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psuhoffman

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Everything posted by psuhoffman

  1. psuhoffman
    I agree with all this. I hope to have my winter thoughts out today and they might surprise some people. But not everyone has accepted the "reality" as you seem to have. But there is still plenty of push back to what you just said above. And many have said "wait until we get a real nino and that would be the test". So here it is. I am just pointing out for that narrative this can't just be a slightly above average winter. If we get 7 years of total worst ever garbage the big year cant just be what used to be normal. I tend to be overly analytical and also carry several unrelated narratives simultaneously and I understand how that can be confusing or frustrating. If we get a decent winter...I will enjoy every snow event and will be totally fine with it emotionally.
  2. psuhoffman
    Let me clarify that we still have plenty of time to get snow even up here and be in the “it could still be a decent to good winter”. But a counter point…what’s the goal here? We’re coming off our least snowy long term period EVER! We have a Nino. If those claiming it’s mostly just been a fluke or bad cycle (as I hope but am skeptical) are correct this statistically should be the bounce back. That year where Baltimore gets 50” and offsets the dreg numbers of the last 7 years. If Baltimore gets 25” this year that doesn’t actually break us out of the snow drought. Our once a decade big years need to be BIG or else things are worse than many want to admit. This has to be a blockbuster season or statistically the snow drought continues and our snow mean continues to fall statistically.
  3. psuhoffman
    I just looked and it seems when my last laptop broke a few months ago I lost it. Thought I had it backed up but I don’t see it in my files. I will recreate it though, it’s come in handy (way too often) lately. I’ll work on that as soon as I finish my winter thoughts hopefully today. But to summarize for now…unlike at IAD, DC and BWI where it is more common to go later into winter before getting snow…there is a pretty strong correlation up here where the avg snowfall and probabilities of hitting whatever benchmark you want…50”, 30”, 20”… go down steadily the further past Dec 1 you go without 1” of snow. By Dec 10 the odds of a blockbuster winter are all but gone. Hope for a decent near avg winger evaporates if we make it to Xmas with no snow and if we get to Jan 10 it almost always ends being a complete crap non winter with basically no snow at all.
  4. psuhoffman
    We got snow but the ground was too warm for any accumulation. For my location 1” was my marker.
  5. psuhoffman
    Maybe…but the numbers are what they are. 2015 was back loaded. But here I had 6” of snow in November and several inches the first week of December. Yes DC didn’t get any snow until late January but that’s different and not as uncommon. If it doesn’t snow early up here it’s almost always a sign the winters in trouble. That said we still have a few weeks to make that happen. Im not that worried yet. But I am not dismissing it either.
  6. psuhoffman
    I was also referring to your “December will probably be December” comment. Yea December’s have been just mostly awful lately. And guess what’s also been mostly awful for a long time now, our entire winters! Is it possible we torch straight through to January then turn it around? Sure, but that’s not the typical pathway to a big snow year. Usually they show their hand earlier than they historically. It might not snow on the mid Atlantic coastal plain but there is a huge difference between it being just a little too warm for snow along 95 and it being too warm for snow anywhere in our region. I looked it up years ago, and everyone hates when I pull out the exact dates and numbers, but they’ve been perfect in declaring “winters over” several times recently. There are definitive milestones where if it hasn’t snowed by then in places like where I am or Martinsburg WV or Hagerstown…it starts looking really bad for the winter, and those dates are fast approaching, so when I see long range runs that mostly torch our whole area for weeks it bothers me some because yes it’s “more if the same” but I don’t want more of the same awful crap the last 7 years has been! It would be nice to get back to when it actually snowed in November and December here because that was also when we used to get a lot of snow in Winter more often
  7. psuhoffman
    Given your location I get your attitude. But in the last 75 years there have been 17 seasons with over 50” here. And only one of them got to December with no accumulating snowfall. Most had significant snow by the end of the first week of December. Up here you can usually tell early if the season has big potential. And if I don’t get 50” here you can forget some of those haughty big number predictions I see for the metro areas in the snowfall contest thread! it’s one thing if DC is 45 and just a bit too warm to snow but it’s not good when we’re 55-60 into December. There is time to turn around. I’m not worried yet. But I do think the next few weeks has more to tell us about the outcome of winter than some seem to think.
  8. psuhoffman
    Very Feb 2010 but ya if that the consensus across all long range guidance in a couple weeks then we get excited for now it’s fun to look at and dream. On a side note I’ve been putting together my analogs (hope to release my winter guess very soon) and 2010 was high on the analog list. But so are some total dreg years depending on what metrics you think are slightly more important. I’ve never seen a more divergent analog list in the years I’ve done this.
  9. psuhoffman
    Had some sleet and slush bombs mixed in around 7am this morning at my place so I am sure on top of South Mtn there was some snow.
