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Weekend Storm Discussion Part II, 2/18-2/19


stormtracker

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well..me and you get it pretty good, and I just like where we stand...someone else is going to come in and say I only get 0.2" QPF.....When I text you something referring to me and you being 3 blocks away from each other it isnt the same thing as forecasting for the entire region...

The GFS has had a really rough stretch the last ten or fourteen days. I hope to see the Euro give you guys a good bounce tonight, the GFS just seems to be playing catchup but is continually about 12 hours behind the consensus of the rest of the guidance.

Good luck.

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I like this too, it is very similar to the one that I created earlier.

Oh and I am the new guy BTW.... Hello everyone

Miller A not a Miller B. Not sure there will be as distinct a "transfer to the coast" as you are indicating. Also very bullish call.

Leesburg is not getting 8+ inches :lol::rolleyes:

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Miller A not a Miller B. Not sure there will be as distinct a "transfer to the coast" as you are indicating. Also very bullish call.

Leesburg is not getting 8+ inches :lol::rolleyes:

I based this off of the 18Z NAM run and the GFS with a lean towards the GFS. I still do not buy the southeastward shift and I think that it will be more to the north again at 0Z

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I based this off of the 18Z NAM run and the GFS with a lean towards the GFS. I still do not bu the southeastward shift and I think that it will be more to the north again at 0Z

Even with the storm farther north, you will also have to hold the slower timing to get snow to fall during nighttime hours. Still think 8+ inches is pretty excessive. 4-8 is a pretty bold call as well. We shall see though.

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All-in-all the models showed a good bit of consistency today, unless you are looking for perfect agreement three days out. 850 MB low appears to be about 100-200 miles SE of DCA with its pass on most of the models, which generally would provide some nice bands for our area. Good to see that the surface track from Alabama/Georgia to OBX is still in play. Still, this is one of those types of systems where minor differences could lead to significant forecast changes, and it will be a difficult one for the local pros to make a final call on.

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I based this off of the 18Z NAM run and the GFS with a lean towards the GFS. I still do not buy the southeastward shift and I think that it will be more to the north again at 0Z

Most likely there will be a shift north, that seems to be the trend the past few years with the outputs. However, lets not forget how drastic the northern cutoff will be with the confluence zone to our north add that to the weak cold front on Saturday evening drawing in drier dew points to the bottom 200mb or so means a longer period of virga at onset for those who are are north of the front. Alot of factors going into the northern edge issues.

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I kinda disagree here. The shift in both track of the low and strength have been quite subtle really. The precip shield has shift more south in relation to the track but still, I think we should be pretty happy.

18z gfs slowed the system down so i compared the panels from that were the most similar with low placement instead of place in time. 12z @ 78 and 18z @ 75 show the suface low in almost the same spot but 850's are clearly futher south than 12z. Maybe it means nothing but it's at least noteworthy.

540 line is further south on 18z too. Again, not sure if it is splitting hairs but imo it gives us a better chance at snow. 2m temps are much better on 18z. Freezing line in a MUCH better spot @ hr 75 on 18z and then most. Hr 78 shows the 32 degree line pretty much along I-95.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I'm just hoping for accum snow. 3-4" would be awesome and the 18z gfs gives me a much better chance of that than 12z. Sure I would love to have it all but I would gladly take less snow in exchange for a subfreezing surface. Kids gotta go sledding this year and a mud-snow ground isn't as fun.

I agree that the temp profile has improved, but the precip amounts are noticeably lighter. My concern is that we just can't seem to get a good 2-4/3-6 inch snow around here anymore. We either get blitzed or we wind up with < 1 inch crap. I would love a moderate snow event, but the trends have been for less precip and any further south trend gets us to fringe state. Here's to hoping for a better model day tomorrow.

MDstorm

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Most likely there will be a shift north, that seems to be the trend the past few years with the outputs. However, lets not forget how drastic the northern cutoff will be with the confluence zone to our north add that to the weak cold front on Saturday evening drawing in drier dew points to the bottom 200mb or so means a longer period of virga at onset for those who are are north of the front. Alot of factors going into the northern edge issues.

I see this as a really good thing. It will help fight the bl issues. I'll glady donate some precip to shave a few degrees off surface temps. 18z hinted at actual 32 degree suface temps along and west of I-95 while deform snow was kicking in. For god sakes, is covering the grass and letting the kids sled this year too much to ask?

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I'll take P006 please. Don't we normally get sucked into thinking the storm is tracking further south around this time (during inland runners when a south shift would bring the snow south out of PA close to the metro area), when in actuality it resumes its original more northerly track the next day?

I think guidance always has a bit of inconsistency 3 days out as the northern stream upper energy is usually over poor sampling areas. I thought all the models just looked funny with how it dropped in and phased up. How often do you see several vort maxes just hang out and be cool within 100-200 miles. I say it ticks back north gradually during the next couple runs. Slowing it down by 6-12 hours allows the HP to filter cooler/drier air down the apps.

