jm1220

And next run it will show 60F under a massive ridge, run after that a blizzard, etc.

There was a death band S of Richmond to Newport News earlier. Must have been 1-2”/hr under it.

The tone today is a monotone snow weenie sigh under our thin cirrus deck while SE VA gets their 2nd snowstorm in a week.

And for stores that sell ChapStick.

Well-good thing is that Mother Nature couldn’t care less what a bunch of weenies on a weather board post or try to “force”. We have no power over it. It sucks watching Richmond get hit again while we just have some clouds and dry cold, but reality couldn’t care less. We can just evaluate it and try to learn what we can while hoping that the pattern changes.

Yep-there’s a reason why we always have “bad luck” or shortwaves interfering with storm setups and amplification. The flow is too zonal/fast so we have interference all the time from competing s/w and the ridge placement/amplification out west is always off-ridge is too flat or pushed out of place. Maybe one day we can get “lucky” even in this pattern and we won’t have to deal with all this interference, but to me it just seems very hostile to getting any larger snow system around the city than a small 1-2” type clipper like we had last December. Once the ridge out west amplifies, we can get some real blocking and the SE ridge stays muted we can talk about something bigger.

If we can somehow get that trough/vortmax to track under us and better yet close off SE of LI. The ridge out west has to be steep enough to allow it to dig and some blocking to the north would be good to slow everything down and lock in a high. In this pattern that's how we get anything to happen outside of a lucky 1-2" type clipper like last year before Christmas in a fast zonal flow.

It’s also terrible for your car when it messes with the paint.

Doesn’t matter what any of us think-it’s what the pattern supports and how any storm evolves. Hopefully we can get an outcome where the S/W can dig and amplify close SE of us and there’s some blocking, so any high pressure isn’t booted east, and the storm will develop offshore and keep winds out of the north. We’ve seen that fast zonal flow either brings what we saw yesterday with suppression, or inland tracks/unfavorable lead up to the storm like early in the week. Could we see a good outcome on 12/13 or later in the month? Definitely and I hope so, but we need pretty significant mid latitude pattern changes to what we have now. Those are just facts and it doesn’t matter much whether the MJO is officially Phase 8 or whatever when other factors override it.

I’m not really paying attention to it at this point but a similar setup to last week would mean more rain coast/snow inland. If we’re blasted with southerly winds ahead of any storm it will rain in the city. Waters are still way too warm to allow snow with onshore flow in mid December-still around 50 at Jones Beach. We can maybe get away with it in Feb when waters are coldest for the year.

A borderline top tier event in Long Beach-altogether I think there was 12-14” there. The 12/5 portion was a huge surprise because the initial overrunning was supposed to be quick snow to rain but stayed all heavy snow (back in the good old days when primary lows transferred to the coast before they torched us). There was 7-8” that day and another 6” with the coastal storm part. Parts of LI under heavier banding ended with 20”. Closer to the city the banding was more spotty and I remember some lulls.

I’m going away from 12/19-23, guaranteed the Dec storm that gets Central Park over 4” happens then.

That was an amazing storm. I walked on the Long Beach boardwalk in the height of that and it was a whiteout. Some of the best blizzard conditions I’ve experienced. 1/4/2018 was up there too.

Few flurries here.

I think the main problem is the flow just won’t amplify when we need it to because of the ferocious Pacific jet which knocks the PNA ridge down or nudges it east too much. So even if we have more southern stream energy it will just get booted out to sea. We had plenty of storminess south of us last winter that couldn’t turn the corner. But when we have periods of -PNA, the SE ridge returns with a vengeance and we go back to cutter/SWFE, or risk any -NAO linking up with the ridge. Also in any Nina December we need to make opportunities count when we have cold stretches like these because odds are, later in the winter will be more hostile if anything and many have posted the stats about how we do around NYC when Central Park has over vs under 4” snow in December in a Nina. So I know it’s only 12/5 but given Nina climo, it’s frustrating we’re back to the exact same BS from last winter with wasted dry cold, suppressed garbage then warm/wet.