March medium/long range disco

[MountainGeek]

Just now, showmethesnow said:

It would be civil war in here if that snowfall map verified.

Nah -- PSU will save the day with his snow bbq offer.

[Fozz]

1 minute ago, showmethesnow said:

It would be civil war in here if that snowfall map verified.

It would really suck for those in the immediate I-95 corridor who didn't get the southern snows in January and then get screwed with a few north and west storms.

[BristowWx]

2 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

It would be civil war in here if that snowfall map verified.

March requires extra special conditions for the cities as you know.  But anyhthng is better than warm/dry.

[brooklynwx99]

I think that blocking is a more realistic option in the next 7-14 days. There is a major system that should push through S Canada in 5-6 days. This will trigger higher heights in the Greenland region. This is shown clearly on both the GEFS and EPS in seven days, which is much closer in time than previous blocking mirages. If the system pushing through Canada is weaker, then blocking might not even develop. The GEPS is a good example of this. The OP GFS and Euro have been moving towards stronger blocking, but OP runs at long leads should obviously be taken with a large grain of salt. The GEFS has been known to develop blocking out of seemingly nothing in the LR, but I don't believe that this is the case this time. The GEFS has support from the EPS around 7 days, and there is a defined reason for the blocking's development. 

If blocking develops, then the chance for winter weather on the east coast is elevated (it's still low, but higher than normal). The 18z GFS shows what could happen if strong blocking actually develops and stays in place. I'm personally waiting until Monday to see if this blocking is legit. If blocking proves to be non-existent, then winter is effectively over. 

EPS

GEFS

GEPS

[psuhoffman]

50 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Can you give me an example where the Atlantic has trumped a bad Pacific?

Bob gave a good answer. January 1987 is another example where the Atlantic overcame a positive epo. Neither operates independently. It's a balancing act. How they play off each other. The better one is the less you need the other. But since we need a good pattern to get snow the status quo or a net neutral balance between the two won't work.  We need the balance to be in our favor so a great pacific can offset a great Atlantic and vice vs.  I think the AO is such a high correlation because it's difficult to get too hostile a pacific with a very -AO because the worse issue in the PAC is an AK vortex or western Canada trough. And both of those would be more difficult to sustain in a -AO so there is some bleed over effect between the two. 

[psuhoffman]

20 minutes ago, MountainGeek said:

Nah -- PSU will save the day with his snow bbq offer.

Im down. Would be fun. I've wanted to make one of the forum gatherings but they always seem to be a weekend I am at debate or when I was still playing soccer had a game.  They plow the crap out of rt 30 which is only 1/4 mile away and I have a motorized snowblower with 24" clearance so I could keep the private road passable.  I got out during the blizzard last year.   If that didn't stop me I doubt anything else will. 

[psuhoffman]

26 minutes ago, MountainGeek said:

Nah -- PSU will save the day with his snow bbq offer.

If this actually happens then yea you all should come up.  There is a liqueur store in walking distance also!  

[MountainGeek]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

If this actually happens then yea you all should come up.  There is a liqueur store in walking distance also!  

Hoping it doesn't verify quite like that....that gradient is just WRONG for the tortured folks within the District.

That's really cool that they keep your main road plowed so well......I thought about offering to be a backup location if the timing didn't work out for you to be available, but there's no way anyone is getting to my place. Last year after the big one we had 33" on the ground and I had the driveway clear to the main road by noon. BUT it took them 2 DAYS to get to us with the first pass on the main road and that was with a large bulldozer. 

[psuhoffman]

Well earlier some were trolling the gfs and wondering why we don't just always follow the euro. With the exception of the op gfs which agrees with the euro/EPS, the sides have flipped and it's the EPS that is now trolling us with a better look

[BristowWx]

7 minutes ago, MountainGeek said:

Hoping it doesn't verify quite like that....that gradient is just WRONG for the tortured folks within the District.

That's really cool that they keep your main road plowed so well......I thought about offering to be a backup location if the timing didn't work out for you to be available, but there's no way anyone is getting to my place. Last year after the big one we had 33" on the ground and I had the driveway clear to the main road by noon. BUT it took them 2 DAYS to get to us with the first pass on the main road and that was with a large bulldozer. 

It's not good for EZF or CHO either.  But snow is a tough game so let the chips fall as they will.  Until 0z when it will look different.  

[xcolger]

We are due for a second coming of the Storm of the Century. I was too young in '93. I'm now in my prime and "the clock" is ticking. Let's (esp us younger enthusiasts) bag a biblical SOTC-rivaling event and check it off the bucket list asap.

