psuhoffman

There are multiple ways to win here. Tight wave spacing with a trailing wave. But also if the next wave were to eject from the pac in prices so it doesn’t amp too early. If the next pac wave were to eject further south that would also help. What we don’t want is a slow pac wave ejecting in one huge amplified bowling ball.

The low is closer to the 50/50 In the second image lol. We need the flow to Be Uber suppressive because every wave ejecting from the Rockies immediately pumps a crazy heat ridge in front of it then cuts north along the thermal boundary it helped push north. Go look at an 850 t anomaly loop and see how fast each pac wave creates a massive heat bubble in front of it the instant it ejects into the plains. So ya we have to root for crazy tight wave spacing. But that’s just not that realistic.

Getting a lot of snow during good years isn’t our problem. It’s being able to eek our way to 10 or 15” in warm years. Lately bad years are totally awful.

Why give up now lol

Me too but of course if it is another warm dud those that want to pretend it’s not getting warmer will say “ya but some ninos were bad in the past” and they wools be correct. No one year can prove anything. But at some point there becomes a preponderance of evidence. I am not an authority to say when that point is though.

Euro was teeing up the storm around the 22nd. Who’s with me. Lol. I wouldn’t give up totally yet. It’s messy with so many NS waves but that period is close enough to good it wouldn’t take much. We would need a flush hit at night to work thoigh.

My thermometer said it’s 99 degrees but I might have had it in the wrong place. It didn’t come with picture instructions

Naw it’s saving the New England ski season. I was worried a few weeks ago spring skiing would be shit this year. April is the best ski month. Soft snow. Warm temps. Sun. Sometimes a dump is snow tossed in. But they have to still have snow lol. Good get that snow up where it matters the ski resorts.

@Maestrobjwa sorry in advance for length but so much to this. I don’t know exactly how much our snow reality is altered yet. No doubt this year the predominant pattern was not good for us. This would have been a bad snow year in any era. We most definitely can still snow and get cold given the right circumstances. Last year it snowed a decent amount! But my concern is I think our winning combinations in the pattern lottery are decreasing. One way I think we are losing out are in marginal situations we used to need to work out for a bad year like this to be 10” and not a complete shutout. There is a reason the frequency of single digit (or worse) winters in Baltimore are skyrocketing. It’s not because great years are suddenly bad. But I do think a lot of years like this that in the past found a way to snow a few times now it’s not working. There has been a lot of comparison to a similarly hostile pac period in the 70s. And they were similar. But many of those years like 72 and 74 and 75 managed their way to like 10-15” despite a bad base state pattern. I’m not sure if we can snow anymore by getting lucky with a good track in an otherwise bad warm pattern. Lately they doesn’t seem likely anymore. Warm is just so warm now. I do wonder if the days of lucking into a fluke snow in a bad pattern are over. @Terpeast here is my even bigger concern than just losing small marginal events in warm patterns. I can live with that. But some of our biggest snow periods came from blocking patterns that didn’t have true cold to work with. I’ll use the most famous of them. Our snowiest month ever. It was “cold” south of 40 because frankly it doesn’t have to be that cold in Feb to be below avg there. But look where the actual cold is. Locked up in Siberia. Our source region is above avg. We had to work with marginal cold of a domestic source. I remember chatting with Wes about 8 days before the Feb 6 storm and he was concerned about the thermals. I said give me that track this time of year and I’ll take my chances. That equation isn’t working as much anymore! This doesn’t mean we can’t get cold and snow. A pattern like 2003/2014/2015 would be cold and snowy even now Imo. But if we lose blocking regimes that don’t have arctic air as a way to get snow we are losing a HUGE part of our snow climo! That’s my bigger fear. @Maestrobjwa I don’t know if we’ve actually lost that path or not. 2010 wasn’t that long ago. But every super Nino seems to reset the northern hemisphere mid latitudes to a new Warner base state. Was the 2016 Nino a tipping point? I don’t know. As @CAPEhas said we need to test that with another Nino. But I’ll go one step further I want to test it with a Nino like 1958/1966/1987/2010 where the pac wasn’t 100% perfect with a poleward epo pna ridge all winter dumping arctic cold into the conus. Years like that (2003/2015) I know can still work. But can a 1987 or 2010 when almost all the snow came within a couple degrees of freezing and there wasn’t arctic witnesses around most of the time. Because we can’t afford to lose those years or isolated similar storms like Feb 2006 in less awesome years but that we’re made ok by getting those marginal airbase setups up produce a big snow. Because if that no longer works then we lost like 50% or more of our snowfall climo. That was the more typical way we got snow not from arctic blasts. But I don’t know. I’m just pointing out the obvious and data. Seems you’re making your own inferences. I hope that’s not true. My guess if I had to predict is we have lost some of that but not all. But I don’t know how much. I’d like a test case season to help find out.

