psuhoffman

But other then that how was the play Mrs Lincoln?

That’s not all

And last winter was 12”, 10”, 5” At the 3 airports. It was a good winter for me. Not good in the DC Balt urban corridor. Last winter was the tightest gradient I can remember.

My evaluation is weighted very highly on the DCA/IAD/BWI urban corridor. That’s where “most” of this forum lives. And this is subjective but my rationale… DC had 3” In 2012-13. 2016 wasn’t only 3 days. There were some February events. One DCA south and one for the northern areas. And a minor March event. And those 3 days were one of the top 5 snowstorms in this area ever. So…I only gave it ok. Sorry but any winter with a HECS is ok to me regardless what else. 2018 was just a mistake and belongs in the bad category.

Lol. This is totally subjective but you seem to imply 2011 should be in the “ok” category here. I think if we were to split winters into “good, ok, bad” categories that year was perceived as bad by most. Well below avg snowfall across the area and lots of disappointments. And not the kind where we get a few inches but others got more. Storms that totally blanked us while not too far away got dumped. Just for reference if I was categorizing winters since 2000 it would provably be Good: 2003, 2010, 2014, 2015 ok: 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2016, 2018, 2019 bad: 2001, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2020, 2021 of course, as I said, that’s very subjective. You could get to break away the “really awful” years where it barely snowed at all like 2002, 2012, 2020 and say 2011 wasn’t one of those and yea…but that’s a super low bar.

Umm DC had 10” and BWI 14” total in 2011. Both below avg. That’s remembered as a pretty bad year in this forum.

Yes ouch but that’s kinda been the trend/ratio recently. DC has not benefited from good winters in Philly as often recently as historically.

Nothing is absolute. But if we want a blockbuster winter we probably need some pac cooperation. And given recent trends if I had to choose one I’d take the pac over the Atlantic. 50 years ago it might have been the opposite. But temps are by far the biggest issue now. If we want a hecs level storm the NAO is still necessary. The only hecs without NAO assist was PD2 and that featured a well timed transient monster 50/50 that substituted. We can still snow with NAO help and a bad pac but it’s more likely later in winter. December and January we really need the pac. By late February and March we can sometimes get lucky without pac help. March 2018 was an example.

My thoughts just glancing at that were “whatever benefit in the enso region is more than offset by the degradation in the north PAC”.

There are degrees between marine Pac and arctic. Getting a direct arctic air discharge during blocking is difficult because said block usually cuts off cross polar flow also. It’s not just blocking on one side! What we need is for Canada to not be torching. If we need a direct shot of Siberian air to get snow might as well give up. That’s incredibly rare and even more rare that a pattern that produces it also leads to a big snowstorm.

Sure, let me just grab my boat and let my boss know.

You can’t just decide to define a Nina differently. The point you’re making about the oddity and abnormal (non nina) behavior is very valid but by the way we define a Nina it was a Nina. This is irrelevant since we have almost none of the oddities that causes 1995/6 to behave antithetical too a canonical Nina.

Yea when I noticed what appeared to be rotation I checked but didn’t see much on radar, no warning, so figured must not be much. I guess NWS did pick up something though because they then warned that “cell” if you can even call it that, a few mins later.

@mappy I could see rotation in that cell warned in NW BaltCo now when it passes further south on my way home. That’s twice this summer I saw what I thought was clear signs of tornadic potential but the storm wasn’t warned so I just blew it off only to have the cell warned a few minutes later. A couple years ago I got pictures of a funnel cloud near my house from a storm that NEVER got warned!

His reply made me regret having replied at all. He is a clown. He can scream into the void next time.

Winds will decrease some over land just due to friction even if it’s not weakening. I’m sure it is also slowly starting to degrade some. But it takes a lot of energy to maintain a storm at this intensity. I wasn’t expecting rapid weakening for the reasons listed but I’m still surprised it’s been able to maintain this level of organization and intensity for this long. Even given the fact it’s just marsh.

The little lights aren’t twinkling Clark.

1) he was refuting a post that last winter didn’t suck. No one claimed it was “great”. He was saying it sucked. 2) the comment he was refuting was made about this region and he replied with sh!t about NYC. Irrelevant 3) last winter did have a great 3 week period. And 1 other significant event. So maybe it was, what, 1 more event from your “great”threshold. Still my point was MOST winters if tut took away the best 3 week period AND one other event would suck. Not all. But most. 4) he is a whole clown, you are a respected valuable poster, don’t die on that hill with him.

The only thing I know is that I don’t know.

Quality post

Got it…so other then a big storm in December AND 3 weeks of storms in Feb. Just wondering, if you let me just eliminate the 3 best weeks plus one additional storm from every winter…how many would not be total sh!t?

@Maestrobjwa My time is more limited these days but let me address some of your concerns. Here is the full version...skip to the bottom if you want to short summary 1) There are some troubling signs I've noted. One thing that really bothers me is seeing more and more examples where it rains with really low thicknesses during peak cold climo and favorable storm tracks. We have had a few of those instances recently. 2) It's also true we have had a lot of pac puke airmasses where boundary level temps are more likely to be problematic. So it's impossible to say exactly how much of this is one factor v another. It's also too soon to know if those 2 are related or to what degree. The prevalence of pac puke airmasses flooding the CONUS is linked to the predominant pac jet pattern recently and there is some speculation that is related to the larger scale climate changes. 3) But its impossible to say exactly to what degree is it this or that. To what degree is this a sea change v a cyclical thing. We know its getting warmer. We know our snow climo is degrading. We don't know to exactly what degree because it doesn't change linearly, the climate has both long and short term cycles. We just have to wait and see. Which brings me to this final comment...and please don't take any of this as an attack. I am in no position to do such. We all have our issues. I have ADHD and know I am slightly on the spectrum and can be obsessive and repetitive. I have my own problems. That said... your posts mostly boil down to 2 types.... A) trying to find meaningful patterns of regularity in the chaos. The problem is any string of random chaos will inadvertently produce some patterns. But without causality these patterns are random and often over time we find not indicative of any meaningful predictive value. Like I said before...if there was meaningful predictive patterns they would have been identified by now. B)comments to the effect of...but then its never going to snow (much) again. Problem with that is again...we just don't know. DC will get another big snowstorm eventually. Everything will break right. We know its getting harder. We don't have enough information yet to say to what degree. Hopefully this is a combination of climo degradation AND a bad patch that will swing back. Maybe we have seen a sea change and snow is much harder to achieve now. We can't say yet. But...pointing it out over and over isn't going to change it. We can't answer this yet...and I know you want that answer....but we just have to wait and see. Short summary version RELAX and just let the weather weather (and yea at times I need to take that advice too!!!)

It's hard to say... the pac in general hasn't looked good most of the time for a while. You're trying to drill down to a level I don't really want to spend (waste?) much time on. I don't feel comfortable weighting exactly which puke indicator is worse than that puke indicator. Does a slightly stronger bad anomaly here outweigh some ambiguous or slightly good thing over there? I don't know. Its all linked anyways so I just weigh it holistically...but I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how bad it is. Bad is bad. I don't have time to analyze exactly what level of bad.

There are some pretty smart people in this field. If there was reliable predictability to seasonal they would have found it.