psuhoffman

It’s not my position. 90% of my posts are simply statistics, observations and guidance products. It’s not my fault all the objective evidence sucks. Back in October when I was saying this season was likely gonna hurt that was me making forecasts and opining. You had more of a case then. But now all I’m doing is posting what we’re all seeing. I didn’t make the models say that. I didn’t make it +10 all over the continent. I didn’t issue that NWS forecast. And you know how bad it is. Yet you continue to read then complain when it’s exactly what you know it will be? What do you want a hug? Ok I’ll try. Here’s an uplifting nugget. Life sucks but it’s ok because someday you die.

@Ji thank god the mjo is going into phase 8 or it could be a 110% chance of above normal!

I’m about as pessimistic as I’ve ever felt wrt snow but I don’t feel it’s unwarranted

Dulles got 15. Where you are now got 18-20”.

Feb and March 2015 were pretty awesome.

I remember in January 2015 you were all getting mad at me for being too optimistic because we were getting screwed but I kept saying be patient it’s gonna turn around.

Lag to some degree. But over the last several years it seems the cycle is this…whether by ridge or trough we get a period where the pac flow attacks and within 48 hours obliterates cold from the whole continent. Then it takes weeks to recover once the flow weakens and before enough cold can build another pac onslaught slams the door.

Ok. That looks great. It’s gonna be a snowstravaganza around Jan 25.

I'll still be posting moron...probably more so now Don’t worry. The longwave pattern might look great but… Temps still look mostly torched everywhere in N America except the desert SW from constant storms.

Anyways I feel like we’ve exhausted this topic. Time to go back to day 15 pattern chasing. Maybe this time it actually works out. We’re due and all that.

That comment wasn’t specific to here. Over the last 7 years we’ve had several comps to this pattern with a favorable longwave setup in a torched thermal regime and they all ended this way. This winter I’ve noted a lack of snow to the NW of waves even well to our north on several occasions.

Jan 1990 is a pretty bad comp to now. It was an awful longwave pattern regardless of background temps. A better comp looking at some historical analogs would be Jan 1992, Jan 1987, Jan 1964, Jan 1998, Late Jan early Feb 1983...and some others. The majority of the comps I see weren't that great, they were all above average temp periods...but guess what, almost all of them also featured some snow. Jan 1992 is the top analog and DC had 4" that month which is close to average. Jan 1987 is a top analog and DC got 2 snowstorms that month. Feb 87 is another decent analog and that month was very warm but DC got a 10" snowstorm from a wave that snuck under them despite it being 50-60 degrees a couple days before and after the storm. Same with some of the other analogs...they were all pretty warm but also most featured some snow. Even 1998 featured quite a bit of snow not that far NW of the cities. My area NW of DC/Balt had several snows by now that year. This year just perfect track rainstorms. I think the degradation is there. It's not like we went from epic cold periods to torch...but some warm but still able to snow periods have become absolute no hope torch patterns IMO.

Isn’t it up to us to look at the permutations presented by various simulations and determine what the most likely outcome is? I’m not sure what your point is. Do you think we have the ability to make simulations that are perfectly accurate at 5-10 days and are choosing to intentionally have variability? If so why?

no its because we didnt get a triple phased bomb cyclone to happen in exactly the right spot and stall and we didnt have a -4 std dv nao block with a full latitude EPO PNA ridge centered exactly where we need it with a 1050 arctic high over lake Placid and a storm that phases exactly as it reaches the NC coast and tracks to 37 miles east of Ocean City, not 36 miles, not 38 miles...it has to be 37 miles, and the deform band sets up right on top of us for 17 hours...not 16 hours because it takes at least 17 straight hours of heavy precip to dynamically cool the column. If all that didn't happen its obvious the problem is that all that failed not because it was too warm.