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸Make America Great Again🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[WinterWxLuvr]

1 hour ago, brooklynwx99 said:

I think that blocking is a more realistic option in the next 7-14 days. There is a major system that should push through S Canada in 5-6 days. This will trigger higher heights in the Greenland region. This is shown clearly on both the GEFS and EPS in seven days, which is much closer in time than previous blocking mirages. If the system pushing through Canada is weaker, then blocking might not even develop. The GEPS is a good example of this. The OP GFS and Euro have been moving towards stronger blocking, but OP runs at long leads should obviously be taken with a large grain of salt. The GEFS has been known to develop blocking out of seemingly nothing in the LR, but I don't believe that this is the case this time. The GEFS has support from the EPS around 7 days, and there is a defined reason for the blocking's development. 

If blocking develops, then the chance for winter weather on the east coast is elevated (it's still low, but higher than normal). The 18z GFS shows what could happen if strong blocking actually develops and stays in place. I'm personally waiting until Monday to see if this blocking is legit. If blocking proves to be non-existent, then winter is effectively over. 

EPS

GEFS

GEPS

All 3 of those scream marginal cold to me. Look at the flow across the country.  Yes, I know it's a smoothed mean.

That baginess off the coast of British Columbia has seemingly been there all winter.

[WinterWxLuvr]

2 minutes ago, xcolger said:

We are due for a second coming of the Storm of the Century. I was too young in '93. I'm now in my prime and "the clock" is ticking. Let's (esp us younger enthusiasts) bag a biblical SOTC-rivaling event and check it off the bucket list asap.

Sent from my LGLS676 using Tapatalk
 

Good luck.

Youre gonna need it.

[Bob Chill]

3 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

All 3 of those scream marginal cold to me. Look at the flow across the country.  Yes, I know it's a smoothed mean.

That baginess off the coast of British Columbia has seemingly been there all winter.

Yea, it's not a big cold look but Canada is loaded up on the means pretty good at least. There will be cold highs dropping down. If we can get a track under us there will be cold to tap. That's the only shot because anything other than an ideal track is lights out for snow chances. PA northward has a much better shot but it's not a shutout pattern here....yet

[xcolger]

Good luck.

Youre gonna need it.

[/quote/]

And if I win, we all win:

Stronger Together
-G

Sent from my LGLS676 using Tapatalk

[WinterWxLuvr]

7 minutes ago, xcolger said:

15 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Good luck.

Youre gonna need it.

[/quote/]

And if I win, we all win:

Stronger Together
-G

Sent from my LGLS676 using Tapatalk
 

LOL.  It was called the storm of the century but it's possible that it was the storm of the half millennium.

[MountainGeek]

6 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

LOL.  It was called the storm of the century but it's possible that it was the storm of the half millennium.

Since '93 we rolled out a new century AND a new millennium.......so you're saying we should be good to go in either case right? 

[psuhoffman]

28 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

All 3 of those scream marginal cold to me. Look at the flow across the country.  Yes, I know it's a smoothed mean.

That baginess off the coast of British Columbia has seemingly been there all winter.

Bob hit it well but I'll add that the threat is there within that mean if you apply how that could evolve. If the block is strong enough to lock in that PV lobe under it that we see there, the next northern stream system would be forced to dive in under it. The EPS does this. The gefs is more iffy. Geps says nope. But from that point shown on those maps it's easy to see how that could go right. It probably won't but the threat is there. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

13 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Bob hit it well but I'll add that the threat is there within that mean if you apply how that could evolve. If the block is strong enough to lock in that PV lobe under it that we see there, the next northern stream system would be forced to dive in under it. The EPS does this. The gefs is more iffy. Geps says nope. But from that point shown on those maps it's easy to see how that could go right. It probably won't but the threat is there. 

They can't go wrong forever.  Sooner or later.

[motsco]

prob won't see another 70+ degree day until mid April.  oh well springs over.. 

[Interstate]

So the 18z might be the last fantasy land storms we see for the winter

[psuhoffman]

14 minutes ago, RidingTheModelWithMostSnow said:

So the 18z might be the last fantasy land storms we see for the winter

Your such a ray of sunshine. 

[Interstate]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

Your always such a ray of sunshine. 

This winter has worn on me...  It sucks when VA Beach has 14 times the snowfall I have had this season.

[psuhoffman]

20 minutes ago, RidingTheModelWithMostSnow said:

This winter has worn on me...  It sucks when VA Beach has 14 times the snowfall I have had this season.

