psuhoffman

The AO starts to tank by the 12th. That’s a few days ahead of schedule. Then we because there is already cold around we dive right into threats. I still think things look good for around the 20th.

EPS just opened up a can

The blocking started to set up a week ahead of schedule.

As far as you know it could be stuck from April to October.

EPS

Lol

14-15 was a modoki nino and 2014 was the best cold enso season since 1996 and the second best since the 60s. This is probably going to end up being one of the better cold enso seasons of the last 20 years...that should be the bar.

I'm basing it off pattern analogs not what the models show right now....and I am being conservative given how little snow we have had lately.

also keep in mind the "averages" are both skewed by those 1-2 huge years a decade and also lag real time because they are based on the last 30 years but we know our snowfall is decreasing. So in reality IAD's average NOW is probably lower. In about 20 years when we can calculate the average centered on this season it will probably be like 18 or 19".

So your bar for not being a "disaster" is winter has to do something that has only happened 4 times in the last 20 years?

I am being conservative too...one flush hit can go over that of course but how often have we got lucky lately?

This is just an educated guess based on similar years and patterns but I'd put your over under at like 9" the rest of the way

@Ji based on my analogs and what I’m seeing Id expect you to get 12-15” more if I had to guess. Would that get you to above avg?

No because it’s a cold enso. Historically cold but not super snowy cold enso seasons are normal. If we got a cold modoki Nino and wasted it I’d be more upset. Plus we are above average for the date in many places. There is a lot of time left. What do you need to get to average?

Weak Nino

Every storm is slightly different. Adjust that 50 miles south and you get a foot of snow and ice like that euro run. Just have to take our chances.

That period must not have been as good down there. You keep talking about 2007 like a fail. But from mid Feb to mid March I had an 8” ice storm followed by a 4” snow to ice event then a 6” snow in March. The winter as a whole was a fail because I had no snow at all before that period. But mid Feb to mid March was plenty good imo.

What did you get from that storm? It was like 8” of snow/sleet/freezing rain that ended up a solid glacier that lasted almost until April here. I’d take that again!

With a decent amount of sleet and freezing rain on top of the snow also. Which is good if we want it to survive the rain when we inevitably end up on the wrong side of the boundary for some of the waves to come!

Euro reminds me of a less juiced up cold enso version of PD2.

Euro looks promising

Think of it this way…once past 120 hours each permutation is about equally likely. There are plenty of big members. This run the op happened to be one of the lesser ones which is equally likely looking at the full spread of options. Also this snow is from several waves so a mean of 7” looks exciting but maybe less so when you see the details and it all came 2” at a time from snow to ice to rain events which is what we’re probably looking at. But I thought it was just a win we were tracking frozen events during what was supposed to be our torch week!

Through day 10, which is honestly as far out as it even matters…0z gefs is snowier 0z on top, 18z below