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February Mid/Long Range Discussion


George BM

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44 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

This is the 12z eps meteogram for dca. There are only about a half dozen decent events for the sun-tues window but there's a decent splattering of small events so the period has something going for it for now. I scanned the members and it's a huge mixed bag or ways to get winter wx. A consolidated coastal is a big minority but in the range. Most of the events that had snow were frontal/overrunning types of deals. 

 

A repeating theme with the ens runs are multiple chances over 12 days starting Friday. We're going to need as many chances as we can get to pull something good off. We have a really good chance at getting at least 1 small event over the next 2 weeks (not including tomorrow).

What I like about this winter vs last year is at least there are trackable events; the upcoming pattern will have no shortage of things to track as long as people don't expect 12" powder from each event.  I'll take the precip first and work out temps afterwards.  

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24 minutes ago, nj2va said:

What I like about this winter vs last year is at least there are trackable events; the upcoming pattern will have no shortage of things to track as long as people don't expect 12" powder from each event.  I'll take the precip first and work out temps afterwards.  

I was thinking about that today as well. It hasn't been fruitful but it's been interesting. Snow has fallen a half dozen times and the ice on the pond I skate was at least 10" thick. That counts for something. Last year was a legit disaster. This year is just stingy. On a scale of 1-10 I would give this winter a 4 if it ended today. Last year was a 2. I can't give it a 1 becuase it had 1 event. We can go virtually snowless here so 1's are reserved for that. 

 

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4 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I was thinking about that today as well. It hasn't been fruitful but it's been interesting. Snow has fallen a half dozen times and the ice on the pond I skate was at least 10" thick. That counts for something. Last year was a legit disaster. This year is just stingy. On a scale of 1-10 I would give this winter a 4 if it ended today. Last year was a 2. I can't give it a 1 becuase it had 1 event. We can go virtually snowless here so 1's are reserved for that. 

 

I agree with you. We've had plenty to track, just not much has materialized. If you want to play the luck game, we were a bit of good luck, and 50-150 miles away from having most of this sub-forum being near climo or above (Dec 8-9, Jan 4th, Jan 16th event). Winter started early, and we had a shot to be above climo, but instead we're going for the more typical la nina climo look. I'm okay with that. We're not staring at a torcher for February as we were for last year. In fact, a lot of people in this subforum have bested last year's snow total. I honestly like how our winter may finish. Below climo, but not bad for a La Nina year. Here's to hoping we get a moderate event this February.

Weeklies look pretty juicy 

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41 minutes ago, Cobalt said:

I agree with you. We've had plenty to track, just not much has materialized. If you want to play the luck game, we were a bit of good luck, and 50-150 miles away from having most of this sub-forum being near climo or above (Dec 8-9, Jan 4th, Jan 16th event). Winter started early, and we had a shot to be above climo, but instead we're going for the more typical la nina climo look. I'm okay with that. We're not staring at a torcher for February as we were for last year. In fact, a lot of people in this subforum have bested last year's snow total. I honestly like how our winter may finish. Below climo, but not bad for a La Nina year. Here's to hoping we get a moderate event this February.

Weeklies look pretty juicy 

I'm sure a lot of people disagree with my rating and would give this year a 1 or a 2 but we can get some really warm winters with extended shutout periods and the local ski areas can barely stay open. This year is way above those. If I hit climo snow I automatically give it a minimum of a 6 because we hit climo well under 50% of the time. 

Weeklies basically keep the same pattern we're going into for the entire month of Feb so we'll find out if we can pull off decent snow again with a -epo/+nao soon enough. March comes in like a lamb though. Which is fine because by March normal or AN temps are really nice. That part of the run was new though. We had at least 3 weekly runs in a row showing a legit winter pattern the first week. Now they break down the -epo right at the end of the Feb. If that happens then winter is most likely over. 

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1 minute ago, osfan24 said:

If February rocks I can live with that.

Yeah I concur.

The Eps weeklies are probably useful for about a week to 10 days beyond the day 15 ens run they are based on. I kinda doubt March ends up wire to wire warm. We really need the cold at the beginning though, and it is certainly possible the current pattern continues into the first week or so of the month. CFS weeklies still keep the same general good look going through at least the first week in March fwiw.

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I'm in the camp that this year isn't that bad also. I posted these numbers this morning but I'll say it one more time here because I really think it's sobering and revealing.  

DCA has only had more then 14" of snow 8 times in the last 30 years. That's even less then 3 times per decade. The other 22 years or 73% of the time, DCA had between .1 and 13.8". The mean of those 22 years was 7.8". 

So 2-3 times a decade we get lucky and it snows easy. The other 73% of the time (the majority or NORMAL) DC averages 8". That's a normal winter. People need to stop thinking the 27% are normal and expecting that every year and complaining the 73% of the time we get a regular winter. Basically once you accept this isn't one of the lucky minority winters the bar should be 8". Above that puts D.C. into top half of winter territory as sad as that is. 

Looking at where we are and how the pattern looks for a solid 4 weeks ok guidance there is no reason to think we can't get there.

Of course the numbers are a bit better for IAD and BWI.   But the general idea is the same.  Ill do the numbers for those locations too because I'm curious myself and post in banter later. 

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1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

I was thinking about that today as well. It hasn't been fruitful but it's been interesting. Snow has fallen a half dozen times and the ice on the pond I skate was at least 10" thick. That counts for something. Last year was a legit disaster. This year is just stingy. On a scale of 1-10 I would give this winter a 4 if it ended today. Last year was a 2. I can't give it a 1 becuase it had 1 event. We can go virtually snowless here so 1's are reserved for that. 

 

Yeah, I’m at a 4 for winter here — I’m at about 20% of my climo for the year.  But its been fun tracking and “radar hallucinating” hoping for some last minute 50 minute mile shifts to get in the game on the storms just missing to our S and E.  I can’t complain about lack of snow anymore now that we have a house in McHenry - the week between Christmas and New Years was pretty awesome....15” or so and single digit highs.  This winter out there is night and day compared to last year too.

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1 minute ago, Ji said:

I doubt it will show that much

This one is going to get on our nerves. We already saw the top end run but in reality h5 is kinda strung out between the 2 streams. We're going to see all kinds of annoying variations with a lot of light events and an occasional decent run. The vast majority of ensembles have some sort of precip event during the sun-tues window so something overhead or close will probably show up nearly every run. 

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2 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

<it has been pretty bad>

<lipstick for pig sales through roof>

Oh, there's not doubt it's been bad but it gets much worse. 11-12 and 16-17 are fine recent examples. Anything 5 and below are pretty bad on my personal scale. Just trying to properly stratify the badness. 

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14 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

<Just because it can be worse doesn’t mean this hasn’t been a crap winter so far>

<stepping back out now so as not to violate the official it’s not so bad views>

From a regional standpoint, it hasn't been an awful winter. It's just that folks north south east and west of us are having decent winters. That's all lol. 2011-12 and 2016-17 were crappy for just about everyone in this entire region. 

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3 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

GFS took a step in a positive direction for Friday.

Up to .4-.5 qpf now. Lol. So we're getting the precip we hoped for but need to shave 5-8 degree at the surface. That's going to be tough but at least there's precip. Ji said it would make him happy if we can just get some precip out of the event. 

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1 minute ago, Bob Chill said:

Up to .4-.5 qpf now. Lol. So we're getting the precip we hoped for but need to shave 5-8 degree at the surface. That's going to be tough but at least there's precip. Ji said it would make him happy if we can just get some precip out of the event. 

its a completely different event than was modeled a few days ago....The Icon has that look but the GFS still has no wave of low pressure

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