psuhoffman

It was trending that way for a few runs...but the 12z overcame the further south H5 track with a more potent surface system...but if you look at the last 24 hours of runs there is a clear trend south with the upper low track. That NS SW is diving down WAY too far east to do us any good at all. But there are a lot of moving parts still and they will go through some changes still. We need the flow over the top to relax just a bit and get the NS to dive in further west.

If you READ the post... the point is WITH a block that ridge location is TOTALLY FINE. Maybe "Ji" should stop combing through my posts to pick out words that when taken out of context can be misconstrued as negative.

It's a beaut Clark The western ridge is really going ape. It's slightly west of ideal but with that kind of blocking I would prefer west then east. Let thigs "try" to cut with that blocking...if we can inject cold (and with that look we should) I will take my chances with that v possible suppressed OTS solutions we can see if the western ridge is too far east.

I can kind of get why those analogs show up. If you just look at the longwave pattern its almost identical to all those HECS storms. Even the euro has a H5 track pretty similar to some of those big storms. But there are details within the pattern that put a cap on the potential of this. The main limiting factor is the lack of true cold. Most of those storms had a much more favorable antecedent airmass. Without that not only does it create precip type problems...it also means we won't see such an expansive or intense WAA precip shield to the north of the system and it could inhibit the intensity of the system because of less baroclinicity. There are also more SW's flying around that could run interference here then in most of those cases. All that said though I do think this might have more upside then typically could be assumed from the current surface look on guidance. Often things "trend" towards what that guidance suggests the pattern produced historically. But those factors probably cap this at a lower level event then those.

If that SW diving through Montana is ANYWHERE else that’s a bigger event. Closer and it likely phases in. Further and it doesn’t dampen and kick it. Get that anywhere but there (wave spacing wise) and that was a bigger deal. But the longwave pattern on the euro from day 5-10 is beautiful

Pretty much every one of our HECS in that set

They didn’t really start to spit out crazy looks for that until like 100-120 hrs out. And there was a lot less complexity to that synoptic setup.

@WxUSAF you called it. That’s you’re storm!

That’s some extreme there...but the N PAC trough pulled back too much. Look where the ridge out west is! Off the west coast. That’s why the storm cuts on that run.

@WxUSAF I would like to see a few less SWs flying around. That one in the 4 corners this week really hurts the wave spacing for Friday. The multiple waves next week makes the 12th tricky. In the end I doubt they all get suppressed but it’s probably making it harder for guidance to key on what to amplify. We likely won’t get a super long track storm with all these waves running interference with one another.

You should definitely ignore precip output on operationals past 100 hours. Frankly even inside that you’re better off applying common sense physics. Once in range meso’s can help pin down details on the banding. That said the op GFS is a sloppy phase and that’s part of why the ragged unhealthy precip at our latitude. You also won’t get as big a WAA shield to the north when there isn’t as much cold. You need cold to force the warm air to lift. Not enough depth of cold and the warm air just moves the cold and you don’t get the same fgen and VVs. That’s another reason for the spring storm type precip representation. Now the para GFS fits your description. It phases at our latitude clean. It captures and pulls the surface low and tucks it in just off Ocean City. That run is doing the typical not expansive enough CCB representation thing. That Para run would adjust to an area wide MECS if it actually verified like that.

Guidance is hinting at a bit of an inverted trough near the area on Tuesday. Some places could get some nice bands of snow showers with that. Right now the placement would favor just to our northeast. Climo says that’s more likely. But it’s close enough to point out. You never know.

Mean is misleading. There was an increase in members that bring the low north. Still a minority cluster but it went from about 8 members at 0z to 13 members at 6z.

GEFS was pretty suppressed. Op was probably a fluke. Consensus is suppressed. But it’s close enough on all guidance to be well within a normal error at that range.

Euro dives the NS down on top and phases but too late. Much colder solution but a close miss SE. get that NE feature to dive in a little further west and phase earlier and we could pull a rabbit out of the hat

You’re seriously hilarious sometimes

The upper level low tracks to our NW. it’s trended NW considerably the last 72 hours. The surface system is weak until past our latitude. Marginal airmass. Not a good combo.

Guidance is starting to pick up on a NS SW diving in out of Canada around the 8th. Right now unfortunately most guidance is diving it on on top of the cutoff low. We need that to dive in behind and phase.

It could be as early as the 20th. With a TPV this weak the coupling process could be fairly quick. Wrt effects my best guess based on past coupled SSW events is it simply promotes a -NAM state into and probably through the second half of winter. There will undoubtedly be periods of flux but odds are we get at least one more tanking of the AO after this one. I tend to look to other examples where the TPV was a weakling to begin with. Imo there is synergy. Often when we get a season long-NAM state there was a weakened TPV to begin with then a SSW finished it off. And often when we’ve had multiple season -NAM states there was a string of stratospheric weakening events after the main SSW. Interestingly maybe there is a solar minimum (it’s really as the solar begins to increase after the min) link. If we take the whole of the late winter 2009 when the first major SSW hit through 2011 period you could argue we didn’t even maximize potential. Even just 2010 it wasn’t non stop snow even though the -AO/NAO ran pretty much straight through the winter. We did miss a few threats. I think while getting cold/snow in general is getting harder odds of anomalous extreme snowstorms or periods (if you can string a couple together) have increased due to the increased baroclinicity and energy available due to warning. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in 90 years of records I poured through before 1980 I only found 3 20” storms up here...but there have been 8 in the 40 years since and even within that span the frequency is increasing with 5 in the last 12 years.

This was the first year in like forever that he didn’t predict like 500% snowfall for 95 so it would be this year that we get another snowmageddon

Better way to get cold into the pattern.

Everyone could just stop paying much attention to it like I did and things would run a lot smoother around here.

Oh he went THERE I do agree that the better analog is 2010 but using the most extreme example is dangerous because results of a similar pattern are not always the same.

Fringed

Yes but again it’s not the type that matters. It’s the track. Problem with an all northern stream system is it’s difficult to get them to track far enough south. Actually when they do track far enough south they are dry and just clippers because typically a system diving southeast isn’t amplifying and a NS system diving south in a northerly flow is cut off from any deep moisture source until it hits the Atlantic and that’s too late for us. Amplifying storms usually are lifting poleward. So to get a NS system to bottom out and begin to amplify/lift north and still stay under us is really hard. We are just too far south for that normally.