PrinceFrederickWx

Idk about oaks but IMBY has now been updated from zone 7b to 8a, which makes sense, as many firs and spruces that are only hardy to zone 7 struggle down here now. I unfortunately learned this the hard way IMBY. One of the local nurseries down here told me they have been changing their tree selections.

It certainly isn’t underperforming here, I have 1.14” and it’s still pouring.

I'm smoothing over a lot of months, but in my mind we've been through a never-ending torch since spring 2010, with just two pauses: a brief one in winter 2017/18, and a longer 15-month period from January 2014 through March 2015. That 15-month period impresses me the most nowadays, it's like something from over a century ago. How did we manage that amidst the secular warming trend? Could we ever do it again, I wonder?

Yes March 2018 and that was definitely the craziest windstorm I’ve seen IMBY. Did a lot of damage to homes down here.

La Nina winters always end with an impressive windstorm in late February / early March, so this is no surprise either.

I read this wrong at first and thought you were getting 4,500 to 5,500 feet of snow on Thursday, then another 2,000 to 4,000 feet on Friday, etc. By Sunday morning I think the snow would be stacked up into outer space. I think most here would be happy with that.

If next year goes cold and snowy then it would really prove my point about ENSO being overrated. I still think we’re screwed, but I might play contrarian in next year’s snowfall contest just for fun.

I agree with all this. As I had said earlier in this thread, I have a suspicion that ENSO is weighted too highly and other factors are underrated (I’d put PDO and Pacific base state down as some of those needing higher weight too). It was a red flag to me early on when we seemed to get the same Dec. Pac puke pattern IMBY year after year, no matter what ENSO state we were in. And FWIW, I’m an admitted climate doomer so you’ll get zero argument from me on the elephant stuff. I think we’re completely screwed but who knows, maybe I’m wrong?

What’s your sample size for a -QBO strong Nino? How do you know either of those were the reason for the high snowfall? How do you know it wasn’t something else? I’m not trying to troll you. Just looking at this from a statistical viewpoint and trying to give you a possibly different angle. I’ve always had a problem with the bimodal distribution of ENSO (with weak Nina and moderate Nino allegedly being the best).

Idk why, but the tone was much different here this season than in years past. I noticed the same stuff you did. It started back in Nov. with the “guaranteed cold” posts and ended with the “Feb. 2010 redux” debacle. The usual skepticism from years past (which was a good thing) was replaced with arrogance and outright weenie wishcasting at times.

I already used my once-per-30,000 day screen name change, but I wanna change my name to “PerfectTrackRainstorm” LOL

-The sample sizes for seasonal forecasts are probably too small, and correlation does not equal causation. -ENSO may be weighted too highly. -Persistence and trends are underrated as forecasting tools. -In recent years there seems to be fads of tracking esoteric indices that may be meaningless (Siberian snowcover, etc.)

If any of you have any pictures of the storm that you'd like to share, I'd love to see them! I wasn't born yet in 1979 but I love reading about this storm. My mother has been through nearly every Baltimore-area HECS and still says 1979 was the craziest. She did have some pictures, but has been unable to locate them currently. If she ever finds them I will post some here. FWIW, my 95-year-old grandmother has also been through every Baltimore-area HECS... she still talks about 1979 and especially 1942.

If I saw something like this here in the current subtropical wasteland of Calvert, I think my head would just explode.

The field I work in has seen so many advances in machine learning / deep learning in just the last few years. I would think a lot of the recent AI advances will eventually be applied to weather forecasting (if they aren't working on this already). Once that happens I would expect to see results dramatically improve.

That area from Lehigh Valley to NJ/NYC just wins over and over again. Some of those areas climo aren’t supposed to be that much better than ours either. I have an opinion on that but it involves elephants we can’t talk about lol

0.1" and it's already over and melting. Roads and sidewalks never caved. I was forecast 1-3" by LWX... I'm convinced it simply cannot snow in SOMD anymore.

The 1981-2010 normal had 8" of snow for BWI in February. The 1991-2020 normal has 7.5" in February. If you average the last nine Februaries you get only 1.9" now. Even if you accuse me of cherry-picking, and I do ten years to include 2014-15, I'm still only getting 3.1." If you assume next year is a La Nina (where Februaries usually suck) then this is going down even further.

3/21/2018 was a WSW IMBY but not for BWI or DCA. Neither of those airports have had a WSW in February or March since 2015. There has also not been a WSW for either one in December since 2009.

The main issue continues to be that the metro areas (and everywhere south and east) can no longer score significant events outside of January. Winter is now boxed into four weeks instead of four months, so the averages are going to be much, much lower as a result. (Note: I will STFU about this forever if the region somehow has a WSW this month or next.)

I almost want to be the contrarian and just say next year will be the 95-96. Though I do wonder what the long range forecasts (if they even existed back then) were for that winter.

With the back-to-back January storms, the errors seemed like they were just sticking a ruler in a random spot and measuring snow depth. Now I'm even more stumped. The only thing we both know is that all the State Highway measurements are probably wrong again somehow. LOL

The airports could still theoretically go climo+ but it was a red flag early on for the forecasted epic winter that we weren’t on the board by mid-December. I had posted this in the Panic thread back then, but winters like 1996, 2003 and 2010 always showed themselves early. Even the epic backloaded winters like 2015 had accumulating events in November, December and early January.

Just remember: we climate doomers were mocked all year on here. Now which of the two threads ended up being more accurate: this one or the long range thread? LOL

Until proven otherwise, nothing has changed my view that this region can no longer get WSW events outside of January.