February Banter Thread

[showmethesnow]

8 hours ago, cae said:

I gotta admit that part of me wants to go outside and look north to see the polar vortex split.  Of course I can't because 1) that's ridiculous and 2) it's foggy.

But this might be the next best thing.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-77.92,88.65,329

Credit to Randall Gates for the idea.

Saw an amoeba split once. That was cool. And I didn't have to deal with fog either.

[smokeybandit]

I saw a banana split once.  It was nuts.  Ice creamed so loud

[CAPE]

The landscape is drowned. Please no more rain lol.

I honestly have not seen it this wet in a long time. Saturated ground, ponding, overflowing ditches, and shallow lakes in farm fields everywhere.

 

[showmethesnow]

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

The landscape is drowned. Please no more rain lol.

I honestly have not seen it this wet in a long time. Saturated ground, ponding, overflowing ditches, and shallow lakes in farm fields everywhere.

 

But.......... Drought?

[Jebman]

At least two inches in Dale City already, more on the way.

Flood warnings are up lol.

Very fun driving around in this, fog was very very dense in places, devilishly hard to see to drive lol

[CAPE]

14 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

But.......... Drought?

Honestly, I dont know how it was even officially "abnormally dry" here a week ago. I had 3.8" in January and well over an inch the first week in Feb. My Feb total is now 5.7" (and rising).

Man the Spring mosquitoes are gonna get an early start with all this standing water and the mild temps we are likely in for. I have a "non tidal" wetland in the woods well behind the house which is the source of my mosquito problems. I will be tossing the dunkers in there early.

[nw baltimore wx]

Not that anyone has lost any sleep over it, but the problems that I was having yesterday with the site not loading correctly must have been site based because now everything is working fine.

[Prestige Worldwide]

It’s amazing that since January 7th or so there literally has been nothing to track in my neck of the woods at all. A very boring winter 

[CAPE]

2 minutes ago, Prestige Worldwide said:

It’s amazing that since January 7th or so there literally has been nothing to track in my neck of the woods at all. A very boring winter 

Your yard is probably 130% of snow climo, at least. Quit whining.

 

[CAPE]

This SSW event seems like one of the most hyped in recent memory. Of course with all the strat experts on Twitter, tweeting...

Anyway, it does not appear as of now that it will have much if any "positive"(depending on perspective) impact for the eastern US. The upcoming look on the guidance continues to feature a persistent, mostly impressive SE ridge. Typical Nina.

On a related note, maybe low 70s on Thursday in a few spots? Might end up too cloudy, but it looks possible.

[PhineasC]

Let's bring on spring now. This winter is dead.

[psuhoffman]

Jb just pulled the plug on winter pretty much. I guess last night runs were too much for even him to ignore. 

[showmethesnow]

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Jb just pulled the plug on winter pretty much. I guess last night runs were too much for even him to ignore. 

Have weatherbell and don't think I read any of his material this winter nor watched any of his videos for that matter. If it was anyone else I would be asking how he did for the winter but being JB I probably already know that answer. Failed miserably as he went cold and snowy. Right?

[RevWarReenactor]

There is no denying it anymore these are historic snowless Times.

if dc gets no more snow it will be 2 years back to back of less than 4 inches total.

that has only happened one other time 2011-2012 and 2012-2013

go back to 1887 it has never happened. It’s not even that close.

maybe climate change. But for the people who say “this is normal” nope it’s historically horrible

[EastCoast NPZ]

7 minutes ago, Mdecoy said:

There is no denying it anymore these are historic snowless Times.

if dc gets no more snow it will be 2 years back to back of less than 4 inches total.

that has only happened one other time 2011-2012 and 2012-2013

go back to 1887 it has never happened. It’s not even that close.

maybe climate change. But for the people who say “this is normal” nope it’s historically horrible

And yet the beaches have crushed us, and climo, 2 years in a row.

[RevWarReenactor]

13 minutes ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

And yet the beaches have crushed us, and climo, 2 years in a row.

True this is limited to I 95 mid Atlantic maybe western areas too?

[MN Transplant]

Just got out of the rainforest room at the aquarium in Baltimore.  Reminded me how much I hate summer.

[CAPE]

40 minutes ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

And yet the beaches have crushed us, and climo, 2 years in a row.

The average snowfall right on the coast is basically a foot or so. Reality is in back to back winters there were 2 "fluke" events, each time in early Jan that got that area pretty much to climo, and they had another modest event or 2 thrown in. I dont see any rhyme or reason to it, just how things worked out during the coldest period of both this and last winter.

[midatlanticweather]

Now that is an inversion! Just wow!

