Bob Chill

Too early for that. Next 10 days look absolutely abysmal at first but moderates towards just run of the mill God awful. Trend is our friend. Maybe we can move firmly into the not terrible enough to not snow arena before it's still light after 7pm

I don't look too far ahead. We all killed ourselves until we died from it just before Feb 14th 2015 lol. I'm not sold on a Feb blowtorch. The west's epic ninano will level out. If the pna goes up for most of Feb it would make sense. Good month for that.

We always lag so our perspective is tempered but the NE and upper MW are getting their weenies beat into the dirt (wet dirt). I do believe there'll be a snap back of sorts for them. I'm nearly certain. Nothing epic, just some sort of climo catchup. If that happens, we'll prob get involved too. Having no snow on the ground to our west and north is another checkmark in the crappy column. Fixing that would help by default

Idk Ralph, considering the past 6 weeks, that pattern looks like mix/ice to rain at best. Classic overrunning needs confluence and mid/surface flow with some kind of north vector. EPS/GFS look like strong SW flow scouring out everything. I want to be wrong but ensembles are agreeing on a continuation of persistence. I haven't like a single setup inside of 7 days since Dec 1st either. In my eyes, a continuation of the last 6 weeks in general is pretty likely and I really want to be wrong lol

I'm a #s guy and always appreciate your logical/calculated posts on the winter temp topic. For anyone who's tracked winter wx around here since 1970, it's pretty fookin obvious it's not the same. Reasons don't affect us as much as warm hard truth does lol. Highly variable snowfall aside, ponds/lakes don't freeze much anymore. Nothing like the 70s and 80s. Illegal ice hockey is a very dangerous game now. I check my old spots all the time. Year after year, it's not same. I think we can all just acknowledge that it's not the same for whatever reason and move on. The tradeoff of less frequent snowfall and more frequent whoppers will just have to do for now because all we get is what we get and not a flake more You're a super smart person with data. I appreciate it as many others do. However, every post you make that threatens belief systems will be met with venom. It's a human reflex. Nobody's mind can be changed but the debates change the vibe of the board quite drastically. If minds can't be changed maybe we should concentrate on the vibe of the board instead?

I'm about sick of the threads devolving into polarized food fighting over climate change. People don't want to debate to solve problems, they just want to fight to protect beliefs. Utter waste of time and energy. Kinda like tracking snow this winter.

We're the same now. Beat into submission or had some sense knocked into us. One or the other lol. I also agree with your thoughts. Epic turnaround is possible but imho, winter has spoken and it will make few happy in the east no matter what. I don't agree that this is the "new normal". The mid Atlantic has had terrible stretches going back to the early 70s when my memory tape ends. Early 70s totally sucked until 76-77 and that was just frigid. Feb 79 turned me into a weenie. Then the early 80s came... I have plenty of memories of absent winter... It may not snow as often but the string of big storms since 2000 is absolutely not what the 80s or 90s looked like. Or even the 70s. It's not like things fells off a cliff. Lol. It's pretty much the same types of winters we've been having. Mostly warm and disappointing with some zingers.

In a general sense, all of north America has no cold to speak of over the next couple weeks and Canada is well well well above normal. All of that isn't changing dramatically. It's a big problem that will remain. I don't have a clue what will happen in a week but whatever does will have pull a bunch of levers and switches to make it snow. We don't do complicated well and we've been shown regularly how we don't do marginal well and that stat trend is going downhill... Imo, Terp was simply pointing that piece out and not saying op runs have anything nailed specifically

My phone has a cracked lens so there's always some sort of washout stuff happening. Pics are actually terrible. It's all about location with my photo posts lol

Hey peeps, up to my eyeballs in mud, dirt, and rocks building a driveway by hand in VA. I'll post pics of deep mud and large rock accumulations later. Caught a sick sunset today tho I don't have much to add. All bases covered. It might snow. Setup looks good and semi classic. There are some problems that won't be figured out for a while. Hopefully one of you figures out the Hoco-Moco death band timing by the time get back Sunday

This is an easy one... if it weren't for the -4 AO already, strat babble would be the talk of the town. Then when that fails, the MJO will be the new OG. However, in between all those emotional keystrokes, a couple of mid range jacked up and untracked events drop some snow anyway. But since it was 10'-12' short of expectations, it went unnoticed while hostile stats and climate posts keep the "hot tag" smokin' in the disco thread

