Layman

Hopefully this doesn't deter you folks from offering up analysis based on what you're seeing in each model gyration. There are plenty of people in here (maybe?) who appreciate the professional perspectives, regardless of the weather outcome.

Looks like we'll be finishing at 2.27" total rainfall here. Breeze picking up a little now.

That's interesting. Is there an amount threshold to determine what's considered "snow" for this? For that matter, is there a generally understood number in the industry that's recognized as a minimum amount of actual snow? I'm not sure if you're comment above implies that to people more in the know than I am with these things. I just know if it's spitting snow here and not coating grass, that's not appreciable snow. (No kidding! )

That's a tough spot to be in and from an end user perspective, I'd much rather be forewarned of a possible event well ahead of time to prepare than have a last minute warning run up the pole. If it doesn't pan out, I certainly find it's helpful to have an explanation why but a lot of people don't care and will likely say "They never get it right!" Trying to predict an ever evolving atmosphere is no easy task and reasonable people understand that. The big takeaway for me whenever this happens is how significantly modeling/forecasting can change in a few short hours. I went to bed last night thinking I'd be woken up with big wind gusts and a likely power outage. Woke up this morning to essentially no wind at all, and still no wind which is fine by me. Determining what drives confidence to lock in a prediction at X hours out from an event is very interesting to me and something I hope to get a better grasp on over time. 12/10 0.71" of rain, max gust of 13.6mph at 11:19pm 12/11 1.44" of rain as of 8:15am, max gust of 11.4mph at 2:34am

0.35" and 56.8 at ~6:30pm. Weather apps are guessing 3.5" total through tomorrow and still saying gusts over 50mph tonight. Basically no wind to speak of at the moment.

Just under a 300 degree spread! Must be a record

Collectively, do these look like a reasonably accurate depiction of what to expect Sunday night into Monday? The 950mb winds look to have a super tight gradient right over my head. Would a shift west strengthen the winds here or is that determined by the coast regardless? The NAM 10-meter looks really mundane at my location if I'm interpreting it correctly.

Looks like a really nice area. Ironically, I need to secure a "home base" for about 6-10 months in NC during 2024 about an hour outside of Greensboro for my company next year. Any direction and within an hour or so from that area. I was thinking Lake Norman however, do you have any recommendations for places to avoid or areas that are nice? I'm going in blind and am trying to find a nice area to pop into for a few days at a time each month to check on things while we get operations going.

Nice pics! Where in NC is that? EDIT: Pardon my reading comprehension....I just saw you said Beech and looked it up.

“Accu”weather is calling for max gusts to 51mph where I am. My station has recorded a mid to high 30’s mph gust during big wind events. Not sure if it’s not precise enough to record a true higher gust or if we simply don’t get them higher than that here. We’re facing south and have a 20-30 acre field in front of us so the wind can blow. I’m hoping for lower gusts but will get the generator staged just in case.

Is it this book? It's dirt cheap and sounds interesting. I'm going to grab it if it is. EDIT: I bought it regardless https://amzn.to/3RbQKIO

Could you expound on this further? Or have you in any of your write ups that you could direct me to? I'm not familiar with this and am curious about the mechanics and analogs of prior instances of this happening.

12.2 for the low this morning. Frosty. Coldest of the season so far.

Cool shot from the North Ridge cam at Killington this morning

Interesting points - I appreciate your perspective and approach with these discussions. As an end user of forecast information, I definitely fall into the category you mentioned regarding current expectations. I utilize a forecast to plan things in my life and expect it to be accurate out to a certain point. In this forum however, as I see discussions regarding patterns, changes that are weeks away, etc my perception changes to more of what has a higher chance of being a likely in the future - there's no expectation that something is concretely going to happen outside of say 3-5 days lead time. Again, this falls right into that realm you mentioned. As an outsider looking in, I see the weather models as an attempt to eventually replace the forecaster. This is clearly not happening anytime soon, but this discussion highlights the need for an experienced forecaster to interpret model data and give an opinion on what they believe is most likely to happen. The models now simply being a tool that, when in the hands of an expert, can use that tool with as much precision as it is capable of. A rhetorical question I have is: How many data inputs are required to have 100% accurate forecast at any given (reasonable?) point in time? The easiest answer is "All of them". With that being a veritable impossibility, I imagine there is a minimum threshold of atmospheric data points that would provide a highly reliable forecast over varying degrees of time. It's likely multitudes of what's being processed today, but I'm so far removed from it that I honestly have no idea. Maybe it's much closer than I suspect. The fact that experienced forecasters can look at a model run and say "Oftentimes when it does this, it's actually showing THIS will happen", makes me think that there are programming updates that could be made to hone those areas. However, I suppose it's possible that the interpretation of the model output by a forecaster is so many derivatives away from the data inputs that went into creating it that it's far from a one to one relationship with respect to making programming updates. With so many ever-evolving forces impacting the atmosphere and weather at any moment in time, it seems this realm should be devoid of declarative statements until you can "see the whites of it's eyes". I sense the most seasoned forecasters here take that approach but it sometimes gets lost in the noise. Welcome to the internet, Sir!