 

 

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, showmethesnow said:

Have weatherbell and don't think I read any of his material this winter nor watched any of his videos for that matter. If it was anyone else I would be asking how he did for the winter but being JB I probably already know that answer. Failed miserably as he went cold and snowy. Right?

I don't read or watch regularly. I've maybe seen 5 of his videos all winter. But I know he was calling for a cold end to winter so I was curious what he was saying now given his habit of being stubborn but his post this morning sounded like "throwing in the towel"  I do agree with him that the mjo stalling at a high amplitude in phase 7 is a big problem.

The difference is I don't present to know what's going to happen past 10-15 days. It's fun to speculate but I'm not lying and pretending to hand a crystal ball. He acts like he knows then gets pissy or worse manipulative when he fails. I know at one time weeks ago he was saying feb 10-march 10 was going to be epic cold. Now today he said "I thought it would start feb 17 and then thought I was just a week fast and it would be the 24th but the mjo threatens to deny it completely". That's typical jb over the years. When what he says isn't happening stall stall stall and when the pattern finally gets close call victory and I told you so. And his followers buy it. 

As for his seasonal as usual he wasn't too bad further north. He does seem to forecast for NYC way better then here. His main problem is he seems to think we will get into snow that hits north of us way more then we do. I'm starting to think the reason might be he is ignorant of our climo. A few times I've heard him reference a storm that he thinks will hit D.C. then says "just like" but the analog was a fail. Most recently he did that with march 2013.  That was easy to remember. But other times he did it with a storm less note worthy but when I looked it up it was nothing or barely anything at D.C. And a bigger event for north of us. Back when he used to communicate with me and I still lived in northern VA he used to think I got 4-6" when in reality I had 1-2" all the time. That's a big deal. He seems to think D.C. Gets into northeast storms way more then we actually do. 

[WEATHER53]

In September I stated

Dec:-0.5 to +0.5. It was -0.5

jan:-3 to -5 with extreme or historic cold-for the last week of Dec and first 10 days of Jan it was spot on. The final of -0.3  was off from the -3 to -5 but had the general idea right

Feb: +2- likely by months end will be there

Snowfall:10-15". May end being too high but so don't think we get zip the rest of the way

we considered the La Niña and how you can get shots  if very cold air but it has trouble persisting and the highs tend to exit off NC and not Maine when you do not have a -NAO. Enso is first place parameter and in a Nina the NAOis a close second.

lurkers here-stay and observe the different methods. One of our biggest analogs was the month of July with its huge rainfall. Winter patterns are predictable when using the binocular approach of analogs rather than the microscope  approach of models which show all the solutions yet never predict one. Pied pipers of pattern change have always been a part of weather boards but enso and seasonal persistence are far from "lazy mans work" and are instead remarkably effective at avoiding hype.

 

 

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

14 hours ago, Cobalt said:

Who's Rian?

My bad

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

.48"today and .51" yesterday.  We bust even when there's no wintry precip!

eta: lessons to be learned from modeled qpf!

[87storms]

The problem with global warming in our area is that we’re already fringe, so it would make sense that if temps have indeed increased a couple of degrees then it’s reasonable to think it would make some dents into our nickel and dime winters.  I honestly don’t even know how ski resorts are staying in business these days.  If things stand that would be 4 relatively snowless winters here in a decade.  That ain’t good.

[psuhoffman]

5 hours ago, Mdecoy said:

There is no denying it anymore these are historic snowless Times.

if dc gets no more snow it will be 2 years back to back of less than 4 inches total.

that has only happened one other time 2011-2012 and 2012-2013

go back to 1887 it has never happened. It’s not even that close.

maybe climate change. But for the people who say “this is normal” nope it’s historically horrible

If you want to take the micro view then yea it's been awful. But climo here is a long average of extremes. Our variability is very high. So I tend to take a long term view. We have had 4 above average snow years and 4 below in the last 8. And 4" seems an arbitrary number to me. I don't really differentiate between a 4" winter and a 6" one. Both are pretty crappy. Plus all D.C. Needs is one fluke 2-3" event and then this winter falls into just a crappy year but not a historically awful 2 year stretch. But to me that wouldn't change the winter much imo. 

Also I would consider the 2000/01-2001/02 and 1996/97 to 1997/98 periods just as bad.  So what if one year had 1-2" more it still was back to back fails.  2012-2013 was worse.  You can't really compare to years further back then that because D.C. used to get a lot more snow 50-150 years ago.  Climo has changed.  So yea by 1800-1970 standards this would be epic fail.  But by our current climo it's just a typical 2 year fail like those other 3 examples in the last 30 years  

Plus the back to back thing is because we just had back to back la ninas during a positive nao phase. That's gonna be a fail in any time period. 

