psuhoffman

It also is flexing more on the 6z GEFS. We will see today...I really think todays 12 and 0z runs are BIG because we are right about the range where the rug was pulled on all the past pattern changes. If it's going to happen again we probably see continued degradation today and then we know its over. If things swing back in a positive way today maybe we have a chance at a meaningful pattern change. But be careful seeing the "good look" around day 10. It means absolutely nothing unless it lasts more than just a few days. The "good look" you see day 10ish is behind a wave...but if it only lasts a few days then warms up before the next wave that does us no good. Cold dry warm wet. We need the cold to settle in for weeks for us to get a hit in this kind of pattern. If we only get cold behind waves and warm up before the next we won't get any snow.

We're on the same page, unfortunately its often a shitty page. That's why I made that post a while back about rooting for the look that was more likely to be sustainable rather than simple "what puts the most blue over us". This is another reason why I just can't bring myself to root for a pacific driven wave pattern. Ya I know lately we've had temperature problems with atlantic driven patters...but there is a reason that historically the AO/NAO is the most correlated driver to our snow NOT the EPO or even PNA. We might win sometimes with these waves...but its gonna be REALLY hard to ever have a truly snowy winter on the whole that way. 2014 was pretty much the only example where a big winter came about that way and it took a crazy favorable Pacific to lock in wall to wall all winter from November to April. People forget there were plenty of misses in there also, a couple waves in Dec went north, a wave in Jan south, late Jan early Feb some misses north...its just the pattern was stable so freaking long we also got a lot of hits. I know some throw 2015 in there but the way the TPV got displaced into southeast canada acted as a defacto NAO block by causing confluence to our northeast in the same way. If I lived on the coastal plain and and I was just rooting to get lucky a couple times a winter and to get 15" of snow was a good result....yea then I would want this. But anywhere west of the fall line...this just isn't mathematically likely to result in a win on a seasonal level. We saw that last year...the warm anomalies were so warm (as usual) that is skewed the whole season, but we were in a cold pattern for a big part of the season and had a lot of chances with these waves...and still most of the region ended up below avg snowfall! It's really hard for us to have a big snowfall season around here without hitting on a more classic coastal storm or two. It's down right impossible if all we get are short windows to try to luck into these progressive waves.

This is probably true of many but I do track heat waves, tropical, severe. Snow is the holy grail though for me simply because the payoff is better.

After a couple days of encouraging trends last nights eps and gefs were a step in the wrong direction. Too soon to know if it’s the start of yet another rug pull or just noise since the changes were within normal random wobbles at that range. But the next 24 hours will let us know since we’re getting right to that magic day 7 range for the most significant changes. I think either way we will have a more workable pattern for a bit but our problem is in a progressive wave pattern it’s going to often take multiple chances to get a hit. Even in the better looks of yesterdays 12z runs the odds of a hit on any one specific wave is never going to be high. They fly along the boundary as it shifts north and south. Some waves will get suppressed. Some will be too amplified and go north. It will likely take several waves in that kind of pattern to get a flush hit. So if it ends up being only a 5 day period before the trough pulls west and the SE ridge goes ape again we’re likely to get shut out again unless we get very lucky. We need this kind of pattern to be more sustained to work. If this was a more classic coastal storm type pattern we could work with a single shot type deal but those kind of setups haven’t been cold enough to work. These wave patterns are more likely to be colder but less likely for any individual wave to track right.

How easy you forget how depressed everyone was between Jan 2011 and Dec 2013. That was a long stretch without a snowstorm in DC. At the time people talked about it as an all time low point. Hindsight and all lol.

Recently I went through all my records to create a monthly snow table. It struck me how rare long stretches of total shutouts used to be prior to 2017 up here. Even winters we remember as sucky were filled with constant 1-3” events up here or at the least a ton of .5 type stuff. I think a lot of those smaller snows were clippers. On the other end 6”+ event frequency up here is actually up compared to 30 years ago but we go long stretches with no snow during winter which used to be rare.

Life can be hard but stay firm and you’ll make it through.

Apparently JB just posted a video and is comparing the pattern to 94. Sorry guys. It’s my fault. He obviously reads the board and now that he’s said it we’re definitely going to torch. I’ll own this one.

There are some similarities between current guidance and 94 yes. That doesn’t mean it’s gonna be that cold. Highly doubt it. I mean in a general longwave pattern sense. Current progs have a little better NAO than 94 but a more broad less deep trough. Those probably are a net wash.

