January Med/Long Range Disco Part 2

[clskinsfan]

3 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

Ji seems to have this winter nailed. This is pathetic. Also frustrating that the Euro is such a worthless model for us now. I'm going to completely stop paying attention to it.

Dont tell DT that he might have a meltdown. But yes. Something is wrong with the Euro this year. And the GFS has been decent so far. Who knows.

[showmethesnow]

8 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

That could hurt us. If a low gets going there it could cut off the flow to its north and dry out the overrunning. We could get stuck in a dead zone. 

Not going to go back and double check but I do believe it was helping a touch in that regards per that run. Not worth over thinking though. 

[RedSky]

3 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

DT might need to look into another line of work now that his only tool is broken. 

Yup I knew when he was leaning gung ho on the storm yesterday the threat was toast

This winter has become easy to predict where things will go 

 

 

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, Interstate said:

Or maybe the Upgrades on the GFS actually worked!!!

The gfs is better but I was comparing the current euro to its previous iteration. The biggest problem imo is it's made the bias to over amplify storms worse. Maybe not globally but where it matters to us.  When a storm actually is going to be amped up it does ok. The bomb. Last years march storm. It missed the warm layer but all the globals did. It was ok with track and strength. But the problem is it's amplifying almost everything so it teases us in the medium to long range with every weak system destined to be nothing by trying to spin up a storm from any fart in the flow that comes along. 

[MD Snow]

JMA gets .15 from dc/annapolis south and east!  

[Bob Chill]

3 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Anyone who doubts seasonal trends hasn't been looking at this winter.

I'm not surprised the coastal idea faded. That piece was tenuous. Front drying up is a bit of a letdown but that can still easily change for the better. We'll see how it goes over the next couple days. 

[clskinsfan]

1 minute ago, MD Snow said:

JMA gets .15 from dc/annapolis south and east!  

Of course it does. 

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I'm not surprised the coastal idea faded. That piece was tenuous. Front drying up is a bit of a letdown but that can still easily change for the better. We'll see how it goes over the next couple days. 

Problem is I don't like the way the trough is trending for that part either. 

[stormtracker]

I'm rooting for you guys from London. I'm in Europe until the 22nd. I seriously hope our region cashes out.

[Bob Chill]

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Problem is I don't like the way the trough is trending for that part either. 

The best global looked better than its previous run.

[Ian]

This could not have been predicted! 

I did miss y'all tho. 

[Ian]

7 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

I'm rooting for you guys from London. I'm in Europe until the 22nd. I seriously hope our region cashes out.

You're going to miss at least two cartoppers my friend.  

[Bob Chill]

This is a good example why I'll take a good pac over a -ao/nao every time. 

[gymengineer]

33 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

The gfs is better but I was comparing the current euro to its previous iteration. The biggest problem imo is it's made the bias to over amplify storms worse. Maybe not globally but where it matters to us.  When a storm actually is going to be amped up it does ok. The bomb. Last years march storm. It missed the warm layer but all the globals did. It was ok with track and strength. But the problem is it's amplifying almost everything so it teases us in the medium to long range with every weak system destined to be nothing by trying to spin up a storm from any fart in the flow that comes along. 

It may be worse now, but the Euro has had many cases of amplifying too far SW over the years. It wasn't alone, but I'm talking about notorious cases like 3/5/01. Locally, the one that sticks out and always makes me want to wait for other models to join was when we were at the 72-hr mark for March 20, 2016-- the 12Z Euro posted its sweetest run yet for our area of heavy snow (1"-type qpf) with falling temps.

And of course, that amplifying too early/too far SW bug was the source of the NYC forecast debacle for 1/26/15 when OKX went hard with the Euro over the GFS, forecasting a range that included the single-storm record. 

[Ralph Wiggum]

Yesterday's day 5 on top and today's day 4 on the bottom. 
 

Remember when there was a massive deep ULL over the Tennessee Valley and still digging? That was a fun run. It's fun to look back and reminisce.

[psuhoffman]

8 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Anyone who doubts seasonal trends hasn't been looking at this winter.

