Cobalt

Guidance being wayy too excited with precip hasn't helped either for sure. In some cases it hasn't been close. Most if not all guidance had 0.8-1" QPF with last Thursday's system from the DC metro up through your way, with a fair bit of it falling when the column should've been supportive of at least partly if not mostly snow (4-9am). Instead all that precip with the initial impulse of snow went north of us, and I'm not sure either of our areas got even half as much QPF as most guidance showed.

I remember the NAM showing a medium sized event for most of the area up until 6z the day of, where it showed something like 6-10" with a jackpot near DC. I glanced at it before heading to bed pretty skeptical, but it doubled down on 12z with a jackpot of like 12-18". Wasn't as insane as that, but still a super memorable storm. The unicorn pattern long range models had been pushing might've not set up shortly after that event, but that still was a pretty decent winter for most. Surprised to see that McLean got 5.5" during that February. Even more surprising given that so far this month I've tallied 6.2", which takes the crown of most snow in February since at least Feb 2015 here. Also 4th snowiest month since I started keeping track starting in March of 2015 which is.. kind of just sad lol.

Yeah, this. Our only shot at a clean event was wave 2 of the Feb 10-12 timeframe, and that one completely clipped us. Final maps for the year will be pretty telling. Payback for Jan 11-13 2019 maybe?

Incredible stuff. Gives me a few more ideas as to where I might move after my college years haha. Seems like that HRRR is somewhat optimistic of having a temporary flip back to snow for areas just NW of DC. 3k NAM has it in an incredibly isolated spot, but backend flakes would still be nice, even if non accumulating.

Wow, impressive! Must look like deep winter out there. You guys have been on a heater ever since Jan 31st. Like your own personal ending to 14'-'15 up there (minus the arctic cold :p). Not sure how much we got in McLean before an icy/rainy mix took it away, but I'll check with spotter reports later. 32F right now.

I recall you mentioned that it seems like this change suddenly became more prevalent after our Super Nino. This is a rather novice question, but would a strong Nina help change some of that PAC forcing? Or is that pattern just being more amplified by our current base state?

That's honestly the biggest fail of all. Since the late Jan 2019 cold outbreak the core of basically every arctic blast has been to the west of us, or nowhere at all. I'd imagine part of the cold busting this weekend is also because not many areas in and near DC retained any form of snow/sleet cover from the Thursday system. In any case, 35 degrees here in McLean. Still some patches of snow on the ground near shade, some of which have been around since Jan 31st. It's pretty rare to keep snow patches around like that for that long here, especially considering that we've had more days above 50 these past 3 weeks than nights below 20. Interesting stuff.

Doesn't help that NAM has the onset directly at 1PM. Compare the simulated radar for the NAM vs GFS, that 6 hour difference changes a lot.

Legit waterfall running alongside the house atm. If the hard refreeze kicks in quickly it'll probably get super slick real fast. Ground cover that's outside of the sun's view is still solid though. Sun angle for the win!

This honestly might be the most impressive DC'ing I've ever seen. A stat which features the company of not only 2010, but also 2003 and 1899 in the department of accumulating snowfall events, in February no less! Without much context that looks incredibly encouraging, but obviously fails to meet that mark lol. How would we have reacted if before this winter we were told that DC would have tallied more accumulating snow events in the month of February than 2010??

I unfortunately feel like we're heading into a grey area between both Spring and wintry threats for DC. Not getting invested in next week's threat, but at the same time the GFS has 0 days above 60 through the entire run. Ugh.

Precip maps show 0.5-0.8" of precip during that time. Based on essentially every single system we've had this past year, I'll take the under on half of that lol.

RGEM would probably work for Monday. Brings in precip way sooner so temps don't have a chance to rise during the day, while 850s are barely hanging on.

Check out the SST anomalies off the Atlantic. Not sure how long they've been torching, but offshore temp anomalies are among the warmest on the planet atm. Would that also contribute to some of our airmasses being rather terrible, or at least less than ideal? Would make some sense given the dynamics of the banding in the Dec 16-17 storm, as well as the fact that every arctic airmass that was progged to reach us essentially danced around us. Even if they'd contribute just a tiny bit, as you've mentioned, +1C or +2C can take everything away, especially if you're already factoring in somewhat less QPF in these setups.

It's not a good day for the GFS bros. Checked WxBell and all the Para GFS runs before 12z today were completely wiped. Hiding the evidence much???

I'm not the one who needs DCA to outsnow IAD But yeah, you're in an exceptional spot for one more small event. I was lucky with this sytem basically clipping Richmond, but my one time was used on this event. I'm drawing dead to just a few outs.

Seems like we're down to the Canadian being the only one to show a hit for the Monday event. Unless progression speeds up 6hrs, it would probably be a bad setup anywho. Canadian has it hitting directly at midday with temps above freezing. Fun fun.

2.5" - 12/16-17. Fun WAA that had 1.5"/hr rates which turned to sleet/freezing rain. Icebox after the storm. 0.3" - 1/25. 5.1" - 1/31-2/2. WAA bust with 36 hours of light snow from the costal that saved the event. 2.5" pt1, 2.6" pt2. 2.2" - 2/7. Slush bomb on Super Bowl Sunday. Several hours of SN+ with marginal temps halting daytime accumulations. 0.3" - 2/10. 0.2" Sleet - 2/13. 0.9" Sleet - 2/18. QPF/Mid levels bust. Rates of .3"/hr sleet over about two hours. 0.3" - 2/22. Season Total: 11.8" (beats 17-18 at the very least.)

If there's one thing we're really good at, it's 2-4" March slush bombs that melt by noon. Beautiful to look at but no need to shovel.

I think you were pretty realistic for the most part. Even with that 2-5", that came with the assumption that a good bit of that zone would get .8"-1" of QPF, which was what basically every model had as it's output. Even if it's all sleet, that narrowly hits the bottom part of the forecast. I had an old page from the storm thread still open from Tuesday, and checking back in it, you were pretty clear about the potential warm nose issues. Regardless, yeah now we know why the forecast played out the way we did. One of the things that might've calmed people's nerves was the airmass we had going into the event, but of course that's only considering surface temps. I think most expected our fail scenario to be either warmer 850s, or less precip, but the two coinciding was not a recipe for a fun time.

Short Pump fringed

0.9" of pure sleet here in McLean. The sandy nature of it is at least interesting. Don't remember Feb 2007 so this is just about the most sleet I've seen in any given event. Pretty paltry total, but we knew what kind of fire we were playing with in this given setup. Still, I'm glad peeps in the NW sections of this subforum cashed in pretty well. Especially the far western members so far this season. I know the past few Ninas have screwed you guys pretty bad (especially 17-18), so seeing multiple events break your guys' way is at least a positive.

I didn't think it could get any worse

How about if it gets better? I don't see any other meso doing this, but the HRRR is insistent on the best dynamics/rates being at the tail end of the thump. This would probably be a rather fun sounding..

Bad trip maybe?