psuhoffman

From numerous spring ski trips up there, once you get north of the crest of the Presidential range and running NE in Maine...places with some elevation hold their snowpack pretty good all winter. They’re shielded a bit from the warmth there.

I doubt the dry slot makes it to you. You should stay under banding until about 2-3am then it’s upslope after that.

Yea...when it’s 31/32 at 1600 feet in northern NH under heavy precip...nuff said.

I assume you are in one of the higher elevations in the area?

It’s pretty awful for this time of year. The pattern now is ok but the record +NAM state and pac ridge combo in November left us void of any N American cold air source. I know I’m south of you but I’m on top of a ridge in a spot that normally gets crushed by marginal good track setups and despite a textbook h5 and surface track all I could manage is a few slush bombs mixing in during the heaviest rates. Everything had to go picture perfect for this to work even up there given there was no low level cold at all to work with.

I think that’s a good spot

Where did you set up?

The Gfs is handling the whole setup up top and the mid lat response completely different from other guidance. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It was on an island a week ago wrt how it was rolling over the western Canada ridge and it turned out right.

I was referring to your general overall tone. But my point was what some call pessimism is simply realism and knowing our climo. If they want smoke up their arse they can read JB. Either one.

Thanks. Fwiw I’ve noticed the gefs seems improved so far this cold season. It’s won its fair share of battles with the EPS so far. That’s not really what we want right now though. Lol

Long term that AK vortex is a killer. It will try to flood zonal pac air across the conus. It can be fought off sometimes temporarily if you have good atl blocking but even then it’s a struggle. But oddly enough a lot of our snowstorms feature a trough near Alaska. That’s because there is a lag effect of several days to a week before that feature kills us. But in the meantime the short term effect often opens up a window of opportunity here if there is some atl blocking. As the ridge response to that AK vortex crashes into the west coast often there is a temporary downstream trough in the east under the blocking. For a short time it actually can favor something amplifying along the east coast. It won’t last, that’s why a lot of our storms are followed by a warm up not long after, but there is often a short period of opportunity as that AK trough sets up before the pattern goes to crap.

Good question...they did upgrade the gefs and added members but I don’t know if it’s based on the new operational now or not. Early returns on the upgraded gefs suggest it’s not as overly snow biased compared to the Eps like it used to be.

It is but in this case it’s a fairly subtle difference in how they handle some mid level energy that squeezes out some very light snow on the euro v not on the GFS. Synoptically they aren’t as far apart as the surface precip representation suggests. But sometimes the small details matter a lot.

Given where we live I find his general pessimism to be grounded and realistic. It sucks for snow 90% of the time here.

Right now it’s EPS and GEPS v GEFS in the long range. The differences start pretty early (relative to long range) between the two camps so it should resolve soon.

Eps tanks the NAO just enough to fight off the pac puke for a while. Fantasy land though.

Looking at the h5 I don’t think that winter was bad luck. We rarely get much snow with a longwave pattern that features a raging +EPO/AO/NAO and WAR. That combo is a shut out the lights no hope don’t bother even paying attention pattern here. Even if we do get cold (and there were some chilly periods in 76) anything that amplified would cut in that pattern.

You’re not wrong from the perspective you are analyzing this. But the majority of the people in this thread are in the Baltimore/DC area and so to them it’s looking like a fail.

It's all about expectations. Right now I would be ecstatic if we got a repeat of 2018 or 2019 and a lot of people were complaining all through those years.

37 degrees and had a little mix with slush bombs during a heavier burst a little while ago.

Hate to be dark but deaths lag cases by about 3 weeks. 18.5 days is the average time from diagnosis to death and then add a few days for reporting delays. If you go back 3 weeks and look at the cases that correlate to the current deaths...and apply that same % to the current cases, we are looking at possibly 5,000 deaths a day around Xmas.

Para GFS was pretty darn good from 14 days. Was off on timing by about 18 hours...and was a bit too cold. Obviously the too cold part is the big deal...but still not a bad job there.

@Roger Smith 1976 was similar to last year around here...in that it was what we get when you have a raging +NAM and a crap PAC and ATL at the same time... no hope. The temps were colder that year due to a colder base state in general...but no way to get a frozen event and a favorable storm track in that setup.

You are kidding right? Hopefully this is you just having a dark sense of humor. 1976 was one of the absolute worst Nina winters in our area ever. It was virtually snowless in much of our region. DC finished with 2" for the whole season from a few very minor cartoppers...didn't even get 1" from a single storm all winter. The northern 1/3 of our region got a moderate snowstorm very late that winter in mid March...the rest of the region pretty much had no snow all winter except a few 1/2" naissance events. That year is a nina nightmare cautionary tale here.

Nice pics. With the Nina we knew a good winter was almost off the table. The signs the NAM state might not be as hostile this year leaves me hopeful we will have opportunities and this might be a more typical not great but not god awful Nina either.