psuhoffman

Is this the thread to discuss the coming winter or is this thread supposed to be propaganda to make snow weenies feel better? Everything looks like crap. It’s about as uniformly bad across all measurable factors as I’ve ever seen it! Therefore when knowledgeable posters wander in and comment it’s going to be the same. Some version of “looks like $&@!” That’s not their fault. There are only 3 options. We get a litany of “it’s likely crap” posts. A bunch of BS wishcasting just to make people feel good. Or this thread is dead silent. All this doesn’t mean we can’t get lucky with a couple storms or that we can’t 100% rule out a fluke. But “maybe a fluke” is not something that can be analyzed scientifically. So what do you want this thread to be? Based on real science or based on making people feel better about their chances of frozen water which their emotional stability seems overly tied to?

It’s too early to give up on any snow. A snowstorm is still possible. And it’s too early to completely 100% give up on a snowy winter but the data suggests odds are very low. Less than 10% low. But our odds of a snowy winter are only about 27% going into any year if all indicators were neutral.

I’m messing with you. But you’ve been on here for years. And you’re not stupid. You know how useless those seasonal monthly plots are from this range. But you also know what our odds of a snowy winter in a Nina when the QBO, Solar, and both north Atlantic and Pacific SSTs suck. You just want someone to tell you otherwise. But you know.

To torment you

Models are useless at this range. But there are some knowns. The vast majority of our snowy winters and HECS storms come from an El Niño. And drilling down even more most are modoki or basin wide ninos. Super ninos and east based ninos actually have a mixed track record. Among the rare snowy winters that had no enso help we usually saw multiple other major drivers lined up in our favor. 1996 was a Nina but the combo of North Atlantic and north pac SST, solar, and qbo was lined up and countermanded the weak unfavorable enso. 2014 the north pac was very favorable and drove the bus. Right now I see nothing in our favor to indicate this is likely to end up one of those snowy years. It’s possible things change. Maybe by November there’s been a radical shift in something. But it’s unlikely Imo. But that also doesn’t mean it’s definitely a dreg 2020 type year either. Could just be a typical 10-15” in the corridor “normal” winter. But most in here, and I don’t blame them, call those sucky winters. Just not as sucky. Truth is 60-70% of our winters are some degree of suck with a few good winters per decade thrown in just to keep hope alive. It’s really hard to predict between a total shutout and just a typical 12” winter in DC because we’re talking about getting lucky like twice making all the difference. look at 2000. We got 3 straight snows from the only 3 threats we had all winter. That could easily have been a dreg winter with less luck. 2001 was opposite. Probably twice as many legit threats as 2000 but less luck. Even 2020 there were several threats and they didn’t come together. Get luckily a couple times and it was just a typical sucky year. So I won’t try to say is this ends up a dreg under 5” winter or a typical 10-15” type winter… but I do think thosw are the reasonable expectations and goal posts at this point if I had to make an educated guess now

I lived about 20 years in south NJ and DC metro with your current climo. That’s why I moved. What I didn’t do was stay and subject everyone to constant complaints because I wasn’t happy with my climo. Before you try to kid yourself that this is only about the current run of bad luck and that you would be fine with climo…that’s bunk because you’re torturous laments began long before we actually got into true anomalously snow drought territory. The truth is you would not be happy with our 1990-2020 type climo…and you certainly won’t be with what is likely to be a worse climo for the next 30 years! You should be honest with yourself. You can either accept you live somewhere snow is rare, and stop expecting it and just enjoy when a fluke happens. Or move somewhere an hour northwest like I did and suffer the commute. Or relocate to a city like Boston where snow is more common. Even there you have to live west of the city to really be snow drought proof.

What I’m about to say is specific to the DC-Baltimore corridor. The western and northern higher elevation fringes of this forum have a different climo. I’m not predicting a total shutout or anything. But they typically only get 2-3 above avg snowfall winters a decade. And “avg” is only like 15-20” across much of the area….so anything below is bad. It’s just how bad. So truth is, our climo is to have a lot of crappy winters with a blockbuster every so often when the stars align. This doesn’t look like that. What level of bad I can’t say. Whether it’s a 2002 or 2012 or 2020 level disaster or just a more typical crappy winter like 2011 or 2018 who knows. But while we do enjoy whatever snow we get many are hunting for the actual good winter, and we’re due for one, but unfortunately it doesn’t look likely to be this winter.

Last year was well below normal here but I still enjoyed the snow I got. It seems you’re chasing the kind of winter we only get 1-2 times a decade. That will leave you frustrated most of the time.

Ugh. It’s way too early. Ya it looks bad now but it’s not even August yet. I said things can change. Ya right now my super early forecast would be below avg snow but it’s too early. Plus even if it is a bad year it will probably snow some. You take everything to extremes.