Why you trying to get me in trouble

@Heisy another example. It’s going to be in the 40s tomorrow in Vermont with dews near 30 even with partial cloud cover, snowpack and the fact they are way north of the mid latitude thermal boundary and still in the northerly flow behind last nights wave. I ski up there in March a lot. It’s going to be a warm day for them despite being north of the storm track in a northerly flow. I’ve been up there a day or two before we get a late season snow and it was frigid cold. I remember being up there in mid March in 2013/14/15 and all 3 years some part of our area for snow in mid March and I remember how damn cold it was in Vermont. One of those years it was single digits! Yea in mid March. It was like 15 in early April in 2003 a day before that late snow that hit PA and NYC. For us to get snow we need Vermont to be like 15 not 45!

It’s not bad spacing or bad luck imo. It’s the same problem we’ve had. The wave spacing isn’t working because it’s too warm. So we need some crazy perfect unlikely spacing between waves where they are exactly close enough such that the northerly flow behind one can suppress the southerly flow ahead of Ty next but without crushing it. Ya ok. That’s just not likely. Waves being a few days apart isn’t the problem. It’s that the airmass is so blah even north of the boundary where there is southerly flow that as soon as any wave ejects from the west with any amplitude the southerly flow can blast a ridge to kingdom come ahead of it regardless of the longwave pattern. The storm is then going to track along that boundary that it was able to push way further north than the longwave pattern would historically suggest it should be. It’s a nasty feedback loop. The airmass is so marginal north of the thermal gradient I’m not even sure it would matter if one of these did track south of us unless it bombed us with like 1” qpf in 6 hours. Take last night. Places in NE PA like Hazleton at 1600 feet got 2-3” of snow from .45 qpf. Even at 1600 feet it was barely snow with a closed h5 tracking under them! And places in the valleys like Drums at 900 feet got a slushy coating. So if at 900 feet way to our north the airmass was barely cold enough to produce any snow even with w perfect track for them…what was the likely outcome in DC area even had that tracked 200 miles south? It’s just too warm.

My area is actually due for a big early April snow. Digging through old coops there were a lot of 6”+ snows in early April in the early 1900s. Even some 12”+. None recently. Of course there is that other thing that could be a reason for that lol. The progression you described is exclusive to a split flow stj dominant pattern. Even none Nino blocking regimes don’t go that way. 2016 for example, while the stj was very active so was the NS and we had to flush a couple miller b waves out of our system earlier that month before we got the NS to quiet down and allow what eventually happened. Anecdotally I’ve observed when we’re on a more noisy pattern and blocking sets in usually it leads to a major amplification in the east but that amplification is likely to be NS dominant. My theory is the blocking forces the NS to buckle and amplify under the block. Our best chance usually comes after as the pattern is deamolifyinh if a SS wave can time up right to take advantage of a temporary relaxation of the flow in the NS. This can sometimes happen in waves as the pattern cycles. 2018 produced more threats after a reload but it was just too late by then. Same is likely here. Might be too late for the first threat even.

They fall for it every time. I have college friends in the NYC area. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told them be careful of the NAM and Euro in NS miller b setups but everytime they get excited by whatever the snowiest model is.

@Ji lastly why would you even worry about the NAM. Even the euro is dangerous here. Has a nasty track record of developing these too fast. All other 0z guidance so far trended north. The RGEM isn’t even a big hit for NYC. It’s targeting Vermont!

@Ji the only way I could see this working were if the NS wave trends even another 100 miles south and intersects in VA, and the SS wave slows down and gets captured and stalls off the Delmarva v up near NYC But that runs contrary to every typical correction we see with these. Even if guidance was showing that now wouldn’t we still kinda know it was likely to screw us over?

