RU848789

You don't understand snow lovers then. I absolutely love everything about seeing snow falling and accumulating, even if it gets washed away, since I enjoy watching it and being out in it - sure I'd like it to stick around, but that's secondary to me. And it's even more fun if that snow was well predicted.

That's much better, lol...

GFS bad, CMC good - we're simply seeing normal variability this far out, IMO. Probably not going to hone in on final details for another day or two, since it's such a fine line between a little and a lot frozen, especially for the 95 corridor.

I'll take last night's UK...

Looks like it's SE NJ's winter, lol - think I read that Cape May has more snow this winter than NYC and Boston combined...

0Z GFS has more sleet for the 95 corridor than previous runs, but similar mass of frozen precip (snow + sleet), as per the TT map; Pivotal shows less snow, though and doesn't include sleet at all. Soundings at 114 hours are clearly sleet for much of the 95 corridor with 850s at 33F and a fairly deep sub-32F layer below that. Saw a lot of this kind of discrepancy for 11/15 and 1/20, also.

And because I know people love this stuff, here's the GFS run through 240, with the 2/16-17 system being mostly snowy, also.

GFS backed off a bit on snow and cold with this system, but is still a decent 3-6" event for most of the Philly-NYC area (except at the coast). I'm sure there would be major rejoicing around here if that were to verify. Hopefully, the step back is just the usual fluctuations around the eventual mean and not the start of a trend in the warm/wet direction.

Was thinking the same thing. And presumably, in this case, if we do pop a weak coastal low, the risks of screaming warm winds off the ocean are far less with the ocean in the upper 30s as opposed to the low 50s in mid-Nov (I'm still convinced the fear of that was why the NWS discounted all the models showing snow).

5 days before the 1/20 event, the 0Z models ranged from warm/wet (Euro) to a huge snowstorm (UK) and everything else in between.

In an unusual occurrence, we actually have at least temporary near consensus on a storm 5 days out. I'm guessing that's just a very unlikely coincidence and we'll see more divergence later. Anyway, every major global model is now showing a weaker initial low, cutting towards the eastern Great Lakes and most show a weak secondary low forming near the coast. This means less precip, but also less warm air intrusion, meaning more snow than rain, but not a huge wintry event - more in the range of a 2-4/4-8" kind of event, with a ceiling of 10" and a floor of maybe 1-2". Sign me up. Note that, these numbers are per current models and are not a forecast, per se; also, note that all rain is extremely unlikely as currently modeled, but that could change, still.

It would be extraordinarily disappointing if, after all that time and money invested in its development, the FV3 isn't materially better than the old GFS. The "world" 500 mbar scores, as per the attached link, were slightly better than the GFS, putting the FV3 in competition with the UK for 2nd best, a decent jump behind the ECMWF, still. But as discussed above, more than a few of us on these boards want to know how it does with northeast winter storms. Hasn't seemed too good so far. And tonight's 18Z 1-2 foot blizzard isn't inspiring confidence, as it's kind of alone in that forecast and has way overdone snow several times earlier this season. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/noaa-is-about-to-make-some-big-changes-to-its-global-weather-model/

It's fantasy land at this point, but c'mon, someone has to post it. Pretty colors, lol...

Some people here sound like PTSD sufferers. We're 6 days out and the global models show somewhere from a little to some to a lot of snow early next week. That's much better than most things we've been tracking since November. Could it end up mostly/all rain for 95 and even inland? Sure, but it could also end up being mostly snow or somewhere in-between, which would at least be something. I just like being in the game.

Euro showed something similar at 12Z, as did the 18Z GFS-FV3, so yeah, I'm at least intrigued by 3 models showing a substantial snowstorm with a baroclinic zone set up near us, a nice moisture feed turned on, and a 50/50 low looking to take shape. Still way too far off to start analyzing op runs, but we have something to track and it has potential.

As modeled, the 6" line runs right up 95 with up to 12" for the interior, but only 2-4 inches at the NJ coast, so obviously, thermal profiles will likely be an issue with this storm. Obviously, way, way, way too far out to pore over the model output, but it's just nice to see something on the board even if it isn't until 2/12. Wish I knew how to copy/paste graphics from weather.us....

It does not count freezing rain as snow (it does count sleet as snow, though, in that map).

As you noted, while Florence is a Cat 1 storm, as defined by max winds, when looking at the central pressure of 957 millibars, it looks more like a Cat 3 storm. As I'm sure you know, the reason for this is that the storm has become much larger than most storms, such that the energy is spread out in lower winds, much further from the center, but the surge and rainfall impacts will be worse for a larger area than for a smaller storm with greater winds at the center. The IKE (integrated kinetic energy) is just as much as it was when it had 130 mph winds, as per NHC comments yesterday.

Pretty amazing consistency in track through landfall on NC, then the slow crawl to Charleston, then inland to Atlanta then Asheville for the Euro, UK and GFS. After days of huge discrepancies after landfall, I'm not sure whether to believe it. And the CMC is the same through about Charleston (then drifts down to Jacksonville as a weak looking TS).

Euro pretty consistent with 00Z - makes landfall actually, on Cape Fear around 10 am Friday, then scrapes along the SC coast down to Charleston over the next 48 hours. Brutal for the coastline if this verifies. Edit: after taking a 48 hour ride SW right along the coast, impacting Myrtle Beach and then coming ashore again right on top of Charleston as a likely cat 1/2 storm, Florence then goes on an inland run towards Augusta, GA, then Asheville. It's nearly identical to the 12Z GFS.

that time of year kids...

Hey Philly folks - is there anywhere to get archived forecasts (and snowmaps) from the various Philly TV stations for this past storm? Were they predicting 6-8" for Philly? I know the NWS was estimating 4-6" for Philly, so just curious. Thanks.

bump again - not sure why not pinned...

Agree with the LOL. I once spent about 15 minutes talking meteorology with him and it was clear that, while he has a met degree (from Kean), his depth of knowledge of complex meteorological science is limited, as he admitted when I asked him some probing technical questions (I wasn't trying to trip him up - was hoping he could give me some insight into the Arrhenius relationship between atmospheric temperature, energy and moisture content and he said he's not really a "science" guy, but was more interested in forecasting). Nice guy, but no Walt Drag.