psuhoffman

He’s lost his mind lately and I’m not joking.

You’re still reading his posts?

There is definitely a tool in this thread

Guidance past day 10 isn’t useless, at times it can give some hints of how things could evolve, but they have to be looked at differently. Op runs past day 10 mean absolutely nothing! On ensembles, weak anomalies, ambiguous looks, and daily shifts mean absolutely nothing. Remember they are means of various conflicting runs. So a weak variable signal basically is saying “I have no clue”. When we start to see consistency across the various ensembles and actions consecutive days, and the signal starts to get stronger as it pushes closer in time, that’s when it’s more believable.

If you want to get November snow the two most likely ways are a progressive post frontal wave or to get lucky under a CCB death band. Other types of systems are even less likely to work this early. Back in 2018 was one of the only times WAA snow ever worked this early and that took an anomalous cold but more so dry airmass and some crazy fgen and VVs I’ve seen. And even then with so much going right it was still mostly a NW of the fall line event.

I’m worried about a fringe

You’re giving him way more thought than anyone in this sub ever does.

Just ignoring him (and several others) works really well.

My real serious non snarky winter thoughts preface: The thing about these winter predictions and why I’m pretty jaded towards them and didn’t issue a real winter forecast last year is I feel like I know what we don’t know. Don’t get me wrong a lot of the people putting them together are incredibly intelligent skilled forecasters and there is excellent science in the process. But the media culture demands they turn that science into a definitive forecast that isn’t realistic. We can look at all the known pattern influences like enso and QBO and dozens more to get a scope or range of variability the winter pattern is likely to fall within but we also cannot account for the variability within that range. We can’t fully explain why two years with nearly identical pattern drivers ended up with somewhat different results. Additionally snowfall is a crazy erratic variable. Some luck with 1-2 discreet events is the difference between a god awful snowfall year and a decent or even pretty good one! Pattern recognition in the fall cannot tell you if you will get unlucky on a few threats and end up with 7” or lucky and get 20”. Think about 2000. There was a favorable pattern for 10 days that winter. Most of the rest of that winter was garbage. Within that 10 days there were 3 threats. And all 3 hit to some degree across our area. And so it went down as one of the better nina winters. But what if we didn’t have as much luck? What if the big storm did stay OTS and only the 2 smaller events on either side of it hit. Suddenly that year is bad. Some luck with one event makes or breaks it. No one right now can say with any certainty how those details will play out. So I won’t be issuing a traditional winter forecast. But considering what we do know I feel comfortable saying the following. WRT snowfall. The range of variability this winter is skewed toward the less snowy side. When I look at all winters with a similar set of pattern drivers (SST, QBO, solar, soil, longer scale patterns) we get a range skewed towards less than normal snowfall. But whether that ends up much below normal like 07/08 or 11/12 or we get lucky like 99/00 or 05/06 or somewhere in between like 17/18 is impossible to say. It probably comes down to luck and maximizing potential. One thing is we absolutely NEED the NAO to be negative some of the time. One thing that stuck out in my snowfall study years ago was we had almost no significant snows in a Nina without a -NAO. A -NAO is helpful in all enso phases but even more so in a Nina. While there are some examples of warning events in neutral and Nina phases without NAO help that is not true in a Nina. To get a significant snow we will need to get lucky during a period of high latitude help. Whether we end up with 5-10” or 15-20” across the region likely comes down to that. Do we get some periods of blocking and luck into 1-2 storms from it. These won’t be HECS level but one 6-10” storm or two 3-6” storms across the region is all the difference here. I am actually leaning a little on the hopeful side on this one. Imo there are signs the NAO may be in a more favorable longer term phase right now. I do think we get some periods of blocking. The most likely months are December and March. Not coincidentally the most likely cold months are also Dec and March. I know that’s not ideal but January and February aren’t totally hopeless. 2000, 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2021 are all examples of Nina’s where the NAO went negative at some point in January/February. Some worked out. Some didn’t. A chance is all Im asking for at this time. The details which will determine our fate have to be worked out with each discreet synoptic event. TLDR version: my snowfall expectation. DC urban corridor: 9-15” Baltimore urban corridor: 13-19” NW zones west of the fall line to the mountains: 15-22” temps averaged above normal but I do think we get some cold shots but when it does get warm it torches so in the end it skews warm.

If you go back and look at old snow maps local DC media outlets put out its very obvious they don’t pay any attention to details once outside the DC metro area.

They never pay much attention to those local mountain zones. Always way under done.

Keep us posted

That look a month later would end in heartbreak. A NS system coming across at that high a latitude has typical mid Atlantic screw job written all over it.

Not all ninos are good. Not all Nina’s are bad. If I had to bet I would go conservative. There are a lot of negative factors. But there is also a lot of chaos we can’t account for in this game. I’m not sure how much enso is driving things lately. The more I learn the less I know. While I’m pessimistic I’ve by no means given up on snow this winter. It wouldn’t shock me if we get decent snowfall somehow.

That storm wasn’t a typical Nina miller b screw job. It was a miller A. Eastern NC and southeast VA got hit. It was a southern stream system. But it went through a weird late phase with the NS and the upper low closed off a little too late. If what you said above was 100% set in stone we might as well just give up. It does snow sometimes in a Nina. We have had decent coastal snowstorms in a Nina. February last year was decent. March 18. January 11. March 09, February 06, January 2000, March 99, 96! It can happen and getting a pattern like Dec 2010 would increase the odds.

I’d roll the dice with a dec 2010 pattern again and hope for a little more luck.

Its not even worth real analysis but I’d be very pleased if things progressed that way. A bunch of cutters in mid November slowly establishing lower heights and cold to our northwest which looks poised to press towards late November is ideal. You want a perfect pattern now when it won’t do us any good? Let this thing slowly develop and maybe we get some snow the very end of November and early December when it’s still difficult but at least less crazy stupid unlikely.

This could take off into as many different angles as we want if there is interest. Do we think it’s necessary to create a member email list to send the login invite/code to avoid random trolls? If so setting that up is step 1.

The strat will save us… off to a great start lol.

We can probably handle the rare case of someone acting out with mute/remove. But if we want to add an additional layer of security we could create a forum email list and send the code that way to avoid imposters. I think anyone who has made significant contributions to our region should be invited. Just my 2 cents.

Thank you…that could definitely change the calculation. If all other factors are equal I do think zoom is the easiest to interact with.

I guess that probably would be the end result. Would add a little more to the experience. So long as you don't think it's stepping on anyone's toes... @stormtracker? I probably should have asked and checked first, I am definitely not trying to take anything away from the board...I want this to be something we add to the community here.

If the cap of 100 isn’t an issue I would agree wrt zoom. Interest level might determine that. If we think we won’t ever have more than 100 logged in then that doesn’t matter.

The NWP guidance has been really erratic at range (as is expected) and that’s the lesson to remember Imo. Synoptic details typically start to become more clear once inside 150 hours then further inside 100. Outside that details are useless.