psuhoffman

When the eps looks great often that one member that sucks is right. But why can’t it ever be this one that’s right...??? it hits DC with all 3 waves. Like 2-4, 2-4, 20”

Exactly...I can’t even come up with a decent justification for that nonsense.

@WxUSAF plus if you go and don’t get it you still have a shot if you stop them there. That was one of the worst calls ever.

I thought it was pretty gutless at the time too. Cutting through the crap you either have a shot at a TD one play from the 9. Or you have to get a stop then drive the whole field with no timeouts in under 2 mins and get a TD anyways. That doesn’t seem like a hard choice to me. I was shocked they kicked.

This post sponsored by big overreactions incorporated...our motto is why be measured when you could fly off the handle. What’s the worse that could happen.

The phasing of that TPV with both waves to our northeast sets up the next wave.

Yea and it’s right to be skeptical. But the signal is there and sooner or later it will snow again. Hopefully sooner.

Honestly TN might be too south in this flow. Of course we are too far out to know exactly where the suppression sets up. Gfs is less so then the euro. But in Thursday’s setup for instance, the runs that crushed us had the primary get up into KY/WV or even Ohio. We’ve had big snowstorms from a NW track primary in blocking before. Obviously details we won’t know from range effect each variable and the ideal track.

Look at this BS. The remnants of the early week storm is still sitting just to our northeast as the Thursday wave passes to our south. They actually end up phasing into a bomb in the Atlantic. Lol. When I started to see that wave hanging around longer and longer I dismissed that it would slow to the necessary amount to become this much of an impediment. But it did. An amazing error in timing across all guidance really but especially the gfs.

That’s too north but not by as much as you would think. Given the blocking suppressed flow we want a primary to get into southern Ohio and jump to off the VA capes for a flush hit.

My rule on the euro worked again. Next time it shows snow and the gfs dosent...the euro will cave EVERY model showed snow for DC 4 days out in December and it still failed! Lol

GFS gets too much weight because it’s the most frequent the first every cycle and most available. Imagine had we swapped the JMA and GFS the last 48 hours! We never would have felt the way we did. But in reality the preponderance of evidence would have been the same.

I’ve let this one go. It’s cathartic. But will never stop tracking and analyzing

We knew we needed that primary to get into WV or OH in this setup because of the suppressive flow. Let’s not act like we thought a typical progressive wave pattern track would work here. Different setup. Just like in a progressive pattern a primary tracking to our west would be no good. Each setup has different variables.

I don’t think that tpv is the issue. It’s behind the trough axis. It’s close but so long as it’s behind it’s not compressing that much. It’s not helping unless it dives in behind and phases though. But the bigger issue is the spacing (or lack of) between the waves off the coast and Thursday’s storm. The ridge to the west is too close also.

No they don’t, and I don’t blame anyone for not giving a crap what I have to say at this point..., but here is the deal. Back on the horse. Analysis. Not using clown snow maps lol. this is the setup for day 4 and then day 8 with key features identified As I said it’s almost a replay do over. The pattern sort of hit the pause/reset button because of the amplification of the Thursday wave delaying the eventual progression. Btw it’s possible if that were to happen with each wave we get through the “reboot” period without ever having the pattern break down before what could evolve mid Feb but one step at a time and that’s rather hopeful but it’s on the table. So what are the difference that could lead to a better outcome day 8. Frankly both look good at a quick glance. It’s not like Thursday is an awful look. But when you zoom in the spacing issue becomes apparent. The wave in front has slowed significantly in the last 72 hours. The ridge behind has shifted east slightly. The combo is compressing the flow around our wave and limiting its ability to amplify. Looking at day 8 the spacing seems better. What sticks out to me is the block is weaker, it’s more just a ridge in northern Quebec by then but that’s fine it’s done it’s dirty work and set up the suppressed flow across the Conus and the 50/50s. The 50/50 is exiting though and there is more space between the waves here on both sides! Don’t mind the lesser amplitude of the wave that’s mostly due to the longer lead time washing things a bit. All features are more muted on ensembles at range. Flashing ahead to the critical moment we need amplification as the wave crosses our longitude you can see the difference with the spacing. All that said...the issues to be careful of here are that the spacing could change. It looked better for Thursday around day 8-10 too then the wave in front slowed down. Also like I’ve said were in a double bind so if the spacing is too great we could go the other way and get rain. But that look there is worthy of interest. It’s basically a do over of Thursday’s setup and I was in love with that look from range so I would by a hypocrite to crap on this next one. Let’s try take 2.