  10. psuhoffman
    This seems like two ships passing in the night. Im talking about our ability to overcome a truly awful pac longwave pattern. A Nino pattern isn’t typically a hostile pacific pattern. It can occasionally be if it’s too strong or the north pac low gets displaced too far east. It can be ruined by a raging positive AO sometimes. But “a crap pacific longwave pattern” isn’t a hallmark of a Nino. Yes we can get a -PNA as a wave crashed the west coast on a Nino but that feature alone isn’t a “bad pac” the way I mean. I’m talking about the Nina ish persistent central pac ridge and corresponding deep western trough base state we’ve been stuck in much of the last 7 years. Saying “we won’t know if we can overcome a bad pac until we get a good pac” doesn’t really make sense wrt my point.
  11. psuhoffman
    With the recent pacific thermal profile the way it is I doubt blocking can overcome a bad pacific longwave pattern anymore. The equation has tilted against us in that regard.
  12. psuhoffman
    I’ve been to busy between coaching soccer and a new job I took to work on a winter outlook much until recently. I’m putting it together now. But I’ll say this, I’m about as conflicted as I’ve ever been. There are a lot of conflicting signals, even more than typical for a seasonal forecast. I could see this being anything from another dreg year to a blockbuster and in hindsight I’d feel like the warnings or signals were there. But I have little confidence which signals will win out.
  13. psuhoffman
    It’s impotent because there is a huge SER that’s winning the airmass war. I see that as an unrelated problem. I’m not sure there is anything about the blocking that’s part of that. Same as the last few. We had a near record block last year and we torched because of the SER.
  14. psuhoffman
    On the 18zgfs the NAO goes neg around Nov 17 and stays strongly neg through the end of the run on the 25. Imo that’s legit. It’s failure to assist our snow chances on that run was a product of the mid latitude pattern and the pacific not anything to do with the NAO in my opinion. But we might be arguing apples and oranges here.
  15. psuhoffman
    I think Ji was just being Ji
  16. psuhoffman
    Yes. We have overcome a crappy pacific later in winter with a -NAO. But it’s becoming almost impossible early season given the current SST torch. Frankly it’s probably gonna be hard to overcome a crap pacific even later in winter given how warm the ssts are. Imo this is partly why the recent hostile PDO phase has been more of a disaster than the last few. In past hostile PDO cycles we had some snowy periods where the Atlantic canceled the pacific. That equation hasn’t worked at all lately. This might be semantics and I’m about to talk a lot about an op solution at range which won’t happen and will look different in 6 hours but I think my point is valid. While I’m not 100% sure how you mean “bootleg” I’d refrain from that language because to me it implies the NAO isn’t legit or is in some way not canonical. But the -NAO on the 18z Gfs is a canonical -NAO coupled with a 50/50 vortex and even western Canada/EPO ridge! The fact that it doesn’t impact the eastern CONUS mid lat pattern and links with a huge SER again isn’t due to any deficiency in the high latitude pattern. Just like what’s happened several times in the last 7 years, the SER simply wins. The western energy cuts under the high latitude flow out west then fails to progress and flatten the SER. Instead the SER pumps so much in response to that approaching wave it becomes a mid lat block and stalls the progression. We’ve seen this exact thing play out a lot and it’s why we’ve been in such a funk since the only way historically to really overcome a crappy pac cycle was with a -NAO. But recently it hasnt worked. But it’s not because all those NAOs were “bootleg” they simply aren’t having the same impact on the mid latitudes because the SER is winning the see saw tug of war battle in the flow.
  17. psuhoffman
    Obviously we want both but early season I’ll take the pacific over the Atlantic.
  18. psuhoffman
    https://www.dictionary.com/browse/joke
  19. psuhoffman
    It took until mid November for models to agree on what October 31 looked like?
  20. psuhoffman
    I used to do that nonsense. At one point I had 3 pairs. For the last 14 seasons I was riding on a pair of Atomic Access. Just got a pair of Rustler 10s and can't wait to get out there. So far the only game in town is Killington with 2 measly intermediate trails open that require hike to, mostly for publicity and to artificially inflate their season length stats. Not worth an 8 hour drive. As soon as someone opens even just a few legit runs I will go.
  21. psuhoffman
    They better be some backup POS pair from the 1970s and not anything you care about if you're breaking them out on 1-3" of snow
  22. psuhoffman
    I agree there are certainly too many unreasonable people anywhere...but there does seem to be a higher concentration of them in our area compared to other places I've lived or spent significant time.
  23. psuhoffman
    It's the DC area. Way too many people are a bad combination of miserable, picky, and demanding.
  24. psuhoffman
    Let me be clear...its way more good than bad. But if I am digging deep for any signs of possible trouble... the tropical forcing is having less impact to the hemispheric pattern downstream than in those years, as of yet. You can also see that in those charts.
  25. psuhoffman
    The forcing is weak (not necessarily good since we need something to counter the recent base state), but its in the perfect location.
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