My take on this..not trying to change your mind or argue just giving my 2 cents which is more then it's worth, 3 times a decade we get an epic period where the base state pattern is good for snow.  There are rare years where that sets in late like 1958 and 2015 but those are usually ninos or neutral years. So odds are high we're  not in one of those years and we all know it. 

The other 7 winters or so it's like this. It will be a fight for every inch and we will fail most of the time.  Most of the threats we track will be flawed so our batting average will be very low. Lots of strike outs for every hit.  Those 7 winters won't end with great seasonal totals but 5/7 we will at some point luck into 1 or 2 acceptably decent events. About 2 will end in total failure with nothing more than scraps and fringe events like last year. Those are the odds based on climo the last 30 years. 

So that said if we're in one of those years we will have a 5/7 chance we can eek our way to a decent event or two somewhere. That's where I am at. I'm trying to avoid this being a total crap year like last year and will consider it a win if we can get one 6"+ area wide event or say 2 3-6" types. Get us to like 70-90% of Climo.

So far we've had 4 legit threats at about day5 and one ended acceptably and 3 failed. That's what I expect in a year like this.  If knowing every great has a 75% chance of failing is too hard to deal with I totally understand if some just tune it out and wait till the flakes are falling. That's cool. But I like tracking and there is a good chance at some point a storm will buck the seasonal pattern and snow and if I just get lazy and go pure persistence my percentages will look good but I'll have no fun tracking and I'll miss it when it does finally snow.  So I'll continue to identify threats and track even knowing each one has a high fail probability. But that's just my pov on this. 

[stormtracker]

10 minutes ago, Ian said:

You're going to miss at least two cartoppers my friend.  

I'm inconsolable 

[mitchnick]

16 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I'm not surprised the coastal idea faded. That piece was tenuous. Front drying up is a bit of a letdown but that can still easily change for the better. We'll see how it goes over the next couple days. 

The reason why I like thaws is there is a better chance when the winter pattern returns,  it doesn't come back identical to before. Usually,  waiting for a change in the early established pattern doesn't work as well. 14/15 it did change without the thaw and is probably the only exception that comes to mind. But I'm willing to try anything at this point and hope for the best instead of watching model run after model run with the same results. 

[Ian]

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

My take on this..not trying to change your mind or argue just giving my 2 cents which is more then it's worth, 3 times a decade we get an epic period where the base state pattern is good for snow.  There are rare years where that sets in late like 1958 and 2015 but those are usually ninos or neutral years. So odds are high we're  not in one of those years and we all know it. 

The other 7 winters or so it's like this. It will be a fight for every inch and we will fail most of the time.  Most of the threats we track will be flawed so our batting average will be very low. Lots of strike outs for every hit.  Those 7 winters won't end with great seasonal totals but 5/7 we will at some point luck into 1 or 2 acceptably decent events. About 2 will end in total failure with nothing more than scraps and fringe events like last year. Those are the odds based on climo the last 30 years. 

So that said if we're in one of those years we will have a 5/7 chance we can eek our way to a decent event or two somewhere. That's where I am at. I'm trying to avoid this being a total crap year like last year and will consider it a win if we can get one 6"+ area wide event or say 2 3-6" types. Get us to like 70-90% of Climo.

So far we've had 4 legit threats at about day5 and one ended acceptably and 3 failed. That's what I expect in a year like this.  If knowing every great has a 75% chance of failing is too hard to deal with I totally understand if some just tune it out and wait till the flakes are falling. That's cool. But I like tracking and there is a good chance at some point a storm will buck the seasonal pattern and snow and if I just get lazy and go pure persistence my percentages will look good but I'll have no fun tracking and I'll miss it when it does finally snow.  So I'll continue to identify threats and track even knowing each one has a high fail probability. But that's just my pov on this. 

It's been dry as something... for years now but especially lately again now. I am not sure this year's events have trended badly, though. We had a system back in and give us a decent little early season snow... everything else performed about as well as you'd expect or hope for in a winter like this. The mega storm probably should have somehow given us nothing so we got a little extra there as well.. as it backed in a bit in the end, too.  Until recently we were running basically average.. plenty of little events, which is usually how you get a winter to work out around here.  Our big problem lately is just precip period. 

