ORH_wxman

18z EPS only goes out to 144. The front running wave is pretty amped though which is good for sending the boundary well south behind it.

Nothing ever looked this good inside of 10 days since December though. We had some runs that showed decent patterns but they usually fell apart before getting inside 10 days. We did have a couple runs show brief threats in early February but they ended up suppressed and we got a historic arctic outbreak instead with no real snow to show for it.

There’s also a lot of cross-guidance support and a lot of ensemble support within each model…and we know that matters too for forecast confidence. The only inhibiting factor right now is lead time. Inherently day 9 forecasts are going to be uncertain, but this is much better agreement than we’ve previously had on a day 9 look for something wintry…prob since December.

EPS also continues to trend stronger with the east-based -NAO in clown range. This is a good sign because that is what the weeklies were doing toward the end of February…and if you want a fun period for a few weeks, we want the weeklies to verify more or less. Note how in response to that, we see an intensifying minimum in heights over the 50/50 region.

As Tip and I were musing…good luck figuring out the dominant strain in this fast flow…buckshot look on the ensembles. But you do love the look of a scooter high to the north.

It’s a moot point at this time range but the entire system would slide south of SNE if euro went out another panel.

Yeah def not a single defined wave. It also has a 3rd wave in between those two for 2/22. It misses us that run but it shows how many different shortwaves could focus more significant cyclogenesis. We don’t know which one it will be. That one later on in the 23-24 timeframe looks the best but can’t rule out a two-wave idea either ala Feb 8-11, 1994 or Dec 19-21, 2008. Even Feb 7-9, 2015 I think had two distinct waves even though in the OES-zone the snow never really shut off…but elsewhere back in our exurbs neck of the woods in the 495 belt, it did.

I remember that vividly and Scott (CoastalWx) and I were talking about why so much QPF was being thrown inland on guidance leading up to it. We were legimately puzzled because the upper air and mid-levels didn’t really support that type of QPF layout. We theorized that because heights were so obscenely low in that event, perhaps it was giving guidance trouble because the temp gradients and lapse rates were so obscene (hydrostatic models would have more trouble with extreme lapse rates)…but that was just a theory. Who knows the real reason. It was the RGEM that showed the potential bust up there first along with the positive bust down in eastern MA about 24-36 hours before the event. RGEM had its random hall of fame season that year…we joke it was like Brady Anderson’s 50 HR season in 1996….it also absolutely nailed the death band in the Jan 2015 blizzard along 495-ORH-Ginxy along with red flags in western SNE and then nailed the redevelopment and prolonging of the Feb 2nd event that year.

There seems to be cross-guidance agreement on strong confluence and a good antecedent airmass. Those are two things we haven’t had much of this season. So I would agree there is reason to be more optimistic than previously. Still, lead time isn’t inside of 6-7 days yet so we need to cross that threshold.

At least we know who to blame if this trends to shit.

Look at those scooter highs.

If we don’t get a -NAO, a good analog for -EPO/-PNA/SE ridge but a cold gradient pattern is March 1967.

This look has definitely gotten closer than a lot of previous setups. I think I mentioned yesterday this is one of the few nice looks I’ve seen get inside day 10 all winter. The others were back in December and maybe we can count 1/23. Still plenty of reason to be cautious though. You get a couple wrong movements in the shortwaves and it could turn into another cutter, but I do like the trend of the front-running shortwave being stronger.

We used to go in 2001 and 2002 when I was in college. Exchange rate was about 1.55 to 1.60 to 1….it was awesome. More importantly for that age in college, the drinking age was 19 there so those couple years pre-21 were great to hop the border…we were both legal and what little money we had went very far.

We’ve never had any overrunning snow events with a SE ridge and -PNA.

I like that the front-running wave around d6-7 is trending stronger. That is going to help push the boundary further south behind it.

Even ORH only averages about 2.5” in November. He is less than that obviously.

We don’t even need an epic winter. A mere +2 with average snow would feel like Caribou compared to Philly and DCA climo which is what a swath of SNE has basically felt like this winter.

Yeah there’s a million different ways that system could go. It could be rain initially and then flipping or it could be a cutter or it could be all snow. The cold advects in during the storm on that run so the beginning is warmer…though it looked plenty cold enough aloft the whole time, so if it started as rain on the 18z GFS, it would prob be extremely brief and right on the water.

Our temps this winter have basically made BOS into DCA. BOS winter is about 7F colder than DCA on average.

At least this one has creeped inside of 10 days. I honestly can only count a handful of larger threats that got inside 10 days (the Dec 16th and Dec 23rd storms, maybe Jan 23rd?) before evaporating or trending worse.

You talking about the system at day 9-10? That’s a full blown snowstorm on the GFS….even a Scooter-approved arctic high building in. But let’s get it inside of 5 days. A lot of the models have that system. But some (like GGEM) are pretty warm with it.

I would say it was a little confusing in that it implied the rest of February would be warm which it might not be. Specifically, the weeklies kind of cut it off around 2/23ish…a bit of semantics but the last few days of the month could be more wintry than one might glean from that tweet. But he might have not had the daily breakdown available…week 2 as a whole is going to be warm but it is front-loaded warmth…that 2/24-2/27 period might be cold. I agree it was a pretty accurate description of weeks 3/4.

18z GFS would be quite a shock to everyone’s senses…getting those 60s later this week and then only having that one colder day on Saturday to rebound back to 40s/50s next week before that boundary presses south and we get 36 hours of snow at temps in the upper teens to mid 20s (depending on proximity to coast). Anyways, that one could still cut too. Less likely though if the front runner system around D7 is stronger and pulls the boundary south behind it further south…I think that is a major key to the D9 system.

Weeklies are still weenie-ing out.....I am not sure I buy the west coast ridging/+PNA pattern with aleutian low it keeps showing....however, it does show that UK/Iceland ridging retrograding westward into the NAO domain which would help a lot even if the west coast ridging doesn't happen.