Yeah I’ve noticed that the storm for tomorrow and Thursday has trended south and weaker. There’s probably a balance here if the same thing happens with the weekend storm. South is good for us generally, but weaker is maybe a double edged sword. Weak and north is bad because it doesn’t wrap in colder air, but maybe weaker and south balances that back out? Just speculation. Nobody should be spiking footballs or bailing on 1 run 100+ hours out.
Even if this storm “fails” from a snow perspective in the cities, this is just a remarkable modeling success from literally 13-15 days lead time. We picked up this time period as soon as it was in ensemble range.
I think you’re on the right track @psuhoffman. Our big dogs often don’t have a monster PNA ridge, the biggest anomalies are the NAO/AO ridging usually. So if that shortwave you’ve indicated rolls east with the ridge behind it…it would look like a lot of our KU patterns.
What’s nice to see is that the guidance is getting more uniform with a respectable high and confluence to our north. Makes the airmass much less marginal heading into the weekend. Euro has lows in the low 20s Friday morning with dews in the low-mid 10s. Mid 20s Saturday morning. @clskinsfan mentioned this above. Differences in the solutions now seem more on how the 2 shortwaves interact.
I agree to 72 hours or so, but there also is a tendency for follow the leader with the ops and ensembles lately. Maybe someone like @high risk or @dtk can speak to studies of how nondispersive they seem to be in recent years.
This is not a HECS setup by any means. Just isn't. Too progressive, not deep enough, etc. Could be a very nice event for someone, certainly the best in literally years, but it's not a HECS.
I like seeing wider goalposts honestly. The more paths to some sort of event the better. Meanwhile GGEM goes the opposite direction and phases it in much earlier and hence a more inland track and just rain for the 95 corridor.