jwilson

Changeover occurred between 330 and 4 AM. Have what looks to be an inch or so thus far, boundary might be setting up east, but the snow side of this system looks more robust (for now) than expected. We'll see when bombogensis occurs how frontogenic forcing interplays with the current shield.

SREF plumes are up to a mean of over 4" now, compared to 2.5" earlier. Meanwhile, the HRDPS is a pretty good hit for us (6-10"), though the model name always makes me think it's derpy. Not sure it's all that valuable, just another possible solution.

The dynamics involved mean this storm has high bust potential either direction. The heaviest band has swung from the west back to the east of us today.

GEFS mean at 12Z was 5" for PIT. That's robust. Hard to trust it, though. We should have some white rain, but I don't know for how long. SREF mean is 2.5". High-res NAM has changeover around 2-3 AM. GFS is slower, closer to 6-7 AM. Canadian agrees. Bunch of mesoscale models are 4-5 AM, including SREFS, HRRR, ARW. RGEM has the bulk of snow over by 8 AM. In other words, there's a spread, but I would be more inclined to trust the faster solutions. Chances favor the snow rates are at or past peak at 7 AM. Messy commute.

Based on the 12Z suite, I'd say the odds *look* decent for at least a 2" event in the metro area, which would probably be the biggest storm for most - if not all - of us. I'm only at ~6" on the season versus the NWS measurement. For right now, the NWS has PIT at a 74% chance of 2" or more. 44% chance at 4" or more. 1% chance at >12" (lol). Given the intense convection and fast storm movement we'll see, there's also a high bust potential for those areas that fall outside of the best convective bands (or get stuck under divergence). It will likely come down to a nowcast event. Reminds me of tracking Miller B's off the coast. A lot of times you'd have wildly different snow totals just a few miles apart because of the convergence/divergence and banding.

Was just about to say the NAM finds a new way to screw us by pulling the low too far west. It trains the good snow to our west and northwest while dryslotting AGH (and points SE) for a while. Its totals are overdone, but that general idea is trouble.

It is looking to me like an interior New England special. GFS & NAM are pretty bearish on this, only a couple inches, at most. NAM looks oddly dry, actually, until the low gets cranking in the Atlantic. The Canadian is a bit more bullish, ranging from 3-6" across Allegheny (West to East, respectively). The Canadian has been better this winter than the GFS so there's a little bit of optimism for you. We're relying on storm dynamics to bring us snow, requiring decent rates in a fast-moving LP to overcome antecedent warmth. Not that it can't work, but we might have a period of white rain which limits accumulations.

If Wichita Falls, TX is getting a bigger snow than we've seen in years, you know there's something funky going on in weather town.

It's part of a decadal trend, but there's an overall larger trend for the NAO to be positive during the winter months starting back in the 1980s. The NAO between 1950 and 1980 averaged overwhelmingly negative versus the average since then which has been quite the opposite. If we break that down a little further, we can see that during the 80s, the NAO spiked upward. It did begin a downward trend in the 90s which stopped right around 2010 (give or take a couple years), but it still remained positive, overall. Since then, the NAO has spiked hard positive again. I think there's an argument the trend should stop soon and start declining again. Similar to how it operated in the 90s. That wouldn't necessarily be good news for snow lovers. Now there's some debate, I suppose, about why this has occurred. I don't know if data collection and analysis is better now (perhaps the older measurements were flawed or imprecise relative to modern times). Is it climate change? Is it short-term variability? I don't know that anyone is certain on the answer. I'm not an expert, either. Here is one relevant portion from a research paper on the NAO and its influence on warming: Basically, the -NAO during summer months has had a negative effect on the warmth of that season over this period. It has only continued since the time frame included in this particular study. Not to say a +NAO can't happen during the summer, because it can, but that hasn't been the norm or average in recent history. Here we can more clearly see the trend of the NAO downward over the summer months (JJA) since the 90s. There's a bit more from that paper: Prior to this decade, of course, the NAO attempted to exert a cooling influence on our winters, but the overall anomalies rose, anyway, in spite of it. This is due to overall climate change and warming trends outside the influence of the NAO. Since then, however, the NAO hasn't exerted the same cooling influence on our winters and we've mostly been going the other way. It helps explain a little why this winter has been basically nonexistant; however, there's a lot of variables to consider. Ultimately, the NAO doesn't exert the same influence on summer temps for us as it does for winter temps, so I don't think it's a big reason for our milder summers, but it could still have some impact, especially if the values are strongly anomalous in one direction or the other.

The Giants will win the world series, undoubtedly.

Euro and ensembles hint at potential Saturday night along with GFS/Icon. Canadian doesn't have the shortwave, more of a little northern stream clipper of sorts. There's a bit of room to come north, which is a good thing, but perhaps the overall pattern hints at another failure in the works. Retreating high. Threat has moved around and we're still 4/5 days out. Hard to get too excited, cap is probably 3" which is relatively small (but would be our biggest hit this winter if materialized).

