Bob Chill

Incremental step towards max potential imo. These NS deals are tricky with qpf leading in. Based on h5/h85 it looked good for us.

We're 72 hours out and all reliable and unreliable models show some amount of snowfall. Maybe the storm will feel underappreciated and move to SNE because you DIDN'T start a thread

Just do it. It's unlikely to evaporate. Nobody is expecting a big hit except Ji. We can prob be civil running up to 3" and back to 1" every 6 hours lol

Nice column for Friday. No worries with SW mid-level flow as the (weak) low approaches. WAA snow along warm fronts with NS shortwaves is typically low ratio. Kinda globular lol. Maybe not this time. 10:1+ seems likely to me.

Train tracks are real. How and why and where they set up is beyond my abilities but they certainly happen all over the place. I never ignore my gut. I bust big like anyone but on the balance, my gut knows more than my conscious brain and I never ignore it. I'm feelin good for some snow on snow Friday.

We are a really streaky area for whatever reason. Long droughts followed by multiple condensed events is far more common than smooth evenly spaced winters. Prob magical thinking but imho, getting a nice event last night is a sign that Fri will work out "ok". My expectations are it will never look worse than 1-3 in general leading in and even though boom ingredients are largely absent, maybe it finds a way anyway just cuz.

Me thinks it gon b a lottle crunchy tomorrow morning.

The upper level feature isn't a phantom. It's on all guidance in about the same place. The tricky part from what I see is the 850 low pass. For example, 6z euro has a decent vort pass: But the 850 low runs overhead. Boom scenario will likely be north of that. But for right now it's an overhead pass so much of our area isn't in the vigorous zone. 850 circ is parked right in the WV panhandle. Run that over EZF and we can get a little more excited. Right now, gun to head, 1-3" with some modest upside.

3-4 looks like max boom from what I'm seeing. Not sure there's enuff wiggle room for anything bigger. Good thing about the event is it will be instability driven moreso that lift/upglide. High ratio snow globe potential could bubble up as the upper level stuff moves overhead. If 12z globals all put down an inch or 2 today, we can prob bank on some amount of accum snow

Gonna go with 4.7". This was a pure old school TN valley swiper. These types of storms make up the balance of "good memories" during the 70s and 80s. Cold 2-4/3-5 events were something we could count on a few times in any average or good winter. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as me. Even though it was a "smallish" event, it was a special one for multiple reasons.

They didn't take the advanced measurement and stat pad course in college.

Serious deathband. Over 6" already

Gettin deathband'd. Leveled up from light snow. 3" by 9pm? Stay tuned!

Doin pretty well. 2.2-2.3". Had the dog out in woods for an hour. No flashlight needed. Love that when it snows near cities. Side roads were terrible. Insurance companies will have busy signals tomorrow lol

It was a tough decision but I went with dosidos #22. May add in some fuel biscuits if things get really dicey

Cannabis delivery and shelter in place is the only option. Operation Vigilance

Finally over an inch. Feelin optimistic for 4". NW DC could easily get the same imho. This is a good setup with favorable stripe. Rare lol

Home from CT. Moco death band setting up early it appears. Getting the hazy look with light snow now. Awesome.

The relax is quite different than a pac jet type of pattern. That's happened so much recently that a "relax" is becoming synonymous with "continental Pac invasion" lol. When cold retreats next week, flow will be slow and cold will mostly just decay and not be "replaced". What brings cold back on the ens is a very efficient way to go from warm/blah to a single front then cold enuff. Cold continental air from central Canada pushes down into the conus SE over the lakes into the east. Ens guidance unanimously agrees that the Epo and/or pna ridges remain favorable. Potentially for weeks. In this type of setup a -AO regime delivers the goods because of favorable ridge axis offsetting lack of a NAO block when the AO displaces the TPV to hudson bay or south. The look reminds me of Feb/Mar 2003. Eta: I left out transient 50/50s would be the key piece for a big storm with the advertised look going into early Feb. We'll see about the NAO. So far it doesn't look to reload quickly

CWG boom baby!

Clear skies and 23 in CT lol. Heading south in a few. Chasing the jackpot on this one. Gonna roll thru Columbia first and make sure @WxUSAFis jackin' and then drive thru the center of the death band to Rockville.

These types of events used to be a staple here. 70s-80s had plenty. Looking forward to it. Felt pretty good last week about a couple cold inches. Seems like a lock at this point.

Yessir. All storms must be looked at individually. Models have strengths and weaknesses. From what I've seen, no model is good at nailing volatile NS setups beyond 3 days. All the meaninful development happens inside of that range. Getting the lead in right AND all the fancy stuff is a seismic butt ton of math lol. Climo and odds say a boom scenario is the least likely. Lots of history there. OTOH- we usually get some accum snowfall with setups like this. They aren't remembered because there's usually an underlying disappointment after "the mid range boom runs" lol. My total wag is most of us are good for a cold couple inches. Exactly how is above my pay grade. Lol

Problem is storm type. Volatile NS, thin margins, and development at our latitude. Far far different that the recent fail that lifted out of the gulf. If you were around in 2013-15 winters we had a lot of this stuff and it was never resolved until 72 hours at best. Some of the events those winters actually popped up at 72-96hr leads with no previous signal. The goal posts haven't really changed. Somewhere between a complete whiff and a good storm. Any time you have a setup where models are developing snow basically overhead, don't get married to anything until that development is within 72 hours minimum. These snow events are very complicated from NWP perspective. They have a long history of being phantoms and booms. That said, this setup is our best of the season by far. But it won't be easy on the nerves if you track ops every 6 hours. One of them will almost always look worse or go the wrong way or show the fail option. Full agreement is a short range game

You're not wrong but until 0:0 is off the table, all other ratios don't excite me too much. What we really need to figure out is how to get the 12:0 ratio then we don't have to care about precip anymore.