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December Med/Long Range Discussion

WinterWxLuvr

By WinterWxLuvr,
in Mid Atlantic

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mappy

mappy

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

The snowfall gradient on the euro op brings back some bad memories...think late Jan early Feb 2015. Lol

I saw that too -- its like the snow knows exactly where the PA/MD line is and won't cross it. 

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soadforecaster

soadforecaster

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, losetoa6 said:

The all time best gradient was spit out by the nam couple days before 12/19/09 blizzard. It showed no snow at the md /pa line and like 30 inches at i70 . Super razor cutoff...wish I had that saved.

i will never forget that cut off, I have the image saved on my old lap top. when I get home ill try to post it. but yes I remember about a 20 mile difference between nothing and then 3' it was just amazing.

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Bob Chill

Bob Chill

Posted
Posted
25 minutes ago, mappy said:

I saw that too -- its like the snow knows exactly where the PA/MD line is and won't cross it. 

I'm pretty relaxed this winter. I went in thinking it would be tame in the snow department so satisfaction from smaller events will be higher than normal. 

OTOH- if the 6z gfs happens I may consider walking the streets looking for things to kick. 

As said earlier, the active/fast pattern is madness beyond 3-4 days. We really have no idea how things will evolve with each shortwave. Shotgun style again. Looking forward to the first med range pop up. Those are the best. Short notice and trend better towards the event. We had quite a few of those in 13-14/14-15. 

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Eskimo Joe

Eskimo Joe

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I'm pretty relaxed this winter. I went in thinking it would be tame in the snow department so satisfaction from smaller events will be higher than normal. 

OTOH- if the 6z gfs happens I may consider walking the streets looking for things to kick. 

As said earlier, the active/fast pattern is madness beyond 3-4 days. We really have no idea how things will evolve with each shortwave. Shotgun style again. Looking forward to the first med range pop up. Those are the best. Short notice and trend better towards the event. We had quite a few of those in 13-14/14-15. 

Years like this can feature the surprise event that busts in favor of snow.  Case in point:  Jan 2011 commute from hell.  Those storms with high societal impacts are always fun.

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WxUSAF

WxUSAF

Posted
Posted
34 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I'm pretty relaxed this winter. I went in thinking it would be tame in the snow department so satisfaction from smaller events will be higher than normal. 

OTOH- if the 6z gfs happens I may consider walking the streets looking for things to kick. 

As said earlier, the active/fast pattern is madness beyond 3-4 days. We really have no idea how things will evolve with each shortwave. Shotgun style again. Looking forward to the first med range pop up. Those are the best. Short notice and trend better towards the event. We had quite a few of those in 13-14/14-15. 

You're upset at the 6z GFS?? We just miss out at a lot more, but shows the most snow for us,  verbatim, of any run for several days. I'd hit it.

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psuhoffman

psuhoffman

Posted
Posted

Finally had a minute to dig into the overnight ensembles.  Mean snowfall ticked back up on the GEFS on both 0z then again 6z and is now back about where it was with the crazy weenie 12z run yesterday with about 5-10" across the region SE to NW.  Euro mean ticked up about 1/2" and is now around 3-6" across the region from SE to NW.  Looking into specifics though shows some more meaningful takeaways.  First the mean snowfall increases dramatically as you head north of our region.  That indicates to me our bigger problem is going to be systems tracking to our north not suppression.  There are several waves were talking about here, maybe as many as 6 in the next 2 weeks, and of course its very possible that one of these stays weak and gets suppressed south of us.  But if we end up with no snow at the end of this pattern my guess is it will be because the majority of the systems went north of us not south.  The other take away is even the GEFS with its healthy snowfall mean gets there through chaos.  The individual members disagree completely on where the snow comes from.  A few of them get snow snow into our area with the Monday/Tuesday wave.  A few more focus on the mid week stuff.  A few hit with the 12/17 storm.  Still more have something in the 12/19-20 is timeframe and then a couple have something towards xmas eve.  There is no single event that is high probability where a majority show a hit.  So we are talking about 5 or 6 opportunities but each taken individually is low probability.  My take would be odds would favor one of these to produce at least some snow across the area.  Odds improve the further NW in our region you are obviously.  If we are lucky we could get multiple hits.  Most of the ensembles that show big totals get there by several moderate hits, not one big storm.  So with some luck we could be talking 3 snows here.  Of course there are a few members where we throw snake eyes and get shut out.  So that is there too.  As has been said the way each f these systems is shifting around run to run and within the run on the ensembles means we are talking short lead times to get details.  I have not even begun to look at specifics on the Monday thing yet.  It would not take much adjustment to turn that into a legit event for our area.  Stuff after that is still way out in this pattern, especially when each wave will effect the events behind it. 

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psuhoffman

psuhoffman

Posted
Posted

Something I've noticed is on the ensembles there seems to be a greater spread between the eventual track of each system then on the operationals.  Many of the op runs show almost an identical track for each of these waves so that by the end of the run the same area gets blasted over and over and over again.  That area is usually north of us.  Some of the op runs have one of these systems sagging a bit south and clipping us but just about every op run the last few days has the vast majority of these systems focusing just north of us.  The ensembles on the other hand show more spread between the track of each system and thus have more hits.  Not totally sure what to make of that discrepancy.  What I take from that in the good column is often with these types of true arctic air masses the eventual baroclinic zone is a little south of where the models show it 7 days away.  If that happens here that "getting blasted with snow" zone shifts down into us.  Of course the flip side is if the models are over estimating the southward extend of the cold and the whole patter shifts just 100 miles north of where it is now we are pretty much out of the game and its a cold dry warm wet patter for the next 2 weeks. 

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psuhoffman

psuhoffman

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, yoda said:

16-17th :axe:

I thought we were going to be good but 850s go bye bye as heavier precip comes in

I knew we were done when it started digging the trough down deep into the west after the midweek wave bombs to our northeast.  That sends the High down to our southwest, eventually ending up in TN.  We need those highs to slide across to our north and end up near Lake Placid NY as these systems come in not sliding across to our south so we get blasted with southerly flow as the get east of us.  Bottom line is if we end up with the Positive NAO and negative PNA shown on this run of the GFS its going to be difficult to score snow no matter how much cold air is around.  We can make due with both drivers in a kind of ambiguous neutralish state but this run goes hard core western trough positive NAO and thats going to pretty much cut anything to our west no matter what the antecedent air mass is.  The only good news is that its one run of one model in a range that has been unreliable at best lately.   Plus even if this is how it shakes out, the cold is still around and if things shift at all we could have threats after that period.  Of course with bad luck we could waste 2 weeks of arctic air then when things moderate we get a decent -nao and its wasted. 

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Bob Chill

Bob Chill

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Bob likes to say we hope to get something to show up in the medium range, and he's usually right, but right now we are going to have to get it to show up under about 72 hours.  There is huge volatility in the models right now beyond about 4 days.

There will be no long tracking in the pattern. No chance. We'll probably end up long tracking one of these deals and all of a sudden models will say "hey! it gon snow in 4 days!". 

I don't see how any good precip maker will be all snow. I think that's obvious to all of us now. And that's fine. Lets just get something going so we can have fun with an obs thread. 

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Bob Chill

Bob Chill

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

You're upset at the 6z GFS?? We just miss out at a lot more, but shows the most snow for us,  verbatim, of any run for several days. I'd hit it.

Crap, you guys must think I'm half blind or drunk...I meant the 0z euro. Not the 6z gfs. 

How's this lookin for good times? lol

lol.JPG

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