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Here we go again. It's all about the track & temps. I usually feel good when we have already had an event that scores for us by this time of the winter. We have not had one a real snow event this year in my neck of the woods. I look with real caution and model guidance that hopefully gets even better in time with this event. Yes, something is better the nothing, but I am not that confident yet with all this winters let downs. I am for sure by this time tomorrow we will all know I hope where we stand. I am not ready to put out any prediction or forecast just yet. I would not be surprised at all if we hit jackpot or bust!

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Here we go again. It's all about the track & temps. I usually feel good when we have already had an event that scores for us by this time of the winter. We have not had one a real snow event this year in my neck of the woods. I look with real caution and model guidance that hopefully gets even better in time with this event. Yes, something is better the nothing, but I am not that confident yet with all this winters let downs. I am for sure by this time tomorrow we will all know I hope where we stand. I am not ready to put out any prediction or forecast just yet. I would not be surprised at all if we hit jackpot or bust!

I'd be stunned if we jackpot. It is going to be an imperfect event like 98% of our events. But I doubt we whiff completely.

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Gut feeling or something to back that up......I dont see anything that supports your "feeling " other than trends from previous events

HPC saying that it would probably be tomorrow before we narrow it down gives his idea some merit. A guitar string is how I'm seeing this. Larger oscillations gradually getting smaller as we get closer. Well see I guess.

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Gut feeling or something to back that up......I dont see anything that supports your "feeling " other than trends from previous events

Gut feeling. Climo. Model bias. Medium confidence guess. I think we need timing for suppression. And chances are that timing wont work out.

Is it within the rules to link to Rob Guarinos' "live weather blog" website? The reason I ask is because Mike Defino and Bobby Martrich each did very nice write-ups/blogs on why they believe this storm has a very strong potential of trending back north based on this winters weather pattern, the northern & southern stream interaction, the PAC NW, etc...

BTW, if its against the rules just let me know and i'll simply delete this post.

Thanks,

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Gut feeling or something to back that up......I dont see anything that supports your "feeling " other than trends from previous events

Zwyts' gut feeling can often do better than the models themselves.

I'm in his camp too and it's not wishcasting. Of course we could be both totally wrong but you have to analyze why the precip gets squashed in the first place. It's not a big massive block or some gorrilla strength hp to the N. Those types of features would have me thinking otherwise right now.

We're dealing with confluence, stream interaction, and timing. It's a miller A with a classic track. It tracks right along the gulf coast, across the se and off the NC coast. It easy to doubt the entire package slipping quietly ots without impacting the central and northern MA. If it does, it's bad luck with timing of the energy in the 2 streams. Sure it can happen but it's not like were fighting the obvious brick wall (like we did last year with some of the ss lows and crushing -nao).

This is a total weenie statement and I don't have any type of data to back it up but.......there is some anomalous warm sst's off the NC - NJ coast.

Gotta wonder if that can add some extra kick when the 850 heads offshore. Could help energize the deform band or could make the precip field a bit bigger. IIRC- when a low deepens a little quicker than expected shortly after heading off the coast, it takes a more northerly track than modeled. Not like a hard left or anything but just a slight jog. We're dealing in inches afterall.

If I'm talking out of my u know what here, please correct any bad info. This is just speculation on my part.

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Mods: Feel free to move this to the Met 101 section if you want.

To Wes: Right...I've been thinking about this for a while and I want to come up with a way to demonstrate this to people. I need to design a way to illustrate the following points

  • Creating an analysis / initial condition is statistical and probabilistic by nature, since all of the information we use has errors associate with it (even observations).
  • Only a small majority (52-58%) of observations have a positive impact on the forecast (or, another way to say this: between 40 and 48% of the observations we assimilate actually DEGRADE the forecast). We have methods to quantify this, and I'll throw some examples in the Met 101 threads. [this does not mean that those observations are actually bad, however]
  • If we blindly force the model to be close to observations, we get worse forecasts (and significantly so). I think I can demonstrate this with a toy model.
  • The best analysis does not necessarily yield the best forecast from a NWP model.

Sorry for the banter-ish post but I had to say, "Excellent, as usual".

Let me take a moment to plug the conference here...DTK will be at the conference this year with this info and much more re: models/modeling. Just FYI

Sold. I think I'll just have to go.

Can dtk or another met give a presentation on the computing power side of NCEP too? Would be interesting.

Indeed. Oleary might be a good candidate. I might be able to feed in some info on the medium and long term technology roadmap.

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I don't think will hit jackpot either especially with the constant let downs/pattern. 2009-2010 we could see the events coming way in advance because of the pattern. I do not think the storm will bust either because of way too many model agreements on there being a Low close enough for something. I love weather and always will, so I will take whatever. Even if it drops a wet dusting, I will take it. If we get a major snowstorm I will eat my words for what I said last week about winter being over.

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A slower ejection of the STJ wave would be better for us, wouldn't it ? Give the Nova Scotia vortex time to scoot off toward S. Greenland, like they have all winter ?

I thought the afternoon models started to lag a bit with that southern storm, but I didn't spend a lot of time comparing them to the morning runs Like to see that continue at 00Z. Baja lows usually are big precip producers, so I can't see all that moisture being shunted away completely, but a few hours later might benefit us up here on the fringe.

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