I spent plenty of time there like everyone else. Transcending away from that is probably one of life's most important challenges. It's optional and many never get there. It happened to me by accident but it would have happened no matter what i think. I've always felt a little detached from all the fake reality humans like to (almost exclusively) focus on. But it takes a long time to break the conditioning. The material world is very efficient at holding people back from inner peace too. Once I let that go, I never looked back

This can be a real crappy time of year when life's gravity digs in and holds your spirit down. Standing up to it is all you can do and seeing your post made me feel good about that part. I've always found peace during high stakes periods by simply being present in the moment. I constantly ask myself "what do I see? what do I hear?" instead of "OMyEffinG I cant stop thinking about this crap! GAH!" Just watching something like a squirrel eating breakfast or pleasant sunrise reminds me how much more there is out there than human emotional drama. It's impossible to avoid and not participate in at times but it's irrelevant to what is really going on "out there".

Me too. Itching to get back to work on my va property. Heading down Thurs for 10 days. Dry sunny warm days are my jam for now. Maybe it'll snow in Jan

This place is in mid/late crappy season form already I see. Lol. I closed the blinds before Christmas. No reason to open them for a week or 2. Carry on with weenie death by a thousand cuts

DC stats are from multiple stations. And the current one could not possibly be in a worse place. Concrete jungle at sea level with warm water nearby and jet exhaust blasting 18 hours a day. Not sure how to quantify how much difference but my guess is if the nwdc station was used exclusively, that graph would only require 1 Prozac to emotionally deal with instead of 2 and a Xanax

I always think of it like we almost always require a non hostile pac to snow in any fashion except for the coldest climo weeks when "domestic air" is just cold enough. We almost always require a good Atlantic for a big storm. Reality lies in between most of the time and it gets real muddy as to what really made it happen when it does accidentally snow once in a while

It's sad. Temps thus month are solidly below average. Precip is above average and yet...no snow Above avg precip is a direct result of being on the tropical side of all strong lows so far. Pretty much like every other Dec with strong lows coming out of the MW. We need weak events in Dec otherwise we need a once a decade fluke. Which will happen... tracking it beyond 4 days has minimal returns on investment

Frozen ground is always nice for walking in the woods this time of year. Clean feet. Lol. Smooth ice in the stream valley reflecting golden hour really got me yesterday. So peaceful.

There were some real cold winters that lacked precip in that mix. The 60s were crazy snowy too so the 70s comparison may seem similar on the lot but under the hood looked quite different. We don't have many dry winters around here anymore either. Especially compared to some of the 70s winters. Our problem is elsewhere lately

This airmass is legit. No doubt there but it only offers one chance behind the front and it's a weak NS wave with minimal upside as of now. After that it all whooshes right out. Loop the gfs 850 temp/wind panels. Confluence and/or blocking can give us long duration cold because highs slide more W-E north of us. Surface and mid level flow consistently has a northerly component. Keeps windows open much longer. Which provides more chances... which we always need lots of.... This blocking period did not provide that at all. Early season climo lanes won pretty easily. In Jan, I prefer flatter flow in the east. I don't care for tall pna ridges and deep eastern troughs. Let highs slide by W-E north of us and lows do the same south of us. Not a big storm recipe but an easy one lol

Random weird stuff usually gives us good snow outside of obvious Nino conditions. This is why I spend more time than winterwxluvr looking at temps more than precip. Deep cold is necessary around the beltway. And by deep I don't mean like 10 degrees. I mean that favorable mid-level temps push into TN/NC. It has to stick around too. 2013-14 was bizarre because the cold domes were so massive, it snowed "anyway" when it shouldn't have. I got excited with the blocking like everyone else to start Dec but even with all those pretty reds in good spots, deep cold that could hold on for more than 3 days never showed at any reasonable lead. It still hasn't really happened. This artic shot is more of a scrape than any kind of flood. One thing that always gives me optimism is qpf overperformers are becoming the norm lately. Big storms happen and they can make up ground quick.

Yep! And then when u get back to the SE sub you can inform them with first hand information that the MA sucks a giant snow turd too!

We've seen it a lot with quick progressive conditions last 7 years. It doesn't take much at all really. Cold can build and be here in 5 days if the flow cooperates. Tracking British Columbia and Alberta height patterns begins in earnest late next week