It's been rough. Gfs shifted the boundary north and takes a system just north. Ggem went south and actually takes a snow event south of us day 8-10. But 36 hours ago a clipper was hitting NYC and now it's squashed to nothing south of us so worrying about shifts of 100 miles day 8 is silly. We will see what happens. 

[RevWarReenactor]

On 2/28/2017 at 10:20 AM, psuhoffman said:

That's because the short range pattern has been crap all winter so naturally people that like to track weather look to the long range. I'd much rather spend my time on tangible threats but there weren't any. Now if your the kind of person who just wants snow and the chase isn't fun then you would have been better off just not paying any attention. But some of us enjoy the analysis and tracking. 

There is some truth to the long range trolling us all winter too. But many of us noticed it a long time ago and pointed it out numerous times. We discussed how there is obviously something the models miss or under weight at long leads that is overriding the other pattern influences.  So at times the guidance saw a favorable mjo or nao or whatever and thought ok it's going to do "this". But as we get closer that other factor that's been leading to ridging in the east takes over. 

My guess is a combo of the cold pool off the west coast of North America combined with the warm sst combo in the eastern tropical PAC and off the east coast of America.  

That cold pool is the exact opposite of the warm pool that helped us so much in 2014. That's might be a pretty significant player and in the future I'll give it more weight because there were a lot of similarities this year and 2014 yet such drastic opposite results and that feature sticks out as one reason. 

The warm sst off South America and off the east coast combined with that is just bad. The pacific cold pool means we are fighting the flow coming on off the west in the northern stream and the warm sst down there is pumping warmth into what is already a bad flow and pumping ridging even more. Sprinkle in the qbo and those 3 factors were too much to overcome. The first two would fight off any attempt to get cold into the east. Again and again cold shots would be deflected and ridging would fight back. 

I love that kind of diagnostic discussion but I'm not sure many others do. But it's not been unnoticed. But other then to point it out and temper expectations I'm not sure how much more we could have done to factor it in. We all have been low on expectations I've not heard anyone be bullish lately. We're just discussing possible outcomes. And there we're some rare instances where the ridge was beat down for a small window so you can't completely dismiss things out of hand. I think most have handled it well. 

Ok, fair enough.

I agree if you just like tracking party cloudy skies, than cool. That is awesome!! That is true commitment to this.

For me, there has to be a legit chance of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

[psuhoffman]

17 minutes ago, Mdecoy said:

Ok, fair enough.

I agree if you just like tracking party cloudy skies, than cool. That is awesome!! That is true commitment to this.

For me, there has to be a legit chance of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Even in the worst winter there are legit chances. One big storm went just to our south. One went just north. We had an ice storm. Two clippers barely missed one south one north. And a couple other times a system sheared out. We had a bad pattern 90% of the winter and we lacked any luck the other 10. But even in the worst winters you don't know the outcome of each specific threat until it's over. No one predicted absolutely no snow all winter so it's not like just because we knew this was likely a bad winter we should just pack it in and give up on anything. Most bad years we luck and fluke our way to 1-2 snow events like the eastern shore did. 

On top of that there are lessons to be learned in failure. I've seen some things and will know a little more next time. The journey is part of the experience even if the destination sucks. 

[BristowWx]

10 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Even in the worst winter there are legit chances. One big storm went just to our south. One went just north. We had an ice storm. Two clippers barely missed one south one north. And a couple other times a system sheared out. We had a bad pattern 90% of the winter and we lacked any luck the other 10. But even in the worst winters you don't know the outcome of each specific threat until it's over. No one predicted absolutely no snow all winter so it's not like just because we knew this was likely a bad winter we should just pack it in and give up on anything. Most bad years we luck and fluke our way to 1-2 snow events like the eastern shore did. 

On top of that there are lessons to be learned in failure. I've seen some things and will know a little more next time. The journey is part of the experience even if the destination sucks. 

did you like what you saw on the overnight runs?  I didn't hear "step back"  but I also didn't see "continued improvements"...I start my day with coffee and wondering what happened overnight. 

[psuhoffman]

Quick rundown.  Euro and EPS held serve with a pretty good threat window day 8-15.  Op euro has a great setup day 10 for a storm around day 11/12 and ensembles and control support it.  The general idea is an initial system bombing to our northeast then something coming across as the trough digs in behind the first system  lots of cold available.  

