psuhoffman

I’m still holding out hope but in the last 48 hours the mjo wave has shown signs of dying short of cold phases again. As that’s happened the hints at longer term changes up top have faded also. The SSW might still kick in but it seems the late Feb start if favorable shifts was more mjo than SSW related. If we don’t get changes up top I doubt we get anything. I know some keep trying to find ways to work around but during the last hostile PDO phase we rarely snowed without blocking help. @jayyy keep in mind in the other similar years to this where it was this warm and very low snow (never this low but lowest before this year) all the snow fell by now. The little bit of snow we lucked into was during peak cold climo. What I’m trying to say is we need a pattern change. As it now starts to warm this pattern isn’t going to work if it didn’t work during our coldest window and that pertains to us up here also. @CAPE I am also interested in what happens if we get a prolonged favorable enso state. Something I think worth noting to watch for. As I was looking at the h5 anomalies from those snows in the last hostile pdo period from 1945-1980 and the more recent -NAO fails something stuck out to me. If you adjust for the warmer base state the patters were the same. Even in the 60s for example, we often had higher heights over the east than the west coast. The mean trough was out west but with blocking systems cut across but there was still a hint of a SER. But the mid latitude base state was so cold it didn’t matter. The baroclinic boundary was south of us. Is the issue now that if you adjust that same pattern for the warmer base state it doesn’t work as well anymore. Think of 2021. It was very close. My 1000 ft and slight latitude advantage was enough. DC was very close to a big big winter. The pattern tried it just couldn’t quite overcome the warmer base state. We don’t have enough data yet. But if we get a modoki Nino and it continues to be hard to get cold enough we might have our answer. My guess is it’s in between. That it will snow more. But maybe not as much more as we need to get out avg back to what it was. What I mean is for Baltimore to maintain a 20” avg we don’t just need a modoki Nino year to give Baltimore 20-30” those have to be the 40”+ years or else the avg will tank considering we’re averaging like 10” in all other seasons now.

That’s all logical but keep in mind this is already historically unprecedentedly shitty. My records go back 17 years but the Manchester coop records I found between 2 reliable stations go back 40 years. There is nothing close to this. The least snow ever by this date before this year is ~12”. So it’s impossible to apply historical expectations to this since this winter has by far far far worse than anything we’ve ever experienced.

Eduggs is just happy we devoted 8 pages to discussing how much rain we may or may not get

His forecast for the moon was perfect!

I said I had some optimism for late Feb and March. That's relative to the no hope despair I've felt for the whole winter up until now...so don't get carried away and say I think snowmageddon is coming...but I could see us maybe having some legit threats for snow the last week of Feb and through March.

I understand the frustration but the perception the models over predict snow to that extreme is a perception bias fallacy. Back in 2018 and 2019 I ran the numbers to see and while they do tend to over predict snow somewhat its not as much as we think. First of all there is the issue of a mean being bound by 0. So lets say you take the 4 GFS runs from a day. If one has a 10" snowstorm but the other 3 show nothing. An average would say the GFS predicted 2.5" of snow but the reality is the GFS was saying there was a 75% chance no snow would fall. Probabilities have to be factored into the equation since a mean is skewed by outliers, especially because 0 bounds the lower end of the calculation. The other factor is the perception the models show snow even when only 1 or 2 runs in a day out of like a minimum of 10 major global runs...more if you include more obscure guidance. If one GFS and one Euro run over a course of 24 hours shows snow...that is not the guidance predicting snow. The preponderance of evidence for that day was no snow would fall. When I tracked both the mean and the probabilities those winters once a week I found the mean was slightly inflated but not as much as we thought...but the probabilities were pretty good. Usually when the probabilities of snow were above 50% it actually did snow. The problem was those probabilities were rarely above 50% even when we percieved they were. Take this year for example...the probabilities for 3" of snow were never above about 30% at any time. And the probabilities of 1" never got above about 50% at any time lol. And the one time the 1" probabilities got to 50% is when we actually did get that little snow event where places got almost 1" lol. If you were just joking sorry...but some really do think the guidance is skewed towards snow but I found numerically its not as bad as we think.

Make preparations now. Only 15 days to get ready. Make sure you buy enough eggs to feed the entire metro area with quiche, a minimum of 10 loaves of bread because why not, and all the toilet paper just in case it never melts and after all the leftover quiche...

Did he start getting all religious and philosophical Iike he does when he is wrong

Lol Nothing can stop the SER

Wonder if it’s his son? I went there in the 80s and early 90s.

Sal’s in Washington TWSP NJ was pretty good.

We’re in similar boats here so something to consider…even the good runs like that euro that shows 4-6” up here is likely way overdone. Surface is 34-35 at the coldest and I’m not sure how 4” of snow is gonna accumulate from 1.5” rain and a surface well above freezing. That strikes me as the kind of thing where a quick slushy coating could at times start to accumulate during heavy burts before being wiped out by rain. And that’s on the better runs for us up here lol. Ya I know I’m a deb.

I’ve been wearing my fall jacket all winter. That part has been ok I guess.

