psuhoffman

Thanks for your efforts

One last thing... wrt to the "phased" opening of the economy. All I have heard lately are the same very shallow hollow talking points from every interview on this. There are some VERY important details that no one is even mentioning. So....if we return the less vulnerable to work and order the people at higher risk to stay in quarantine.... possibly for a year or more, how does that even work. First of all do people realize how many that is. High risk isnt just people over 60 its also anyone with diabetes, asthma and other lung diseases, heart conditions, cancer, anyone who had chemo, various immune system deficiencies, anyone who smokes....we are talking about a LOT of people. How do businesses function missing that many people? Some key contributors will be gone. And most importantly...what about those groups? That is tens of millions of people. Who pays their bills? Do businesses have to retain them and pay their salaries even when they aren't working for a year? If not...what happens when they run out of money? Do we give them all unemployment? What about the people who live in a high cost of living area and unemployment won't cover their cost of living? They have to then "move" during a pandemic and suffer that loss because they are forced to isolate for a year? And even if we take the "conservative" approach of "well that is their problem" no it isnt..because if that 30% of the economy suddenly is destitute you really think that wont trigger a depression? Then what was the point of opening back up anyways? And if you force that group to choose between their health or losing their homes many will take the chance and go to work and get sick...and then we crash the medical system and we end up with the result the "plan" is trying to avoid and we might as well have just done nothing. Maybe there is some brilliant plan that no one is talking about to deal with all the issues that kind of policy would entail...but forgive me for being skeptical on that. Yea a scalpel type policy towards this would be better...in a vacuum...but we suck at that kind of societal level details collective actions. We would likely not even be able to agree on what kind of assistance the high risk in isolation should get. I don't have the answers either...just pointing out the "plan" I keep hearing about is more of a vague un-fleshed out idea than a plan.

Even if yesterdays spike was partially due to the observed "Tuesday bump" each week...it is apparent we have not made much progress down the curve yet. We may be slightly past the peak but still very early in the decline and that decline is likely to be slow not sharp. That said (and I do not want to get into a political argument with anyone, I have mostly been avoiding that but this is my personal take and yes its biased because EVERYONE is biased by their own experiences in life) I find it ridiculous that we are suddenly talking about a quick opening and relaxation of our societal covid preventative measures when we are just now very close to or only slightly past the peak of the pandemic. IMO the discussion is being driven by some people's impatience and frustration and economic concerns. I have not heard one shred of evidence from a virologist that inclines me to think opening everything back up soon is a good idea medically. And I am suspect that an early opening which could lead to another spike in cases would have any economic benefit. We are over a month into this now...and we are going to just throw all that way and go in a different direction? Then we might end up back at square one and have wasted all this time and be starting all over again. Plus if a significant number are sick the economy won't be "fine" no matter what the policy is. This just seems crazy to me. And I am NOT coming at this from a place of not wanting to work. I am working. All my classes are online. I have collaborate sessions with my students everyday, I am posting and grading work daily. I am contacting students by phone and email daily. My work load is pretty similar to what it was before. My concern is 2 fold.... this sucks and I do NOT want to have wasted all this time and have to start all over in 2 months...and if the economy is going to suffer anyways we might as well save lives.

I would take yesterday's numbers with a grain of salt wrt to declaring it a "SIGNIFICANT" jump up because for several weeks there has been a repetative pattern of lower reported deaths over the weekend and then a significant spike on Tuesday. The only logical explanation is that changes in how they are reported and issues with contacting family before they are made public wrt the weekends causes a backlog that then hits the reports as "new deaths" on Tuesdays. That makes more sense that the virus cares what day of the week it is and suddenly becomes more lethal every Tuesday. We will have to see what the numbers look like today before drawing any larger conclusions about the trend. That said the numbers do suggest (even taking into account the Tuesday bump effect) that while we may have flattened the curve that flattening happened at a fairly high level and we have not yet seen a significant move down the backside of the curve.

It was snowing when I went to bed. No accumulation though.

We could have. But so much has to go right this late. Need a rare cold airmass. Then need rates. And likely need it to be at night. We got 2/3. Oh well

Problem is that initial slug comes before the low level cold filters in. That was always rain on guidance. Our windows was late night early morning with the frontal wave. That now looks to stay southeast. That trend had been apparent for a while. We could mix with heavy enough rates this evening but the potential for accumulation is pretty low.

We will be cold enough but latest trends keep why heavy precip south of us.

NAM and GFS on their own with the heavier precip. I’m actually thinking my fail will be due to lack of heavy rates not temperatures. It actually looks cold enough overnight if we get heavy rates up here. But the wave looks more and more pathetic each run.

True but it’s actually because the euro is weak sauce with the wave. If it had heavy qpf like the NAM it likely would have higher snowfall also. Not saying I buy any of it but the guidance is very cold for this late. Runs that have enough heavy precip to mix out the boundary layer warmth carry snow east of the mountains. Euro was doing that to.

Just wish predicting the weather was as easy as predicting that model.

@showmethesnow sorry what I was trying to say was that I am skeptical of the virus being here in December because with absolutely no containment measures in place it likely would have spread rapidly out of control then.

@showmethesnow I have no doubt the episode began in China prior to their reports. What I meant is we didn’t see that type of spread here that we likely would have absent any measures at all to contain in December. When this hit various areas it wasn’t something that went undetected. China then Iran, Italy, Spain, NYC...places this hit before they were ready to contain it spread rapidly and was easily apparent something was wrong. I haven’t seen evidence of that kind of thing here back in December.

Maybe but then why didn’t we see what happened in China in other places until much later?

But it was windy yesterday

If this survives as a threat long enough to get NAM’d that’s a win imo.

Right now the gfs op is suppressed. Given it’s extreme cold bias not shocking. Im not kidding that I expect at some point it will come around and tease us with some epic ridiculous snowy solution before it realizes its mid April.

My 5 year olds been outside all afternoon. Can’t convince him it’s not nice out lol.

When the gfs finally jumps on board and has the storm it will be way too cold and tease everyone for a couple runs.

How dare you... some people need to find their happy place

You do know that people have the right to reply to your posts right? Just making sure you aren’t confused about how this works... No one can make you feel anything. And feelings aren’t right/wrong they’re just feelings. You can have your opinion. But I’m entitled to my opinion and I have the right to post my opinions too. And my opinion is you need to chill out. You do this every spring. We can have 5 nice days in a row but everytime we get a chilly or rainy day in late March or April you act like the sky is falling. And sometimes you don’t even wait for a bad dat...one year you were wasting time complaining about a day 10 model slowing a not nice day (that never came) when it was beautiful out that day. You can feel any way you want but in MY OPINION you get triggered way too easy about this every year.

And you need to lighten up in general. Yea today isn’t pleasant to be out. But we just had a bunch of awesome days, tomorrow will be ok and in 48 hours it will be gorgeous. So just wait. Why get upset over one not great day. It’s not like it’s January and you might have to wait weeks to get a warm day. Enjoy the nice days. Find something inside to do on the not nice days...or wear a coat.

Dude you’re not the only one with 1st Amendment rights. You get to say what you want. And other people have the right to respond and disagree with you. This isn’t your personal bulletin board.

And yet it’s 50 right now in Baltimore. Most will have a high in the low 50s today. Yes the wind sucks but I was just outside doing yard work and even up here with a coat it’s not like winter brutal cold. Tomorrow will be upper 50s and Sunday almost 70! I think we will survive 24 hours of “chilly”.