psuhoffman

It’s hard to say where we go from there. I don’t think analogs are as useful as they used to be. Additionally almost all the top analogs to the current and coming pattern are Nino years. The one Nina that’s close to this wrt pattern progression and where we are heading now was 2005/6. The progression has been pretty close this year. Unfortunately if we follow a similar trajectory we didn’t take any advantage of the early blocking this year like that year and then we suffered a long time in January 2006. We did eventually get back to a good pattern in Feb but it underperformed and only yielded the one storm. As good as it was the h5 from Feb 1 on would make you think we got more than one snowfall. Imagine we almost wasted this look because the one storm we got was barely cold enough. On a side note I remember on eastern everyone saying leading up to the storm the pattern wasn’t great and it was a thread the needle setup. It wasn’t cold and so there was a narrow margin on track but i never understood that. The pattern couldn’t have been better. It just wasn’t that cold because we never recovered from the pacific onslaught that obliterated all cold from our side of the northern hemisphere. Here’s a thought…would that even work again? If the exact same pattern repeats would that Feb 2006 storm work out because almost all the snow around DC fell with temps between 32-34 degrees. Or would it be a 34-35 degree rain and we would totally waste the same pattern?

We can overcome a -pna in Feb and March with blocking but it’s hard to almost impossible in December.

How long can you hold your breath?

Pann was one of 4 he quoted. Then Pann took offense and claimed it was taken out of context. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Just a case of “Man acts like clown, complains when treated like one”.

On top of all that…if we did get cross polar flow +5-10 air in Siberia would still be cold here. But that’s not how we typically get snow here anyways.

There is a path. But I’m not over reacting to one run of anything. But…if the pac jet extension isn’t quite as emphatic or relaxes a bit quicker…most of the rest of the larger longwave drivers are similar. It’s just the Aleutian low pushes too Far East and floods pac puke and that along with the flaws we already have (TNH WAR) takes a workable pattern and makes it lights out for a while. But adjust the pac a little and it becomes workable again. We are probably going to fight the TNH/WAR all winter. But there are ways to overcome. We have had 50/50s several times in the last couple weeks. But they’re going to be transient. But each gives us a 24-48 hour window. Keep that up and eventually you get lucky with timing. Also as we get later in winter the colder overall profile combined with shorter wavelengths works to make the pattern we’ve been in less hostile. I would prefer if we stay in the general look we’ve had and take our chances than roll the dice with a total breakdown and reshuffle which could lead to a much worse look. I’m of the mind that if we play around with a severely negative EPO/AO/NAO long enough we should end to with at least a respectable amount of snow by the time it’s all said and done.

If you’re talking about Dec 1995 luckily for me that was a year before I started really getting into looking at guidance and so most of my info was local. Knowing what I know now Dec 95 would have been torture as places just north of us got like 25” that month but as it was we did get a few 1-2” snows where I was in northern VA that weren’t really expected so I was happy. Had I known what I was missing…ignorance can be bliss.

It’s been there as a minority opinion on various ensemble’s over the last few days. It finally popped up on an operational. Maybe by chance. But it’s a subtle enough feature that its the kind of thing guidance will often miss until shorter leads. But we don’t necessarily need a dynamic h5 feature to get a decent snow if the setup is right. It likely doesn’t have huge upside but they sometimes turn into nice events which seem to be extinct lately. But definitely a long shot, as anything is at that range

I remember playing a soccer game that day and it was like 65 degrees, then that evening we got a couple inches of snow.

@Terpeast you’re right that the pna ridge a bit too far west and associated WAR is a problem. But the answer isn’t “let’s lose everything else we also need for a snowstorm” like the NAO/AO and Aleutian low. There was more right than wrong with the longwave pattern. Blowing it all up seems unlikely to result in getting us closer to right. I’d prefer to root for the subtle changes we need in the pna and western Atlantic and not lose the good stuff. ETA: the problem with “let’s reshuffle the deck” is there are lots of combinations and like 90% of them don’t work. It’s unlikely any reshuffle results in a better look when you had a decent longwave configuration and just needed a slight adjustment.

Dec snow climo isn’t isn’t that bad the NW 1/3 of this forum either.

Just for future reference the Gfs was more correct with the happenings over Canada. But it ended go kinda a 60/40 compromise and we needed the GFS to be 100% correct to have a shot at keeping this from cutting. But still impressive imo that it was closer given all other guidance was totally against it at one point.

I don’t think we’re done for the season. This doesn’t have the hallmarks (yet) of a total dreg year like 2019/20. And if we were to get a similar pattern to the one we just wasted in late January/February it’s more likely something comes of it. Just depressing we seem to have wasted what’s been mostly a decent to good longwave configuration the first 1/3 of the snow season. Yea November and December aren’t good snow climo but in most good seasons we did manage to snow by now. It’s not impossible. Or at least it wasn’t impossible lol.

Over the past 6 years numerous times we’ve wasted what should have been a good longwave pattern. Every time as it ended there were a smattering of “good let’s try something different”. And I can’t reminder a single time that worked out. If a good pattern doesn’t work I doubt a bad one will. Usually we just end up in a total no hope close the blinds don’t even look at each run until further notice so pattern. I am not excited by a pattern change. But hopefully it doesn’t last too long. Maybe by mid January we can cycle back to a better pattern and hopefully get more luck.

