Cobalt

Regardless of what falls, it looks like it'll be a precip bomb. This is a pretty juicy 1hr panel as depicted on the Euro Here's 850s at the end of that timeframe. Should be pretty interesting once mesos get into range.

That was definitely an exciting/volatile storm. There's two differences that stick out to me, with one being that the 850 low was a fair bit west compared to this storm IIRC. At the same time though, the HP wasn't departing as fast, and it was a pretty serviceable airmass given the time of year.

To me, this setup seems pretty reminiscent of 12/16/20, just displaced a bit to the south at the start. We scoffed at the unconventional track that guidance was showing (and I believe the low did track SE of where it was progged), but it became clear that the ULL being vaulted to the north would definitely scour any cold that was present, regardless of if the LP track was "typical" or not.

Already outdated information, appears to be 10:52am for me.

While we've been fixated on the day 4/5 threat, the following threat has began to make its way onto ensemble guidance. Looks like a viable setup to me Following that.. it looks like we go into the icebox. There is unanimous agreement among each ensemble suite, and the EPS stepped it up a notch with the 12z run. This mean is probably amplified due to the ensemble members holding onto snowpack, but it's.. quite the signal. For 12+ days out I don't think I've seen this sort of consensus before.

Wxbell is being really weird with revealing panels but it looks like 850s give way near 141, definitely a crusher before that though

That's a strong HP overtop at least.. I'd take my chances with a 1040hp as depicted by the GFS thru hr 100.

Definitely a NW lean on 6z compared to 0z.

For sure, kinda as if it replaced the GEFS for their respective 6z runs. Pretty acceptable lp mean given time to improve

Looks way more similar to Feb 2014

Pretty healthy CAD signature going into it, it certainly can't hurt that one of our coldest airmasses so far is coinciding with this event

Canadian ensembles agree with the OP. A bit south at the moment, but an impressive precip and snow mean to boot.

P18 is having a party.. that belongs in the digital snow thread.. its kinda absurd lol not for our area ofc but still the wildest output I've seen for a given ensemble member within 100hrs, needs no further discussion ig

GEFS has a better h5 look once again Precip mean is starting to show a legit signal for the event

I've done LP comparisons with the OP and Ensembles in the past, but I think it has more weight at this range compared to within 100hrs. There seems to be two camps with the 0z EPS: closer to the coast, and suppressed solutions. The Euro falls in camp two, with this overlay of the OP and Ensemble showcasing that There's a lot of visual clutter here, but the large L represents the Operational run, put on top of the ensemble. It shows a 2 LP look but the most northeast one seems to be the correct position as this panel is mid transfer. This shows that the Euro op run is in the "suppressed" camp for sure. Here's the EPS run itself to clear up any confusion with respect to the OP This is actually a slight improvement from 12z. The spread is to be expected, but the mean is still showing a significant LP somewhere in the vicinity of offshore NC Finally, the look over top improved somewhat compared to 12z. The 50/50 signal shifted a tiny bit west, and the HP position and strength looks as solid as the EPS has shown so far

Canadian Ensembles build a signal for a favorable LP as well

The overall snow mean for that timeframe clearly highlights the window that we've been given

Pretty nice looking LP cluster this far out

Snow mean responds pretty positively to this, with some big hits mixed in. I was trying to find if there was any relation between the offshore D5 system and encouraging a more favorable track for our threat (in the circumstance where that D5 storm strengthened while also approaching 50/50 domain and acting as pseudo 50/50 low), but it's hard to view both LPs using the individual member WxBell maps so I gave up on that.

Pretty nice LP mean this far out. Would be more favorable if there wasn't a cluster suggesting the primary takes a route through northern IL, but there's also a (smaller) cluster suggesting the primary tracks through Kentucky. More to be desired but bears watching

Some rudimentary research, but here's what I could figure out. 2009-01-21 Tail end of a brutal cold pattern for most of the central and eastern US. 1-28 featured a snow to ice/rain event but the major storm (12-18"+) was confined to the interior NE. 2003-01-15 Southern slider with light accum for DC. 4-10" for SE Virginia. 1980-01-24 Couldn't find much other than a WSW event for North Carolina on the 30th. 1978-01-29 Follows a sizeable MA/NE storm on the 20th and predates the New England blizzard during Feb 5-7th (which we got scraps from). 1961-01-25 Follows a decent storm from the 18th-21st and predates a sizeable one from Feb 2nd-5th. DCA had a high of 18 and a low of 8 on the 25th, so a pretty frigid timeframe. 2004-01-20 Predates a pretty decent system on the 26th. Pretty broad range of 4"+ for most of the subforum. 2007-01-28 Couldn't find much until well after 2003-01-20 Same as previous analog 1996-01-03 Lol I wonder what happened here 2009-12-31 Not much other than a weak system on NYE Biggest takeaway for me is that just about all of these analogs occurred before a substantial system, even if that storm didn't target our general area. A lot were also coupled with brutal temperatures, so if there's any way to test if we can still get "true" cold, this would be the time.

#Nailedit

3.8" here as the final. 2.0" -> 3.6" in just an hour, that band did some serious work. Existing snowpack was replenished and then some. Awesome week of winter weather! Hoping that it's just the beginning