But it’s too late the surface low is past us. Part of the problem is how this evolves. The angle at which the NS and SS waves interact is awful for us. The NS wave is diving in from the NW. So imagine the flow around these waves. Initially before they phase the flow of the NS wave to the NW is interfering with the ability of the SS wave to have moisture transport to the west of the low. Instead the moisture transport gets focused along the inverted trough between the waves. Later once they phase a healthy CCB associated precip shield can develop to the west but look where the capture will happen? Because of the trajectory of the two waves it’s going to place at our latitude. That’s when precip will start to expend. But it will be past us before that happens. It’s more the way this evolves rather than the track that is the problem.

Didn’t we have this discussion earlier?

This is following a typical timeline progression for a blocking regime. Unfortunately we are running out of time. Weeks ago when it was becoming clear the SSW was propagating and coupling someone asked how I thought the timeline would play out. I pegged March 15-20 as when the improving climo intersects the degrading climo to produce the best threat but that the pattern itself would likely get even better after that. It’s playing out exactly that way. The best threat might come after March 20th anyways but climo is gonna be a real issue.

It was a perfect 18z run. Does exactly what we need wave 3. Gets the NS wave out in front just enough. Then it has wave 4 but just a bit suppressed. Perfect for that range. Lol Both those waves will adjust around every run but 18z Gfs showed how we could conceivably win with either. This is the first time all winter we actually had a good setup. Ya it’s sucks it comes 3 weeks into March

It’s a lot easier to be optimistic betting other people’s money.

You’re even more pessimistic than me. We’ve averaged about 50% of historical climo the last 7 years. You assume this isn’t a down cycle but just the new normal? I think we get some better periods that averages it out closer to 60-70% of what climo used to be going forward.

Our 6 worst winters, and 8 of the worst 10 all happened in the last 25 years. But its not.... oh nevermind.

We are in a cycle where both the atlantic and pacific are in a hostile decadal mode at the same time (AMO/PDO) which compounded by a bad enso period has caused what would have been a down period in any era. This would have been a bad 7 years whether it happened in the early 1900s or now. But we had similar bad cycles before and they weren't THIS bad...and there is a reason for that. There is a reason why the last 7 years is the LEAST snowy on record here and its not even close. It's not that we have never had a bad pattern stretch like this before. We have...but those bad cycles weren't as bad as this one because it was during a colder base state. The downward trend in snowfall in our area has been steady, consistent, and real for 100 years now and is unlikely (not impossible, I can't see the future) to reverse. If you look beyond the shorter term cyclical ups and downs, we have already lost about 30% of our snowfall compared to about 100 years ago. That is not a prediction, it is what has already happened. That is without factoring in the full affect of the last 7 years as I do think we are due for a reversal of fortunes, but if you do we have actually lost closer to 40% of our snowfall climo from 100 years ago. I do think a snowier period ahead at some point so perhaps it is still closer to the 30 number. But it is unlikely to be enough to reverse the longer term downward trend. The truth is Baltimore doesn't actually get 20" in a typical winter like it used to anymore and that is unlikely to be "typical" again in my lifetime. If you disagree that is fine, but I don't see where you are getting the evidence for that other than wishful thinking that a trend that has been consistent within the variables for 100 years is just suddenly going to flip.

The only thing REALLY wrong with that is its too warm IF everything there was the same but the thermal boundary was where the purple line is instead of the red line...that would be fine. Trough axis in the pac is exactly where we want it, right where it is for all our big snowstorms...REMEMBER our big snow look is NOT the same as a big cold look...almost all our big snows come with a trough under Alaska. Ridge building out west in response to kick that trough east. Super 50/50 with blocking over the top. The problem is that ridge between goes nuts because its so warm...the boundary is just too far north despite a perfectly fine longwave pattern. Yes the NS wave is there over the top and that pumps that ridging a bit more because of the phase...but even with that there is there was a colder regime in the way it would be fine. Probably would be a messy storm with a primary to our west initially but we have snowed from that a LOT in the past...even in March. Some of our huge March storms had a primary way to our west initially. Especially during a -PDO regime. Again...its JUST TOO WARM. Nothing works, no longwave pattern, no setup, nothing....if its JUST TOO WARM.