BECS of course! But I don't think managing a decent MECS/SECS is totally out of the question sometime by mid-late March.

10 years ago today..."Snowmageddon" began (Feb. 5-6, 2010)!! Here's a photo from early morning on the 6th that I took:

Hell, that could almost be the ensemble forecast right before the 2016 blizzard!! But yeah, that is just...amazing!

Hahaha! Yeah, I thought I noticed a paucity of cute, furry creatures the other weekend when I was up in the Rockville area...

Ji? (Or a distant relative)

I guess that means cute, furry bunnies would be safe as well?

Ha! Kind of reminds me of that book "Eats Shoots and Leaves", depending on how you punctuate that it can have vastly different meanings!!

Funny, but in so many ways I miss living in northeast Ohio! No, we never got the big East Coast storm totals, or maybe something on the periphery from huge ones like March 1993. In my time here (going back to 2001), I've seen more snow from the big single storms than from any single synoptic scale event in Ohio. I swear I never witnessed a 20" storm until I lived here, and I've now experienced 4 of them (and a couple of others not far behind). But damn...even in a crap year you could pretty well count on 40" for the season in northeast Ohio, especially on the east side of Cleveland where I was (KCLE averages around 60, I think). And you could always count on some decent lake effect events after rain and a cold front went through. We'd get a good number of 4-8/6-12 kind of synoptic events, and it would generally stick around for awhile just simply because, well, it's a lot colder there climatologically than here! I won't even go into the Ohio Blizzard of 1978 (The "White Hurricane" as it was known), which...even though it didn't have a large amount of snow...is still the most severe and dangerous winter storm I've lived through. When I first moved here, it took me a couple or so years to realize the "average" snow was kind of meaningless, and that you get feast or famine in most years. That wasn't true in northeast Ohio, where the variance is far less! Now I totally understand what's what here. Get hammered, or get nothing, and all it takes is one damn big storm to exceed normal. In a way, I've actually learned to appreciate that!

Personally, I think the performers coming out dressed in Puritan-like outfits or something from the Victorian era would have been great! Like back in the day when they thought the waltz was scandalous because you had to *touch* (gasp!) your partner and hold them close. Fetch my fainting couch...and where are the smelling salts!! (I think it was Winston Churchill who said something like dancing is the vertical expression of the horizontal urge??). (Yes, that was all meant to be sarcastic!).

I can see it now...Reaper, Jr. "Hey Son, time to learn the family business. I take bitter, sad weenie souls and bring them peace when it doesn't snow. Here, you need some practice. Let's try someone easy for you first...hmmmm, let's see what you can do with Ji!" By the time he's grown up, imagine the kinds of gif images and other animation that might be available at that time!! Make sure he (or she!) is up on the hospitality side too, if your new fancy Panic Room suites are to keep going!!

You're right...it depends on whom you ask, and even where they live (their particular local climo., that sort of thing). And in general, I'd agree that one storm doth not a winter make, but in 2016 I personally would make an exception. Simply because...oh, my!!...what a storm! Like you, I certainly would have less than 10", probably far less, that season without the blizzard. I think we got a small snow to ice event in February sometime, but that was it. And the little clipper-like snow a couple of days before the blizzard when it was quite cold was neat. After the ridiculous +11.5 temperature departure for December 2015, damn near anything looked good! Last year was a mixed bag, and again depended on where you live I guess. Kinda average for the most part. The DC metro area got that one nice event in mid-January, there was some solid cold that month, and we got the neat event in February. At least there was cold around throughout the season. The disappointment really was how so many medium range models and ensembles kept trying to show a great pattern...that never really materialized (frustrating from an NWP perspective, for sure!). But that's more an expectation issue than the actual weather. This winter, even if we get one decent warning-level event, won't be even in the same zip code as last year...and I say that simply because there has been almost literally no cold air around here at all. A couple of crisp days, but we had damn near everything go wrong. Now if we get a PD-II or 2016 or some other HECS, I may change that view of this year a little! I've often said that 2006-07 was pretty darned good, in my book. No, we didn't get a lot of snow, in fact I think most areas were below normal? But after a warm December and first half of January that winter, things got going!! From mid-Jan through about early or mid-March, it was memorable for me...especially the very cold February! And we did get some snows as well as very trackable events. That winter, honestly, was one storm away from probably being on everyone's "good to very good" list (I'm talking about the Valentine's Day event, that ended up as sleet/ice around here). Move that storm track just a bit and we'd all have gotten an area-wide foot or so from it...though that's like me saying in hindsight about the 2016 World Series, "If Jason Kipnis' long fly ball in the bottom of the 9th of Game 7 was 2 feet to the left instead of just foul, he'd have had a walk-off Series winning HR, and Cleveland would be the champs that year!" (LOL!!). But even without that storm being a big hit, 2006-07 for some reason always stands out as one I remember in a good way.

So...you're guaranteeing another Storm of the Century then, here in a new century now!! You saw it here first (well, 2nd, JB beat you to the punch!!). (Saying this all in jest, by the way, as I'm sure you know!!)

Almost. But as I recall the wave/surface low in PD-II was not all that strong, it was by and large a huge overrunning event into very cold air. And there was much better blocking in place for the high. At any rate, as depicted here we hold on a remarkable amount of time to frozen/freezing, which is like PD-II in a way. I know it's ridiculous to detail a single run 2 weeks out there (but still fun, and all we got right now!).