psuhoffman

Yea...that’s sinking in...but what was missing from a pattern setup POV? We got a west to east weak wave. Baffin Rex Block. Polar airmass in the way (and yea it’s not cold enough but it’s an Arctic in origin airmass so we’re not getting any better unless the PV swings back to this side and that ain’t happening). This was a classic setup for a regular old DC snow event. Maybe not a big storm but some snow. I’m keenly aware of the limitations of the current N Hemisphere base state. But I’m running out of ideas how to “tinker” with the pattern to overcome it. We’ve tried everything. It’s like everytime we get a factor to compensate for one problem another pops up. Look at the next storm. We need more ridging and a strong primary to get an amplified storm given the block but because we have no cold anywhere to work with that risks turning it into a rainstorm. It’s starting to feel like a no win scenario.

Yea but specific to this threat even....I’m BARELY cold enough here to snow. But the significant precip is all to my south. So what am I rooting for? Do I want a north trend? But since the precip is WAA driven if that shifts north the thermals shift north and I literally don’t have any room to give. So short of getting a pity inch on the fringes what’s even the path here?

Not enough baroclinicity. These boundaries, even now, are lacking the potential energy they should have with a greater temperature gradient. It’s a little better now. At least the waves aren’t squashed to LA lol. But it’s still not enough to get them to amplify much given a suppressed flow.

Yea but what good does it do anyone if the level of suppression it takes to stay cold also squashes everything to your south. Look at the axis of qpf. Guidance nailed that from day 10. But that band over northern VA was supposed to be snow and historically it SHOULD be! This is about the 5th storm this cold season that lacked any appreciable snow shield to the north of it at our latitude because the cold and precip never touched!

It’s going to take 2.5” from a storm to be named later for the audacity of even trying.

Sure it is....if you’re one of the weenies who just looks at clown snow maps verbatim lol

Yes but compare it to previous runs it was getting there. I don’t think there is much chance it goes negative given the flow in the Atlantic but we need it to close off sooner. It happens a little too late this run but way way closer.

The h5 track is perfect. And i would say it got half way to what we need wrt amplitude to get a nice snow event from this. The h5 dives from Chicago through Ohio and across VA it just doesn’t close off in time for us.

Haven’t looked at the surface yet but the euro trended significantly stronger with the h5 feature this run. Not all the way to the gfs but a step that way.

This is the main difference I see with gfs. That feature is much weaker and not affecting the flow as much on the gfs ETA: that feature washes out in future frames and isn’t much of an impact down the line.

I don’t think that feature has much effect. The heights in front are slightly lower but it’s very minor differences. But I don’t see much improvement from last run either.

It misses me to the south kinda with that little snow band....then to the north with the second wave after I flip to ice. So...depending on what happens in the next 10 mins this could be an epic dumpster fire run for me lol.

I’ll reserve that judgement for 15 more mins

It’s easier to be cold on a north wind behind a wave then on the southerly flow ahead of a wave. Combining these two...I’m not saying we’re done with snow. Yes the last two years have had specific features that may have hurt our chances to a degree on top of simply AGW. But I am willing to say it’s more then just those factors. It’s symbiotic. I’ve seen signs for a while now. The most obvious one is how frequently patterns have not produced what analogs suggest. Those h5 analogs take the pac pattern into account. And time and again we’ve had patterns those analogs said should produce some snow and we get shut out. It’s not always that we didn’t get a 40” winter or a 20” hecs. But sometimes it’s that we should have had couple 3-4” slop storms that were just rain. And a winter should have produced 10” and we got 2” or it should have produced 18” and we got 8”. There have been way too many instances the past 10 years where a similar setup that produced some snow in the past was just rain. The frequency of really bad (single digit and even less then 5”) winters is increasing exponentially. Then we start seeing model runs where a 980 low in the perfect spot is rain in prime climo. And often that doesn’t happen but it’s showing up more and more. That shouldn’t even be a possibility on January 28. And that’s not just the Nina. Actually look at Nina climo, it’s not to torch Canada like this. This isn’t explained as simply as “Nina’s suck”. As for the acceleration. I honestly don’t know how much of this is a temporary thing and how much is a permanent degradation. But sometimes you hit tipping points. The pac warms to a point that it changes the typical jet structure. You get a feedback loop from ice/snow loss. The super nino in 2016 may have set off a feedback loop that takes a while to recover from or if the base state is warm enough perhaps we never fully recover. Or we recover some but to what %? I can’t say. Don’t even want to speculate. I can only say these two things...right now for quite a while the thermal base state of the northern hemisphere is very hostile to getting snow and we know AGW is happening. It didn’t trend south the upper low came across at the same exact track just weaker. Subsequently the surface secondary low developed further south and didn’t tuck as much when it phased with the upper low. People confused weaker for south. The warmer solution was simply from a weaker solution. Less dynamic cooking.

Anomalies still happen. But almost all the snow to our south...and at our latitude lately, comes from getting lucky with an upper level feature to crash temps. When was the last time we saw a huge expanse or cold powder to the northeast of a low coming across the US? If the coverage of snowfall overall in a larger scale decreases the odds of any one spot getting snow goes down.

Here is a scary thought...Dec and Jan are going to finish VERY -AO/NAO. I guarantee you this will be by far the warmest such two month period and it’s likely not even close.

Yea if that setup doesn’t “work” I’m not even sure what we’re tracking anymore.

I think it’s maybe time to stop tip toeing around it. We all know what the issue is.

No It was just weaker. Took the same track until it hit the east coast then it’s shoved south more by the flow because it’s weaker. It was just weaker. Maybe the more south tpv had some impact. Compressing the flow a bit. It was slightly weaker pretty early on though. But while everyone is stressing the rain the real issue is it was a definite trend towards the euro. Remember the euro isn’t really south it’s just weaker.

Double bind... unfortunately there just isn’t enough cold to make any storm “easy”. The amount of suppression we need to stop warmth from surging north also is very close to be too much to allow anything to amplify. Do there is a very very very narrow margin we’re playing in and to get a big snow we will have to play with fire either way. There isn’t enough cold to get some huge shield of cold smoke to the north of a storm. Everything at our latitude and south is going to have to be dynamically driven.

It’s too close no it’s too far. Lol

No from what I saw it was north like the last few gfs runs. It simply had a more suppressive flow in the west Atlantic and it ejected a weaker wave and dampened the wave more as it came east vs the gfs which amplified it. This gfs run might turn out ok but I don’t like seeing the wave trend toward a weaker solution like the euro.

It’s not really south. The upper low takes the exact same track it’s just weaker.

The TPV in Canada is a lot further southeast and compressing the flow in front more. It might not matter. But I don’t like that.

I see things I don’t like at 81 hours. That’s all I’m gonna say.