Yes but you didn’t have to go far north to see a significantly snowier winter. The Mason Dixon line got about 40-50”. Ya there was a lot of ice mix up here too but each storm dropped like 4-8” of snow before the ice up here and with the temps there was a deep snowcover all winter almost to April! The ice/snow line kept setting up almost the exact same place all winter just NW of the metro areas.

The guidance reminds me a little of January 1994. Hopefully if a similar thing repeats we can get a 50 mile shift south compared to 94. DC and Baltimore were so close to a big run but we’re slightly on the wrong side of the boundary almost every storm in 94. The gradient was extreme.

If it still looks like that in 48 hours I will start to get excited.

I put my averages into monthly splits... Total Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr 2008-2022 Records 42.7 0.6 1.3 6.9 10.6 15.1 7.8 0.6 I have never gone this far into a winter with no snowfall. The closest in my time up here was 2016 when we only had .1 in December but then had an inch of snow on Jan 12/13th. Of course we know what happened right after...I don't see anything like that in the next few days lol. Going back through local coop records up here from before I lived here the furthest I had in the local records into a season without snow was 1985 when there was no snow until Jan 5. I scoured the climod database and found some not as local but still close coops from prior to 1970 and apparently its likely they went pretty far into January in 1959. There was no snow at either Westminster or Hanover that winter until about 3-5" fell on January 17th. Both locations do get significantly less snow than here though so its possible there was a marginal event in Manchester and not those lower elevation towns But unless some snow falls today we are in completely uncharted territory up here. I went back to the 1940's and didn't find anything else close. Most years there is snow by December and almost always by January, the few times there wasn't it snowed the first few days of January.

The key to this is simple. If guidance is correct this time about the TPV getting displaced and stuck under the blocking in central or eastern Canada it will suppress the SE ridge. All that “other stuff” aside the SE ridge can’t win with a TPV that close by compressing the flow. However, guidance attempted this in December then it failed miserably. Guidance attempted to phase and drop a tpv under the ridging into the 50/50 space just recently and that failed. Both times guidance picked up on this “failure to launch” around day 7. So we need to get it inside day 7 for me to start feeling highly confident. If the tpv displaces into western Canada it’s not gonna work. If it doesn’t displace at all it’s not going to work. The tpv is the key to this. It has to displace into central or eastern Canada. Ideally elongated with a lobe into the 50/50 but let’s just start with a workable pattern and go from there.

04-05 was really late. I think 72-73 was another. Most of them were ninos actually.

Thought I posted this earlier but internet here is shoddy. Sorry if it posts twice. No more “when we don’t get an inch of snow up here by this date” posts. There is no longer anything to comp. This winter is now a sample of 1 with no final result. We’ve never gone this far into a winter before. Who knows, since we have no comps maybe getting to Jan 15 with no snow here means we get 100” in February lol.

Banter isn’t for weather. The originator of the futility thread requested we not do it there. I created a place to contain this conversation so anyone that doesn’t like it can completely avoid it if they want. Those that want to discuss this can do so without annoying anyone else. Anyone who doesn’t like it doesn’t have to click on this thread!

Looks like they have a 2 inches on the ground? I think they got 5”. We were here for the last inch or so. But a lot of its blown into mini drifts.

No the Japan stuff was about warm SST impacts. No one said a word whether that was permanent or cyclical or anything regarding cause. We have to be able to discuss pattern drivers like SSTs, PDO,AMO and such. Those things are cyclical but also could be affected by you know what. But they are integral to a pattern discussion unless you literally want no analysis and this just to be people posting snow maps and “it’s happening” memes.

You will all be glad to know I can no longer make my “when it hasn’t snowed an inch in Manchester by this date the winter was this bad” posts anymore. Beautiful day at snowshoe

It was pretty low in my analogs but what I said was it did register at least as somewhat similar and it was the best example of a Nina that started dreadful and ended ok. Actually it was the ONLY example so I said let’s root for that.

No one has made a climate change post in here since he said that so…

No one has claimed it’s not snowing at all. But it’s snowed less over the last 7 years than any previous period in history. Posting examples of when it did snow some doesn’t refute my point.

That was a overatted weak nino right? Sure but it’s revisionist. Going into that winter most we’re calling for epic snow then when it didn’t happen (our region even did better than most) the excuses came out.