psuhoffman

Sorry I wasn’t clear. A h5 track that far south can’t work Imo. It has to not dig as deep and track more west to east just under us. Ideally closing off as it gets to the Apps just to our southwest and swinging through VA and off MD. That’s really the only way I see this working. By tracking that far south initially it puts us in a 12-24 hour period of easterly flow that obliterates an already awful airmass. That won’t work. Unless we get an adjustment back north of the h5 this is doomed.

I left my freezer open all night Damnit

It's my fault I farted.

I don't know that the track matters much... the surface low takes an inside track but the storm is vertically stacked by then so we are still in the CCB there just isnt any cold, there is no snow really outside of elevation. It would help if the h5 didnt close off so soon so far south...the easterly wind ahead of it just wrecks the thermals even worse then they already are. But we're really being silly here...if this was anything close to a typical winter airmass, even a "warm" one by normal standards, that would have been a huge snowstorm on the ICON/GFS/GGEM. We need so much to go absolutely perfectly here to overcome the thermal situation...its just not realistic to expect it. Sure if we get super lucky and the thing bombs out perfectly and death bands us enough to snow great but man thats such a super rare anomalous thing to have to root for as our only hope.

Sorry guys... Needless to say I won't be staying up to calculate our snow probabilities tonight. But based on the thermals on all the ops I would put them somewhere between "snowball in Miami in July and Dante's 9th level of Hell"

the fact that solution is even possible is depressing

This is the most depressing thing I've ever seen

Time for @stormtracker to get aggravated by the speed of the 0z NAM

Seems an even mix of rain and some misses south.

No I just think there is too much molecular friction in the air.

Only snow storm misses us to the south is very on script for this winter lol

It would have been a hecs run if we had a typical airmass lol. The end track was fine but the h5 digs too much and cuts off too far south initially. That’s a problem when we’re already too warm. Works out ok but required crazy banding. An easier path would be less dig initially in the h5 low.

Everyone open your freezer doors… How much dry ice is it possible to have delivered in 4 days???

I would much rather need a minor north adjustment than south in a cut off h5. I actually feel ok about that variable. If I had to bet money on what is the most likely fail scenario it would be the system just isn’t amplified enough to induce the dynamic cooling we need.

The 18z Gfs was half way to a huge solution. Get that amplitude but adjust the h5 about 100 miles north and we get a paste bomb.

Normally of course not. But normally this isn’t what an antecedent airmass looks like on Feb 11th. My point was the actual airmass we have to work with right now is more typical of March 25th than Feb 11.

This is kind of like trying to get a snowstorm the last week of March or first week of April. It’s possible but we need a lot to go right. But if we’re ever going to get snow this year we’re probably gonna have to get that kinda lucky.

It does. Follow the track of the upper low. We need that to swing through VA just south of us. That’s key 1. Without that nothing else matters. The primary surface low is irrelevant since the only way we snow is with dynamic cooling under the upper low. Get the h5 low to cut through southern VA and then we just have to hope it’s amplified enough and we get lucky with meso banding to dynamically cool enough.

It was a definite improvement. It kept this in the "worth bothering to keep an eye on" category for another day. But I dunno... I reserve "great" for something more than a run that says we have a 20% chance of snow. But if we're grading on a curve this year maybe.

12z snow probabilities for BWI including all 3 ensembles 1": 18% 3": 15% 6": 8% The relatively close spread between 1/3/6" is expected given the all or nothing dynamic nature of this event. Overall odds improved from 8% to 18% from 0z to 12z so this was a move we needed to even be in the game at all. We need to see continued improvements but given the very marginal thermals not sure we would ever get this into the high probability range until very short range since ultimately to work we need some luck with banding features and that is never going to be a high probability thing on guidance.

Yea its "better" but the upper low mean track is through NC, we really need it to be through southern VA. We can't afford any easterly flow given the already problematic thermals.

I'll post them when it comes out in a few mins

Yea. I think most of us have been around long enough and seen enough to look at this and see what it is...a super long shot but a non zero chance in an otherwise shit the blinds period so we are keeping an eye on it because WTF there is nothing else to talk about other then crazy speculation about March.

There was a huge ridge over us which made the flow between it and the TPV to our north impossibly suppressive. If there had been a trough in the east we might have been able to work with one of those waves...but with that ridge everything had to try to ride over it which put it right into the confluence/shred factory. I know the point you are trying to make wrt precip but its more complicated than that. The setup was all wrong regardless of the precip. With that ridge where it was the only way we could get cold enough was to have that TPV right on top of that and that also made precip impossible. Had there been precip it meant the flow relaxed and it would have probably been rain. You aren't wrong, but its only half the equation. We need both equally. If the only way to be cold enough is to have so much suppression you can't get precip that wont work. This is a totally different setup though, and it could work if we get a strong enough storm to take a perfect track, long shot as it is. But not sure we want the trough deeper...we have no antecedent cold, we wont survive an amplified system to our south pumping easterly winds here. We need the H5 low to track west to east just under us. I don't see any other way for this to work.

I was exaggerating. The 3 main things we need are for the system to be more amplified than the euro/gfs/cmc show at 12z, for the upper feature to track about 200 miles north of where it is on the 12z guidance and then hope we get deformed to death enough to dynamically cool the otherwise putrid boundary and mid level thermals.