psuhoffman

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.

Gfs is kinda a nothing burger wrt snow. It confined the heavy banding south across central VA where it’s just rain. Pretty paltry precip up to the north where it would be cold enough. That’s why the warmer result.

Gfs looks a little colder at 850 to start nevermind...it did through 60 then went the other way

Yea the wave was stronger but the shred factory flow got worse and more then offset.

What made you say this? Just curious because it looks worse then 0z to me.

Yes but also slightly less ridging and a more compressed flow in front of it. They probably offset imo.

I posted earlier that I think our biggest issue is the incredibly warm base state of N America. The longwave pattern is pretty good to get these tantalizing threats but with little true deep cold airmass around...we need so much suppression to keep warmth from surging north of us ahead of any wave...that it makes it difficult to get anything to amplify when we are "cold enough". When the flow relaxes enough to allow a system to amplify we get rain...even from a pretty good track.

We haven't even had a typical la nina pattern though. It's been more like a super nino pattern honestly.

Both the GFS and Euro are almost identical at 60 hours as the system crashes into CA. They both have the wave. But the GFS brings it across the southwest and ejects stronger...the euro de-amplifies it some...but its still healthy enough ejecting from the mountains...but for whatever reason...and I can't see HUGE differences in the flow around it to easily account, yes I can see how the flow to the northeast is compressing it but that is there on the GFS too and I am not sure that should be impacting the wave as early on as the euro starts to weaken it...the euro weakens and shears the wave out as it comes across and the GFS amplifies it. But its not like we need the euro to conjure up a wave...its there, and its healthy enough to begin with...just needs to amplify it coming across instead of weakening it.

It's not THAT far off if you look at more then just the verbatim surface results. The track of the h5 feature is perfect...we just need it to be more amplified and suddenly this turns into a nice little snow event with everything else being the same. It's not a huge adjustment needed to see a better outcome from the euro progression. Maybe we dont get the more amplified wave...but there is no HUGE red flag this time that we can't. Its not like some of the recent examples we tried to will a storm up when there was some death vortex over Maine that we knew was never going to allow a wave to amplify or some wave over the lakes to wreck the flow. All we need here is one thing...for the wave to be more amplified as it ejects out west.

yea no that GFS run was fun but I think most of us know that's a max potential only if all the stars aligned thing. I would be happy if we could just compromise...get the euro to amp up just a little...and get a nice simple snow event across the area out of this.

NO...do you remember last nights run? That was a horrific run. If this showed a central NC hit right now...that would be a problem we probably can say we wont recover from. Look at the track of the h5 feature. Look at the track of the precip before it dies during the "transfer" because the system is too weak to initiate a healthy secondary in time. Its heading right for us. The only adjustment we need here is more amplified with the wave and we have a storm. Don't need a track adjustment of the major feature. Don't need some major thermal changes. We just need one thing...and maybe we don't get the GFS op idea...but if the euro is just slightly more amplified we at least get a nice snow event.

so its NOTHING like the gfs/cmc wrt strenght...we need the wave to be stronger and not deamplify as it comes across as much... but imo just looking at h5 the euro made baby steps the right way. Slightly more amplified early on, slightly more ridging..little further north track of the h5 low. But it simply needs to be more amplified to initiate the result of the GFS or even the GGEM.