jayyy

Ended up being a disjointed mess. 2 pieces of energy instead of a decent shield of precip. Eek

Definitely a colder look there than we saw a day ago. Hmmm! Tomorrows runs will be interesting. .

I think we all got burnt pretty badly by that ordeal! You’re not alone there. That was honestly the final straw for me on looking too closely at any threat outside of D5ish. Ill look at ensembles through D10 or so to get a general idea on the overall setup being depicted at 500mb (even that changes a lot of the time) but trying to decipher details such as phase timing, surface low track, exact position of a high up north, energy transfers, ridge axis, etc? ON OPERATIONAL MODELS? Heck no. Why get so emotionally invested in something that will change literally 100x between then and game time. I’m getting too old for all of that anxiety. Have a decent feeling about someone seeing a solid couple inches out of this Sun night ordeal between my area and yours the way things are trending atm. Nothing crazy, but 1-2” sounds good to me.

Hook a brother up with a snapshot (if you’re able!) I’m currently driving home from WV .

That’s what I’m talking about! If I can squeeze an inch of snow out of this and see flakes fall for a few hours, I’d be happy. I swear, most of our snows seem to happen when we least expect it or when we’ve written a threat off and moved on to the “next potential”. Tracking storms D10 and beyond is for the birds. Idc how much models have improved over the years.. no one can convince me that models fully know how to decipher a given setup when most of the players in question are nowhere near being onshore. Models depend on data - and until they have that data, they are simply guessing how things will shake out to the best of their ability. Certainly that ability has improved over time, but it’s nowhere near perfect. We see booms on the regular in these parts - especially during overrunning events Models can’t even agree on this Sunday ordeal (48 hours out) yet folks are committing weenie suicide run to run over the 15th ordeal. Makes no logical sense to me. Let’s reel this sucker in! .

I’ll go with p26. P30 from earlier smoked the northern tier but left the cities with a smaller, yet still respectable snow. If this is going to pan out and be a biggie, I hope as many of us as possible get smoked. .

Sure, I’ve “seen worse” too, but we need the high way SW of where it is given the lack of cold air in Canada to have any shot with a marginal airmass. Just north of NY/CA border would be much better. .

That high pressure in Canada is in a shitty position for starters. .

LOL, just as I post this… we get another huge change in a subsequent run. Point = proven. Precisely why we shouldn’t care about minute details this far out. It’ll probably lose it at 18z and get it back at 0z

All we need is the ICONs temp profile (which is on its own island) with the GFS’s track (basically on its own island too). What could go wrong? [emoji23] - joking. In all seriousness, not a great set of runs so far today, but again, we’re mainly discussing OPs from 8 days out. They’ll change at 18z, 0z, and then again tomorrow, etc. No use in getting too worked up about it. Yesterday we saw the cash in side of the outcome envelop. Today we’re seeing the opposite. I also don’t love the idea of analyzing a secondary storm which partially depends on what an initial storm does from this range - especially when neither piece of energy is onshore yet. Models are missing far too much data to get an accurate picture of the players on the field for a storm over a week out. They aren’t even in agreement on the 8th-9th small ordeal yet [emoji2369] Peeping at the 6z GEFS, which I give far more weight to than the GFS or ICON at this range, there’s still a shot. Timing needs to be near perfect though, otherwise there’s virtually no cold air to work with…. which is a tall ask in these parts. A full phase could also do the trick. A few of the individual members get it done with proper timing, but most panels are a swing and a miss. Can’t say I like the way things look at this point, but I also can’t say with any semblance of confidence that this is the way things will look by the time the 8-9th rolls around. We could see a situation like last January where the storm sneaks up on us in the D5 range once models get a better grasp of what we’re dealing with up top.

Wonder if it’s attempting a Miller b’esque transfer to a coastal there .

I’d take this all day. 2-4” for many would be a welcome sight. Our VA brethren wouldn’t be thrilled though. .

0.4” of QPF from an ensemble is weak sauce? Interesting. .

@Ji you probably hate the GFS because you start hugging it 5+ days before you should ever start taking it’s outcomes with anything more than a grain of salt. The main system we’re all tracking as the potential “biggie” is what, 9 days out? And depends partially on what the first system does. Until models - especially OPs - get that data, they are simply spitting out a wide envelop of outcomes - which is their literal purpose. Analyzing slight differences in the heights out west or the strength of the 50/50 low in SE Canada is also a waste of time this far out. Are the players still on the field? Yes. Is there still a storm? Yes. That’s all that really matters right now. We won’t get meaningful details nailed down until we are closer to the 9th-10th timeframe, and even then, we are simply shrinking the outcome envelope. Stick with a blend of the ensembles this far out (heaviest lean on EPS) to get a general idea of the setup at 500/H5. Parsing details any farther than that is a complete waste of your time. They will change 50 times between now and the 14th. What looks crappier now may very well look good tomorrow, and then back to crappy the run after. When the outcome for us is dependent on so many factors, there is literally NO USE in obsessing over the details at D9. .

That’d be quite the NYC screw job - hypothetically speaking. .

It’s too far out for BC to get invested. He doesn’t track storms outside of the D5-7 window nowadays. .

Let’s get into the D7ish range with that look on the ensemble and we may be in business! After that, we look for the Euro OP to show something similar in the D5-D7 range and the GFS inside D5. That’s when we know things could truly be coming together. All of that aside, if we’re just analyzing THIS run, it doesn’t really get much better than that. That’s likely a slow mover too. .

