Cobalt

As this winter has transitioned to a variable pre-cicada Spring, one thing stands out about the past several winters. Sure, the last AN winter for IAD and DCA was just 2 winters ago, but as a whole the past few years have been filled with futility, at least for the metro areas. In fact, with a meager 34.1" of snow during the past five winters, DCA is currently experiencing its least snowy 5 year stretch on record. While that record stands out, the theme of a string of non-snowy winters is not a new thing. The 5+ consecutive snowy winters of the 60s are a distant memory at this point, and the divide between snowy and snowless becomes more defined with each of these "cycles". However, is there anything from previous snowless stretches that resonate with what's going on right now? That's what this thread is for. While I do not have a recollection of the past two stretches of famine, I'll be mentioning them here, and other people can chip in with their memories of those timeframes. Here I define the periods as being roughly 6 years, so if that still rings true for us, we'll be revisiting this thread in 2022 (and a 2 year Nina would back this idea up I suppose). '97-'02 One Super Nino (97-98) Two Neutrals (96-97, 01-02) One Weak Nina (2000-01) One Moderate Nina (1998-99) One Strong Nina (99-00) Airport Snowfalls: DCA - 44.4" (7.4"/yr) IAD - 82.6" (13.7"/yr) BWI - 70.8" (11.8"/yr) From a first glance, this stretch seems somewhat comparable to what we've been dealing with recently in the DC metro area, but it is also notable to mention that the least snowiest winter for two of three airports (DCA, BWI) happened during the only Nino in this period. The idea of a strong Nino affecting the PAC base state has been floated around recently, so perhaps any residual effects stem from that short-lived Nino, but coming off of the tails of the snowy 95-96 winter (which also happened to be a Nina), this is an interesting period of study. I know the stories of the two week stretches in both March '99 and Jan '00 still are spoken about today, but are there any other timeframes which are of similar importance? '04-'09 Two Weak Ninos (04-05, 06-07) One Neutral (03-04) Two Weak Ninas (05-06, 08-09) One Strong Nina (07-08) Airport Snowfalls: DCA - 60.4" (10.0"/yr) IAD - 77.7" (13.0"/yr) BWI - 84.5" (14.4"/yr) This stretch of winters were the most interesting to me, as every winter outside of 07-08 seemed to have their own quirks. Feb 07 and Jan 09 also stand out with some anomalous cold, and the somewhat uniform distribution of snowfall among the three airports seems to make this the least "snow droughty" period of the three. However, despite this, not a single winter produced AN snowfall at the three main airports, and instead modest snowfalls dominated the timeframe. I'd love to hear some of your guys' memories from those events for sure. '17-'21 Two Weak Ninos (18-19, 19-20) Two Weak Ninas (16-17, 17-18) One Moderate Nina (20-21) Airport Snowfalls: DCA - 34.1" (6.8"/yr) IAD - 60.6" (12.1/yr) BWI - 49.9" (9.9/yr) Unlike the other two periods, I actually have a recollection of what happened during these past five winters, so it was interesting to compare/contrast it to those two prior stretches. 18-19 clearly sticks out as a sore thumb for DCA and IAD, followed by 19-20's impressive futility. While DCA has only had one warning level (5"+) snowfall during this timeframe, BWI has had two, and IAD has had four, which shows how prevalent the gradient has been. I mean, this winter could be seen as a breaking point in the futility stretch for many of the areas that benefit from being in the north or western parts of our subforum. For me, the few things that stand out for me mainly happened from Jan 17-18 through 18-19, as I also found out from the Extreme Run thread that the two week period from late Dec 2017 to early Jan of 2018 was DCA's coldest two week stretch since Jan 1994, which is surprising considering how little it's mentioned. Jan '19 also comes to mind, but other than that, the snow drought has lived on in the general metro areas. This is coming off one of our more prolific "feast" stretches, which includes IAD's snowiest three year stretch, so it is only fitting that the past five years would set a record for futility. I would not be surprised to update this thread next year, but it will also be interesting to see how we view this period given enough time. Now, I'd like to open this thread up to see what this subforum can remember from these three different periods. Which stretch of famine has been your favorite/least favorite? The most interesting thing to me is how evenly proportioned these famines have been. Heck, even the below average period before 95-96 was roughly 6-7 years. Perhaps it has to do with our return periods of Ninos, favorable patterns coinciding with winter, or both, but I thought I'd put this out here to open up some discussion. Let me know what you guys think!

