psuhoffman

The traffic is getting out of control along 70. I almost missed an 8:45 pm flight out of Denver when I left Vail at 3pm because it took over 4 hours to get to Denver. Took an hour to get to Breck from Frisco a few years ago over spring break. I shy away from that area anymore, rather drive a bit up front to avoid that crap during my vacation time. I used to ski Vail a lot. Blue Sky at Vail is awesome but it’s so hard to get to it. Takes forever to get through the crowds as the base then 3-4 lifts to get back there. It keeps getting worse everytime. Don’t even bother with Copper on a busy weekend. Waited an hour to get on the 6pack lift. Steamboat or further away and has great tree skiing but it can take forever to get out of the base because there aren’t enough ways up the mountain. That’s why I’m leaving Aspen this year. Aspen Snowmass never seem to get too crowded. I guess the extra 2 hour drive keeps people away. They get less snow but that only matters early season. Once there is a 5’+ base you don’t really notice the difference between an 8” and 12” storm in terms of skiing. Still considering SLC but it’s harder to get a last minute flight at a reasonable rate. I’ve noticed I can still find a Friday night $300 flight into Denver even until Wed but by then it’s like 700+ to get into SLC. I could book further in advance but then I risk so many things going wrong. Weather turns and I spend all that money to ski crud, or either myself or someone else in the family gets sick. Don’t want to leave my wife alone to deal with a sick kid or if she is sick. I’d rather wait until the last minute to reduce the risk of all that.

Now we know why things trended wrong then

Ive been to CO about 20 times. Have family in Denver and go skiing there a lot. I agree with everything Bob said. If you do decide on Vail, I often stay in Avon which is 15 minutes up 70 from Vail and has some nice hotels for much less. Beaver Creek resort is also right there. Are you going to ski/board?

Yup....heading out there soon. Maybe next weekend. Might try Aspen this time.

Feb 2003, Dec 2013, Feb/mar 2014 all bore some resemblance.

Station said it was up to 35 after a few mins of sun before I left a while ago. It was hanging out at 32-33 all morning. And sometimes I see a 5 degree difference between here and the valley.

Mjo today backed away from a high amp run through phase 4/5/6. We can maybe survive a low amp wave into warm phases so perhaps that supports the better looks today.

Gefs “caves” to EPS mid February. Shocking. Good news yes. That look is not a shutout one. But color me skeptical until we get it inside day 10. Yes it’s ok. And it’s a slight adjustment from good. But it’s also only a slight “seasonal” adjustment away from shutout again.

I’m still hanging out around 32 here.

Yea but I suck at seasonal or super long range “forecasts”. And frankly I can’t stand it. But in way too many years that’s the only game in town. But I would much rather be analyzing medium range to determine the exact track of a system or if it’s going to phase or short range plots of moisture convergence and lift to determine who gets a death band. (It’s me). I like to think I am ok at that stuff. This day 15 crap is like a tarot card reading from a drunk psychic. I can analyze the pattern the guidance is showing, and guess based on seasonal trends and climo how it might trend...but honestly it’s mostly me just applying statistical analysis from the past. I don’t have any real insight on what’s going to happen in 2-3 weeks. Yea the statistics on this type of seasonal pattern say we end up with a total clunker 80% of the time. But what about the other 20? I have no way of knowing this won’t be one of those 20%. I’m just playing the odds. Hopefully the odds are wrong this time.

Ehh it’s inevitable. Every post I make gets misused or twisted out of context by some assclown at some point. I’m done wasting time wording posts to avoid the tools who will misinterpret it and go off on a tangent of stupid. Life’s too short. 90% of everyone here knows the points I’m trying to make. The other 10% can bite me.

Lol. What people don’t get is not only was that week unlikely to produce a superstorm from a statistical POV, it was unlikely to even produce any snow. 90% of the time a full latitude pole to tropics Ridge west trough east alignment is a cold dry look for a few days. The only reason that storm came up was the fact it was a triple phased monster bomb. Any regular wave gets squashed in that look. There were only a few storms ever in that configuration and all of them were phased systems. The other recent one was Feb 1995. It developed later than 93 and wasn’t a triple phase just a typical phase but it did develop fast and was a dynamic system. I had thunder snow in Herndon VA with that storm. It put down about a foot in only a few hours in the Philly area. It bombed too late to crush our area but the point is the type of rare dynamic storm it takes to overcome the suppressive flow of that setup.

