psuhoffman

Your obsessing over one thing. Too small a sample. Especially when those years were all drastically different in other ways. Correlation doesn't mean causation.

We have a chance. But no way guidance nails that kind of progressive wave on a fast NS dominant flow at this range.

Your thinking of 2005. He is talking about the year before that.

Day 10 euro has promise. Stj waves in the southeast with a 1042 high pressing down into the lakes and the boundary pressing just to our NE. I could see getting a wave to track right in that setup.

OK first of all why do you keep talking about 2004 like it was an awful winter... all 3 airports beat their median snowfall by about 2-3". It was probably a top 40 percentile winter, meaning it was better than about 60 percent of our winters. It wasnt great but it was a better than normal winter. Second it was the year after a nino and the nino faded to neutral conditions by winter, so the comparison to this years pattern is bad. This year the pattern is establishing and that year it was breaking down. That winter was front loaded and this one is likely to be back loaded. No reason to expect a similar result. Finally, the period following the strat warm was very very very cold. There was one very good snowstorm in there. Overall the period was pretty dry, the trough axis set up a little too far east and we got some clippers and other than the one good overrunning event not much else during the 3 week cold period. But it wasn't a bad winter. It just wasn't epic.

Euro keeps the accumulating snow Christmas to north of the mason Dixon and the significant snows north of the PA turnpike. We might start as some light snow north of D.C. before dryslot. Need the track 50-100 miles south. Low tracks into SW PA before jumping east. Need to get that to like central WV or south to have a chance

Euro has some flurries from the weak wave the U.K. has Xmas eve morning.

The great "fantasy land" looks from the seasonal guidance are starting to progress into the range of ensembles right on schedule, maybe even a week ahead. Because it was also supported by analogs and the logical progression given the weak PV this year and the mjo wave timing I was never nervous. But maybe those that were more skeptical will breathe a little easier now. ETA: who am I kidding.

It's probably rushing things a little...but we're getting there!

I got one of my last elective credits at Penn State by signing up for a basic level meteorology class, and somehow they allowed it even though I had been a meteorology major for 3 years lol. Easiest credit ever. True story though, the only question I got wrong on any of the exams was when the professor asked "what causes the changing of the seasons" and the possible answers included what he wanted the answer to be (the tilt of the Earth on its axis) but also the wrong answer of (the orbit of the earth around the sun, and the rotation of the earth) and I pointed out that the correct answer should be "all of the above" because without the Earth both rotating and revolving it would simply always be summer on one side and winter on the other, and he still marked it wrong saying I was thinking about it too much. After the course was over I left a note in his box saying "maybe you weren't thinking enough". I was a smart arse then too.

Randy you wanna take this one?

Something else to consider...but we don't have enough data yet to say there is a correlation... but in recent years when we get blocking our chances of getting a storm seem even higher then in the past. Historically blocking is always good but we used to waste blocking patterns a lot more then we do now. I don't mean like 3 day transient ridges but the last decade when we get a solid period of NAO blocking we almost always score a good snowstorm from it. If precipitation events are becoming more common from global warming and the subsequent intensification of the potential energy along the baroclinic boundaries then that stands to be a logical outcome. But again, we can't say that for sure yet. But we haven't totally wasted many blocking periods lately.

because things that are unknown are way more predictable

I am by no means in their league with this stuff but a couple thoughts... We don't necessarily want the core of the cold to be here. 1977 is a good example. Ridiculously cold, not much snow. If we get blocking up top it should be helpful in some way regardless of whether we get an arctic blast directed right at us or not. Most of our snowy periods that were blocking related weren't overly cold. Makes sense since significant storms ride the boundary and the best snow is typically only 25-100 miles north of the rain/snow line. If the cold is blasting all the way to Florida that's not exactly good if you want snow. Second thought...totally agree about the timing. I know people are grinding their teeth over the fact that this warm period is happening right around the holidays...and because we missed the big storm threat they are also getting antsy for results, but the timing of how everything is lining up couldn't possibly be better. I have often thought that much of our winter fate is determined by the luck of getting certain phases of these cyclical patterns to line up right during our peak climo. Yes, certain overriding long term patterns like enso and the pdo can skew things more or less favorable overall. But we have had some great Nina's (1996) and we have had some aweful modoki Nino's (1995) so obviously there is some chaos also. Last year was an east based Nina, which is the better of the Nina's for our purposes and gives us at least a chance. West based nina's are almost a close the door and wait till next year thing. And we had a chance...we just missed several threats...but we also got unlucky that the worst mjo phases happened during our peak climo. We had some favorable looks in December and early January but we spent January 10th to the end of February suffering through a long strong mjo wave progressing the awful warm phases. Then as soon as that came off and we got some strat help we had an epic pattern in March and April and we did get one minor and one moderate event out of it..but what if that had happened mid winter? We could easily have had another 1996 last year if what went down March 1 to April 15th had been January 1 to February 15th instead. This year the way the timing of all this is shaking out...that looks to be the case. We are likely to get our best phases of all the key indicators to line up right during our prime climo the second half of January and early February. I will take that and roll the dice. It's been a while since we got everything to line up in our favor. This year the timing looks to be right.

