psuhoffman

It can't be worse

Funny…except this region struggles to get snow even in good years. It’s only the extremely rare 1-2 a decade years like 96/03/10/14 that snow comes easy. The rest, even ones you probably remember as great in your area, were a struggle with long frustrating periods and lots of fails mixed with a few victories. That was our climo to begin with, without accounting for any degradation.

Those means were already reduced. When I moved to northern VA in the 90s the IAD "avg" was 23". It wasn't long ago that BWI was close to 22". My baseline will always be set as those numbers. I know I am getting older but I am not a fossil or anything... it's not like we are talking about 50 or 100 years ago. But now we talk about "will BWI get BACK to 19" or will IAD get BACK to 20" but for me those numbers are already lower than what my baseline was. This has been going on for a while...so no its highly unlikely we get back to the climo numbers of the previous 30 year period...just like the most recent period didn't get back to the numbers of the one before and so on and so on...this trend has been happening for quite a while now. The real questions is...has it accelerated recently or is this just a down period following the 2016 super nino. I tend to lean down period...and that the snowfall will bounce back some. I'll feel a lot better when we see the actual evidence of that and its not just hope.

It’s going to be sunny and 60-65 Tuesday. 70s later this week. Seriously, life is harsh and unforgiving, filled with countless assholes you will have to deal with, death, pain, tragedy, unfairness, and misery. No one can afford to be so weak they can’t simply adult up and deal with a chilly day.

Given the pattern it won’t surprise me if at some point in the next 2-3 weeks we do get a storm that teases us with some snow in the area. It’s highly unlikely we get anything significant of course.

There is definitely a sweet spot where we can get the positive affects of a Nino without a significant permanent hemispheric climate impact. But now we’re talking about a really narrow range between too weak to appreciably alter the pacific (2019) and too strong. How narrow are our goalposts getting? This is speculative but there are tipping points. 66 and 83 maybe did contribute some permanent warming but the colder base state then was able to recover more. Warming is accelerating even absent a Nino. That might have an exponential impact. Like giving a little shove uphill v downhill. One of those has way more impact! I’ve seen this same speculation and even some preliminary studies that do suggest that the lessening gradient is somewhat responsible for much of this but also that an impact of the changed pac base state is increasing the frequency of Nina’s. It seems still too early to know how much though. Unfortunately for us I’ve seen so much speculation around numerous individual factors, some directly related to climate change some indirectly, and I have no idea how many are really impacting and to what degree, but the problem is it seems every single one of them disproportionately affects our location negatively wrt snow. Indo pac warm pool, reduced sulfur emissions, expanded pac Hadley cell, warmer gulf and Atlantic, altered trade wind patterns) it doesn’t even matter if ALL are having the speculated impacts because every single one has a negative impact on our snow and we didn’t exactly have a lot of room to spare with our snow climo before! Even if only 1-2 are actually having much impact it’s going to hurt us a lot.

Awesome write up. It seems we’re on the same page on much of this, including having some of the same questions and musings going forward. I think unfortunately when the majority of factors indicate a hostile longwave base state we just have to assume it’s going to be awful and not look for the kinds of intervening factors that could salvage a “decent” outcome in the past. Warm is just too warm anymore for the result to be anything other than bad. I share your musing (made a post to maestro speculating this) regarding a Nino. I do think it’s likely to increase our snowfall chances in the moment. But man what if it also ushers in a new even warmer base state like 1998 and 2016 did. Be careful what you what for.

The thing I see most is people playing in the ambiguity that exists here. Two things can be true. This year had a a horrible longwave pattern. That is attributable to factors “mostly” unrelated to any long term trend. But it’s also true that it’s very likely the reason things have been worse than past analogs to similarly hostile pattern periods is that it’s warmer now. Too many are playing one side of those two facts or the other as if they have to be mutually exclusive when they are not.

They did fine if you knew how to use them. Model output isn’t meant to be a plug and play forecast. They are possible permutations. You have to apply some intuition based on knowledge to the equations. Some of us were never fooled by the chaos induced colder long range looks. The ensembles never broke down the central pac ridge or pac NW trough that was driving the SER. The fact they kept losing the SER was just an error. But if you corrected for that error they did a good job.

