psuhoffman

The nina snow anomaly map has a major minimum right over us for a reason...we are stuck between streams in these patters, so I am not saying that skepticism isn't warranted...but there are fluked within patterns and we are at a range where not much can be taken about a specific outcome yet...the general idea will start to hone in around day 8 or so....we really did start to see the idea of this coastal around day 8...then around day 4-5 the models got the details and have been locked in since. If it still looks like a slider at 100 hours I'll throw in the towel.

Yea like if KC on that one play had just...oh wait, nevermind.

yea...usually we are stuck rooting for a bunch of things to go right for us to get a good snowstorm...this was a situation where we just needed a bunch of things not to go wrong...and they did.

This is really valuable... but nothing works 100%, I wish it did it would make this so much easier. But seasonal trends arent 100%, there are anomalies within the seasonal norms, I did jack that one time mid january for example. And one model might do great with a storm then utter fail the next time. I made a critical error trusting the Euro way too much because it was really really really good with several storms in a row, including the one that hit New England last weekend. It was dead on perfect with that from like 8 days out. So when it was showing a big snow around day 5 I was thinking...money. But its performance on the last few storms did not mean it was going to nail this one. So I agree the AI should become a big part of the equation...but nothing is 100% of it, we make the mistake of relying too much on whatever proved best "the last time" and forgetting that over the long run none of our tools is perfect taken by itself and we need to factor in everything and even then "good luck" lol

No originally Feb 20th was "the first opportunity" in what I thought was a favorable period from Feb 20-March 15th, but when it got to about 10 days out I did jump "all in" on that window so I can't say now...no no I wasn't wrong. I really really liked the look...at at the 30k foot level it was really good. I mean if you just anyone these 2 panels, I mean honeslty this looks really really close to how a lot of our big snows. If we are being uber picky maybe its more MECS than HECS...the PNA ridge isn't quite as bonkers as we would want due to the weak kicker, the H5 track is slightly NW of idea which might actually make me think its a snow to mix event if I was just looking at the h5...but if you just showed me these daily plots I would expect to flip to the surface and see a nice storm for us. We got unlucky with some of the finer details that just went all wrong. Weak SS wave that ran away out ahead, ULL that had a little too much depth possibly and acted like a kicker v an amplifier. Split wave structure that destructively interfered with itself. The ULL didn't really separate fully from the PV which flattened the flow in front. And I think we could have overcome most of those small issues...just not all of them at once. They were all very minor flaws...a stronger SS wave and it wouldn't have mattered. A more consolidated wave without a duel wave structure and we would have been ok. A full detatch of the ULL TPV split and the weaker SS wave would have worked. There were actually more ways to win than fail for once in this setup and we managed to pull a fail out of the hat even with the deck stacked in our favor. That's what makes this one hurt so much.

Looks good for VA beach

Shame it actually looks and feels like a big snow is coming out. Probably because the upper low is so far NW there is a good amount of moisture streaming way NW of the low. It’s not the typical smoking cirrus look.

What you talking bout. 38” or bust!

I honestly thing our best chance at a surprise snow now is something crazy with the ULL pass

nothing good...see all the convection exploding down in the gulf...that's NOT what we want...the flow is not amplified enough to get a storm up the coast that starts out way off the southeast coast...what we needed, was to see the precip associated with the wave along the front up in the TN valley amplifying. If we were going to get some big shocker one of 2 things had to happen...the models had to be totally wrong about that gulf wave starving the TN valley wave of moisture inflow and have that TN valley wave amplify unexpectedly some and maybe down the line that pulls things further north with a better energy transfer point. That is now dead. The only show left now would be for somehow there to be an unforseen phase and the storm to bomb up the coast Jan 2000 style. Good luck with that, we got our once a century bust like that already.

If it's the storm I am thinking of it was February 2013, a saturday night yes, and we got like 3.5" in about an hour from it.

I think we got enough -PNA the last 5 years for the rest of my life

I think some of that snow was actually from another small event a couple days before that...then maybe 1-2" was from the ULL thing the night before. We had a lot of minor snows that year...it was soooo annoying...really cold for a lot of that winter but just couldn't get any storm to jack us. One of my least favorite winters ever. Kinda similar to this one lol

this is you right now

Why you F'ing with them like this?

The simple answer is the ULL is acting like a kicker instead of a pinwheel to amplify the flow in front of it. Bob pointed it out a few days ago and I didn't want to see it. The ULL got "too much" of the TPV cold pool and its acting like a PV not an ULL. Too much of a good thing... we don't expect to get a snowstorm with a TPV sitting over Ohio...if you want to think about it that way. Had the ULL that broke off from the main TPV been a little less overpowering we probably are getting a MECS this week.

This http://www.raymondcmartinjr.com/weather/2009/03-Feb-09.html and I know that event missed down here...it was CLOSE here I got like an inch but missed some places that got 8" just northeast of me. But this ULL is crossing further south...so if something like that were to happen it would be further south this time. I am NOT saying its likely. Its not. 99/100 times that will NOT happen. But that was totally unpredicted and unforseen and some places got 10" that had flurries in the forecast a few hours before.

Actually, I've become that guy in the weather center who was dismissing me back in January 2000 when I was trying to get him to look at a WV loop and show him "somethings not right" and he was just not interested saying "the models are not going to be that wrong 24 hours out".

And here we go

Back in 2009 (which was one of my top analogs to this season and similarly cold but not too snowy) I think it was...there was a situation where we were tracking a threat at a big coastal phased with a cut off ULL for a few days...and it failed...but then some places not too far away from here up in southern PA got like 10" of snow in a few hours from convective bands that set up as the h5 low came through. Just bringing that up. lol

Every time the Eagles have won the super bowl its been on a weekend! Crazy right

don't start that shit again

You're just "done" and I totally get it.

The extreme to which the TPV got displaced this week actually lead to a pinwheel of the whole pattern and a temporary break for a few days before everything cycles around again. I did not, nor could anyone really, have seen that coming. But the warm few days is just a temporary thing in the larger cold period as things reshuffle.

Don’t we want it too amplified at that range?