Unfortunately everything I see now is pretty grim regarding winter prospects. I really appreciate our out of region contributors, they’ve been adding value to this discussion, but the worrying about exactly what the enso state ends up is more relevant to their snow prospects than ours. It’s evident we won’t have a Nino and if you take all other enso states, neutral, weak nina, mod Nina, strong Nina, our snow probabilities the last 40 years are nearly identical for our local region. Once you get north of 40 it does still make a difference if we get a weak Nina or strong one. Only if you go back further (and I don’t think those stats are relevant anymore) do you see any real differentiation here. For us unless we get a Nino (and even then we really need a mod-strong, but not super, basin wide or modoki) our prospects aren’t great. But in all other states we can and have equal chances of a fluke decent to good year. But we need other things to line up. AO/NAO, PNA, EPO, SOI being the big 4 actual pattern measures we need to be lined up in our favor somehow in some combo. All the other stuff we discuss like PDO, QBO, solar, enso, soil moisture, hemispheric energies and planetary tilt are just things we can try to use as hints how those 4 will line up. Right now absolutely nothing is lined up the way we want. Just about every measurable is opposite of what we want. What more is there to say? The only good news is these things can all change dramatically from this range. Let’s just hope it does. Or sometimes a fluke that defies every measurable thing we know happens. And yea Iets root for that, but “maybe there will be a fluke” isn’t the basis for a forecast unless you’re JB.

It’s amazing the cutoff in many decent Nina years near Philly. Same in 2018. My area northeast can do ok. But south of there doesn’t cash in even in “better” Nina’s. On another note not sure a repeat of 2001 works out even here. The coop near here recorded ~35” but most of it came in several very marginal temp storms. Two where the snow mostly fell with temps at 32-34 degrees. A repeat of that winter adjusted a couple degrees warmer would be a dreg winter here.

I need to visit your reality. In mine a significant % of people have decided reality is subjective and science is a conspiracy.

I would guess in that range yea.

Some pics from around town 27 just south of Manchester South side of Manchester These are just down Ebbvale from my house. Whatever it was the worst passed just a few hundred yards south of me down my street. my kids think they’re camping.

27 between Manchester and Westminster was a mess. Trees and power lines down everywhere.

More than I expected when I moved here. We seem to get a good storm every couple years. I’ve seen a funnel cloud twice in the 8 years here. A wall cloud with rotation twice. And I was at work when a tornado hit about 1 mile from my house in Feb 2020. I do miss the pure lightning storms that used to be common where I grew up in south Jersey. But I get good severe events up here. Still no power though. Might not be back for days according to BGE. Using a generator to try to save the 3 months of meat in my freezer.

Power still out up here. Hear sirens a lot. I cleaned up the yard somewhat. Found the pool stuff 2 doors down. Kids playhouse was mostly ok. Lost some tiki torches and some big branches but nothing too bad. Neighbor lost a tree. Heading out to find somewhere with power to get the kids dinner. Maybe Westminster.

Few miles south of me. I took this right before things got crazy. There was clear rotation. Then it got bad enough quick that getting the kids to safety outweighed getting better video footage.

It blew the kids plastic toy house about 75 yards into the neighbors yard. My patio furniture is all over the yard. It’s a mess.

Lost power. Had to get the kids in the basement. It got bad. Too much rain/hail to tell if it was a micro burst or ef0/1 tornado but we got hit by something and it was bad enough I decided not to watch and get the kids in the basement. We lost some trees.

If anyone knows someone at NWS might want to get a tornado warning out on this storm here in northeast Carroll. Clear rotation on wall cloud. Hail. High winds. Nothing on ground now but worth a warning Imo.

Happy birthday @mappy

Maybe others haven’t noticed but Ji has been much better even last winter. He still does his thing from time to time but he wasn’t wrecking threads and was making substantive posts also.

One of the main culprits for the decline in mean snowfall around DC is that enso neutral winters used to have a pretty high probability of above avg snowfall. But in the last 30 years that’s no longer true. They’ve been mostly dreadful, even worse than Nina’s in many cases, with the exception of 2013/14.

@Maestrobjwa in the last 50 years... Years with above normal snowfall at BWI by decade 2010s: 4 2000s: 2 1990s: 2 1980s: 3 1970s: 3 Avg years per decade above avg snowfall = 2.8 There is a 73% of below normal snowfall in any given individual year just based on random chance. But the truth is we have about a 75% chance of above avg snow if it is either a modoki or a moderate to strong nino year. And all other years including non modoki weak nino's we have about a 15% chance of above normal and 85% chance of below normal snowfall. That's our climo. Set your expectations accordingly.