VIce and MDECOY both had a point, they were just obnoxious and ridiculous in how they presented it. And both have a penchant to exaggerate beyond reason. Example...was VIce right about it warming yes...but he claimed Cape May would be under water in 20 years. And he would try to destroy every thread to force people to talk about the issue. MDECOY was right its been bad but then he claims he has had no plowable snowstorms in 8 years. That's just ridiculous. I didn't engage when he said that a few weeks ago but I know where he lives...and I know there have been several storms that were like 4-6" at every reporting station around him and plenty cold enough over that period. Just last winter where he is got like 4" from the late Janaury storm that happened overnight with temps in the 20's. If he didn't get a plowable event from that then his roads must be heated or something. They are bad posters because of how they engage in discussion not the main points they try to make.

yea we can still snow, hope my pessimism regarding the situation NOW isn't interpreted as a "its never gonna snow again". But I think its becoming pretty impossible for us to get snow during "non cold" patterns when there are lots of examples in my archive of all snowstorms at BWI of a fluke snowstorm in an otherwise very warm pattern. Those don't seem to be a thing anymore. That's a problem when were in a warm pattern a very large percentage of the time. My other concern with these long range looks is unless my memory is wrong back around xmas didn't the period RIGHT NOW look like that on the guidance? I thought we were supposed to "flip right back to cold" by January 10 or something back when this current torch was starting. I was skeptical back then...arguing that historical climo data argued we probably wouldn't just flip back cold so fast...and climo usually beats guidance. Hopefully that doesn't happen again...but the longer we go into the season warm the less likely we are to suddenly flip cold according to past records in enso neutral and cold. Maybe the fact we have been in a more nino pattern though could mean its more likely this year than in past similar enso seasons. Hopefully...Im grasping here.

But we used to get a lot of snowstorms around here from a hudson high setup and a positive NAO. They were very marginal in most cases...storms where the snow fell mostly at 32-33 degrees and in many cases they did mix and were like a 6" snow in DC and more NW. Lately those setups aren't even close anymore. A 50/50 was always necessary for the southern mid atl to get a 20" snowstorm. But we used to be able to get a messy 6-10" storm that mixed without one from a setup like this. Yes maybe with a true block and a locked in 50/50 this could have worked out...but man come on how much snow are we really gonna get if we need to stack this many dominoes our way to get snow?

Yea I think we're just cooked here. I held out hope there was a way to get lucky...it's a good pattern to get systems to track under us. We used to be able to make that kinda thing work mid winter. But this just can't work out. The 12z GFS was damn near perfect from a longwave setup POV and it wasn't even close. I guess the truth is unless we get cross polar pure siberian air involved we have no chance anymore. ETA: it doesn't seem north america can sustain a cold profile anymore once cross polar flow is cut off. The pacific wins and obliterates any cold from the entire continent. This has happened over and over again in recent years.

@CAPE we were talking about this as a test case for a Hudson High setup. I think we might have the answer. Those setups are almost never arctic air cold. It would be almost impossible to have true cross polar flow in that setup. They need to work with a domestic airmass. But look at the setup on the GFS (right or wrong doesn't matter because it wasn't cold enough). Look at the predominant airflow. It's not straight mid lat pac puke. The predominant flow is out of the Yukon! Yes its mixed with the southern stream flow off the pacific but that is ALWAYS going to be true. If polar continental air is obliterated and dominated by the pacific air that will always get mixed into the equation simple because were at the mid latitudes and the pacific is what is upstream, it's never going to work. Even with a predominant flow that should be good enough, I am not saying truly cold, this would have been marginal in any era...but its not marginal now, its a straight torch. Yea we can point out the strong pac jet but thats been non stop for almost a decade now. At some point we need to just accept that as a permanent thing now. In that paradigm this setup no longer can work.