Its been a bad year. If we don't get anymore snow this is a pretty epic 2 year fail. But some started complaining way back in early January. No one was saying it's been good the issue was complaining over and over for months gets old. Especially when you start before the fail even happens. My march it gets insufferable. 

Yea it's not snowing. Sucks. I'm not happy about it either. But whining every day won't change it. Next year D.C. could have an epic year and get 20-30".  We just came off an epic 3 years so I kinda expected to pay the piper and we are.  If we have another total fail next year then I would agree some serious disappointment is warranted. 

[psuhoffman]

You make up nonsense to rail against. Government conspiracies and now attacking "pied pipers" on here that don't exist.  Go back and read the discussions in September and October.  Everyone....just about everyone in here was posting analogs to past years with similar factors. We all knew the odds favored low snow this year. There was a period in late fall when the ao/nao gave us a head fake and we had some hope because the nao is a huge wild card and can flip things that are otherwise hostile like the years 1996 and 2000 but we all knew that absent winning the nao lottery this year would be bad. 

But it can snow some in a bad snowfall year. Analogs tell you the general tone of the winter.  Most of us were leaning towards a below climo snow year. But analogs cant tell you when the fluke anomaly snow might happen during an overall bad year. Analogs didn't predict the one snow in February 1997 or march 99 or Jan 2001, or January 2002....even crap years often get one  or two fluke snows. We are all looking for that. Many of those are hidden within an otherwise crappy pattern and require some luck. 

No one on here was predicting some kind of epic year or glacier. There were times I was hopeful we might win in an epo pattern but I admired weeks ago I was wrong about that. Most others were more pessimistic than me. So who you are attacking with this nonsense is beyond me. No one is saying any of the stuff your railing about. You seem to confuse discussion about specific threats and pattern changes within the season with analog based seasonal forecasts which are very different. We did a lot of that back in the winter thread. Once the winter started we moved towards hunting getting lucky with a specific synoptic system and not as much seasonal analog based discussion.

[Cobalt]

11 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

If you want to take the micro view then yea it's been awful. But climo here is a long average of extremes. Our variability is very high. So I tend to take a long term view. We have had 4 above average snow years and 4 below in the last 8. And 4" seems an arbitrary number to me. I don't really differentiate between a 4" winter and a 6" one. Both are pretty crappy. Plus all D.C. Needs is one fluke 2-3" event and then this winter falls into just a crappy year but not a historically awful 2 year stretch. But to me that wouldn't change the winter much imo. 

Also I would consider the 2000/01-2001/02 and 1996/97 to 1997/98 periods just as bad.  So what if one year had 1-2" more it still was back to back fails.  2012-2013 was worse.  You can't really compare to years further back then that because D.C. used to get a lot more snow 50-150 years ago.  Climo has changed.  So yea by 1800-1970 standards this would be epic fail.  But by our current climo it's just a typical 2 year fail like those other 3 examples in the last 30 years  

Plus the back to back thing is because we just had back to back la ninas during a positive nao phase. That's gonna be a fail in any time period. 

Its been a bad year. If we don't get anymore snow this is a pretty epic 2 year fail. But some started complaining way back in early January. No one was saying it's been good the issue was complaining over and over for months gets old. Especially when you start before the fail even happens. My march it gets insufferable. 

Yea it's not snowing. Sucks. I'm not happy about it either. But whining every day won't change it. Next year D.C. could have an epic year and get 20-30".  We just came off an epic 3 years so I kinda expected to pay the piper and we are.  If we have another total fail next year then I would agree some serious disappointment is warranted. 

Pretty sure it was the snowiest 3 year stretch for Dulles on record too. I would agree that if that 3 year stretch wasn't as epic (Blizzard of 16 missed, or 14-15 last minute save failed), we would have the right to complain, but this decade hasn't been completely demoralizing for snow lovers in the DC region. Feast or famine, that's all. 

[Cobalt]

It's also interesting to note that Long Island has had 6 consecutive winters of above climo. That's nuts. They seem to catch all of the offshore storms that we miss. 

[Mordecai]

I've always wondered: How come a lot of members joined the forum in Nov-Dec of 2010? Did something happen back then that resulted in a lot of new members?

[Cobalt]

2 minutes ago, Mordecai said:

I've always wondered: How come a lot of members joined the forum in Nov-Dec of 2010? Did something happen back then that resulted in a lot of new members?

Pretty sure that was due to the old forum (EasternWx) shutting down during that time, and most of the people moving to this forum.