There are several waves running the boundary that week. The boundary is probably to our north most of the time but its possible something starts or ends as a little frozen. Its unlikely but its not impossible we get something around New Years.

Why aren't you all talking about the euro? Did you know it shows snow? Did you see the weeklies? BTW did you know 2+2 is 4? why aren't you talking about that? You all are so weird. What's wrong with you? BTW why doesn't anyone like me. Did I tell you how weird you all are? Have a good day, take care, goodbye. PS: why doesn't anyone like me

Congrats!!!!!!

We love when knowledgeable posters visit and make valuable contributions. No one in here ever chases HM or coastalwx or various others from our forum when they drop by. But you pop in from time to time to tell us things we already know, parrot what several others are already saying, or worse...at times in the past have popped in here during a fail to let us know its going to fail. You typically add nothing of value. That is why YOU get a hostile response. I pop into other forums from time to time, and in the past have been a regular in the PA forum since I am about 1 mile from their border...but when deciding whether to post in a region I am a guest in, unless I feel like I am adding something of value and contributing to the discussion in a positive way I keep my mouth shut. If the regulars in that forum have it covered there is no need for me to interject. It's a bit insulting when you pop in from another area to say freaking obvious stuff all the time, as if you think their too stupid to see it themselves. As for your euro post... yea we saw it, but perhaps we do not get all excited over a discreet wave in a fast northern stream dominant flow at 150 hours out because one model has it take the absolute perfect track on one run of the op. If at 72 hours it looks like that across most guidance then yea we will be talking about it a lot. For now its a pipe dream not worth a ton of analysis.

all 6 days of it?

From there it is almost inevitable...you can see how the features up top are going to retrograde based on the seasonal progression this year.

The Winter that followed December 78 was definitely above average snowfall.

The long range guidance is ambiguous past day 10 with the MJO. Most of it starts to de-amplify towards the COD. But the long range guidance has been under doing the amplitude for a while now so it wouldn't surprise me of it does go into phase 6, and yes that could cause a temporary pull back of the cold, but probably not very long. And I am not so sure phase 5 is even really going to help because the SOI is in nina territory so why would using a nino phase 5 correlation really work? Perhaps other factors are about to take over. The MJO correlation is not 1:1, it can be overcome, especially if the wave weakens some. Lately the MJO wave has been flexing and overwhelming the pattern but that isn't always the case. Either way, worse case scenario we get a week through phase 6 and have to wait but that would only be a temporary problem so I am not going to sweat it. Besides I am still sticking to my original call that after January 15th is our best chance for snow so having punt the first week of January won't bother me as long as things are still on track in the overall progression and we see the look up top heading towards what we want. That was a whole lot of ways to basically say I don't know...but I don't think its a problem in the longer term picture either way.

From about January 1 to Feb 20th we don't need big negative departures to get snow. Yes on a sunny day our high with "normal" temperatures will be around 40-45 in the city but with a dew point well below freezing and 850 temps plenty cold enough to support snow that is not indicative that temperatures would be a problem if we got a storm. There are times when temperatures can ruin a good storm track...like this weekend, but often that is because the pattern is absolute crap due to something like an AK vortex or a raging positive AO/NAO. If the pattern is at least decent, with a "normal" air mass in place, the storm track and getting a favorable SLP and H5 pass is more important to our snow chances than the surface temperatures on a sunny day before and after the storm. Having a high of 42 at DCA the day before a storm is not in itself indicative that it is too warm to snow. The pattern being advertised on all the long range guidance will be plenty cold enough if we get a good storm track. The more likely reason there are a lot of individual members that do not show much snow here are that not all of them agree on the pattern. Out of the 50 members there are going to be a few that don't develop the same good look. Then they, of course, would favor to our north because in a less ideal pattern for us, north of here still can get snow. Then there is the fact that a few members probably do have a good pattern but bad luck is the problem. A few miss us to the south with the best snow. There are a couple that really crush our area also. And frankly getting those to show something much above climo in the long range is difficult. That is one of the better looking snowfall means I have ever seen on the euro weeklies when you consider that almost all of that snow comes after day 20. On the list of things I am worried about in this coming pattern, New England having more snow then us on the 45 day weekly mean is like on page 7 next to some cow in ohio farting in the wrong direction.

DT did call for this warm up and then a flip to cold after the holidays a long time ago...he was very bullish on this winter and so far has been pretty good with timing the pattern progressions... we will see.