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February Medium/Long Range Discussion Thread


North Balti Zen

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36 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

They got one storm. It's not like there has been a pattern to hits there. If it still looks like this when it's 72 hours out then I'll worry more. 

You could count last night for coastal DE. 3-4" is a decent storm, especially this winter. So some places in that area have had quite a nice January, over 15". That being said, I agree that the overall pattern is hardly suggestive of cold and suppressed.

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1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

They got one storm. It's not like there has been a pattern to hits there. If it still looks like this when it's 72 hours out then I'll worry more. 

I wasn't referring to any other location.  I'm talking dc/balt metro. It's 1/30, we've had nothing so far, and the chances of a mod snow, or legit light for that matter, in the foreseeable future look poor. I stand by my statement that some years our location can't buy snow. 

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17 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

I wasn't referring to any other location.  I'm talking dc/balt metro. It's 1/30, we've had nothing so far, and the chances of a mod snow, or legit light for that matter, in the foreseeable future look poor. I stand by my statement that some years our location can't buy snow. 

Your right it's been a really crappy winter. But we are in a better pattern now then we were most of the year. Yesterday's miss wasn't any snow shield it was just a vort that dove 50 miles too far southeast  Baltimore could have just as easily been the 3-4" total with some luck. But then someone else would be complaining it can't snow this year. It's not a widespread snow year. But that doesn't change the fact it's been a bad year. I guess my point was everyone south of New England is doing pretty bad except for a few locations that got lucky with a fluke hit. Like Richmond. We need to hope we get one such fluke hit before it's over. 

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9 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Your right it's been a really crappy winter. But we are in a better pattern now then we were most of the year. Yesterday's miss wasn't any snow shield it was just a vort that dove 50 miles too far southeast  Baltimore could have just as easily been the 3-4" total with some luck. But then someone else would be complaining it can't snow this year. It's not a widespread snow year. But that doesn't change the fact it's been a bad year. I guess my point was everyone south of New England is doing pretty bad except for a few locations that got lucky with a fluke hit. Like Richmond. We need to hope we get one such fluke hit before it's over. 

We may be saying the same thing, but you call it bad luck. But whatever you/me call it, it just doesn't snow on us. Lol

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54 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

New weeklies are out. Not awful overall. Not worth detailed analysis. Looks changeable. Does have AK ridge much of the time. I don't have much confidence in what its advertising, especially since the EPS has been so erratic lately.

Let me preface this by admitting the weeklies have been a wild goose chase all winter. They have flipped drastically lately. And it's getting late in the game.  So with those caveats out of the way...on to the analysis. 

Since their based on the last EPS run we knew they would start week 3 with a torch. Judging them week 2 is silly since we knew up to day 16 already. 

The relax lasts about a week. Then a pretty strong negative nao and AO develop along with a slightly negative epo. That sets up a pretty darn good pattern for storms from about feb 20 through to the end. Of course time is running out and temps become problematic more and more every day. But I suppose that still gives us a 2-3 week window where it "could" snow. 

Now before the angry hoards gather I'm just analyzing what it shows not giving it any credence or weight. The timing of what it's showing does seem to fit it's mjo forecast along with timing of a reload and effects of the current strat warm. If the signal for that end game is real we could hope perhaps the changes sneak up on the models and we get there sooner. Or we get lucky in the few chances we could get last minute in that look. You could argue the gefs is trying to get us there by day 15 and never relaxes things. At least 12z I didn't look at 18z yet.  The euro has been struggling past 7 days lately.  Both op and EPS are shifting a lot run to run. So who knows. 

