psuhoffman

He was the leader of that band for sure but it wasn’t just him.

Remember in 2009-10 we had a hecs in December and a 1-3” snow in early January and by Jan 20 some were complaining the winter was becoming a letdown.

I agree to a point...but there have been several winters where my best snowstorm happened before December 15 and so I will take what I can get...but you're right when we time up great patterns outside mid winter...that's not good for maximizing potential...but since we don't have any control over that I'll just take whatever comes. If my memory serves, and if you are talking about that same early April storm I am... it was a problem with the energy trade off and cold air press related to the wave in front. From 5 days out that lead wave was weaker and supposed to be a small snow threat for Maryland. At one point I was even on the northern edge of a 2-4" snowfall projection from that little west to east boundary wave. But as that lead wave trended more amplified it pushed it north...but also had the corresponding effect of suppressing the wave behind it. Less energy left over, but more importantly an even greater cold air press, which crazy to say for April, was not what we needed. In the end the lead wave amplified too much and squashed the wave behind it south of us. I remember having this discussion with people that week...they were confused how a wave could be suppressed when temperatures weren't actually THAT cold and it was April. But suppression is more about the flow than the temperatures. And having high temps in the upper 40s when its sunny in April actually is VERY COLD...and indicates how dry and suppressive the flow is. Plus...had it been precipitating it would have been plenty cold enough to snow.

There were 3 dominant patterns that winter. The first 1/3 of the snow season was cold but typical Nina on that without a strong STJ and not a lot of Atlantic help big snow was hard to come by. The coast got clipped by an offshore bomb and we got a couple minor events back here. It could have been better though. I doubt much worse. the Mid Jan to late Feb pattern was bad. But it wasn’t as bad as we can get in a Nina. The poleward pac ridge extending into the AO domain provided some opportunities. Duel waves can work when cold presses. We had 2 legit threats. One fell apart and the other under produced. I got 3” from the one wave. But it could have been better if it was more organized or timed better. But it wasn’t a total shutout type pattern. More typical Nina bad. then of course March was unreal. We just missed 2 storms before the March 20 one hit. Then we missed another legit window in early April. Yea I know April but one wave gave southern PA 8” (I had about 2 here) and it’s not like those were areas that have a significantly better April snow climo the wave just went 50 miles north. Then the next wave got suppressed! We actually would have snowed had it now been squashed! Overall if we had those same 3 patterns repeat I’d put a 75% probability we get more snow than we did in 2018.

I think the analog years were for the December’s which would have made that the 2017-18 winter

The "flavor" of 2017-18 was probably about as good as we could hope for this winter, the Baltimore area was the local screw zone snow minimum in general but it featured two legitimate cold/snowy periods and even with both failing to fully reach potation around here even the minimum areas got close to a median snowfall that winter. If we repeated that general pattern with truly cold period from mid December to mid January and then crazy blocking the whole month of March...plus there were a couple lead/trailing wave opportunities in February and one produced a minor snowfall... so even the in between period wasn't a total hopeless period... considering there are some total snowless duds in the analog set I would sign up for a repeat of that winter and say please and thank you.

I’d be more concerned about why I’m suddenly a farmer in the 1800s than the winter.

If nothing changes I might just post this link with “what he said” for my winter outlook

@CAPE @Bob Chill I’m a believer in the WDI but the problem is what’s going on behind this. What we’re due for is to get out of this PDO cycle. I don’t mean the general -PDO but the mini super negative PDO phase we’ve been in since 2019 where it’s basically oscillating between -1.5 and -4 the whole damn time! Which is to say it’s been some version of “just plain bad to OMG what did I do wrong in a past life” territory for 6 years now! The WDI is for that ish to end! Past PDO mini negative cycles like this didn’t go past 5-6 years. But so long as we are in this the odds of a big snowstorm remain very low. We didn’t have many at all during past similar PDO periods. The thing is we won’t know it’s over until it is. But I don’t necessarily think the latest relaxation of what was a record low PDO in August is necessarily proof it’s over. So far we’re just seeing a typical relaxation in the cycle. If by January or February we get a PDO near neutral then I think it’s time to consider we’ve finally broken out of it. All that said, once we break out I think we will get a region wide snow. Hopefully soon! But so long as we remain in this recent very negative PDO mini phase it’s just unlikely.

No lies were told. I wonder how much of the ~18% of our snow climo we’ve lost is due to the fact our pre new years snowfall has fallen off a cliff.

The issue I have is once you start layering too many factors and being super specific for each (weak cold enso, PDO, AMO, QBO) you end up with such a small subset that it’s hard to say for sure the results are significant. Or maybe the better way to say it is it’s difficult to know what the chances of a “fluke” outcome are because that’s really what we’re hunting for. The truth is outside of Nino, all other winters the odds greatly favor a lower snowfall season. The vast majority of our good to great snow seasons fall under that category (1978, 1983, 1987, 1988, 2003,2005, 2010, 2015, 2016) with some chance we get a fluke cold/snowy year like 1979, 1982, 1996, 2014 in all “other” winters. And a slightly greater but still low chance we get a “decent” snowy or cold year like 1990, 1994, 2000, 2004 or 2006. But those are all kind of flukes. 70% of all non Nino winters end up pretty bad. And if you parse the analogs with so many variables to the point you only have 3-4 seasons in the list, you often end up not being able to tell what the odds of that fluke type season happening are because a sample that small might miss that fluke event unless you go back 100 years but then you’re using data on some of those variables that are less reliable. Just throwing my stream of consciousness out there. I do this too. Not sure how to account for it.

It’s way too early to pop any champagne but it looks promising at least.

Looping back to the discussion a few posts back, as we head into November we do want a colder pattern. We’ve had 11 seasons since 2000 when we went into fall with a somewhat similar enso to now and the winter ended up cold neutral or weak Nina. So somewhere within that group is our best enso analogs. Only one of the 11 was a truly great snowfall winter, 2013-14 but it was the coldest November of the 11! 2 others were decent snow seasons, above median at least across the area, and they were the 2’nd and 4th coldest! 3 of the 4 warmest November’s were total dreg dud almost no snow at all seasons and the 4th was pretty bad also. so if we get a torch November our sensible analogs become torch snowless winters! If we get a colder November the analogs become a near average to maybe even a show at a snowy winter. Something in between produces a mean of about 11” at BWI so bad but not god awful. All that to say if that pattern were to be the predominant one for November it projects well for the season. Im trying to provide some hope, there is plenty of doom and gloom to grab onto if that’s your thing.

the 11 best enso analogs (we won’t know which actually end up the best for another month or two) since 2000 are the Novembers of 2000, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2024 There does seem to be some correlation between a colder November and a better chance at snow those winters. These are stats for BWI. The 4 warmest November’s were 2001, 2011, 2022 and 2024 and those years went on to average 3.9” of snow. The 4 Coldest were 2000, 2013, 2017, 2021 and they went on to average 19.4” Now let’s assume 2013-14 was a fluke outlier (which I do) even if we remove it and replace it with the next coldest year 2005-6 the mean is 14.5” which is close to a median winter at BWI and significantly better than 3.9” So it does seem colder November=better

That event could have hit further north, but then it would have ripped off the places that got hit. It was typical of cold enso waves in that it had a more restrictive cold sector precip expanse. We just don’t get those HUGE whole region win type storms in a cold enso which is part of the issue.