There was a conversation on here the other day about this which I found interesting. Seemed like some thought modeling was doing pretty well, especially compared to 10-15 years ago and others (maybe you?) expressed sentiment as you did above. I'm curious what plays into a model being more-right or more-wrong. Not sure there's an easy answer to that but it's an interesting discussion.

Dec 3: Dropped to a low of 35.2 with 0.85" of rain Dec 4: Low of 32.7 and 0.18" of rain as of 8:15am My brother in Wolfeboro at 800' ASL has about 2" of wet compacted snow. Sister in Farmington NH also has about 2" but I'm not sure of her exact elevation compared to the other Farmington posters here. She's not on the ridge and maybe at 400' ASL.

This may need a qualifier. Optimistic for warmth and rain or cold and snow?

36.7 and 0.21" of rain so far. Looks like there may be snow around Northwood/Nottingham. How low will we go?

To be fair, it seems like you could log on any 5 of 7 days during any given week and find something similar.

While tone is a difficult thing to discern online, I don't necessarily think the question about where the confidence comes from is unjustified. However, my understanding is the man dedicates a significant amount of time to defining exactly that in his seasonal write-ups so the answer likely lies within that. I've found them to be too densely packed and filled with terms I don't yet understand thoroughly so it's a slog trying to read them but I do appreciate the brief clarifications that show up in the threads that are ultimately bolstered by that document. To that end, I agree with much of what you said with respect to the fact that weather constantly changes, it's going to do what it's going to do and the experts will do their best to attempt to predict/forecast what's going to happen. My simplistic perspective of seasonal forecasting is that it's incredibly easy to fail at and it's a step or two above making guesses as to what's going to happen. Alternatively, there's clearly a tremendous amount of data and research that goes into it so who am I to say it doesn't have merit simply because I don't understand it? So something is behind the confidence that this year won't be like last year, and he's likely already explained it and I didn't understand it . I too am curious where the confidence comes from and may have posed the question differently (assuming I knew what I was talking about): "What gives you confidence that things won't continually get pushed back like last year? The -PDO is not very encouraging."

Wow, if that comes to be my back yard will have 3-6" while my front yard will be ready for another mow! BTW, I saw a yellow Harley at a sushi place on the Seacoast about an hour ago. I wonder....

I try to keep up with the technical jargon here but some terms are simply above my pay grade. This one seems to be deep into the Journeyman or early Master phase of the craft.

Interesting to know that Plymouth Rock is less than Geico. We use Geico for personal policies and Liberty Mutual for commercial. Both increased significantly this year. Personal was the addition of a new driver and kind of made sense. Commercial policy sent a "warning" notice saying "FYI, your policy is going to increase by more than 25% at renewal". It did too - by about 45%. From what I've seen after investigating why my policies were going up so much, there are apparently three major reasons why insurance companies are hiking rates: 1) Inflation - costs of repairs are up significantly, 2) EV's - more on the road getting damaged or needing battery replacements which are extremely expensive, 3) Large pool of uninsured drivers claimed to be due to significant immigration. Whether any of that is true or not, I'm not 100% sure, but on the surface it makes sense.

I'm new to all of this and enjoy trying to parse information provided by the experienced meteorologists and hobbyists here. The abilities and reliability of the models is something that is very interesting to me. Trying to discern the line between models as a tool and the interpretation from the experts who use them. I tend to view things very black and white and expect hard and fast results from specific inputs but weather and forecasting certainly don't seem to work that way! I find it interesting that the experienced folks here can see biases and trends within the models that are counter to what the model is outputting. Why would this be? I'm assuming that those who provide input into the models development would see this too and attempt to correct it...? I don't know what that process is like and imagine it's arduous and involved. However, based on the responses above, it seems like something has changed in the models specifically. If it/they were previously more reliable with the data point inputs they were receiving, it shouldn't matter if temps are increasing, decreasing or other normal weather related impacts are changing if it was processing them correctly. It seems that these are very valuable tools but I'm curious about the reliability. @WinterWolf mentioned the "scores" = is this a self-assessing/ranking score for each model? Is there data showing how reliable a models forecasts are at X number of hours out from an event? Or not even an event per se, but any given moment in time? I'd love to know if there's a "cone of confidence" showing how far out from point zero in time that a models predictions go from 0% accurate to 99%/100% accurate.