It scored a fair bit too, such as latching onto the Feb 7th storm not going OTS. It mainly sucks that it has very limited visuals, like no 850s and no mixing indications (No soundings too I think), but yeah.

Mesos still trying to push mid 20s lows into most of the area Friday morning. Nothing special for this late in the year, but some chilly mornings before a pretty temperate stretch of weather coming up.

Not sure hearing those two words in the same sentence gives me the warm and fuzzies wrt snow chances. Or I guess in this case it would be the cold and snowies?

Aside from the elevation out near your way, I'm not too certain that 0.1-0.2" QPF falling at 35 degrees during midday March 19th would provide for anything other than mood flakes. I do find it somewhat interesting that the Euro takes most of the subforum into the mid/low 20s following that system for Friday night. A pretty chilly airmass for sure, but that warmup behind it should send us one step closer to tracking fantasy sunspots and SAI soon enough

What's your view on nuclear? If I might ask.

Yeah, EPS backs this up. At ~D10 it depicts the NAO spiking to positive, with a low pressure off of Alaska helping to circulate some warmer air into the US. Spring-like airmass for sure, which would be a good way to close the winter tracking period. Need to preserve as much of the 60s/70s before torchfest enters the picture.

That ULL in the NW US interacting with the big Denver system seems to enhance the amount of cold air on tap behind that storm, given that the two pieces of energy are interacting/phasing now (or at least trending to doing that sooner). Coupled with the east based NAO that is showing up on some guidance during that time, it should def be watched for the interior areas. Checking old snowfall records I had no clue that areas near mt PSU got ~6-8" on March 30, 2014. Nuts!

Better than being on the northern fringe I guess? Haven't seen PSU complaining about his spot in the event but I'm sure we'll get plenty of pics of the massive cicada drifts from him soon enough

An awful lot of weather chat in our political subforum today

Represents my luck heading out West to ski! I recall heading to Steamboat for Spring Break back in 2015 with temps in the 60s at the base.. and yeah that's about as bad as it can get. Since then we've been a lot less haphazard wrt when/where we plan those trips. Pre-covid last year was a pretty good time to head out, and at that time Jackson Hole had a pretty great base, but that mountain is cutthroat! Still one of my favorite experiences skiing out there for sure though.

I'm gonna be a state over skiing in Utah watching the event unfold just a state over.. the fringe will always be eternal

For us to get that, I'd imagine that we'd have to have a year with a winter first..

Also would make sense given the seasonal trend. Confluence wanting to linger has only helped us out one time this winter by my count with Feb 18, but in all the other cases it's just sent our long range dream storms into the suppression shredder. Unfun.

It was mentioned (don't remember by who) that this setup resembles how we scored late in the 2014/2015 seasons, but I'm not entirely sure I see that. Those had the waves riding on the heels of a PV lobe which acted as a suppressive mechanism (I think?), but with this setup as far as I can see it's just a stout HP that's departing as the storm makes its way over here, with a string of low pressures off of NE Canada slowing down the HP a bit (but not really acting as a bona fide 50/50 low). Still, an intriguing setup, and at the very least it's a novel tracking experience that shortens the offseason. For now we should enjoy the 70s this week I suppose

Perfect progression of temps! As much as we didn't like the outcome, the core of cold + blocking actually happening in winter with a gradual warmup entering Spring is a welcome sight. Hopefully no pesky neg NAO making its mark into April with a sudden jump to Summer as we've had in more than one recent winter.

^^ That radar imagery for the WAA portion is killer. Def has a spot near #1 for front end thump snows. Possibly only with competition from PDII (since Feb 5 wasted some precip on marginal temps and got more of a nudge from the pivot, etc). It's a shame that the pivot was essentially on top of the NW burbs of DC. Feb 5 stands out to me as possibly the only time in a HECS hybrid type event that we've had (so excluding Dec 09') where the pivot was basically perfect for DC. Maybe that's due to the system having less neg tilt?? Still, the CCB for '16 was something to behold as well. Good find.