You might need an intervention

Some will talk for days about a natural disaster but analyzing snow data is too much to bear. Lol. Im a very analytical person. Not everyone is. And that’s ok. I can’t produce beautiful works of art or hit a 3. Everyone has gifts. But I don’t shit all over art that I don’t understand or don’t like. Yet non analytical types will shit all over data analysis even when it’s clear they don’t really comprehend what it’s showing. That part annoys me. I don’t mind discussing weather even if it’s not what I want. But I don’t only analyze bad snow trends. Only a few years ago I posted a whole thread, literally like 20 posts, analyzing every warning event we’ve ever had and what trends and patterns lead to snow. No one minded that analysts. Oddly no one argued with that data. I enjoy analyzing weather. I would prefer that analysis was of snow. But since it’s now snowing the only analysis I can do is “why isn’t it snowing”.

I agree but it is the official recording station for DC. I can’t change that.

Y_S would you like to buy a vowel?

Some individual years have been more snowy. Mostly when we get a HECS. Those also seem inflated lately. But if you look at longer decadal periods no. Go back to my post this morning.

The most recent “snowy” cycles were not as snowy and the 1960s and other snowy periods prior to that.

I think maybe we need to emphasize statistics more as a society.

So use BWI. 2017-2024: 64”. 1950-1957 84.1”. Im not trying to misrepresent the data or skew anything. The most recent 7 years are the least snowy at all 3 official recording stations. And the least snowy at the 3 non official non UHI locations I looked at to examine if it might be a UHI issue.

The periods I was comparing were 2017-2023 and the previous worst 7 year period on record 1950-1956. We most definitely will still get a snowy winter or snowier period, that wasn’t my argument. But the snowy and non snowy periods have been getting less snowy.

I used 2 locations outside the UHI to show the phenomenon is not totally a UHI issue. So this is kinda am irrelevant argument

Lol

Just ignore him. I do. I will engage with almost anyone no matter how much I disagree so long as they are grounded in reality and arguing in good faith. He is either NOT grounded in reality or is not acting in good faith. He refuses to even acknowledge there is any trend at all no matter how much evidence is provided. He has repeatedly said things that are so utterly ridiculous and contradictory that there is no way to have a logical debate with him if he isn't operating from the same reality we are.

I looked at 2 coop sites near here, Westminster and Hanover and both were worse the last 7 years than that comparable period in the 50's. The departure is SLIGHTLY closer than DCA so it is fair to say some of this is UHI, but looking at other non UHI locations in the area seems to bear out that this period is in fact worse than the 50's in our area even accounting for UHI.

@SnowenOutThere there is no comperable period to this. Not even close. The 1950's were our next closest awful snowfall period...but the worst 7 year period during that stretch was from 1950 to 1956 where DCA had 68". The last 7 years DCA has had 47.7". It's not even close. To avoid this being the worst 8 year period ever next season DCA will need 34.5" of snow. Anyone want to bet on that? Please, my children's college fund could use a boost. It gets even worse after that because all previous periods like this were bookended by huge snowfall periods. For DCA to avoid the worst 10 year period they need to average 31" over the next 3 seasons! Who wants to take bets on that? Again...please. I am sure we will get a snowy winter sometime soon. And clowns like him will try to say "see there is no trend in snow" but we don't just need a snowy season. It's been so bad for so long...we need what would be an unprecedented snowy period over several years just to get back to not being the worst period ever. I really don't think some get just how bad it is compared to previous standards.

He is on my ignore list so I didn't see his original post...but if its the chart I think it is I can explain. That chart is incredibly misleading when comparing trends over eras because it normalizes seasonal snowfall to each era. In the 1950's DC's avg snowfall was still about 17" so a 17" season would show up as normal on the chart where as a 17" season now would show up as above normal since DC's avg is now down to 14". That kind of chart is useless for showing a trend because by normalizing each season to a running mean it masks changes in the mean. It is simply showing you the cycles of getting above and below normal snowfall in a given period for the avg of that given period. It's fine for showing up and down cycles of snowfall but useless for showing changes or trends over time within those cycles.