psuhoffman

These cycles are the main drivers of our snowfall...but unfortunately within these cycles there is a clear diminishing trend. The current bad cycle is worse than the previous one by about 20% and that good period in the 2000's was not as good as the previous time the Pacific and Atlantic both cooperated simultaneously in the 1960s. The most troubling aspect of that period from 2000-2016 was that the center of the positive snowfall anomalies shifted north several hundred miles from where it was in previous similar periods...we were barely above average snowfall for that period while places like Philly to Boston were running at 150% or more of avg. And not too far south of us actually were below avg for the period... In short while there are still these up and down cycles we are getting dangerously close to the "you're just too far south for it to matter" line

I agree with several of these points. WRT taking advantage of the Eagles injuries yesterday, Mitchell was only out for 2 plays and the Eagles blitzed and created pressure on both. I do not think this is a coincidence given that overall their blitz % is near the bottom of the league. They were covering for that issue and it worked. Who knows what the plan was had Lamar not been forced into a bad decision by pressure. As for the safety situation, the Eagles are pretty deep there, they have a young Safety who was starting last year who is now 4 deep in the depth chart due to signings and improvements at that position. I am not sure the drop off there is really all that great. I agree with all the other points though.

I'll be honest...my primary tracking interest when I first look at guidance any given run is for where I am going to be at a particular point in winter (Vermont next weekend, Revelstoke BC around New Years) not here.

I am shocked and confused (but interested and willing to listen with an open mind) by the perspective of Ravens fans here. As a neutral outsider (I neither particularly love but definitely do not hate the Ravens) I view them as a team with a good but not great roster that typically overperforms their talent level over the past 10 years. This year, they are about where the talent level says they should be. The talk about firing the coach is crazy to me. I did think maybe I was simply missing something and off on my evaluation so I looked at all the pre-season roster rankings I could find from the major publications like PFF, ESPN, Fox sports. I looked at 8 roster rankings in all and the Ravens were between 3 and 9 with an average of 6.5. I guess you could argue they are slightly under performing their talent this season since at the moment they have the 9th best record and by talent they should be 6 or 7 but that seems pretty minor, and I think they've had a harder schedule are are playing better in reality than a few of those teams with better records. I will admit I don't watch them closely enough and maybe this is due to boneheaded decisions that I just don't notice...but I didn't see anything in the game yesterday that he did that I found egregious or harmful to the team. They lost because the kicker missed a few important kicks but mostly because the Eagles defense did to them exactly what they've done to everyone all year and the Eagles offense ground them down late which is also what they've done to everyone all year. And the game ended about exactly how you would expect given the talent on both squads, the Eagles have the slightly better roster and they won a close game. What am I missing?

It’s 10 days away.

Bad solutions don’t lock in either. But the problem is we have a box about 100 miles wide (sometimes smaller depending on the setup) we need the storm to track. Anything outside that box is a fail. We don’t care or notice if it ends up 200 v 300 miles outside the box in either direction because the result is the same for us. No snow. The permutations that result in no snow exponentially outnumber those that do in any threat from range.

A 10% chance of snow is a better chance than we have most of the time lately

Ya well it’s hard to get “blue” even in a trough when the averages are calculated on a 30 year period that ended 5 years ago and it’s continuously getting warmer. The actual average base state right now in a neutral pattern is warmer than the averages those plots are calculated with. That’s one of the reasons why many times when you look at a long range plot there is no blue anywhere.

My one hope is that as we enter a warmer climate maybe the dry isn’t as dry and the cold is still cold enough. It’s a narrow target we’re aiming for though. But 2014 does prove it’s possible. But not the most likely outcome imo. I don’t find perfect track rainstorms funny but everyone has their own sense of humor. Ya 2017 and 1951 sucked but so did 2001 and 2009. None of them were good so not sure why you highlighted those 2 specifically.

There’s a trough in the east on that plot.

Some of my analogs are in there too. Problem is while they are cold most of them were not snowy years.

Top 5 were 2008-9, 2016-17, 2000-01, 1950-51, 1954-55

One of the limiting factors to this winter’s potential imo is there was a uniform characteristic across all my analogs, they started and ended cold. But the “snowiest” part of winter was the warmest in all of them! It’s really difficult for us to get a snowy winter without timing up a cold period somewhere between Jan 10-Feb 20 and that period was universally warm across all the analogs I identified. That leaves us nibbling on the edges so to speak. It could be worse. We’ve had several wall to wall torches recently. And there was some snow across our area in December in all the analogs so I do expect we get some snow soon…but it’s probably something small. This isn’t anything specific to the pattern (other than the fact it is NS dominant) just statistical probabilities.

No help

It takes special expertise when handling such a large bird.