You're using an effect as a cause. Let me explain. Look at the longwave pattern setup here... This is ideal in every single way. Textbook. Pacific trough off the west coast (if you look at past big snowstorms this is exactly where it typically is) PNA ridge is actually slightly east of where we want it and under normal circumstances might even indicate the threat of an off the coast track. The SW in question is amplifying and about to go neutral as it enters the TN valley and look at the flow over the top suppressing the ability for the upper level features to lift. Now look at the surface... 1038 high nosing into New England with 1036 all the way down into VA. But look at the thermal boundary. Despite that pressure configuration look at where the thermal boundary is! The thermal boundary is north of Chicago and already pushing north of DC and Pittsburgh before the wave even approaches! Surface lows will seek out the baroclinic boundary. The upper low tracks from southern MO through the TN valley and then through southern VA. It's a perfect track because the longwave pattern is perfect in every way. The reason the surface low ends up north of the upper low and cuts is because the thermal boundary is way up there. It's just too warm. That's it. Why is everyone trying to find complicated excuses for what is a very simple problem. If the thermal boundary was where it typically should be given that pressure and longwave pattern presentation (the purple line) the surface low would not cut to northeast Ohio. The reason this system is cutting is NOT the longwave pattern or some flow in the setup its simply because its so warm that is where the thermal boundary is. The surface low ends up meandering north of the upper level support even because of it. There is nothing in terms of pattern features that can prevent that if its warm all the way to the upper great lakes despite a perfect longwave setup.

They actually aren't THAT far apart...the features are both there on the euro but the NS feature is weaker and a little further north because it didnt phase with the mid latitude wave like the GFS does. But that kind of thing often isn't resolved at long lead times.

Not a bad look??? lol its beautiful, I'm gonna throw a virtual rock at the first person that complains about the high. That is a damn classic setup for a snowstorm its just not cold enough. If there was just a normal airmass in place for mid January this would be a snowstorm without us having to sweat all these details. The details would simply determine if its 3" or 8" or maybe even more.

It's probably worth noting when we're looking at systems that are 6-10 days away...that the GFS just went from a low off Savannah to over Buffalo in the last 24 hours for a storm at day 4. For the record we wanted this change... we want that system further north to have more interaction with the NS and enhance the return flow behind it and confluence in the northeast. But those positive changes have been most offset by other issues cropping up in other places...more phasing, and the overall air mass has trended warming...not further north, the boundary is actually trending south some...but if the entire airmass trends a couple degrees warming it doesn't matter since its so marginal to begin with and any strong wave will have enough southerly flow ahead of it to easily obliterate an airmass that's barely cold enough to begin with. We will either need an absolutely dead perfect combination of everything and get CCB'd to death with dynamic cooling or we would have needed a weaker wave that takes a perfect track. But just interesting to note the major changes happening at day 3-4 and keep that in mind when over analyzing details of longer lead stuff.

lol I don't need 200" a season. The climate up here until recently was just fine... actually if you go back prior to 2010 those close to 100" seasons were unheard of or at least super rare. But getting below 20" was also super rare. There was way less variance up here than DC, 95% of winters were between 20" and 60" with a mean around 39 and a median around 35. Very rarely, like 1 in 20 years there was a season above or below that. But recently suddenly we've had 2 seasons way way over that range and because of that the mean has actually gone up a bit...but we are also getting way more ratters even up here where it barely snows that much. I would much prefer getting a consistent 30" most seasons than this 100" every 10 years and crap in between nonsense.

Our equation is nearly impossible because it’s just not cold enough. So we need a perfect 50:50 and a perfect track and a phase to pull in cold but not too soon because any southerly flow obliterates the airmass and not too late because the flow actually is suppressive and we need dynamic cooling and …ok you get the point. That’s way better but I’d still be worried anything decently strong cuts in that look. Something vexes me. Over this now 7 year run of futility the one constant has been the problem a strong pacific jet has caused. But that’s now been a constant for 7 years through 4 Nina’s, 2 neutral and 1 Nino. And we’ve seen it cause the same problem in opposite pac longwave patterns. If we have a Nina like ridge the screaming jet goes over the top and digs a trough to Mexico on the west coast pumping a huge SE ridge infused with pac puke. If we have a Nino like trough the jet goes under and blasts sub tropical pac puke straight across the whole continent. The issue is according to research I’ve seen referenced the enhanced jet isn’t related to enso it’s a result of the expanding Hadley cell and might be permanent. If so…what are we even looking for? We’re failing in opposite ways because of the same underlying problem and I don’t see that going away no matter what longwave configuration we get. I mean ya once in a blue moon we will luck into the super rare full latitude epo pna ridge combo but the other 90% of the time what’s the answer?