Bob Chill

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

Shouldn't last. It's too far away from Nina climo. My guess is it's some sort of byproduct or aftereffect of the big blocking event. Atmosphere is in flux. Aleutian low won't park and the pac won't stay configured like that.

I haven't looked close like u guys but I 100% agree that the oddball unmistakable Nino look is unlikely to last much at all for a lot of reasons. My guess is the big -4std AO is bullying things as heights shift around. Pretty anomalous stuff in the artic during a time of year where it can really assert itself both up and down stream.

He's expansivly focused on proving he's right about anything after the SCI was quickly proven to be a dried up nothingburger. He lost me back in 2015 after claiming victory for SCI predicting the cold in the US when the very important teleconnection that the SCI predicts was polar opposite. Lol. Ego much? Think we dum much? Lol And saying Siberia is north America's primary cold factory. Lol. What a fruitcake he's becoming

Best small event in 20 yard years. Remember it like yesterday. I seared some fillet mignons on my grill in 12 degree temps and 35mph winds while getting blasted by blowing snow. If that ain't livin' I don't know what is

Hey! Still on amwx server! Lol

Feb 2015 is the benchmark for my yard. Got over 2" in like 30 mins and stuck around for days.

I keep getting more modest and humble as I get older. I'm totally fine not knowing the answer and getting shit wrong. With anything really. I'm usually first to say I got it wrong when I make any long range call (I don't much anymore). I also know I'm far far dumber about wx than the most powerful wx supercomputers in the world. When they are at odds, I stand in the back of the room, get a drink (root beer), and watch the show

After everything all of us have learned collectively in Weenie U, writing something off in a loaded pattern a week out is prob more emotional than logical. Big dog bubble bust effect. Lol. I'll bet a lot of the storm cancelers were the same honking the big dog alarm haha

@Maestrobjwa I uploaded this after the Jan blizzard. Fantastic full continent satellite loop. Watch it like 5 times and keep staring at the orignin and track of the NS wave that kicked it all off. THAT is the kind of track we need (in general) to feel safe and it certainly can't include a big deep upper level low west of the MS river. There is a lot to resolve with the NS wave that may or may not snow in the east. Unlike Jan 2016, this one is very volatile. The atmosphere is going through a major shift at the same time the storm is pulling together. Jan 2016 had a locked pattern in advance. Patience always Eta: the depth of the trough and approach angle with NS waves cause massive differences in our potential outcome. To shallow of a dig and any good snow requires upper level support because there is no room for a swath of WAA in front. I hate this type of event. We're in the game for "tricky hard snow but could be big or bust" but "easy snow" is off the table. With NS waves, give me easy front end snow every time so I don't cry when the tough stuff skips... as usual... It's not looking great so far but next week could still bring easy snow without a bomb.

The biggest recurring hot spot is any time a general pattern supports an east coast storm a week+ out, models will always spit out big solutions. Which are random just like the terrible solutions but get married instantly and become a benchmark. This is losing the game before ever rolling the dice or drawing your first card. Lol Eta: big storms are rarely long tracked in the east no matter what. Southern stream waves are the only thing that move slow enough and predictable enough to model well 120hrs+ out. Southern stream doesn't buckle and rip like the northern stream in winter. NS is a much stronger and faster force on winter wx and it's crazy volatile at mid/long leads. Many "sub classic but still big storms" surprise people regularly even at d4 or 3. Go back and read the Dec 2009 storm thread. Wild crazy tracking until the bitter end and that was a classic Nino giant block southern stream influenced wave. Lol

This is why I changed my rules. Not because of others complaining though. Because it's a waste of my time and emotional energy getting involved in anything beyond d5 unless it's already stable across guidance. We don't have the technology capable of meeting expectations here. I figured a wound up storm would be problems all month even with blocking. NS wind-ups fight like the hulk to push north into anything. It's always like that and Dec climo lanes are not friendly here basically ever lol .

From what I see, the gefs lost a # of deep western solutions run over run. Could be follow the leader bug good news either way. However, there was also a less than small shift north with the heaviest precip. My guess is there are prob more misses with late cyclogenesis

The ukie only gets attention when it shows snow in the face of everything else. Otherwise, imho, it usually adds confusion and uncertainty instead clearing up gfs/euro divergence. I keep it simple in mid to short range. Euro/gfs blend, hedging towards which one makes the most sense (subjective). Nams are good t add 48 hours in for clearing up qpf/temp details when things are dicey. There are magnitudes more old threads with post storm discussion that says euro/gfs blend was good from 4 days out or whatever. Rarely if ever does the cmc or ukie end up being the best mid range solution. ICON should be ctrl-alt-deleted