psuhoffman

Hey man how you been? Was wondering what happened to you this year. Hope all is well. ETA: It is SOME bad luck...and I also think some of its the pac base state and some of it is AGW.

I measured 5.5" of pretty much all snow when I first got up and shoveled off my "measuring spot". Since then I got 2.5" of half snow/sleet mix for a total of 8" of frozen that fell but the depth everywhere is still only 6.5" due to compacting from the weight of the ice on top of the snow. But lets assume the 5.5" had higher ratios so is like .45 qpf. But the 2.5" since is VERY low ratio lets say 5-1 so best guess I was close to 1" qpf up here under that banding...which makes sense because that is what all the guidance said the qpf would be only they had that band along 95 near DC not up here.

You are responding to what you created. People aren't coming at you for no reason unprovoked so stop it with the persecution complex nonsense. That post I responded to was just picked at random. I was worried about the warm layer too but I'm not going all over the board this morning while people are disappointed and frustrated saying basically "I told ya so" over and over and over again. And I am probably guilty of doing some of that in frustration sometimes and I should try to cut it out and tone it down and I admit I have faults but "two wrongs make a right" is a crappy justification. Lastly, for the record, your NAM comments are a bit much. The NAM did see the idea of a mid level warm layer first...but it was also WAY WAY WAY off synpitically at range too. And frankly all the CAM's saw the warm layer the NAM is simply the only one that goes out to 84 hours so yea it "saw it first" I guess. And the NAM got some stuff way wrong, like the placement of the precip banding...had that super band set up over 95 like the NAM thought last night at 0z DC to Baltimore would have done a LOT better...even if that was all sleet it would have been 3" of sleet! But we saw that at times it mixed with snow when heavy banding did get east so it would have had some snow...and probably been 4-5" and a win. But that banding set up NW of 95 and there wasnt steady enough heavy precip for a long enough period to mix out the warm layer...and there wasn't enough precip for sleet to really pile up and accumulate...and so total fail. But the NAM didnt NAIL it...it was right about the mid level warm layer and wrong about almost everything else!

That works when we have one threat to track....but it gets really confusing when we have multiple threats being discusses all in one thread. But I am ok whatever we do. It never bothered me having multiple discussions in a thread....but it seemed to drive others crazy.

This is EXACTLY how this winter is going to end.... Wave 1 Wave 2 And even though we KNOW its coming its still going to hurt sooooo bad. LOL

Ok you got your victory lap now stop

we should scrap all threads and just make the board one big stream of consciousness

I went with 2-5" along 95. At the time with all the doom posting about the NAM's showing no snow I kind of considered that a positive bust. Even that looks high though, although remember sleet accumulation counts. But I really thought with heavier banding it would mix with snow enough...but the heavy banding (again) set up NW of 95 so that didn't work out. It was close...you can see during some of the heavy banding places pretty far SE did mix with snow. I wanted to be optimistic. Figured we were due for something to break good for once. I was wrong about that. But my "fear" all along for what could wreck this turned out to be correct. Even up here I have mixed with a lot of sleet and its holding down accumulations.

Pouring sleet. Darn. If this last band had stayed snow with these rates could have made a run at double digits.

Do I have to go back to when we were only 48 hours out and post those trend gifs showing EVERYTHING with 6" plus for DC and Baltimore and trending better EVERY run? Yea it immediately started to fall apart after that and by last night signs were this could go down this way...but this one has to hurt even more because it was trending better until about 48 hours out...all the others looked really good at like 100 hours but the slow bleed to fail started much earlier. This one actually looked good at 48 hours and then fell apart. Just because I was worried about the mid level warm layer...and I am not shocked it ended up killing a lot of people's snow dreams...doesn't mean I wasn't hopeful this one would be different and work out. You don't find it amazing that we keep getting "decent" chances and they ALL break the wrong way for 95?

Thanks. Sucks I slept through that lol. 2 year old wasn’t feeling well and was up late with her so needed to catch a few hours. Thought most of the good stuff would be after 7am here. Some guidance last night did have a pockets of warm up here between bands around 8 then flipped back to snow as heavier banding came through so hopefully I get to enjoy another heavy burst of snow.

Where are you?

WTH did I miss. Figured if I got up at 7:00 that would be right as it was getting good. But there was already 5.5” on the ground (great!) but it was also already mixing with sleet (what? Boo!). I really hope I didn’t miss the best part of the storm. WTH happened in the few hours I slept? Did it snow 3” an hour or something? And why am I mixing with sleet up here already at 7:30 am??? It’s a 50/50 snow sleet mix now. About 6” total.

Does it have round 1? yes...actually focuses that further NW. Bullseye of precip is Winchester northeast to Carroll County. Would be mostly snow NW of a line from about Sterling to Owings Mills. Mostly ice SE of there and looks like about 4-6" of snow with wave 1 NW of there.

UKMET has round 2 tomorrow night also...generally .2-.3 QPF across the area with that. Just about all guidance has that now.

It drops 3" of snow/sleet on DC (mostly sleet) but the warm layer is only about 1C for a lot of that...if its off by just a bit then its in line with the euro pretty well on the thermals. It's precipitation representation is pretty close also except in typical NAM fashion its wet. They are fairly close in terms of the progression of the event just off by very minor details. The ground truth ends up a big difference because DC is on the razors edge for precip type. But even then...the Euro was like 3-4" of snow with some sleet...the NAM would be some snow with 2-3" of sleet...so its not really that far apart in terms of how much "stuff" is on the ground in the end either.

If you tone down the mid level warm layer by like 1C the 12k NAM matches the Euro (as a slightly wetter version) pretty well actually.

the primary track is trending south across all guidance right now...and that could very well activate the lingering boundary through our area Thursday evening/night. I doubt we get anything heavy but could tack on some additional accumulations if the precip is heavy enough to mix out the warm layers left over.

True...but from the sounding the extreme dry layer coincides with the warm layer. There is a really warm but dry layer around h8. But my point was if the NAM had that layer at 0C at 60% humidity and in reality it was +1.5C with 40% humidity...in the end the wet bulb temp (which is what really matters) is about the same so the error seems insignificant imo compared to the press its getting.

alternate version for the lazy...but I like the metric version better.

The NAM was too warm...but it also wasn't dry enough...so wouldn't those 2 kind of offset in the end?

I adjusted some of the totals a little...this is my current thinking. I think during the heaviest precip it will mix out the warm layer just enough to do better then the doomsday scenario on some of the high res guidance. Ratios will be low but it will be puking precipitation so even if its a 50/50 snow/sleet mix it will accumulate a decent amount. I also think these gulf systems with true cold air in place tend to run on the wet side of guidance.

I like to see the mix line taking on more a SW to NE v W t E trajectory. That’s more a winning scenario for along and west of 95

I know someone else...

It’s annoying but you can use the other guidance wrt how far north of the h85 and h7 they get the warm layers to make an educated guess. You will get close enough that whatever minor error the model isn’t likely to be that accurate anyways.