Terpeast

I remember that storm. That was the only legit snow we had that winter. We got other storms where it snowed in NC/SC but rained here at 33-36 degrees.

Crazy how cold it is this week so far and how much colder it's going to be buy rain is still our main precip Cold, then warms up to rain, then cold after. Story of my life in the mid atlantic since the late 70s

Low 19

Just woke up. Did I miss anything?

Welp. Thanks anyways.

Not sure when NAM gets into its range, but it seems to be trending colder at precip onset. Only checked 850 temps, not ptype

I was checking daily temps and precip data for IAD and DCA for the 85-86 winter, which was - and still is - my top analog for this winter. It was very back loaded, and it didn’t really get going until the end of February, when it got most of its snow. It was quite cold wall to wall, but had so little to show for it Dec-Jan. I can only imagine what this forum would have been like in a winter like this.

I think the bigger culprit than chaos or lack of 50/50 is the pna being too far west. Models initially had it centered over the western rockies, then pulled it back westward just offshore into the eastern Pacific. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - without a western US ridge, we have a snowballs chance in hell of getting a good snowstorm here. Especially if it’s December. OTOH, if we had a 50/50, plenty of cold air, and a block of just the right strength and position, then MAYBE we can get away with a neutral PNA.

Dipped to 23

Looks like a clipper. But someone told me they’d gone extinct in recent years.

Posting a 500mb map longer than 2 weeks out should result in 3 day ban That’s actually a good idea. Especially if it’s an OP run.

FWIW, LWX mentioned the possibility of a brief period of anafrontal snow in their recent AFD.

So it looks like around 18-19z when the front crosses DCA?

I'm back after a decade's hiatus, so yeah I might as well be new here.

It'll be interesting to watch for sure. I'll be right by the window for this.

I still wouldn't get too excited about this. I mean, we can't even trust the models beyond 3 days right now, and anafront snows are very rare here.

I remember it well, too, obviously. I was in Vienna at the time, and I was coming back home from swim practice in torrential rain. My mom was driving and she was white knuckling it the whole way because we could hardly anything in front of us. Then just as we got home, it changed over to snow and a brief blizzard of thundersnow ensued. We would see purple flashes of lightning through the snow. My cousin, who was staying with us at the time, and I jebwalked through it... it was awesome. The most memorable 2 inches I've ever seen in my life. P.S. after that event, the entire month of December totally sucked donkey balls... by the end of the month I was whining "it never snows here anymore". Then we all know what happened a week after that.

November 1995. It was THAT long ago.

That fropa will be fun to watch if it pans out…

I don’t remember saying anything to the effect of “losing everything else we need for a snowstorm” just because the pna ridge was too far west. In fact, my point was we were so close and all we needed was a slight adjustment on the overall pattern. Shift that ridge east a bit and we might have gotten something. And it’s certainly possible the -NAO might have been too much too strong with the TNH. But I wasn’t saying we need to “reshuffle the deck” and start over. As if we had any control over mother nature. She’ll do that for us.

Yes. You’re a quick study.

In November it was reload this month it’s nuances. Wonder what’s next in January.

Well that’s obviously a negative PNA. It’s really no wonder December turned out to be awful up and down the EC. Only reason it wasn’t a torch is that -AO/NAO.

Agreed. I don’t think this is a good pattern to begin with. By that I mean what’s actually out there in reality, not what has been depicted on model maps 7+ days out. There’s a difference, and the “good” pattern the models told us was coming did not fully come to fruition. Yes we got the -nao, but we did not get the +pna (which is even more important in Dec than Jan-Feb) Having all these cutters is about what we would expect from a La Nina.

Great game indeed. I think Messi and Argentina deserved the W.