The -NAO through summer is almost a guarantee, at this point. We've been stuck in this loop where the NAO tanks from April to October and is positive for the winter months. I imagine that's part of the reason we haven't had a really hot summer in a while. Then we get the heat into fall (September/October) when the pattern starts flipping.

Euro and GFS actually look similar for once (Thursday into Friday). The Canadian is also somewhat similar, but it's a bit more strung out initially and then cranks the primary low later (Saturday). It's all a very odd evolution. It amounts to three straight days of rain (Tuesday through Thursday) and then snow on Friday, but obviously the location and strength of the primary/ULL would factor into how much snow we get, if any. The GFS does go negative tilt. We're under 7 days which makes this "agreement" unusual for the winter, but given all the moving pieces, I'm not ready to buy in to any solution. I have to think a more progressive storm is likely which would limit our accumulations to nothing, more or less. I don't even know if it's worth mentioning because we're due to have the rug pulled out in another cycle or two, but there's nothing else to talk about.

Yeah, remember that? Well, it's down to 10% now. EL OH EL

My hopefully positive takeaway from this winter: improvements to modeling science. We've seen time-and-time again models simply default to snow - and big snow - in the long-range. Anytime we get within 4 to 7 days, however, all that snow vanishes into a calm wind. The GFS is especially infamous for this, but it isn't alone. Clearly there are limitations that seem to favor deep storm systems and lots of snow in the long range. Ideally, folks can use this winter as another learning tool to correct these biases and flaws, and one day the models will stop teasing us with Siberian looks when all we get is ... Richmond, VA.

Your best bet is trying to sample from archive.org. Here's the generic archive link for the forum itself: https://web.archive.org/web/2019*/www.easternuswx.com. From there, you can attempt to get more information by using individual forum pages and putting those into the wayback machine. For example, here's one using the link provided in that NBC news article: https://web.archive.org/web/20100301000000*/http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?showforum=15 ... There's a few hits from February 2010 in there. Being that it's a forum, not every page is saved through the archive, of course. You'll hit lots of dead ends, but you'll also find the occasional goody. I even found one of my old posts from back in the day: Well, this ended up being a pretty good prognostication. Looking back, I see the last true snow of that season occurred on the 25/26th. March was empty. Then 2010/11 provided a respectable follow-up. Something about a blind squirrel... What I don't know is if any of the old administrators have the entire forum saved or backed-up somewhere in an archive that isn't available online. You'd have to ask those people individually. I remember there was another forum prior to EasternUSWX, but I can't remember what that forum was called.

That was a good winter, for sure, but as others have already mentioned, January was very quiet and there were extremely sharp gradients with each of the storms. Here's one example: Through the first two major storms, I had received HALF of what Philadelphia measured. The December storm and the first in February were only about a foot each in my backyard (12-13"), while the official measurements for those two storms were 23.2" and 28.5", respectively. The northern portions finally hit a bit better on the February 10th storm, where I received ~23" relative to the 15.8" official total. That 23" was broken up in two pieces, however (7" overnight, then a lull, followed by 16" with the remainder). I have quite a few pictures from that winter. I guess I'll share a couple from each storm. Caption underneath. This is unrelated to the three snowstorms, but it is to help illustrate how dynamic the weather was in December that year. These were poorly defined mammatus clouds from an early December storm front (12/9). We received hail from this storm and intense wind. What I always thought was remarkable about the December system: down in the Gulf was what amounted to an eye on the central low pressure. Perhaps the most interesting element of the December storm: giant icicles. The snowfall itself was relatively tame compared to the later snows. This was the "table setter" event from February 3rd. Not much, but it was probably more than any storm from this winter. From the first main February storm (2/6). Snow emergency route looks about right. Cars on the street. This will be important for comparative purposes in a little bit. Same February storm (2/6). Here is a view during the morning lull between the overnight snows on 2/9 and the bulk of the snow on the 10th of February. During the height of the storm. This is as low as visibility dropped, down to about 500' or so. The camera really doesn't do it justice. You can compare the snow depth to above. Stock photo of bank on the same day. I trekked through Hatboro during the storm. Quiet streets during a snowy day. The roads are relatively clear in this pic, but I remember walking through some areas that hadn't been plowed. Snow up to and above my knees made walking difficult. RIP Big Marty's. The snow didn't kill it. Visibility drops, though some people either had to or chose to brave the conditions via automobile. This is night-time snow depth on the road after the plows had essentially given up. Close to a foot there, footprints visible for scale. The snow and wind continued during the night. I remember watching the blue lights in the sky from transformers sparking. Signs obscured by blowing snow that piled up. Sorry for the blurriness, but my digicam at the time wasn't capable of great night pics without a flash. Almost final snow depth, again considering comparing to above. Car almost completely buried. We'll end with a brief video during the main snow on 2/10. Quality looks like it was shot in 1980, but I assure you it wasn't, just "old" technology. Wish I had my phone from today then. Also, sorry for the guerrilla-style videography. That about sums it up. I have more stuff from that winter and others. Seems like too much to dump unless I had a website like Ray's. Hope you enjoyed your pictorial tour of 2009-10.