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7 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

We may be saying the same thing, but you call it bad luck. But whatever you/me call it, it just doesn't snow on us. Lol

I guess I'm thinking big picture and you're thinking meso my yard picture. So I took my son to deep creek over the weekend. They had about 4-5" and are getting more all week. But the locals were saying how most of the winter was snowless and warm. So for them we're obviously in a different pattern.  So I'm willing to see how this new pattern plays out before declaring it more of the same. We may not get snow but it's not the same. It's just we're not really a good spot for snow in many patterns. So get a bad year where we don't get a great pattern to lock in and we will need some luck and it will be a struggle.  This year the pattern sucked for long stretches and when we had a few chances we didn't get the luck. We gave more chances coming up and maybe our luck changes but I don't see a trend that says atmospheric memory to me. Some storms missed bwi just northwest. A couple just southeast. The weather doesn't have some vandetta against you. You just only had a few shots and they missed. Get enough shots and odds are one hits. I'm just not sure we get enough shots this year. We've really only had 3 so far.  

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39 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Nature of the hobby when much of the sub forum is snow starved and 2/3 of winter is in the books.

True, but my neck hurts from the whiplash of excessive "wow, things look great, weenie run!" and then 6 hours later "everything sucks, it's a cutter, f**k this winter, it's over!", then back to "wow, things look great!!" again.  I can understand the frustration with how things have gone, but...yeesh, come on!  Reading pages of pearl clutching after every bad run gets old.

To be honest, at this point I'm just hoping we score something solid, whatever that may be.  A warning level event, I mean.  If we have to luck our way in during one week of a decent pattern, then so be it.  Something like Feb. 2006 or March 2009, say.  Can't let run to run variance kill everything, even if we end up with nothing in the end.  I still believe we do score an event that we'll all be happy with.  Will that make this a "good" winter?  No, I don't believe that unless we truly get unreal lotto luck and get a HECS.  But enough to soothe nerves so we don't look back at this as one of the ultimate fail winters?  Yeah, I think we can avoid that.

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10 minutes ago, Always in Zugzwang said:

True, but my neck hurts from the whiplash of excessive "wow, things look great, weenie run!" and then 6 hours later "everything sucks, it's a cutter, f**k this winter, it's over!", then back to "wow, things look great!!" again.  I can understand the frustration with how things have gone, but...yeesh, come on!  Reading pages of pearl clutching after every bad run gets old.

To be honest, at this point I'm just hoping we score something solid, whatever that may be.  A warning level event, I mean.  If we have to luck our way in during one week of a decent pattern, then so be it.  Something like Feb. 2006 or March 2009, say.  Can't let run to run variance kill everything, even if we end up with nothing in the end.  I still believe we do score an event that we'll all be happy with.  Will that make this a "good" winter?  No, I don't believe that unless we truly get unreal lotto luck and get a HECS.  But enough to soothe nerves so we don't look back at this as one of the ultimate fail winters?  Yeah, I think we can avoid that.

For me it depends how late and how big that event is. 2009 I finally got a 6.5" storm in march but the winter was so awful I still considered it a total waste. Keep in mind my avg and spread is way higher up here. Getting a 6.5 storm late to edge over 10" puts me in a bottom 10% winter here. 

Had that been 10" I probably would have felt better. A march 1999 ending with two 6" + snows in march probably would do it too. But at some point, and it's coming soon, the frustration of waiting so long almost ruins it unless it's big. 

 

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18 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I guess I'm thinking big picture and you're thinking meso my yard picture. So I took my son to deep creek over the weekend. They had about 4-5" and are getting more all week. But the locals were saying how most of the winter was snowless and warm. So for them we're obviously in a different pattern.  So I'm willing to see how this new pattern plays out before declaring it more of the same. We may not get snow but it's not the same. It's just we're not really a good spot for snow in many patterns. So get a bad year where we don't get a great pattern to lock in and we will need some luck and it will be a struggle.  This year the pattern sucked for long stretches and when we had a few chances we didn't get the luck. We gave more chances coming up and maybe our luck changes but I don't see a trend that says atmospheric memory to me. Some storms missed bwi just northwest. A couple just southeast. The weather doesn't have some vandetta against you. You just only had a few shots and they missed. Get enough shots and odds are one hits. I'm just not sure we get enough shots this year. We've really only had 3 so far.  

I'm not speaking just imby. I'm talking the 3 airports. Whatever.  I think next year will be very good to us. But that's for a different thread I suppose. 

