Bob Chill

BWI: 26" DCA: 19” IAD: 34” RIC: 14” Tiebreaker (SBY): 11”

We're pretty irregular down here with any and all sets of tele's. Our snow needs timing far more than up north. So any pattern that repeats air cold enough to snow can get it done even if jacked up. Big storms are different and Dec is not a big storm month here. We've had numerous 2-6" snowfalls splattered in all enso phases. More common in the first half of the month. It's a weird quirk in DC. Dec snow is rare except around Dec 5th give or take lol. Stats back it up.

Battle ground patterns with a block like to aim hoses at places for hot streaks. We've won some and lost more. Lol. Gotta have a chance before you can lose tho

GEFS has been consistently showing a decent TN valley overrunning setup in the 5th-7th window. The carving troughs aren't digging deep but are plenty cold. I like the breadth of the cold air. Flat and wide instead of a deep bowl.Gulf is open from what I keep seeing. Overrunning is one of the only ways for our sub to score together in early Dec. Ways out in time but it makes a lot of sense if it starts locking in next week.

@raindancewx the comparison is based on solid ensemble consensus for traditional high latitude blocking and the fact that we (in the mid Atlantic) are often dependent in that type of feature in ANY nina if we want winter at all. How long it last or even if it materializes are unknown but the look is classic. If early Dec is showing a piece of what winter has in store then mid Atlantic people will enjoy it. I have no thoughts about the west on this stuff. Nobody here broad brushes the US with winter thoughts in areas outside of "home"

Once we get finished with the 95-96 redux we can immediately jump into disco about the incoming 09-10 redux. Brooklyn is just letting us know that 09-10 is knocking at the door again real soon

There is some sort of weird decadal ao/nao cycle. I don't understand it other than it's obvious in the rear view. We've had a run of dog turd ao/nao years lately. Fluked out in 13-15 stretch. Atypical there. Last winter wasn't hostile. Almost seemed like blocking was making a comeback. Makes you wonder if this year is part of the eventual reversion. If it is then a winter with patterns like 95-96 isn't crazy talk. Snow beats to a different drum and that was a monster year. A redux there is def crazy talk haha

Man, I'm diggin the quick carve progression in early Dec. Fits into the personality of the last 1.5 months. Fast starts and good winters are rare. 2013 was the last one right?

Man, I still can't get the multiverse treble hook out of my mouth. I bit that ish hard lol.

You believe this is a hostile pac? We'd of killed for this jet structure multiple times in recent years. It's not perfect and it never is but the pac jet as depicted is slow/split/dirty with a cold air factory in Western Canada. I find that very workable

If the early Dec deep western trough rolls quick like what's been happening all fall, Dec will keep a lot of people glued to screens every 6 hours . And if a stable block sets up then 10x as many will be glued...

I'm a damn noob again lol. I forgot the CFS ran weeklies. This is a great visual of what I'm thinking (in very general terms). Uber scandy ridge rolls forward and assets itself into the NAO domain and all forces the tpv into Siberia. The last panel shows the -AO/NAO combo flipping + awful quick but thinking that far ahead is more insane than what I'm already posting. This progression kills the big cold air factory in the arctic but it also keeps the door open for western Canada to do what we need. Force seasonal cold air under a block and it works in early Dec when other features line up. I want a perfect pattern as much as anyone but the vast majority of our snow falls with a jacked up pattern. If a locked shutout pattern shows up I'll change my mind REAL quick and go dark again

Going off of intuition only (some call it a WAG lol),I feel pretty strongly against a persistent trough in the west in Dec. Climo and odds favor it so I'm thinking against the grain here. The deep western troughs have all been rolling forward quickly last 6+ weeks. Nothing is locking down yet. Oct/Nov are transitional so locked patterns are less common but even by fall standards, cold continental airmasses have preferred to roll and not sit. Dec plays by different rules because 2 week locked patterns are common. All ens are showing a potential strong western NA trough trying to load first week of Dec. If that rolls forward efficiently with successive shortwaves, I'll be pretty stoked cuz we'll be trackin legit phantoms before we know it! Eta: my thoughts above are contingent on the Scandy ridge asserting itself and the NAO domain remaining "unhostile". Or even blocked... We've been bombarded with long duration Nina troughs lately and never get anything to push back until later in the season. I may be off my rocker or too optimistic but I can't ignore the gut feel of a winter with real AO/NAO help (including Dec). We'll see soon enough

A good start no doubt. I've refined my strategy this year. In addition to shoveling all my neighbors' snow into my yard, I have a nice tilt trailer that can haul 3 tons of snow so I'll import from Smith Mtn this year. @psuhoffmanwill be very jealous of my very legit snow totals this year. Mappy will need a new color for my rockville yard. Yolo time

@WxWatcher007love what u do buddy. Keep it comin

Too add to my last post, I typically check cpc upper air analogs 1-2 times a week just for reference. For the last few weeks, the analogs have been heavyweight 1950s&60s. Going off memory only, that's not common. Plenty of the analogs are the years we like from those decades but there were some real turds in the 50s. Lol. Don't need a decadal redux there...

