psuhoffman

Gfs was sooooooooooo sooooooooooooo soooooooooooooooooooooooo close to pulling off a monster around the same time I’m very interested in. Just had a sloppy phase between 3 pieces. But it was close. Ask me how close.

It says I get 4”. Let’s put the new king to the test.

I think it’s apparent eventually the pac is going to revert to the Nina base state and the -pna will return. Don’t worry if you forget, Chuck will remind you 17 times by the end of the day. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re done for snow chances the rest of winter. Some factors… 1) the pac pattern advertised is a little east of December’s. The trough in the western pac is east of Japan and the ridge axis is east of the Aleutians. That’s not as awful. 2) the pac ridge is extremely poleward. That will at least dump cold into N Amer. If it was flat with a +AO that’s pac puke game over time. 3) there is cold around to to start also. It’s possible weaker waves could eject and with lucky timing we could get chances even in an otherwise warmer pattern 4) it looks like Feb starts with a +AO NAO and so we likely content with the SE ridge. But if we do get another round of blocking in Feb and March that pac look can be mitigated. Blocking overcame that exact pac look to lead to snowstorms in Feb 2006 and March 2018. But that part of the equation is unknown

From 10 days ago I liked the 20-25 but edited that when it became obvious the pattern was retrograding slower than expected. Some idea just a few days delayed. everything’s been a slow progression this year. It all went kinda as expected just delayed.

If you look at both the gefs and eps and loop the h5 anomalies you can clearly see an stj wave ejected east on the 25th. At the same time the NS is diving into the high plains much further west than the waves before. That setup then repeats a few days later and everything pinwheels around. That look seems way more likely to allow amplification along the east coast without needing perfect timing and phasing.

The front the wave is sliding among has been pressing more each run. Not overly optimistic up here.

Unfortunately the rest of the overnight guidance confirmed my suspicion regarding convergence v a true NW trend. Noting the run to run trend of a specific model is important and part of the analytical process and it’s especially significant if an outlier is trending towards the consensus since that increases confidence. That’s often what we do if the consensus is what we want. But the consensus here was a close miss. Early on there was a lot of cenebrating amplified trends in the Gfs and NAM but they were the least amplified models. The icon had been the second most amplified and it was trending weaker. The rgem and ggem had been in between and they stayed mostly identical. Based on that it seemed likely we weren’t seeing a true north trend towards a euro like soliton but rather a convergence of guidance towards a southeast VA hit. That wasn’t even a prediction of the outcome just a prediction of what the 0z guidance was doing. Maybe we see a real trend today. I tend to doubt it. The flow is not really supportive without the more amplified phased idea the euro had and everything has moved away from that. I continue to like the pattern overall abc especially like the window between the 25-30, just not bullish on a big hit from this. I could see some snow sneaking up to DC but the euro big storm idea seems pretty unlikely Imo.

Don’t worry my words have no bearing on the outcome.

But is this really a positive trend or just models coming to consensus. If the most amplified models trend weaker and the least trend stronger that’s not really any change in the overall situation. If the euro goes back to a big hit then we actually made progress over the last 24 hours. Otherwise all that’s happened in everything met in the middle.

There was a time I salivated when central or southern VA was the target 3-5 days out. But over the last 5 years we’ve seen about a half dozen of these and not seen a flake from any of them. DC got into some on the northern fringe. But places like Winchester, Hagerstown, Frederick… have mostly misses every one. The north trend isn’t what it used to be. ETA: that’s not the same as the the west trend when there is no blocking which is still a real thing.

It’s the rgem to 84 then ggem after.

Those hemisphere h5 scores aren’t always relevant to the one thing we care about, the track and amplitude of low pressure systems along the east coast. The Uk for years killed those scores but I’d trust the icon over it at placing a mid latitude cyclone along the east coast at day 5.

You’re right about what guidance is most reliable but I think it’s time we stop having to add an obligatory apology for discussing the NAM or icon or anything else. It’s not like they come out at the same time and are distracting from better analysts. And there is no post limit. Lastly it’s not like they are totally useless. It’s worth noting what the preponderance of evidence shows. Especially if we’re about to elevate the Gfs to lone superpower model status. What if it’s off it’s rocker? It’s been impressively better since the last upgrade but it’s not flawless. We need additional data, even if it’s slightly lower quality.

I’m still on the way home stopped for dinner so no fancy graphics but the 18z rgem is an example. It has some phasing between the streams and still is a miss anywhere NW of DC and only fringed them.

I’m probably the location at the lowest as a % of climo right now. Most places are getting close or have passed climo end in at 25%. But I haven’t complained once. Because it’s just a fluke. Blind luck. The fact we’ve had 3 snow events and are tracking several more is the pattern. Exactly where gets fringed or 5” or 10 is just luck. Over time elevation will help die to enhanced lift and colder temps but short term there are no guarantees. And I see several more chances at least before the pattern expired so let’s wait before we declare it disappointing. The biggest problem I see is that we’re still on the NW flow on the backside of a trough after it progressed following the phased bomb. The mean trough hasn’t yet retrograded enough, everything this year is progressing so slow! That phased bomb was just a fluke that amplified and took advantage of a temporarily weakness in the trough to cut. But until about the 25th we’re still in a NW flow. The kind of waves you’re describing, we had a ton in 2014-2015, usually require the trough axis to be further west. Weak open waves will get squashed south of us if the guidance is even close on the baroclinic boundary and trough axis. Until we get the trough axis west a bit we will need something a bit more amplified to pump ridging and defy the NW flow. If I was in Richmond or Raleigh or maybe even as far north as DC itself I might be rooting for open waves in this pattern, but if we want a region wide flush hit we need something to phase just a bit.

I agree but our problem here is the wave spacing looks off for a slider to work. We kinda need the more amplified phase idea or it’s likely a miss south. Just looking at the longwave pattern progression I think our best chance is around the 26-28. Not saying something can’t work before that but the trough axis seems a bit east of ideal. I like where the trough is amplifying around then.

Even that NAM look argues it has room to adjust the precip field north. Gfs there is too flat and supportive of a slider.

I think the euro bashing over one storm is over the top. It did best with the next snow event and was better with the last one too. It’s still better than Gfs overall. That said we’re getting into the range all the major globals have been good. So if only one is off on its own that’s suspect. So I think if we don’t see some significant movement in the icon/Gfs/ggem today that’s a bad sign. I also suspect if we don’t see any improvement today the euro will begin to trend towards them. This is totally superficial analysis based on recent model behavior at specific lead times.

That’s what I saw..Imo 6z would end up an even more amplified storm but it’s developing a bit further east so the question is would it be in time for places NW of 95. But given that g5 at 90 I could see that tuck up the coast even more.

I’ll clean out my inbox now.

Got some turns in with mini psu once they got some lifts open.

Snowshoe around noon today https://imgur.com/a/Tx6unfj

I’ve been busy but just from glancing at the pattern with all the waves I’d be shocked if something doesn’t eventually work out for a flush hit in the next few weeks. Yea it’s possible stuff keeps fringing us one way then the next but just probabilities in this look would put odds that one of these waves works.