Haha no worries. I'd imagine that will certainly be useful at some point, since a fair bit of images from that timeframe were taken down to conserve file space. For now I'm going to focus on pre-AmWX events, since most of our events following that are entirely intact. 09-10 and earlier are a completely different story.

Looking into the thread that MN Transplant linked is honestly incredibly sad. The death of that abundance of information during potentially the best wintry period of our natural lives (also one I happened to not remember due to age, how foolish!) adds insult to injury. I'm mainly revisiting this because of this winters' end, since the offseason feels like a good period of time to attempt to reconstruct information from winters' past. There does seem to be a period of archival from the Wayback Machine which shows what the page looked like just hours before onset of Feb 5 blizzard. In fact, the main link that connects us to that snapshot happens to also show the radar imagery. I find this incredibly ominous, tbh. It's completely frozen in time, which adds to the mysteriousness of the lost information, yet it still shows the onset of a once-in-a-lifetime stretch of snow. Past that, the Weather Forecasting and Discussion board hosts the most promise: http://web.archive.org/web/20100204094738/http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?showforum=15 Here, some of the threads actually do work. Even if the images appear to be dead (except for some), the content of these posts still does happen to exist. The most captivating one to me was @donsutherland1's analysis of similar ENSO and blocking periods. Others here might remember that well, but it is just purely fascinating to see the synoptic view of what was to come. That can be found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20100130093856/http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?showtopic=219983 Outside of that however.. things came up dry. Attempting to utilize the Wayback Machines' page saving feature fell just short. It was close, and in fact the only thing separating me from accessing some of the individual OBS threads was a few errors.. if I were more tech savvy I would've pushed further, but for now it's not viable. Perhaps a different tool can be utilized to revive those half-dead links. There's still some pages of interest to be found there. It's kind of comedic though, since the OBS threads from Feb 10-12 (based on a snapshot from Feb 12) exist. Yet, it seems like everything from Feb 5 to early Feb 10 is MIA. It's a real shame, but not much can be done. If anyone wants to explore the links to see if they can find anything interesting, it's posted above. Not expecting much out of it. The idea of trying to reconstruct it was started off by me as a 14 year old weenie, so obviously that excitement of reminiscing has calmed down just a bit. The archival on this board doesn't make sense either given that the file limit constrains everything, but perhaps it can be done elsewhere. Just goes to show that everything that can be found on the internet is permanent.. until it isn't.

^ another fun stat for the past 5 years is that Richmond has surpassed DCA for snowfall 4 out of 5 times. I believe they might've done the same in 10-11, 11-12, and even 12-13 too (I can't find the page to back that up but that's what I remember seeing). So that's seven out of the past eleven years where Richmond has outmatched DCA in snowfall. Some of that has to be attributed to bad luck, but the rest? I'm not too sure. So in short, we're a glorified Richmond climate with the caveat that we luck our way into a 20" snowfall every decade or so. Nice lol.

I remember Chuck posted a series of maps for winters following the 97-98 (and 72-73 I think?) Nino(s). We sort of pushed it aside because Chuck, but perhaps it could be argued that the wake of a Super Nino causes long term effects for our PAC wrt hostility? I need to find where he posted it, but they looked pretty similar to what we've been dealing with.

Substitute the bacon with pepperoni (or maybe have them both?) and you can count me in. Been eating well but the picture you just painted in my head might get me to break that temporarily lol. Also yes, not much drinking going on here. I've only ever had anything at special occasions, but I don't really have a taste for it yet. In terms of general drink-worthy occasions, I wonder which would come first.. a major DC sports title, me turning 21, or an area-wide HECS? Place your bets I guess, but only one of those is most nearly a certainty (I hope at least), but yeah, I can wait to drink. My family is full-on Portuguese so I can only safely say that I'd enjoy various wines anywho. Beer drinking doesn't exactly run in those genes.

0z Euro at least keeps things interesting for next weekend? Slightly better ridge to the west coupled with a slightly farther W trough. It's still an OTS miss but this run it was a 986 mb low 200-300 miles from where we'd want it. 12z had a ~1005mb lp 500+ miles offshore. Still substantially far out so it's at least of interest.