@WxUSAF killer post.. The abrupt flip to sustained crisp continental air early/mid Oct caught my attention. I spent most of Oct in VA and it got below freezing 3 nights in a row mid month and scattered randos after. Every time I looked at d15 epa/gefs ens, I kept thinking "if this is an early peek into early winter jet highways, we're going to like this winter. Now as we cruised thru Nov with little variance, it's time to let it go and see what comes back. This has been a very long cycle by fall standards. So persistent it does call up my intuition in a good way. Hostile lack of blocking seems unlikely this year. My gut says winter wx chances will be served by both the npac ridge at times with fast flow and dirty blocked flow stsrting to show in the mix after mid Dec. Just a gut hunch. We'll see. Dec has a habit of rewriting everything so hopefully we don't watch the a Hindenburg redux To clarify "like" for everyone, I only mean winter will have the feel more often than not. Snow in the MA is too volatile to predict. We can be an icebox and suck door to door and warm 10 out of 12 weeks and hit climo snow anyway. Not a set of stats I like to guess with anymore. My guess is we'll have enough chances to get soundly on the board. Whether people feel good or not at the end is very subjective lol

My weenie brain is so fookin afflicted... I have photographic memory of OTHER weenies' tragedies. Some call it empathy, others call it sadistic pleasure. I just call it F'd up and move on with my day

I missed the damn storm and it really ticked me off lol. Freshman in college elsewhere. I think u can relate my friend

I've been quietly interested in this period for over a week. We're undecided between rockville or smith mtn for the holiday. I was rooting for warm but kept telling the fam it looks like Dec haha. It does kinda have the break out the parkas and cameras feel... shovels? Sun angle.... Having another property with similar climo totals but different favored setups will increase my odds of fun. I plan on being in VA for every storm unless it's better here Nov is a silly month here for snow. It never happens and when it does it usually sucks. Except for 87. Still waiting for a redux. Only been 35 years

The only strong storm I'd be good with is one that literally hits rapid deepening at the perfect latitude. Imo, slider or wave type deal hitting right after max cold has pushed south would be the only way without intense anxiety leading in and abject failure leading out lol. I (nobody) needs that right b4 a holiday. We've rained in Dec multiple times recently with a perfect track modest low. One that always snows in Jan... I'll never get excited for an amplified storm in Nov unless it's imminent and even then... lol

Attachment problems... story of my life... didn't quite finish last week but very close

In many ways the wife and I feel "guided" somehow. Sounds crazy but we're making a ton of long term decisions on the fly and as long as our intuition isn't yelling, we just go with the flow. I love building stuff there are a ton of trees on the ground in various groupings. We had forest crew clear a 500' access drive and half acre clearing for the RV in July. All the good trees were saved for milling. The drive path was majority pine so milling with a chainsaw is easy enough. Once I get into hardwoods I'll invest in a bandsaw type mill. I'm real proud of this project. I did the collage for my bro-in-law. Does a nice job capturing the grunt work. Only tools were 2 chainsaws, mill guide, hammer, level, draw blade (bark skinner) and tape. All cuts were basically freehand. Next up is a big 20x15 shed!

Think of it like a counter trade in the stock mkt. Against the grain for a reason. Low probability to go against climo guardrails. The most powerful wx supercomputers in the world still struggle bad beyond day 5 so its hard to trust any numerical guidance beyond that. Climo is the best predictive tool in the long range hands down imho

In a feast or famine climo location, any guesses near climo are statistically weak lol. Go small to rack up wins or go big to rack up fame.... eventually I still look at long range stuff but only at a 10k' view nowadays. From what I've seen since mid Oct, my intuition is strongly telling me winter will be winter this year in the east. Especially if the GoA ridge is predominant and is centered further east than usual. We can be cold and snow without blocking in that regime. I have no strong thoughts at all other than my gut