psuhoffman

I hope everyone enjoyed our dead period because I have a feeling that things are going to be busy in here starting soon and for an extended period. We are starting to see the first signs of the pattern flip towards New Years. Once the lower heights near AK retrograde west watch out. The rest of the pattern progression is just the snowball rolling down the mountain. Even during this crap pattern troughs have generally tried to dig into the east, and we have had storms, but there just wasn't any cold air thanks to the trough over Alaska blasting maritime air across the CONUS. But as soon as that shuts off things should get exciting. There can be a threat as the pattern flip happens, but don't be surprised if we have to let this ferment a while before we score. But every year is different and just because most of the analogs suggest January 15 on is when to look for big snow doesn't mean we can't get lucky before that, but don't be discouraged if the interior and New England cash in before us. In many of the analogs there were some storms that missed us just to the NW during the transition period in early January before we got hit later in the month. As the pattern matures and blocking develops our chances will increase. All in all we are starting to see the changes in the long range guidance...the ensembles are now beginning to pick up on the first steps towards what the seasonal guidance has been saying is coming, and right on time.

No one thinks it's going to happen. Just having fun. Nothing in "real" range to discuss.

Not if it was truly the fully phased monster that run shows. Would be extremely tightly wound. Heights are crashing over us. Great h5 pass. 1993 tracked up well inside the coast yet places not that far west of 95 stayed mostly snow. We aren't used to that at this latitude but it's more common to our north. But this is all just for fun. It's beyond crazy fantasy range. If a storm like that ended up within 250 miles of where this run shows it that would still be an amazing achievement for the Fv3.

If this happens it will forever be the dragon storm.

Fv3 is pure weenie porn. Not gonna happen but fun to look at. This is one of the craziest phases you will ever see.

Happy happy delivers. Everyone leave a nice tip please. @Bob Chill really nice snow mean on the weeklies. It's hard to get a much over climo look on the mean. Take a look at the last 10 days of the euro control on the weeklies. Especially the last 48 hours. You might want to be alone when you do!

I'm going to list every pattern that had a perfect setup and just failed to deliver.

All the seasonal and sub seasonal guidance looks identical. And they look exactly like a composite of the analogs. And there are current indications the PV is in big trouble. There are reasons to believe this more than just because the euro says so.

Everything started fine. But right now the mjo and soi spike are temporarily running interference. Neither of those things will last. When they come off we should resume our regularly scheduled modoki nino programming.

Been telling everyone to chill

Everyone should just enjoy the holidays and by New Years we will have better things to talk about.

E27 on the EPS would make many happy. Lol but I think we are seeing signs of the very start of the progression to what will be a good pattern by mid January showing up. Geps is likely too fast but showing the evolution also towards day 15. Now that the cfs caved everything is in agreement we start to transition to a good look by the second week of January. Doesn't mean we can't luck into something before that though.

our average high in summer is close to 90. Our average high in the dead of winter is like 40. So...figure it out

Keep in mind that year wasn't a nino so the results of a similar strat warm wouldn't necessarily be the same. Frankly the results of every strat warm is different and unpredictable. Last years ended up helping us out in March...several threats and one hit. Others have done nothing for us at all and mainly impacted Asia or Europe. Also...that year we had a very cold and generally favorable pattern for a couple weeks the end of January. We got one good storm and a couple close misses. It was mostly northern stream though so getting a big one was unlikely. But this area recorded 33 days of snowcover from January 18th to February 19th because it was so cold. Not crazy totals but that is an impressive stretch of snowcover even for up here.

No just trying to change the subject from 1980 to 1969 because 1980 was a hot mess up here...even worse WRT climo then DC and Baltimore. It was one of the worst fails for this area ever actually with regards to it being a bottom 1/3 snowfall winter here yet was above average in DC and way above average south of DC. Everything was suppressed that year. I don't mind talking about 1969 since that was actually an above average snowfall year up here. No blockbuster storms but a lot of the close misses in DC and Baltimore clipped up here with 5 or 6" of snow. I wouldn't actually worry about 69 though. There were actually a few really nice track miller a storms that winter...but a couple just didn't come together perfectly and so they were mediocre snowfall events (3.3" on 2/8, 2,8" on 2/20, 5.4" on 3/2 and 2.4" on 3/7). I couple of them mixed in the cities and that was the problem, and a couple just didn't come together right for us. Two of them were decent here but became absolute monster blizzards to our northeast with 2-3 feet in New England but the storms didn't really bomb in time to crush our area. There wasn't anything "wrong" with the pattern, we just kind of got the minimum for the potential. It happens...if you look at all the modoki years...1995 sticks out as the "what went wrong this doesnt fit" year...and some have opined that the volcanic eruption may have had something to do with it... but just taking all the rest they had such similar patterns and all fit within a range with "ok" being the bottom and epic being the top of that range. Luck probably had more to do with what years fell into what places in that range than anything else. I know some people don't like to accept chaos. But a couple of those storms in 69 were a degree or two away from being a big hit, or a slightly more amplified SW away. Look at 2005, that storm in January was close to being a monster. But the stj wave missed the boat and got squashed and so the entire storm ended up northern stream and so it was a low end event here and huge to our northeast. There were two storms in late February that were close to big, perfect track miller a systems but they just didnt phase and amplify enough to really be big. There was a possible big storm in early February also but it ended up getting suppressed and we had a cold dry weekend. There were opportunities for that to end up a great year and it just didnt work out. That happens. But you can't worry about it because there is nothing you can do about it. There are also examples of years that probably should have been awful and we lucked our way to a pretty good year. 2000 was like that. We really only had 3 threats all year during the only favorable 10 day window in January but for places just west of the cities all 3 hit and so it is remembered as a good year even though 90% of that winter was a totally crap pattern. 2006 was like that also. That storm in February came during the middle of an awful pattern and we got lucky, remove that and it was a total crap year. To an extent 2014 also...the epo was good enough that it should have been cold and somewhat snowy, but we did way better then you should expect from a year with a positive AO/NAO. That probably should have been an about average snowfall year with a lot of ice and we just hit the jackpot everytime with a perfect track. It goes both ways. But having a pattern that gives us multiple chances is all you can ask for...it's like starting the poker game with a pair of aces... doesn't guarantee you win the hand but I will take my chances everytime!

