jayyy

But we were still relying on things like perfect timing of phases, praying the SER doesn’t flex, ignoring the PAC, etc. for nearly 7 years out of sheer hope we’d get SOME snow. Yes, these are things we try to avoid every winter given our location, but when they are sustained / entrenched patterns? Good luck overcoming that. Sure, we saw a few brief windows where the pattern “historically delivered”, but they were extremely short lived and still required near perfect timing in the midst of an otherwise bad longwave pattern. That may work for Boston, but not in the mid Atlantic. Add in the impacts of AGW, and what used to be marginal snow at 32F is now more likely to be rain at 34-35. We typically need the boundary to our south, snowpack in Canada and the Great Lakes, etc to score around here. We really haven’t had much of that the past 5+ winters. Temps were what? +5 to +7 above normal last winter? How many sustained patterns (2+ weeks) have we seen where we had a +PNA and a workable NAO / AO / EPO setup? That’s just not going to cut it. Hoping it snows when it’s 50+ degrees out the day before and after a storm is not a recipe for success around here. Is it possible? Sure. Not likely. And certainly not likely when we don’t have the necessary mechanisms in place to bring cold air into our area. Not sure we can just chalk this up to “it doesn’t work like it used to” when we haven’t really had a prolonged period of favorable setups for the better part of the last decade. If we’re being brutally honest… we saw a pretty incredible stretch from 2000-2016 of above average winters and winters with at least one major snowstorm. Our luck caught up to us, and the accelerating change in our overall climo has been the icing on top. We can certainly have that convo if this winter doesn’t pan out - where we should see plentiful WC ridging, blocking, etc. .

Down to 29F at midnight. Temps forecasted to remain steady the next few hours. Nice to see some below freezing temps before met. winter for a change .

I can certainly understand why some folks are skeptical, pessimistic, sour, etc. We’ve been burned time and time again over the past 7 years. Besides one winter where extreme N MD did well, the past 7 years have sucked. HOWEVER… we spent majority of those years hoping we could thread the smallest needle. That we’d get a snowstorm during a somewhat workable window in what was an otherwise trash longwave pattern - particularly the god awful PAC situation thanks to a persisting la niña, among other factors such as a SER that always seemed to win out. For every positive we had, there were multiple negatives working against us. People clowned on PSU for being a realist when he’d say “hey, I know this looks good, but here’s why it could fail”. As it turned out, he was right pretty much every single time. We are in a completely different situation this time around. CAPE, PSU, Brooklyn and many others have taken the time to thoroughly explain the reasons why this winter’s overall pattern is vastly different than years past. Does it mean we’ll see an 09-10 type winter? No. Maybe we do get extremely unlucky again. Wouldn’t be the first niño to fail and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But the weather doesn’t give a crap about our feelings. At the end of the day, science is the name of the game. It is and always will be the driving force behind our outcomes - good and bad. All we can do is analyze what we have in front of us and take it week by week. There are so many tools at our disposal and there is a wealth of knowledge on this forum after you sift through the BS. One of those tools should NOT be operational model clown maps 10-15 days out. If you are already souring on winter because the 18z GFS lost 10 inches of digital snow 300+ hours out, you’re doing it all wrong. This is, without a doubt, the best chance we’ve had in years to see some legitimate snowfall. This is the first time in nearly a decade that we will get to analyze the impact of GW on our winter climo during what *SHOULD BE* a snowy season. If we happen to see a +PNA -NAO - AO regime fail us in the midst of El Niño, then we can all move on over to the panic room. For now, we wait patiently. Have a good feeling that our patience (if you can call it that) will finally be rewarded.

Baltimore bullseye — what could go wrong? In all seriousness though… the longwave pattern is trending in a great direction for early to mid December. The -NAO seems like a lock at this point being only 4-5 days away. Very intrigued by the recent development of some models showing the AO tanking and staying negative for most of December. Couple that with a workable PAC (HUH!?), and we WILL cash in. There may not be a significant storm to kick off December, but I think we’d all welcome a nice 3-6” type event to kick things off. Have a feeling those of us who are well inland could even see a warning level snowfall before Dec. 15th if the advertised h5 pattern on ensembles holds firm. We should all know better than to live and die by OP runs 7+ days out - particularly the clown maps. I’m sure one of the OP GFS runs tomorrow will show a flush hit. Folks are going to drive themselves nuts living and dying by run to run 10:1 snow maps on OP runs. Watch the trends, not the clown maps. This will be the best winter we’ve had in 7+ years. That much is becoming crystal clear. Even if that bar is low, it excites the bajesus outta me.

Up at my aunt’s house in Schenectady NY. Some fatty flakes falling with accumulation before an expected changeover to rain overnight. Weather station back at home in union bridge showing just over 2” of rain and 53*F

If you end up leaving the area, you’ll find the QOH (quality of human) rating has severely declined everywhere. .