The euro only goes to 4.5 and 10 days. Icon 5 days and 8 days. Not sure that makes them any better within the range they run. Does running extra days really limit the physics?

What do you suggest they do to improve the guidance?

Since when do we need cross poler Siberian air to get snow? h5 from some of our notable snowstorms. A -epo is actually pretty rare during a big snowstorm here because a ridge over AK often puts the trough too far west and a storm would cut unless there was a VERY negative NAO. The more typical progression to snow here was a -epo a week or so before the storm that helped inject cold into North America. Then the epo ridge progresses to the pna space with a trough near AK and the cold source cuts off. But the storm that would then come would take advantage of the left over domestic cold. The cold didn’t get immediately routed and annihilated by warm pac puke in like 7 seconds like it seems to now! If we need a direct flow from Siberia to get snow we’re in deep deep bleep because that’s actually NOT a good pattern for big snowstorms historically. 90% of our big snows did not happen during cross polar flow but used domestic air masses that were just cold enough.

He wised up and moved to northern NH and is busy shoveling the 20” they just got.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness I’m about to unleash… so many thoughts on this. It’s not a 970 low in Erie as that front runner blasts to our north. And if there was a colder thermal profile maybe the low ends up 980 over Ohio and reforms off NJ. Small adjustment. Major difference for ground truth. That still wouldn’t be a HECS here but it’s the difference between all rain and a messy 3-6” snow. You’re totally correct in the micro. Im being more macro. You’re right but what’s the goal here? We’re never gonna have a big winter relying on weak boundary waves in a progressive pattern. 2014 was a once in a lifetime luck heater wrt those. That’s never happening again. Our path to a big winter is getting some big storms and those require blocking. On the one hand it’s a Nina ya. One the other 1914, 1996, Jan 2000 and Feb 2006 happened. We can get big snows in a Nina when we get blocking. So just tossing the opportunity to score big because Nina is wrong Imo. Im also biased because up here I’m never getting to a respectable winter with a few weak waves. Last year was near median for you and a bottom 10% snow year here! Some winters you think are pretty good because you got 15” from a few weak waves were the worst up here where a 20” winter is bottom 10%. But we all root for imby so I get it and don’t begrudge you at all! I’d feel the same in your shoes. But what’s the goal? We aren’t breaking out if this cycle of crap with a couple 4” progressive waves. We’re long overdue for a big winter. I think we’re hunting for different things. Lastly I’m not kicking a 3-6” snow out of bed. I enjoyed the few snows I got last year. I will again. But nothings eminent so…. But if we keep wasting -4 stdv blocks we’re in trouble in a larger snow climo sense.

They’re meeting in the middle. We maybe can still salvage something from this on either side but won’t know that until we get inside 72 hours for those kinds of details.

Once again we go from 5 to 8 to 28 to 8 but instead of settling at 5...we get zero I’ve noticed. You’re not wrong. My next project it I ever get time might be to look into this further but anecdotally it seems to me that the snow gradient on the south side of storms is a lot sharper. It’s just not cold enough. When I did that snow study years ago I was kinda shocked at many of the ugly and convoluted tracks that managed a 3-6” snow in our area simply because the antecedent airmass was cold. But they became much less frequent in the records over time. They’re becoming almost extinct lately. It’s perfect track or nothing most of the time lately. Add in the fact we’ve even managed to waste a couple percent tracks when there just wasn’t enough cold and voila were in the worst snow stretch in recorded history

The 27th threat was predicated on this system being a coastal and progressing east. If it bombs to 950 and ends up a tpv directly north of us nothings going to happen for a while around here after.

No we just need the NAO and AO to be -4 stdv at the same time as we have a stationary TPV at 50/50 and a perfectly placed full latitude EPO PNA ridge with the axis exactly through Boise. Jokes aside to clarify my point…those making the case why this shouldn’t be a DC HECS are 100% correct. The PNA isnt perfect and the 50/50 slides out too fast. But I have 2 counter points. What happened to just a 3-6” messy snow in our area from a storm that “wasn’t perfect”. That used to be the majority of our snow. 3-6” in our area from a storm that cut due to those imperfections and dumped 12”+ on Buffalo or something. But it was still cold enough to start as a nice snow here. Why do we need a perfect track to get any snow even when we had a cross polar flow direct injection only a few days before??? Second point is why is it a repetitive pattern that the WAR associated with the TNH continuously is winning and preventing a 50/50. Yes no 50/50 is the micro reason we lose but why are we seeing the failure of blocks to produce the canonical response in the northwest Atlantic repeatedly.

My fear for after is this system pulls north and retrogrades, stalled from progressing by the link up of the WAR and NAO. So we’re left in the exact same conundrum. Weak waves are likely squashed since were directly under the TPV but anything stronger that phases cuts since there is nothing to prevent it from pumping ridging to the North Pole in front. ETA: it could work, but would require luck with exact placement of features and phasing. Been a long time since we got lucky. Some here subscribe to the were due index.

It is and it’s always been better for us when it’s negative. BUT there were more examples in the past of a -NAO being able to beat down the +TNH pattern and suppress systems under us. Recently the TNH seems to be winning even when the AO/NAO are ridiculously negative.