The gefs is doing what the EPS was a couple days ago.  Weaker 50/50 feature or Quebec PV lobe and so it pulls the trough back into the west and and ridging in the east.  6z did take a slight nudge towards the EPS but not impressive yet  

The geps appears to agree with the gefs bit this is a perfect example of how a mean can be misleading.   On the mean there is weak ridging across the south and avg to slightly below across the north.  Looks closer to the gefs.  But looking at the members about 70% agree with the euro on a major trough and storm in the east day 10-15.  A few are snow.  Others are close but the surface is warm, it is mid march, but that still puts it in the euro camp.  There are lots of cold rain results in the EPS also so that's a threat obviously this late.  The mean looks bad because a few members develop a super ridge that skews things and most pop a ridge before or after the storm and timing differences combined with the extreme warm minority camp combine to wash out the details and hide the storm signal but it's there.

On another note...The model war has flipped sides. The euro and EPS is trolling us hard.  The geps agrees on a big east storm in the mid month and the gefs is playing dr no.  There were other times the euro played the yes role too like mid December and early feb when we had a couple 4-6" EPS runs that produced nothing.  So at the least when this fails we can cool it with the euro worshiping for a while. Yes it's better but it fails too and you can't just look at one thing and ignore all else. 

[terpsnation]

18 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Even in the worst winter there are legit chances. One big storm went just to our south. One went just north. We had an ice storm. Two clippers barely missed one south one north. And a couple other times a system sheared out. We had a bad pattern 90% of the winter and we lacked any luck the other 10. But even in the worst winters you don't know the outcome of each specific threat until it's over. No one predicted absolutely no snow all winter so it's not like just because we knew this was likely a bad winter we should just pack it in and give up on anything. Most bad years we luck and fluke our way to 1-2 snow events like the eastern shore did. 

On top of that there are lessons to be learned in failure. I've seen some things and will know a little more next time. The journey is part of the experience even if the destination sucks. 

Apologies for this banter, but I 100% agree with you. I have lurked here for 6 years reading what you all post, and I have to say that I've probably learned more this winter than any other.  It's one thing to see what we need to go right in order to get snow, but it also seems equally as important to see what factors will put us in poor patterns and result in winters like we've seen this year.

Thank you to you and all others that have persevered and continued to provide excellent analysis of the models and overall discussion of weather in our area.

/banter

[showmethesnow]

After looking at the overnight GEFS and EPS I want to point out something that may be a key player in our upcoming pattern and any potential we may see. 

Both are in good agreement with the pinched off PV lobe that rotates through south-central Canada around day 5/6. Once it became obvious several days ago that the NW troughing would have the final say that feature pretty much became a non-player. And we see that with the overnight runs. Keeps the feature to far to our west before it makes its move northeast dragging the associated trough with it. And yet what it does afterwards may be part of the key in the setup a couple/few days later.

As this feature rotates northeast it helps to pump up the heights in front of it into Greenland. Now this alone would be a good feature whereas we see blocking in Greenland. But the other part of the key that makes it very interesting is what we are seeing in the Pacific. The troughing that screwed up our chances earlier in the period was induced by very strong ridging we see in the Berring straits. This strong ridging is the key.

Now this is the look we saw a day ago on the GEFS. Though elongated the PV is fairly solid and somewhat consolidated. We see good ridging in the Berring sea that is pinching into the PV from the Left. Yet the ridging in Greenland is fairly weak and substantially east based so we see little effect on the right side of the pv.

 

Now move this forward a day to last night's run. We still see the strong ridging in the Berring sea pinching the pv from the left. But now we see stronger ridging on the east side over Greenland which has been moved westward. Fairly significant changes can now be seen with the pv. We are now seeing a partial split of the pv as the ridging from both the east and west are now extending towards each other.

 

 

Now this new look in itself is a much better look then we saw just 24 hours prior and though still a little to far north for my tastes, still has upped the potential a bit. The best part is that it leaves part of the pv in general region of central Canada for an extended period of time. As an added bonus the EPS, although I didn't show it, also likes this idea and has a very similar solution to the GEFS. As an added, added bonus this setup actually begins to be realized roughly around day 6/7. Under 10 days. Woo Hoo!!!

Now this is mere speculation on my part so take it for what it is worth. Looking over the last couple of days of runs, as they have evolved with the pattern, the models have been slowly and steadily working towards this elongated pv solution to the point where we are now seeing a partial split. Now who's to say they are done yet? Could we possibly see a full on split? If this were to occur we would most likely see that PV lobe drop even farther south as the ridging connects and builds over top of it. Now depending on the actual placement of that pv we could see our chances increase quite significantly if this were to occur. 

Anyway, long story short, at this point I feel a little better about our chances then just 24 hours ago.