I’d rather have the low tracking too far to our SE at this range than it show a flush hit given the 500mb evolution. Plenty of room for things to work out with this setup. Maybe it’s not a KU, but it’s likely somethin’. Now let’s get some ensemble support. .

Most of the time, the OP GFS will hang onto the SE Solution longer than others. December was the perfect example. We’re still too far out to know where the GFS will land on next weeks threat. The GEFS doesn’t match the OP whatsoever, which to me means the GFS will waffle a bunch more before it hones in on a general solution around D5. This is all pretty standard given the range we’re in right now (D9-d10) My guess is the GFS waffles back toward a more SE solution over the next few days, which is it’s typical bias in a progressive pattern. It looks completely out to lunch given the wide array of outcomes it’s spitting out from run to run. At this range, I’m looking at the GEFS and EPS. Using the OP GFS is a fools errand 10 days out. I’ll start looking at the OP Euro in the D5-D7 range. Until then, OP runs are meaningless to me. Sticking to this general schematic leaves me heartbroken a lot less frequently than most weenies… Days 8-10 (GEFS / EPS ensembles) Days 5-7 (euro, with a lean on the CMC/Ukie for similarity confirmation) Days 3-5 (GFS / Euro - less euro as we approach D3) Days 1-3 (NAM / GFS - outcome typically splits the two in some way shape or form) It’s not perfect, but it utilizes the strengths of each model @ a given range, while leaning on a few other models to see if they show similar evolutions at H5/500 for some semblance of confirmation that the outcome could have some weight to it. A lot of folks look for the coldest / snowiest solution at any given range, which is a method that’s equivalent to begging for heartbreak. Any model out on its own island, especially in the long range, should be a red flag. Details aren’t very important at range. Yesterday, we had several models showing the general idea of a storm in the 175+hr range - which is enough to peak my interest. I don’t truly get excited for a potential threat until we enter the D5’ish range. If the OP Euro at D5 generally shows what the EPS/GEFS combo was showing prior, that’s typically a pretty solid signal that something is on the horizon. For me personally, anything before that is simply noise and the models doing their jobs - which is to calculate all possible outcomes. That’s why the GFS jumps from a multi foot blizzard to a warm / rainy cutter every damn time from the D10 range. It’s simply establishing the envelop of outcomes. .

I don’t think this is true whatsoever. The midatlantic doesn’t do complicated well. Complicated setups often result in things coming together too early (cutter) or too late (NYC to BOS special) Some of our best patterns (feb 2010 for instance) were simple setups with a cold high entrenched to our north and a storm track that took storms off the NC VA coast. The “geography of our area” is exactly why we typically need simple for things to work. When we start talking Miller b’s, triple phases, bomb cyclones, yada yada… the likelihood of failure goes up exponentially. There’s a reason we typically do better with overrunning events and Miller A’s than we do with Miller B’s. The former is simpler than the latter. .

Absolutely not. The GFS has always had a SE / progressive bias. Not sure how much that’s changed since the upgrade but that’s always been the case pre upgrade. If a storm is cutting well NW of us on the GFS in a relatively progressive pattern, that’s usually a failure in the making. .

I’ll take flat and progressive this far out (system sliding south) over seeing flush hits 9-10 days out any day of the week. The trend this years been fairly consistent. Things tend to look more amplified as we get closer. D5 has been the sweet spot for when models begin to converge on the details. Flat and out to sea to our south at D9 sounds fine to me. Plenty of room and time for things to trend our way. I’d be more concerned if it was showing a big storm this far out, knowing full well it won’t hold for a week and a half. .

Or… it’ll show a workable pattern again at 0z tonight [emoji23] The GEFS dropped 40” for the DC - Bal Corridor between now and February 3rd less than 48 hours ago. I don’t trust any model from 384 out, ensemble or otherwise. All of the waffling we’re seeing day to day on long range models indicates a pattern shift is definitely coming. I wouldn’t read much into the specifics until we get closer, as we’ve seen a crazy spread in outcomes over the past few days alone. Remember, ensembles like the GEFS showed us getting a MECS+ during last weeks outbreak only 7 days out, only to see the storm run 1,000 miles west of here. Hard to say models have a grasp on much of anything, especially in the 384hr timeframe. IMO, models have been struggling pretty hard with how they’re handling the PAC. The difference day to day, even run to run is pretty stark.

It can snow from late October through April, which is the wild part about that area. I was a freshman at UB the year of the ‘October storm’. I also witnessed it snow around 18” during finals week (the last week of April) one year; a day after it was nearly 60 degrees. The temp swings up that way are pretty wild. Never saw an event quite like “snownovember” (2014) or last week’s storm during my time up there, but saw plenty of 2-3 footers from LES and some fantastic synoptic snows as well. Most people don’t realize that they do synoptic snowfall well up there too. LES is the larger early season punch as the lakes are much warmer in November - mid January, but once you get into late season (feb into late march when the lake is mostly frozen) they also still cash in on powerful Low Pressure systems as spring and winter air masses collide over the plains and Great Lakes. They perform well during App runners, and clippers also serve them quite well. They even fail well, because there’s typically a backdoor cold front and an LES chance behind any storm that runs to their WNW so long as the lake isn’t frozen over. Can’t tell you how many times I witnessed rain to heavy snow events during the 5 years I lived in the Buffalo area. I love it here in the higher elevations of carroll county near the Fredrick cty line - but man, do I miss some of those epic winters up in the Great Lakes too. .

I’ll take p16 on storm 3 too. .