I suspected we would have an about avg winter, perhaps on the plus side of avg... but that also included a good midwinter torch that has yet to show massive signs of showing up long, although I think we have more warm potential ahead than some might hope... we will have plenty more opportunities I think, and our best odds of something truly widespread  sizable are probably in the final weeks of winter.  

[Interstate]

30 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

The gfs is better but I was comparing the current euro to its previous iteration. The biggest problem imo is it's made the bias to over amplify storms worse. Maybe not globally but where it matters to us.  When a storm actually is going to be amped up it does ok. The bomb. Last years march storm. It missed the warm layer but all the globals did. It was ok with track and strength. But the problem is it's amplifying almost everything so it teases us in the medium to long range with every weak system destined to be nothing by trying to spin up a storm from any fart in the flow that comes along. 

I get where you are coming from... but isn't this the first full winter that parallel GFS is in production?  Maybe they fixed the over amp problem. 

[Bob Chill]

3 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

The reason why I like thaws is there is a better chance when the winter pattern returns,  it doesn't come back identical to before. Usually,  waiting for a change in the early established pattern doesn't work as well. 14/15 it did change without the thaw and is probably the only exception that comes to mind. But I'm willing to try anything at this point and hope for the best instead of watching model run after model run with the same results. 

Next week is the first potential event after the thaw so we'll see how it goes from there. I do like seeing large precipitation events crossing the country again be we have our hands full with what appears to be a peristant unfriendly pac. It's how we roll here the majority of the time. Big cold is dry and thaws are wet. That's been happening since way before I was born so it's not some new phenomenon. I spent most of the fall contemplating a sub par winter before getting fooled at the end with a transient -ao. As much as I don't enjoy sub par winters...this one is going pretty much as I expected in the snow dept. 

[mitchnick]

7 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Next week is the first potential event after the thaw so we'll see how it goes from there. I do like seeing large precipitation events crossing the country again be we have our hands full with what appears to be a peristant unfriendly pac. It's how we roll here the majority of the time. Big cold is dry and thaws are wet. That's been happening since way before I was born so it's not some new phenomenon. I spent most of the fall contemplating a sub par winter before getting fooled at the end with a transient -ao. As much as I don't enjoy sub par winters...this one is going pretty much as I expected in the snow dept. 

A moderate event here and mixed/rain on the mid/lower eastern shore will signal to me a change. But I'll settle for a moderate event here. Lol

[psuhoffman]

29 minutes ago, gymengineer said:

It may be worse now, but the Euro has had many cases of amplifying too far SW over the years. It wasn't alone, but I'm talking about cases like 4/9/96 and 3/5/01. Locally, the one that sticks out and always makes me want to wait for other models to join was when we were at the 72-hr mark for March 20, 2016-- the 12Z Euro posted its sweetest run yet for our area of heavy snow (1"-type qpf) with falling temps.

And of course, that amplifying too early/too far SW bug was the source of the NYC forecast debacle for 1/26/15 when OKX went hard with the Euro over the GFS, forecasting a range that included the single-storm record. 

Your not wrong the euro always had an over amped bias.  But this is worse. A lot of those examples you cited fooled all the guidance. That can happen. The models see something then some chaos in the pattern they didn't predict changes things. If they are all off it's more foregivable. And the bias wasn't as bad imo. Its over doing almost everything now. 

[Ralph Wiggum]

Next week is the first potential event after the thaw so we'll see how it goes from there. I do like seeing large precipitation events crossing the country again be we have our hands full with what appears to be a peristant unfriendly pac. It's how we roll here the majority of the time. Big cold is dry and thaws are wet. That's been happening since way before I was born so it's not some new phenomenon. I spent most of the fall contemplating a sub par winter before getting fooled at the end with a transient -ao. As much as I don't enjoy sub par winters...this one is going pretty much as I expected in the snow dept. 

GEPS says thaw is continuous with no end in signt. GEFS isnt as much AN in the East as the GEPS. If ever we were going to crown a new king in the name of the GFS family, now would be the time to shine.