That's through February 12th. Honestly, 3" in the prime of winter over a two week period is almost guaranteed around here. That's not hard to come by, and that's why I'd say it's not a hugely relevant statistic. We have some cold air now with potential access to more in the near future, as well a bit more favorable ridge and trough axis, but we might need to hit the window just right or storms will slide to our south (then in between continue to cut west as has been the typical track all year).

Unsurprisingly, the GEFS have backed off significantly from the earlier solutions, while the Euro ensembles are basically a nothing-burger. There's still time for a more phased solution to return, but it was always a long shot. Long-term snowfall probabilities have us at essentially a 100% chance of more than three inches over the next couple weeks, but that doesn't mean a whole lot, really, considering the length of the term.

The ensembles have been somewhat better than the OP GFS. *All* the members have something, which is fairly interesting. 12 out of 20 give us at least 6", while a few more are borderline to that level depending on your target point. I think it is rare (or at least unusual) to see this at such a range. The question is whether you believe it. Personally, we've been yanked several times already in this winter from ~7 days out. The GFS has been terrible. I'm not quite ready to buy in, but I'm also not sure if the GEFS has honked this season. It will be rather telling if the Euro ensembles at 0Z have anything similar.

Thanks for that info! That is interesting to hear. Where I live now (Pittsburgh metro), December has - long-term - actually beaten March and historically been the better month for snow. However, the last five years (this year will be the sixth, I get a sense) have bucked the trend so much that the new 30-year mean will actually have March with a higher average than December. Locally, between '99 and '13, not a single March month had double-digit snowfall, whereas in December it was closer to every-other year. Now the tables have flipped and we've only hit double-digits in December once since '14, with three of those below 2" total. This might just be a short-term trend and we'll see things change after another decade of measurements are available, but at least for now it's kind of odd.

I'm wondering how much the specific NWS location is influenced by factors of elevation and just pure geography (being more north and west of the city). I feel like what they measure and experience isn't always what the entirety of the metro area experiences. Now I probably don't have much room to question them as I've only lived in the metro area for just over a year now, but last winter I measured 24.3" on the season while the NWS official Pittsburgh total is 36.6" of snow. I definitely did not have a 5"+ or greater event last winter; the most being that 4" or so on February 20th. I didn't measure a 5" event in the preceding two winters, either, but that data isn't relevant because I was in a different locale. The last storm over 5" I measured was the big one in 2016. And ironically enough, I believe that largely spared Pittsburgh.

I guess this isn't an unpopular opinion, but I'd almost certainly prefer to see snow levels increase in November and December and then relax in February and March. It seems the opposite of that is what's actually happening, however. Are seasons shifting in terms of their place on our traditional calendar, or disappearing altogether? I'm sure this also depends on where you live. The midwest still does quite well with early season snow storms.

Isn't the "hypothetical" end of climate change that the more extreme results become more common and there is less in the middle ground? I think that hypothesis would correspond to the idea that snowfall in certain areas extends more to the bell-ends of the curve, while the middle chunk of the curve bottoms out. Instead of a bell curve, we get a half-pipe. As a few of you already discussed, the idea is feast-or-famine events (or seasons), while still maintaining the semblance of a traditional long-term average. The one thing I've noticed as an adult now compared to a kid in the 80s and 90s: we have apparently shifted away from the four season model and are down to two: summer and winter. This is purely observational on my end, and I don't know if data confirms it in any way. Observing the trends, it seems we have less normal seasonal breakdowns. Now the last few summers haven't been as hot as perhaps in the past, but we've shifted those temperature spikes away from the middle of summer and they can now extend deep into "fall" (September and October). Likewise, we're seeing the extension of winter into spring months. Even recent May months have been cool and wet, whereas April can swing wildly either way (from hot to cold). Maybe it's just a short-term cycle and there is no long-term change. I don't know for sure. Like I said, I'm basing that off my own observations. Perhaps my memory is also failing me as to how conditions existed when we were kids. I will say the 90s really weren't all that great for snow growing up in Philadelphia. Obviously we had at least two major remarkable events ('93 and '96), but outside of those, I don't think there was anything extraordinary about the decade. The last ten years have been much more interesting, starting with '09-'10 of course. I guess my final question would be: if global warming continues, would that see the eradication of "La Nina" conditions as we know them? Maybe that's a stupid question, but thinking about the warming waters of the globe, I would think it'd be harder to get cool or negative temperature anomalies. Or would that not be the case and instead we'd simply see more extreme versions of La Nina with intense negative spikes to couple with the opposite, as well?