Damn everyone hitting the sauce. I just hit here have to catch up.

This winter died a long time ago. We just refuse to bury the body.

I’m technically tired of this, someone change the channel please.

I had to get the kids new shoes and took them to dinner after. A family sat down at the table next to us and 2 of them were wearing cowboys jackets and hats. My 4 year old, Nora, immediately starting singing "fly eagles fly". I can die now. My work is done.

IMO this is what to look for if we want improvements here... Look back at that GFS run a couple days ago that was a legit snow across our area without needing some miraculous 10 degree dynamic cooling (dont get me wrong it still took a lot going right but this was a better setup). This result.... was because of this setup Look where the upper low is cutting off there, as it crosses the central Apps and the surface low is developing to its east which limits the SE flow here. Also its more connected to the northern stream there so it does have some ability to tap cold air, what little there is. Calling it cold might be a crime but "cooler" at least. But look at the latest 12z GFS same time That's just not going to work. The upper low is cutting off way too far south, putting the surface development way to our south also which places us under a long duration of southeast flow obliterating what marginal cool air we have to work with. Plus it means the system is completely cut off from the northern stream which allows the very marginal to start with "cool" mix of maritime pacific and modified CP air to get stale and degrade from "maybe slightly workable" to "Nope". What we need is for the h5 to trend back to the north and cut off over the TN valley not down in the deep south. I don't know if there is enough time for that to be a realistic ask but its what we need and should look for on future runs. If we don't get that the only chance we have is to get some kind of ridiculous crazy once in a generation type event where we get death banded so extreme that it can dynamically cool the thermal profile by like 10 degrees. That is incredibly unlikely. It's not impossible. And places with some elevation have a better chance of that type thing working out. But by far the better way for us to get snow would be for those adjustments in the H5 I listed above.

You’re not wrong if we had anything close to a typical winter thermal profile. Even a “warm” one by normal standards. That run does dynamically cool the column by like 5-7 degrees but it’s just not enough because it’s so ridiculously warm. Think if it like if we got a storm in early November or April. Because that’s what this thermal regime is more analogous to. It could go perfect and still not be enough because it’s just too warm.

Problem is where is it pulling the cold from??? there is no cold to tap to our north within 500 miles. The only cold is the pocket of dynamically cooled air. The slight imperfection that doomed the euro control was the slow movement and early close off of the upper low allowing us to be under easterly flow for too long. Plus by the time the system gets here it’s vertically stacked and not amplifying which is worse for dynamic cooling. Also there is a limit. We’re not asking to cool a marginal column with a wet bulb of 36 degrees. On that run the boundary is torched. It’s too much to overcome no matter how heavy the precip is.

As I admitted it wasn't an intense a storm as this but it would have been a 4-8" snowstorm if we had anything resembling a normal winter airmass, even a warm one by "normal" winter standards. This would be the most extreme example, but this is also the warmest airmass also, with +15 anomalies heading in and just a small pocket of dynamically cooled mix of modified PC and maritime air behind the incoming trough to work with. Yes if we get an absolute bomb with a dead perfect h5 pass, and get a meso scale band dropping summer thunderstorm type rates, we could dynamically cool and get snow. That is within the scope of possible outcomes here. But much more likely is that any one of several variables doesn't go absolutely perfectly. The h5 low track isnt perfect. We don't get an intense enough meso band. The low moves too slow and torches the thermals before it gets here. Surface cuts inland too much. There are way way way more fail scenarios than win.

I deserved to be moderated and have my posts deleted, I was having a pissing contest with an assclown in the main thread. It was stupid. She is right I should have just ignored him and let the mods delete his nonsense. She always deletes both sides of the discussion when its inappropriate.

Sorry he got me heated. It was bad enough when he went at Randy but I really didn't like him picking on Chuck, especially when he was misinterpreting what he meant, yea I know that's kinda easy to do, but maybe thats why someone shouldnt just jump in here and start throwing haymakers at every one of the regulars. I know Chuck is "odd" but I consider him one of us and in that case he was actually right and that clown was trying to make him out to be stupid. I know he talks in code but he is actually very insightful if you can interpret the code. But if you are going to be deleting his attacks I'll refrain from engaging with him the future.

Even if I don't say it, its still going to be true. The problem isn't the people pointing out the reality, its the fact its a reality. But it's happened several times over the last few years. Most recently a couple weeks ago we had an absolutely perfect track storm that was just rain along 95. I think no one noticed because from range it was supposed to be a cutter and it had no hope of snow anyways due to temps so people stopped paying attention but over the last 72 hours it trended east and ended up an absolutely perfect track coastal low but it did no good. We had a couple of those in January and Feb 2021 also. So why are you so sure it can't happen here? I will acknowledge this is the most extreme example of all these recent events I am citing...but its also the warmest status quo airmass also so while I acknowledge there is a chance (please dont interpret this to mean I am saying there is a 0% chance of snow) I definitely do buy the possibility, if not even the likelihood, we get a perfect track driving rainstorm.