psuhoffman

It’s a little over 2 hours in good weather. It’s not bad now that 48 is done. Obviously it’s dicey in the snow but that’s true of any roads

It’s possible. At this time in 2013 I didn’t expect what was about to happen. I was expecting another 2008-9 type year then also. It definitely happens sometimes. But it’s not something I bet on. A lot of forecasting is just playing probability

Seriously that could be describing like 10 years in the last 20 and most were cold neutral or Nina years. But I know 2009 there was a sharp gradient near 40 where snow went from way below to near and slightly above normal. It wasn’t amazing to our north. Philly had 23” which is slightly above avg. NYC had 27” also a little above avg. There were no major storms but several minor to moderate events went just to our north during several cold periods in Dec-Feb. We got all our snow from one storm early March.

That’s almost every “cold” Nina.

I’d argue last year was better. A good week of winter. 2009 almost all the snow fell in one March storm and melted the next day.

It’s gonna be a long year

Even the kuchera maps on the NAMs are becoming more interesting. I’d like to see some of the more reliable guidance come in colder 18z but if the NAM can ever get one thing right it can sometimes do better with temps.

Probably overdone. It’s the NAM. But euro was indicating 1-2” in favored areas also. That’s probably more realistic.

I see the reason for the hype, there are some similarities to 2013/14 and the pattern looks fairly good coming up. The problem is that the same can be said of most of the other analogs that didn’t lead to much snow. Look at the patter late November in 2008. Perfect march also. This type of pattern has only ever really worked in a cold enso or neutral season once. Since we don’t have reliable records far ending back I can’t say if it was a 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 type fluke but I can say it was an outlier result and not one I’d want to bet on repeating in any one given similar season. The more likely outcome is the less exciting one unfortunately. But y’all know I’m rooting for it. I didn’t see 2014 coming either.

Kickera isn’t bad for our area as long as expectations are reasonable.

I think if people don’t get dreams of 2014 results in their heads there is some good news here and that is I do see signs that some of the absolute worst analog years like 2002 and 2023 might not be how this winter is evolving. I see more similarities so years like 2008/9 and 2012/13 and while they weren’t good there was more snow around the area those years. They were just bad not god awful. Until recently not god awful might have been considers a win. But recently I’ve seen some hype based on one season where this type of pattern worked. But it takes things going to a crazy extreme to get an epo driven pattern to be snowy here in a cold enso season. It does snow some. And it’s cold for stretches. But most often it’s also frustrating as we’re stuck in the dead zone between storm tracks most of the winter.

Precip shadow due to downsloping off the catoctins. The precip hole is on every run. The 3kNAM sometimes over does this feature some, but its a real thing with this wind trajectory. NW Carroll gets less snow than surrounding areas due to the shadow effect with ridges to either side of them.

I will put my full bias on the table...2009 is my top analog and it was by far my least favorite winter EVER. Because it was generally cold for long stretches, at least a cold enough pattern to snow...and it did snow a decent amount just to our north, so I was tracking and invested and watching every freaking wave, and almost nothing came of any of them. Yea I got slightly more snow that winter than a few others (but other than a bunch of 1" evens it was all from one March storm), but those years the pattern was no hope awful and I just checked out, 2009 was the biggest waste of my time for little return of any winter.

How this next couple weeks plays out I think is very important for hints at the winter. I know some will be tempted to say "it's early so its ok that these storms are not working out" but that is not necessarily true... It's one thing if the boundary is a little too warm maybe in the UHI but the storm took a good track and 2-3 degrees colder at the surface would have been a big snow...that is the type of thing that an early miss is not a bad thing and can be indicative of a good pattern. But when I saw the 6z GFS run the thought I had is...and that is exactly how all those horrible snowfall analogs I had in my set managed to have decent looking H5 patterns and produce no snow. A NS wave goes just to our north, it gets uber cold but a southern slider gets shunted south then phases too late and hits new england... another NS wave goes just north...gets cold but no STJ at the end then a NS wave goes north again. You look at the mean pattern for the whole period and it looked great and we got no snow to show for it! A little ice maybe. But I do think this first period of "winter pattern" will tip the hat for the winter some. If one of these waves can actually flush hit our area I will start to think maybe the 2014 analog idea has merit but if we go through a period where its generally chilly but NS waves manage to go just north and STJ waves get suppressed well...thats exactly what all the analogs say will happen all winter long.