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15 minutes ago, Always in Zugzwang said:

True, but my neck hurts from the whiplash of excessive "wow, things look great, weenie run!" and then 6 hours later "everything sucks, it's a cutter, f**k this winter, it's over!", then back to "wow, things look great!!" again.  I can understand the frustration with how things have gone, but...yeesh, come on!  Reading pages of pearl clutching after every bad run gets old.

To be honest, at this point I'm just hoping we score something solid, whatever that may be.  A warning level event, I mean.  If we have to luck our way in during one week of a decent pattern, then so be it.  Something like Feb. 2006 or March 2009, say.  Can't let run to run variance kill everything, even if we end up with nothing in the end.  I still believe we do score an event that we'll all be happy with.  Will that make this a "good" winter?  No, I don't believe that unless we truly get unreal lotto luck and get a HECS.  But enough to soothe nerves so we don't look back at this as one of the ultimate fail winters?  Yeah, I think we can avoid that.

I thought it was just me getting whiplash from this thread.  It's like watching a tennis match with how much my head is bouncing back and forth.

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4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

For me it depends how late and how big that event is. 2009 I finally got a 6.5" storm in march but the winter was so awful I still considered it a total waste. Keep in mind my avg and spread is way higher up here. Getting a 6.5 storm late to edge over 10" puts me in a bottom 10% winter here. 

Had that been 10" I probably would have felt better. A march 1999 ending with two 6" + snows in march probably would do it too. But at some point, and it's coming soon, the frustration of waiting so long almost ruins it unless it's big. 

 

I hear you...and overall for the most part agree with you about the March 2009 event.  There's nothing memorable for me from 2008-09 other than that one storm.  And I "only" got about 5-6" from that, saved mostly by some good bands that went through in the morning after even that looked like it might fail!  But still, impressive for early March and it was something; it was below freezing for two days.  I don't look at that year as a complete fail like 2001-02 or 2011-12, which had under 5" for me each of those years.  2007-08 is up there too though not quite as bad.  2005-06 had that one good event in mid-February, but that was much better farther north and west of the immediate DC area.  I still got on the order of 8-10" where I was at on Capitol Hill.  But the winter sucked otherwise (God-awful warm January!), and it was 60+ degrees the week after the storm.  Again, I look at that as a "meh" winter, saved (sort of) by one event, but not at the level of complete failure or near shut-out like the other years I mentioned.

I suppose I'm trying to say that I'm just hoping for something to make this a "meh", semi-forgettable winter rather than a "wow, that's a record-breaking fail!" one.

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11 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

I'm not speaking just imby. I'm talking the 3 airports. Whatever.  I think next year will be very good to us. But that's for a different thread I suppose. 

If we get a west based Nino next year... 

btw I have often wondered if the perception that a strong Nino is bad is skewed by the fact that they have all been east based. I'm not even sure we could get a modoki super Nino given the nature of how they develop and trade winds but if that places the tropical forcing in the right spot, then a super modoki could just mean 2010 on steroids!  Just a random thought. 

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2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

If we get a west based Nino next year... 

btw I have often wondered if the perception that a strong Nino is bad is skewed by the fact that they have all been east based. I'm not even sure we could get a modoki super Nino given the nature of how they develop and trade winds but if that places the tropical forcing in the right spot, then a super modoki could just mean 2010 on steroids!  Just a random thought. 

Too early to think of this now, I know, but I do wonder what we might expect in terms of the ENSO state as we get into next Fall and beyond.  This year was, as I understood it, a weakish Nina or nearly neutral.  So we'll see...do we level off and go back to a Nina state, or end up with another Nino (though not as strong as last year)?

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3 minutes ago, Always in Zugzwang said:

Too early to think of this now, I know, but I do wonder what we might expect in terms of the ENSO state as we get into next Fall and beyond.  This year was, as I understood it, a weakish Nina or nearly neutral.  So we'll see...do we level off and go back to a Nina state, or end up with another Nino (though not as strong as last year)?

And overall...is it true that the most likely winter pattern for us to get snow is a weak-moderate El Niño? (I've heard that a few times)

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