psuhoffman

At least it this run is right I can take the kids to WV next weekend instead of Nunavut. Maybe we can all meet up at Snowshoe or Deep Creek.

Ji is right. The high is actually in a perfect position. Banana over the top! The other map only showed the center of highest pressure giving the false impression the high was not ideal. Actually this is a great pressure representation. Can we please stop trying to find excuses. The thermal profile over N America is just so warm that it makes it REALLY difficult and even with a perfect High and low track it might still only end up a mostly rain event. What it did this run was at least mean some frozen to start and a snow event for the mountains. But even with a close to perfect synoptic progression it wasn’t enough to save us because the airmass is just so awful.

I made a huge rant in the futility thread this morning. I’m good.

Ok root for the full phase it is.

At this point I don’t care if it works out because Satans Arse pops out of the clouds in Nova Scotia and farts the cold air down to us.

MLK weekend I am taking the kids skiing somewhere and it has to be somewhere that has snow OTG also so they can play in it. At this rate I might be driving to Nunavut

It's Nora actually. My son is 8 now, and yea he likes to play in the snow but he is way more indifferent about it. But Nora's little heart is broken by the fact is hasn't snowed yet.

can we get the ICON antecedent airmass with the GFS track?

BTW one thing we should clear up...there is still a 50/50 low on the guidance. Its there...as the system we are watching is in the MS valley getting its act together there is a low over the 50/50 area just like we want...its just not the sub 500 monster polar vortex of doom some guidance was showing before from a convoluted polar jet phase phase with a mid lat system leading to a bomb cyclone. We shouldn't need all that.

Honestly if it wasn't for the fact my 4 year old loves snow and is asking me literally every day with a quivering lip "when's it gonna snow daddy" I probably wouldn't care at all anymore.

@Ji Don't worry we can track the next January peak climo perfect track rainstorm now

fixed

I see a repetitive problem we have here. To get it cold enough to our north we need a +AO or low pressure over canada pattern but we are too far south to get that cold to really help us in the zonal pattern that will invariably develop under that in the mid latitudes. But when we get the high latitude pattern we need to cause the jet to buckle to out south our source region temps are torched. High latitude blocking was always associated with warm anomalies to our north. But those warm anomalies were still cold enough to snow here. But now that when we have upper level high pressure over Canada it completely torches our source regions to the point its no longer workable.

Last January we had an Aleutian trough with an AK ridge and cross polar flow. But the reason it didn't end up snowier in a more widespread sense ( some localized parts of our area got lucky but it wasn't a snowy season on a larger scale) was what is a common problem with cross polar flow...we didn't have any help on the atlantic side. As I've said a cross polar flow pattern is 1 rare and 2 not even the best pattern for us to get reliable snow. Last January was a rare example of cross polar flow...and not all of the area even got that much out of it. So it was a fairly rare thing (one cold month surrounded by warmth) and it wasn't even that affective at giving us a lot of snow, so not sure why that should make me feel that much better. OH...and it wasn't even THAT cold considering the pattern frankly

PPS... we will still get seasons where the predominant pattern includes both an AK ridge AND an eastern trough so that we get constant injections of cross polar air and snowy years because of it. But those are incredibly rare things and so this is about what our fate is during the majority of the time when that is not the case. And even in those in between years it will still snow some...it's not like we are seeing no snow at all the last 7 years. Last year we got some incredibly unlikely luck with some wave spacing in early Jan and for coastal areas a perfectly timed phase in late January to get snow so I am not saying it won't ever snow...just that it seems to be taking an increasingly unlikely confluence of events to make it happen.

PS: I just feel like the micro excuses are wearing out at this point. Its been a string of overly specific reasons/excuses why a pretty good synoptic setup failed. "December climo sucks", the pacific was bad, no HL blocking, the WAR...but what they all have in common is no cold air. And frankly we've failed with exact opposite pacific patterns recently so I am tired of the "its the pacific" excuse. The pacific is always going to be there upstream of us so if we can't snow because the pacific is too warm thats never going away.