The eps kinda reminds me of Feb 93 at the end. I wouldn’t mind that repeat. You probably would. It was a constant train of storms from Feb 15 on but none were clean snow. Even up here there was a lot of mix but they each put down about 4-6” of snow/ice up here and about 1-3” towards the cities. (kind of like that early Feb overrunning wave last year just 5 of them in a row). Btw a repeat of that does not mean a repeat of March 93. That storm was an extreme anomaly for that pattern. It’s why I laugh when people pull out that analog. 99% of the time with that h5 look nothing happens. But if we were to get a repeat of the Feb pattern and adjust it 50 miles south....we would all be happy.

There aren’t many examples. The best examples of a March save in Baltimore are 1896 when only 4” fell before March then 13.8” in March. 1931 only 3.4 then 10” in March. 1942 only 4” then a 22” snow on March 30th There are more examples of years where there was little snow before mid Feb then a lot after. And since mid Feb is still far enough out it’s plausible we get a snow that week these are still mathematical possible comps 1914 nothing before Feb 13 then 23” after 1924 2” before Feb 2/19 then 10.2/11.6/9.4 in Feb/mar/apr 1937 2.8 before 2/16 then 22.8 after 1960 1.8 until Feb 13 then 32” after 1993 also had very little until mid feb then several small events and then March 93

I have a dusting of snow on my lawn from last night. I’ll call that a win.

Eps says seasonal after next weekend It’s better. Of course when our avg high is 45 seasonal often isn’t good enough.

Can you be fringed by a fringe?

If we can get some banding to develop up here we might have an outside chance.

@losetoa6 I realized the way I worded that post could have come off as an insult towards you and I did not mean it that way. I was actually thinking of someone I know who I’ve engaged on this subject who at times is like talking to a brick wall. I was thinking that and not about how I worded the post. My comments were not directed at you in any way. Im sorry if that wasn’t clear.

Found the article I was looking for. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/08/30/our-motion-through-space-isnt-a-vortex-but-something-far-more-interesting/amp/ It’s likely frame dragging is integral to the forces that determine the exact plane of orbits in our solar system. The video that sparked this article was wrong in many ways...the vortex thing is inaccurate it’s a helix and the planets don’t drag behind. But the idea of a “wake” like phenomenon in space time is correct only that it’s more like ripples that move out in all directions even ahead of a moving object.

Just imagine how much a fluke like that changes a season. Some areas around Philly got over a foot from that upper level low also.

http://www.raymondcmartinjr.com/weather/2009/03-Feb-09.html

I’m going to hit up either Utah or Aspen sometime before the season is over. I would prefer SLC, so many great options but might lean Aspen because flights to Denver are a lot cheaper and easier to get last minute.

Im actually just as into quantum mechanics and astrophysics as weather it’s just harder to find a lot of people that want to chat about that stuff plus there aren’t really daily developments to track in those fields. The advancements we are making are mind blowing but still not at a “tracking weather” pace.

In 1950 physicist Enrico Fermi while at lunch with other physicists blurted out “where is everyone”. He went on to explain that if there are billions of sun like stars in just our galaxy...and just 1% have earth like planets...and just 1% of those develop intelligent life...and many are billions of years older than our sun giving them ample time to develop...where is everyone. Even at our current technological development if we really wanted to do it the entire galaxy can be traversed within a span of several million years. Assuming faster means are possible the galaxy should have evidence of civilizations everywhere. Yet we see nothing. There are many theories to explain this and Frank Drake created a famous set of equations to estimate the probability of life (called the Drake equations) but the equations are incomplete. As we learn more about the galaxy we continue to fill in some of the missing pieces. The most popular theory today is the rare earth hypothesis. That the set of conditions on earth are extremely rare and we are very lucky. There is some good evidence for this. The fact that basic microbial life has been impossible to replicate. The importance of our moon being exactly the right size to create tides necessary to the initiation of basic organisms plus its acting to deflect and scoop up many objects with it’s gravitational pull early to prevent them from bombarding earth. It’s possible the conditions to create complex life are rare. That theory doesn’t mean there is no life but it could be so rare that it’s separated by hundreds of thousands or even millions of light years making it harder to detect each other. Another theory is a late filter, one we haven’t hit yet, that prevents most intelligent life from advancing to interstellar travel. Climate change from technology could be an example. There are more crazy ideas like we are living in a simulation and some serious physacists (Neil Degrasse Tyson is one) thinks there is credible evidence this could be possible. One being the puzzling part of quantum mechanics that is wave particle duality. The double slit experiment in 1998 proved this phenomenon that every quantum entity can take on the phase of either a particle or a wave and only is forced to choose one phase of matter existence when observed. That observation (even if just by remote) changes the phase of particles. My favorite theory is that advanced civilizations would use motion or gravity waves to manipulate time to slow down their space time continuum so that travel across great distances would be possible. In that case we wouldn’t see them because we would be out of phase with their existence. Its a compelling thought experiment in any case.