Cobalt

ICON has 0.3"-0.5" QPF fall this weekend with temps in the low 20s.. awaiting surface panels to see if it's an icy mess or not.

FWIW

65:1!?? That's kind of insane.

18z continued the trend of a weaker wave 1 for a more consolidated wave 2. Not able to post pics right this instant but (speaking for DC), wave 1 dropped .2” less, but the costal dropped .1-.2” more through hr 90. Seems like the storm is beginning to appear more consolidated on the models. .

Hey, at least in this addictive hobby, you're safe with sharing that you spend multiple hours a day looking at models on your computer screen. Well, some people here boast about both types of models, but that's a different story

Check out the h500 heights for that on the GFS/GEFS compared to the Euro/EPS. Those are wildly different solutions with significant effects downstream lol. This seems eerily similar to what exactly happened for the midweek event back on Friday/Saturday when that system was a similar range out. The SE ridge definitely looks like it'll end up being much weaker than it was depicted at that range, so we'll see if this system does the same. I recall PSU mentioning it as a bias at 5-8 days out, but this seems somewhat different with the TPV causing the changes in how strong the ridge is.

That actually just seems to be from wave 1. A decent slug of precip/snow falls (at least according to the GFS/Euro) after 0z Friday, and that runs up until 7pm Thursday.

ICON and GFS look just a tad different at hr 120 lol. Surprised it stays mostly ice with a track like that, I guess it shows the strength of the CAD we're dealing with.

Ptype panels arent out yet on TT, but it looks like it's NW compared to 12z. Gets the immediate area into some precip at 84 but the run ends right there. Comparing hr 84 to 78 on 12z shows how the axis has shifted NW.

RGEM looks better for the 2nd wave FWIW. Seems like that's been the most notable thing from the 18z suite so far.

ICON follows this idea. Overall .2-.4" from wave 2 compared to maybe like .1-.2" for the general DC area from 12z, but less with the overrunning. Still favorable trends for sure. 0.6"+ QPF from DC southwards.

Seems like guidance is moving to this. Wave 1 has trended drier/weaker across the board with wave 2 looking like it has a bit more potential. I was actually thinking about you and how this setup seems awfully familiar to the Chill storm 2 years ago. Obviously not the same look at h500 but a similar progression with the storm starting off with cold smoke overrunning.

Acceptable

DT seems pretty excited. Either that or his all caps method of typing makes it seem like he's yelling every single word

Hard to not like this signal as the pattern reloads. Plenty of moisture and cold on tap

This is a wild signal for cold on the ensembles this far out.. obviously even the individual members can pick up on snowpack induced cold, but considering the smooth mean and how the op/ensembles handle cold compared to the mesos.. bundle tf up during that time, dang.

Surprised nobody posted this. Looks pretty good to me

The RGEM stole them

850s look super iffy, but man that cold air is wedged good. As I said mentioning the GFS' mishandling of how our ridge shapes up, this has been what it's been shifting to for the past two runs. Just need that to continue...

The TPV is substantially different even out to just hr 90 compared to 6z GFS. More sheared/less consolidated through the Midwest. Doesn't give the chance for heights to increase as much after Friday which might set us up better for the weekend event. The GFS is not handing that feature well at all. Seems to be working out in our favor this time.

Ah, I was considering through 18z Friday, but I guess that's out of RGEM range at this point, and it's also not the main overrunning wave. My apologies.

6z EPS juiced up actually. Hard to tell total precip due to contamination from Tuesday, but it seemed like overall 0.7"-0.9" from Wed to Fri. Regardless, it seems like to be on the winning boundary for Wed/Thurs, we need the system to be just deamplified enough. Never easy here lol

The last time the Bucs won the Super Bowl decidedly happened to be during a pretty memorable winter for us In fact the only other NFC South team to win also was during a great wintry stretch, the Saints in Feb 2010. I remember having to drive to my grandparents' house to watch the game because we didn't have power.

More stout CAD signal during that time too. The GEFS has way more of a signal for precip during that time, but that’s probably because it has a few more members that follow their Op brother in trying to pump a ridge and having that storm ride that boundary. Seems like that’s been a bit of a bias with the Ops and ensembles this past week, so I’d imagine that the TPV taking its sweet time to descend into the US (and also having it be less consolidated along the western edge) has certainly helped potentially put us on the winning side of the boundary. Exciting times ahead. .

Interesting thing to note is that the Tuesday weak wave that is going North of us has slowed down somewhat on GFS guidance. Could this be why we're seeing lower heights in front of the overrunning event? That was a negative trend for the storm leading up to the 28th event, but maybe not in this scenario if it is leading to the storm being de-amplified