I had wanted to try to avoid this general topic completely but its become obvious that is impossible...but I will keep my part of this discussion to this thread so as not to annoy those that would rather not think about this in the main thread. @Terpeast I see this as all related. A lot of this is just conjecture at this time simply because we don't yet have a long enough period of data to prove with statistical significance but some very bright minds along with well designed simulations have theorized that there is a causality between AGW and several of these chronic pacific issues we have been having for a majority of our winter seasons recently from the expansion of the Hadley Cell to some of the persistent SST issues in the tropical Indian and Pacific, to the prevalence of a la nina base state. Then, add in that on top of the longwave pattern issues created by these problems in the Pac, regardless of that at any given moment in time warm anomalies over the NH land masses are outnumbering cold about 70-30. So even without those issues simply by pure chance our odds of having cold over us are going to be more difficult. And lastly...there is conjecture that the SST changes also related to warming in the Atlantic are partly aiding the prevalence of the WAR (which is also a feedback issue from the pac longwave pattern as well!) and why its been difficult to get or sustain a 50/50 feature. Basically, there are a lot of interrelated factors caused by warming, but every single one of them seems to be the opposite of what we would want. The only factor related to warming that could work in our favor is the increase in precipitation patterns during the cold season in general. And I do think we have seen evidence of this in the rare cases where we get a cold season but that benefit only matters when its cold which is becoming increasingly rare. @CAPE and @WxUSAF both of your analysis of the issues regarding the specific details we need (50/50 or perfect phasing) are 100% accurate. My point is just, at some point it feels hopeless if we need some super anomalous string of events to go exactly perfectly to get snow as if we are living in coastal SC or something. My point the last few days when I voiced my concern with this setup has been the snow solutions seemed to be relying on something I don't see as very likely and even if it did happen is certainly not something we can expect to become a reliable repetitive way to get snow. Needing some mid latitude system to phase and bomb into a super cyclone and lead to the inception of a TPV in exactly the perfect location at exactly the perfect time is not the way I want to have to roll here. Yes a 50/50 is a feature in just about every one of our 20" snowstorms. Because to get a storm that big in the DC/Balt area we need some pretty major resistance to the WAA necessary. We are too far south to be obliterated by a CCB like NYC north...the only way we get a HECS here is if a majority of that snow comes from a strong WAA feed ahead of the wave and for that to stay all snow and produce prolific totals we need a 50/50. But I am not lamenting that this isn't going to be a 20" storm. What happened to getting a 6" snow from a messy storm where the mountains and get 20" from a setup like this. When I examined every 4"+ snow at BWI years ago that made up a lot of our events. Frankly very very very few of our storms were because we lucked into the absolutely perfect conditions, and when that happened thats when we got those 20" storms. But most of the snow events were messy. What happened to getting 3" at DCA and 5" at BWI and 6" at IAD from a messy storm where we mix but the big snow is to our NW. That used to be the typical outcome of a system that tracked to our south but everything wasn't "perfect". Lately it seems we need perfect to get any snow. Basically...the storms like these below... Hi Low QPF Snowfall 36-30 1.13 4.6 37-30 .77 4.1 45-33 .86 6.9 34-31 .92 3.0 37-33 .92 3.4 39-32 .72 3.0 43-33 1.09 5.5 39-31 1.04 6.9 39-32 .67 3.4 33-30 1.63 6.4 38-33 1.03 3.3 I pulled all of these were from DCA from my past snowfall study. Look at the temps and precip...these were all obviously mix storms...and I remember the H5 from most of these it was because there was no 50/50 and a marginal "pac puke" as we call it lately, airmass to work with...but they were good tracks during mid winter and so we at least got some snow from them. And my area did great from all these storms. I think they were all 12" plus up here. But now...look at many of the permutations in the 3 ensembles. They have perfect track systems with rain to Montreal! Another good example is 1998. I bring that up because that year is showing up in current analogs a lot. And yea that year SUCKED for DC snow so its easy to say "well this happened before". But I was at Penn State that year and we got crushed with snowstorm after snowstorm all winter. Even my area here had about 20" that season because all those perfect track rainstorms in DC were a messy mix with a few inches of snow up here. Places with elevation to the NW of the cities actually got quite a bit of snow that winter. But most of the permutations of this are rain even in those places with a perfect track, and we've had several of these over the last few years. That is my bigger concern. We can't seem to get any frozen event, even a flawed mixed type, unless everything is perfect or some incredibly unlikely string of dominoes all fall exactly the right way. And lastly, yea the pac is the problem. But guess what the PAC is what is upstream from us, its HUGE, its the largest heat source on the planet, and other than the rare times when there is cross polar flow (and that isn't even really a good longwave pattern to get a system under us!) we will be dealing with an airmass that has significant influence from the PAC. The airmass this week isn't pure tropical pac puke. There is quite a mix of flow from the Yukon area mixed in with mid latitude pacific air. The problem is its torching even in the Yukon, and the mid latitude pac air is +5 to +10 also! And both of those facts don't seem to be a right now at this moment bad luck kinda of problem. They seem to be a permanent base state status quo lately. @Weather Will I am not giving up, there is still a path to get snow here. The phased bomb 50/50 scenario could come back. Or Wxusaf's scenario of a perfect phase could happen. But what is depressing to me is how difficult that is and how that is never going to be a reliable way for us to get snow. Look at the ensembles. They are very good simulations based on the current conditions. They are realistic possible permutations. And the vast majority of the permutations show a rain solution even with a perfect track and even in places to our NW. Even if we get lucky and we get some super bomb to cause a TPV to form exactly where we need it and this ends up snow...that doesn't change the fact that it was a realistic scenario that a storm could take an absolutely perfect track on what is statistically the coldest week of the year in DC, and it would be nothing but rain all the way to Canada! That is alarming in a larger 30k foot view kinda way to me. I am not focused on the specifics of this event, that is a bigger problem imo.

I don’t see much blue anywhere over any mid latitude land masses.

Perfect write up but let me summarize this…. On the coldest week of the year it’s simply too warm no matter how a storm tracks and there is no cold air within 1000 miles of us.

If we actually get a perfect track 985 low on Jan 15 and it’s rain I really am done. What’s the point.

Unfortunately I’m not sure if that path even exists because with the ridging over the top the weaker permutations among all 3 ensembles get squashed. That’s why the snow mean is pretty disappointing compared to the h5 and mslp looks, especially on the gefs and ggem ensembles. It’s basically 3 camps. A minority cutter camp. A minority weak suppressed. And the majority camp with a perfect track but a lot of rain storms among that group. Frankly almost all of them are rain on the 0z geps and gefs

That’s actually a good signal for that range. There will be spread holding down a mean from that lead. The bigger issue is way too many perfect track rainstorms among the members. Like p1 here. This is a rainstorm!

Not totally true, a SSW around then in 2018 led to an amazing pattern in March and one big snowstorm and a couple other minor snows. With some luck it could have been even better.

Just worth noting 8/10 current top pattern analogs are ninos.

Yes but it had that same spread at 12z it was just masked on the mean by that one member that dropped 40” over DC lol.