Didn’t the niño officially take hold in June though? We were still in a niña at the end of last winter through spring. So using the entire year as a reference doesn’t seem right here. Most mets I follow have been saying the STJ likely won’t get going until late November / early December. Have to imagine it takes some time for the longwave pattern to become entrenched and for things to unfold downstream for us. We also had a pretty wet September. Pretty sure dry Octobers during niño years isn’t super uncommon either but someone correct me if I’m wrong. Think it’s still a tad early to be either too concerned or too optimistic about our chances this winter. If it’s still super dry come thanksgiving through December 15th, we can revisit the possibility of a drier niño. One thing is for sure… there are a ton of different factors at play here. Some of which could drastically help us, some that could crush our hopes. We’ve discussed winner and loser niños at length in here over the past several months. All it takes is 1 or 2 things at h5 to be wrong for it all to come crashing down, or vice versa. I think the takeaway currently is that this is the best h5 / longwave pattern we’ve had going into winter for nearly 7 years. How it all unfolds is anyone’s guess. I feel like we have a 65/35 chance of success vs failure this year given our new base state, which is a helluva lot better than the dismal chances we’ve had during the past several / consecutive niñas.

We take. For the love of god, please no sustained -PNA this winter [emoji15]

Maybe we’re the 2023 Jets and manage to pull out a win over the eagles despite all of the obstacles we face!

Very true that we could end up in a super niño regime. Believe there are other factors at play though. Weak niños can still end up being dry / warm for the east and super niños can still end up being snowy and cold.

I despise his analysis as much as the next weenie… but if we’re truly headed for a moderate to decently strong El Niño, this may be (generally) accurate. Early season could skew things a bit warmer… but I suspect we’ll have a deep wintry period to offset some of that. Active southern jet & subdued ridging in the Gulf of Mexico = wetter / cooler than normal for the south & mid Atlantic. Signs are also there that we may finally get some relief from the consistent -PNA pattern that’s made our lives hell for the past several years. Should finally see a +PNA pattern or two pop up this winter. We can and have cashed in without a strong block… but it’s very difficult to cash in if we’re also seeing a persistent -PNA regime. Neutral NAO and +PNA is workable…. -PNA not so much.

West based super niño or bust!!!! In all seriousness… if we’re seeing this same look on models as far as the strength / positioning of the Niño is concerned come late September and beyond… perhaps this winter will make up for the disastrous past few we’ve endured. REALLY like seeing the -PNA regime finally broken down.

Top 3 all time for the twin cities area.

Interesting.

Spring barrier though, no? I’d hold off a few weeks before getting too excited / worried about the strength of the impending niño. Hopefully we don’t get a super niño. Sure, MAYBE we get lucky and see another once in a blue moon monster like 2016, but those are hard to come by and it’ll likely be followed by another 2+ years of niña. A moderate to borderline strong niño is better for us.

Pretty dynamic storm out in the plains. Blizzard warning in the twin cities for 6-12” and tornado warnings in Iowa.

Heat sucks. Humidity sucks. Give me either snow / cold or 50s maybe low 60s, low humidity and sunny. I enjoy a cool spring day. Summer is my body’s kryptonite. 70s is bearable but 80+ and I’m profusely sweating [emoji28]

If I could pick an ideal weather, outside of having cold and snow, I’d pick 50s and sunny all year. I loathe the heat.

I’d take snow in may. No rush here. I despise the heat. I was referring to the purple on the snow map, not the temp map. Just commenting on the fact that the 6” the gfs showed IMBY earlier is likely BS is all.

Cold and dry in mid to late march. Fun.

You forgot to tell us how much your vacation cost per night. We’ve been eagerly awaiting [emoji1787]

Purpled at 228 hours in late march. What could go wrong

Giggity… .

I feel like January February and march are all going to end with a very similar average temp. Odd

Beacon is just east of the Hudson River, has little elevation, and deals with shadowing. Zero shot they got 43” [emoji23] Now, it is true though that snow totals varied greatly in relatively small areas in NY and western MA with this last storm. I drove home through that area the day after and it was pretty incredible to see how much snow was OTG in certain areas versus others. Where I stayed saw 22” of snow, all of which fell at 32-33 degrees. Shadowing in areas close to the Berkshires, Catskills, Adirondacks, etc is very real and can lead to the valleys getting much lower amounts than elevated areas. Especially because temps were so marginal… but seeing a 43” report in a place like beacon is laughable. I grew up in that area and know it well and definitely can smell bullshit on that report. But I bet elevated areas nearby did see close to 18”. The reporting was all over the place. Massachusetts saw similar discrepancies. Totals ranged from 3-4” to 40”. Some of that is legit due to elevation and being colder with better lift, but there are definitely some very suspect lowland reports mixed in there.