EPS at the very end is showing what will be step 1 in a progression towards what we want. Get the trough west to the Aleutians. Once that happens the pna and epo will become more favorable. The ridging builds across to the nao side eventually and that's when things can really go nuts. It might be rushing it a bit. I'm sticking with my call we see signs by early Jan and the pattern gets good after Jan 15. For @Maestrobjwa sake hopefully it won't be like 1969 when we had an awesome h5 look much of the second half of winter but had close miss after close miss and ended up with only mediocre results. 1968 had a snow mid November too and it was a modoki nino so uh oh!

There is a much larger error foregiveness to that. A storm can track to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, or Green Bay and we are rain in all those scenarios. But a storm has to track pretty much between richmond to the outer banks for us to get snow.

lol at people that live places that have a median snowfall of ~15" being uber picky about how and when it snows. Smh.

The last band of heavy precip that came through about an hour ago mixed with snow here. Big wet slush bombs for about 15 mins.

The biggest problem is whenever you try to over officiate you also increase the number of flat our bad calls and increase the chances you negatively impact the game. More calls naturally will mean more bad calls. Plus when the refs are "letting them play" and they miss a call that is usually way less noticeable and easier to tolerate then when they are impacting the game with phantom penalties. The end result is this crap. I find it hard to watch anymore. I used to watch several games a week and now I only watch when the Eagles are playing and if this keeps up that might stop.

I have kept most of my trolling in the panic room threat...and will keep all of it there from now on, which is kind of what that place is for right? As for others... I get the humor in what they are doing...but I am pretty laid back about all this. But as Bob said I don't think he is really trolling, I think he honestly doesn't like the look from now until New Years. But I agree the really silly stuff we should move over to panic room or banter and keep out of the main thread if some don't like it.

The look for about 3-4 days centered on Xmas is actually a pretty good longwave h5 pattern. The issue though is that the entire CONUS is pretty void of true cold air at the start so we might waste a storm threat that way. Then we are left needing another wave to come along in time before things retrograde up top and ridging starts to develop in the east. If there was a cold pattern established we would actually have a pretty good window for something. I think I am slightly more optimistic then you right now regarding the chances to luck our way into some marginal event during that week. Not high probability but it wouldn't shock me either. A clipper, or a quick inch on the backside of a departing system, or 1-2" on the front end of a cutter after xmas. Something like those options is on the table imo. But our chances of something significant are pretty low. I am also probably more optimistic because I "think" I have a handle on where this is heading. After a week or so of cold around xmas the look up top continues its retrogression. At that point we probably warm around new years. From there if we can build heights up top as we head into January and the jet naturally gets displaced south more easily...the whole pattern would become suppressed enough to get us on the right side of the gradients. Get the typical nino Aleutian low to pop up and we could get some PNA help and then it could really get epic. Either way things seem to be going according to the typical weak/moderate nino progression. Hopefully tonight's weeklies will speed up the progression a bit from the last run and calm some nerves. I am actually OK with the progression Monday's run showed. If we get that kind of look by January 20th...we would be set up for a 3-4 week run during our prime climo. We kind of missed our golden chance to get a big hit or two outside the prime climo run we likely go on later...and that sucks, and maybe in the end that means this year ends up more like 1966, 1978, 1987, or 2015...years where nothing happened early and basically the whole winter was a 3-4 week epic run. We might have missed the boat to get a year like 1964, 2002, 2010 where we got lucky with an early hit before also having the epic period later in winter. But when it's all over if anyone complains if this year ends up above 20" at DCA and above 30 at IAD and BWI they should be taken out back and beaten with the stupid stick!

It will stop once there are real threats to discuss. Don't worry

As usual we did get the north trend at the end. It's a pretty good bet with southern stream systems. BUT the shift south between 100-72 hours out took us out of it. Had it still been targeting richmond and Charlottesville as the bullseye going into the last 72 hours we would be shoveling right now. Oh well. On to the next episode.