The Cubs and Red Sox finally won a World Series in my lifetime. We just have to keep at it.

Agree with all this. That first point is totally true. The models can only project based on the data they have at the time they initialize. If we start trying to tinker around with predictions on top of predictions chaos would take over and we would get too much volatility. So as new data comes in every 6 hours they adjust as a crucial feature gets better sampled or something they projected turns out to be an error. The second point...only having the gfs would be a problem. Only having any one model would be. None of them are so good that an error at day 5-10 is unlikely. Contrary we know they definitely do have errors. No operational is ever in any run going to nail the details globally at day 5-10. The trick is predicting the errors and adjusting for them. Only having one tool would make that harder since often the others give clues. We could still adjust for biases but the gfs was actually running contrary to its typical bias in this case. The GFS gets way too much attention Imo. It saturates us because it runs a full suite every 6 hours, it’s the main flagship tool of NCEP and its the first and most easily accessible product every run. But frankly it’s behind the other major globals. It’s on par with the JMA and we dismiss that as a joke. But honestly more times then not over the 25 years I’ve been doing this the gfs adds more uncertainty then of it simply didn’t exist. More often then not we probably could have done better had it simply not been there! Some of that is our fault. If we weighted it correctly based on its scores it wouldn’t be as problematic but we weight it too heavily and allow it to skew our perception imo. Imagine if it was only the ICON showing what the gfs was the last 2 days...and the gfs was showing the weak POS the icon was...our perception would have been completely different. But they shouldn’t be. That’s our fault. lastly (and I bear some blame here) the way we evaluate on here is not really scientifically sound and healthy. We know guidance can’t see details at day 7+ but the problem is all we care about is one detail...snow in our yard. And so we try to pull that detail from guidance we know can’t possibly get that right at long range. If I had an actual job forecasting I would never do what we do here and talk about snow chances for a specific spot 10 days away. If I was actually forecasting the last few days for Thursday I would say “a threat for a storm along the mid Atlantic coast. Snow or rain possible, we will know more details as we get closer”. That’s in reality the best we can do. But that’s not good enough on here. Some get carried away. I probably feed into that because I sometimes try to be an optimist and not just crap on a threat until it’s apparent it’s not working out. The left few days I saw the flaws but I did have some hope maybe guidance was weakening the energy out west in error. Sometimes day 5-8 I’ve seen that and it bounces back. But it almost always bounces back at day 5 and we’re inside that so when I didn’t see a trend the last 24 hours I think you could see the frustration in my posts. This was my baby. I picked out this threat 3 weeks out. And in general the pattern progressed how I thought but the details matter. But I wanted it to work. I want snow. I want DC to get snow. I didn’t want to admit I was wrong and some of the discreet details just weren’t coming together. And I was probably too optimistic in my posts for those reasons. Even now it’s not 100% over. Maybe guidance is dampening the feature too much. But we’re getting to the point I’m not going to stick my head in the sand anymore wrt the obvious issues showing.

Remember in 2018 after the first several threats in that March Blocking pattern fell apart and that March 14 storm epically screwed us by being suppressed then reforming and crushing New England I had had promised and made an epic blow the world up rant. Then we got a big snowstorm a week later. Maybe it works twice lol.

it was supposed to be figurative...like a mic drop but point taken

Was cleaning out my old post graphics... How did DC not get any significant snow out of THIS... lol

We’ve been tracking. It would be nice to start hitting. Wrt that I touched on it a bit yesterday, it’s there but it displays the same limitations our other threats have. Limited depth of cold so if the flow relaxes it cuts but if the flow is suppressive enough to keep us supporting of snow the wave starts to look sheared and weak and like a minor event. You might not mind since you sometimes get excited over a snow shower or a few sleet pellets but it’s got the same inhibiting factor wrt chances it’s a significant legit snowstorm. That said it seems everything is going to have to be that kind of thread the needle so if we keep poking at the needle eventually you would think the thread would go through just by chance.

I took issue with your reason not the prediction. The high location was a result of other drivers not a cause. The compressed flow in front in the Atlantic and the amplitude of the wave are the real issues. The wave needed to be stronger or the flow more relaxed in front. Some combo. 2 days ago for a bit those things were trending our way across guidance. Since they have gone the other way.