[RevWarReenactor]

41 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

My take on this..not trying to change your mind or argue just giving my 2 cents which is more then it's worth, 3 times a decade we get an epic period where the base state pattern is good for snow.  There are rare years where that sets in late like 1958 and 2015 but those are usually ninos or neutral years. So odds are high we're  not in one of those years and we all know it. 

The other 7 winters or so it's like this. It will be a fight for every inch and we will fail most of the time.  Most of the threats we track will be flawed so our batting average will be very low. Lots of strike outs for every hit.  Those 7 winters won't end with great seasonal totals but 5/7 we will at some point luck into 1 or 2 acceptably decent events. About 2 will end in total failure with nothing more than scraps and fringe events like last year. Those are the odds based on climo the last 30 years. 

So that said if we're in one of those years we will have a 5/7 chance we can eek our way to a decent event or two somewhere. That's where I am at. I'm trying to avoid this being a total crap year like last year and will consider it a win if we can get one 6"+ area wide event or say 2 3-6" types. Get us to like 70-90% of Climo.

So far we've had 4 legit threats at about day5 and one ended acceptably and 3 failed. That's what I expect in a year like this.  If knowing every great has a 75% chance of failing is too hard to deal with I totally understand if some just tune it out and wait till the flakes are falling. That's cool. But I like tracking and there is a good chance at some point a storm will buck the seasonal pattern and snow and if I just get lazy and go pure persistence my percentages will look good but I'll have no fun tracking and I'll miss it when it does finally snow.  So I'll continue to identify threats and track even knowing each one has a high fail probability. But that's just my pov on this. 

I think most would see a below average year as a good year at this point

if dc averages 17 inches a year a below average year could be two six inch snowstorms or a 6 inch storm and two 3 inch storms.

we have been having trouble doing below average.....at least since the blizzard from  two years ago.

[Cobalt]

EPS heads a way from showing decent event, as expected. Only 1 great hit (4"+). Good news is, each ensemble member finds a way to get at least 0.1" of snow within the 5 day timeframe. 

[mitchnick]

8 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

I agree with Ian, if you looked at the chances we’ve had since early December, I’m not so sure we’ve had awful trends, in fact, it’s easy for me to see how this season could have been worse. Most of us were on a heater in early December. We had mega cold, though I know few of you care about that. The thermonuclear low that screwed the cities was weird but overall we’ve been pushing back warmth that I think is more typical in this ENSO regime. That’s a good thing.

To me, as long as the PAC doesn’t go to hell and stay there we’re going to have our chances. It won’t be the big bombs we love but nickel and diming our way to climo is a way of life. We’re just about to enter peak climo where we don’t need all the stars aligning to get snow. I think we’re ok provided we don’t flip to torch or go for a trough digging to Cuba again...

Wrt chances this year, the difference is that Salisbury is sitting at around 20" and tidewater Virginia isn't far behind.  

[attml]

I am just happy to see Ian is still alive!  I haven't seen him in a while!

[EastCoast NPZ]

1 hour ago, MD Snow said:

JMA gets .15 from dc/annapolis south and east!  

Thank goodness!  Those poor folks have had it terrible this winter; glad to see something finally work out for them.

[CAPE]

18 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

41 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Next week is the first potential event after the thaw so we'll see how it goes from there. I do like seeing large precipitation events crossing the country again be we have our hands full with what appears to be a peristant unfriendly pac. It's how we roll here the majority of the time. Big cold is dry and thaws are wet. That's been happening since way before I was born so it's not some new phenomenon. I spent most of the fall contemplating a sub par winter before getting fooled at the end with a transient -ao. As much as I don't enjoy sub par winters...this one is going pretty much as I expected in the snow dept. 

GEPS says thaw is continuous with no end in signt. GEFS isnt as much AN in the East as the GEPS. If ever we were going to crown a new king in the name of the GFS family, now would be the time to shine.

Not a thaw. Legit pattern change. Really bad looking Pac is going to run the show for a while. This should make Mitch happy. The "reshuffle". See where we end up sometime in early(or mid) Feb.