baltosquid

Hard pressed to even nitpick that…

Dream scenario: lobe continues to trend SW, slips under a growing block, gives us a taste of flakes/appetizer before we set up under the big chill behind it.

Look at the surface temp trend next Sat, 12z. On EPS. The Friday/Saturday storm is bringing in the chill behind it… just needs to reach us.

Euro trended south for next weekend as well.

In that reading, could next Friday’s wave, if it shoots off the coast further south, open the door for that slip to happen?

Danger, anecdotal blend of models ahead: Am I crazy to think that blending the GEM and GFS look on next Friday/Sat might work out for us? edit: never mind, was looking at a 00z GEM panel. 12z is closer to 12z GFS.

To expand on next Fri/Sat, GFS trend has been pretty evident towards colder on lead-in. Over last 3 runs, freezing line has gone from being horizontal right through central PA, to reaching well into the WV apps but certainly not a strong, deep cold or anything yet. Baltimore went from 45 to 41. Energy for the storm is getting more separation from the deep pac NW vort. Little vort pops out from the lakes earlier and flattens the ridging over us some. More ridging over central Canada overtop the storm rather than all out front.

Trend for Friday/Saturday on GFS getting closer to a thump but would require a lot of temperature improvement and further moves SE

I’m waiting for the big post on how really the AO and NAO are king for snow, so we can just ignore the pac punts.

If we’re dropping complaints, I’ll say that sometimes it grates to hear over and over again “not a typical storm for us, we don’t usually score this way” in the wake of a bad run… we have been on a historic streak of misses, and that includes missing low prob hit after low prob hit. I know no one is omitting the larger context on purpose; the ones who know what’s a good look or not are also the sort that probably are good at keeping focus on one storm. But it does feel like it’s speaking to a different angst (getting upset over missing one bad opportunity) than the actual angst (getting upset over having mostly bad opportunities for years and also missing all of them). Like, would I be wrong to say it’s odd (need not say the double C words) that most/more storm opportunities are razor’s edge now, atypical, or just in general may require a fluke to get through, and we simultaneously get Lucy’d on all of them (particularly the metros)? I feel like a part of building a climate year is occasionally hitting a storm you’d expect not to hit individually. It leaves a couple questions. First is the obvious “can it snow” and I am in the yes camp… but next is “can we do slam dunks?” And “can we do flukes?” To the former, we don’t seem to be getting those opportunities to test that. To the latter, sure as hell not recently. If we can’t do what we’d view as a fluke anymore then is it time to move the goalposts on what a fluke is? Are slam dunks and their supporting patterns actually just flukes now? It’s probably not that bad but it feels that way from Baltimore…

A nice silver lining, just have to hope there's still room for the ensembles to be the leader here rather than the OP. Relatively close now...

I95 seems no longer IN the goalposts but rather is itself one of the posts… needle thin path to a mostly snow event may remain in the realm of reason. But if the incoming euro is bad and the runs through 00z don’t start a trend back to the good, might be exiting that realm of reason. Might be taking down the tree after all…

DC around a foot and the usual NW burbs all the way up through NE edging out a grass coverer or nothing at all makes me skeptical on its face, ignoring specifics lol.

On the back end in Baltimore. Could be really, really nice along I-95 as the temp drops... wet bombs up front, clean flakes coming in on the back, fingers crossed!

Looking like it might be less charged NW than prior runs but perhaps a bit more favorable to a wider area...

Low is almost moving through Tallahassee by 120, much quicker!

GFS continues to trend towards a later tilt, seems like it's feeling more of the energy behind it. Easily positive through 102.

FWIW the ICON is cooking very well for the 7th. But interesting to see it jump to being so much more amped relative to 00z - was previously very suppressed.

So GFS/Euro heading in the right direction, CMC still heading north but not drastically. Really good day so far... I'm very close to my personal "delay putting away Christmas decorations" line, let's go 12z!

First flakes courtesy of this pellet snow, at work in Aberdeen! Not a bad start to the day.

Not going to hold my breath on the NAM look here, BUT if I'm not mistaken one of @CAPE's big hits last year was a storm that looked certain to be OTS/too far north (can't remember which way the globals had it) and was first brought back to us by... the NAM 12km.

Trend on the GFS. More alignment. But staying at arm's length from each other. Don't they know it's cuffing season?!?

If it somehow were to go down like that, it would be a miracle and would give a lot of us a shot at a White Christmas with the cold behind it. But I just can't trust that anafrontal stuff...

But conversely, the TPV (minus anomalies in Canada) is getting its fingers deeper and deeper into the cookie jar with each run, and the low in the north Atlantic is moving away. Trace clockwise circles around the red and counter-clockwise around the blue... our storm is right in the middle of two features that want to send it on a 0-degree heading.

That ridge is screaming dig.