February Banter Thread

[Cobalt]

I respect your work, your analysis, and fully admit you know more about this stuff in your finger than I do in my entire body.
 
I think you are totally wrong on the climo stuff, unless the averages are wrong. Lets stay with DC, I said 17-18 inches in climo, you said 15. You claimed the "maps were old". But I had a bit of a chuckle, yesterday when a met literally came on here, and said DC was about 17.
So if you have 3 winters, 22, 18, and 32, and you call them historic, how do you defend that when 2 out of the 3 winters are just barely abovce climo?
If climo is 17, and we get 16 inches for the year, you'd call that, climo.
If climo is 17 and we get 18 inches, you call that historic.
Something ain't right there. You are clearly exageerating the positive and downplaying the negative. I guess that is really my main beef here. I am fully aware, this ain't boston, this ain't even NYC. But I feel like you try to pass bad years off as NORMAL and normal years off as amazing. I guess I don't get that.

Pretty sure that 3 year stretch was the biggest ever for Dulles. Only reason DCA average is 15 (I believe it's currently 15.4") is because it's skewed by huge years, and also a couple awful years. It was the first time since the 60s where DCA Got 3 above average years in a row, and we had a blizzard in the middle of it too. Even then, you realize that DCA is the worst place to officially measure snow for DC. They measured something like 6.6" of snow in the Feb 12-14 storm, while areas even in Arlington measured 10"+. In 14/15 DCA measured 18.8" while Dulles measured twice that. A 3 year stretch where DCA measured above average snowfall in all 3 is impressive to say the least. Also, in that time, Dulles measured over 120" of snow in that 3 year span. Even in that, we had many huge months/events. Blizzard of 16 being one of them, and even March 2014 where DCA got a foot of snow for the month.


.

[Bob Chill]

14 minutes ago, Ji said:

just looked up Lake Gaston. your not getting snow there lol....your way to close to chester, va shadow. That Lake might as well be in Florida

Oh, it's no doubt a downgrade in the snow dept. A big one at that. But the tradeoff is worth it big time. I love to fish and boat so for me personally...lakeside living > snow. 

[CAPE]

48 minutes ago, Mdecoy said:

I respect your work, your analysis, and fully admit you know more about this stuff in your finger than I do in my entire body.

 

That being said, I think you are totally wrong on the climo stuff, unless the averages are wrong. Lets stay with DC, I said 17-18 inches in climo, you said 15. You claimed the "maps were old". But I had a bit of a chuckle, yesterday when a met literally came on here, and said DC was about 17.

So if you have 3 winters, 22, 18, and 32, and you call them historic, how do you defend that when 2 out of the 3 winters are just barely abovce climo?

If climo is 17, and we get 16 inches for the year, you'd call that, climo.

If climo is 17 and we get 18 inches, you call that historic.

Something ain't right there. You are clearly exageerating the positive and downplaying the negative. I guess that is really my main beef here. I am fully aware, this ain't boston, this ain't even NYC. But I feel like you try to pass bad years off as NORMAL and normal years off as amazing. I guess I don't get that.

You have made it abundantly clear via the majority of your posts that there is a lot you don't get.

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

lol @goofus talk in the main

[CAPE]

GFS is king.

[mappy]

57 minutes ago, Mdecoy said:

I respect your work, your analysis, and fully admit you know more about this stuff in your finger than I do in my entire body.

 

That being said, I think you are totally wrong on the climo stuff, unless the averages are wrong. Lets stay with DC, I said 17-18 inches in climo, you said 15. You claimed the "maps were old". But I had a bit of a chuckle, yesterday when a met literally came on here, and said DC was about 17.

So if you have 3 winters, 22, 18, and 32, and you call them historic, how do you defend that when 2 out of the 3 winters are just barely abovce climo?

If climo is 17, and we get 16 inches for the year, you'd call that, climo.

If climo is 17 and we get 18 inches, you call that historic.

Something ain't right there. You are clearly exageerating the positive and downplaying the negative. I guess that is really my main beef here. I am fully aware, this ain't boston, this ain't even NYC. But I feel like you try to pass bad years off as NORMAL and normal years off as amazing. I guess I don't get that.

not a single person called 18" snow for DC historic. stop it. 

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

1 minute ago, C.A.P.E. said:

GFS is king.

3 days before something happens

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Mdecoy said:

I respect your work, your analysis, and fully admit you know more about this stuff in your finger than I do in my entire body.

 

That being said, I think you are totally wrong on the climo stuff, unless the averages are wrong. Lets stay with DC, I said 17-18 inches in climo, you said 15. You claimed the "maps were old". But I had a bit of a chuckle, yesterday when a met literally came on here, and said DC was about 17.

So if you have 3 winters, 22, 18, and 32, and you call them historic, how do you defend that when 2 out of the 3 winters are just barely abovce climo?

If climo is 17, and we get 16 inches for the year, you'd call that, climo.

If climo is 17 and we get 18 inches, you call that historic.

Something ain't right there. You are clearly exageerating the positive and downplaying the negative. I guess that is really my main beef here. I am fully aware, this ain't boston, this ain't even NYC. But I feel like you try to pass bad years off as NORMAL and normal years off as amazing. I guess I don't get that.

 I would reserve historic  for the 1/10 years we get 30"+ region wide. I would say good.  Actually I never used any adjective at all I just quoted facts and numbers and YOU labeled them historic. 

These are facts...based on statistics. Not my opinion. 

If you average DCA snowfall the last 30 years it's about 15". 

The two winters you mentioned rank 5 & 6 on DCA snowfall in the last 30 years.  

So only 4/30 years were more. 

Thats 13%. 

So dc only gets more snow then that 13% of the time. 

Those are all facts. And that's what I said. Then you made inferences and generalizations and attacked me with those not what I said which was just a list of factual data.  Thanks for the straw man argument but no thanks  

I'm not sure what your issue is with those facts.  You also don't seem to understand some things about statistics 

1.  I don't know who told you it was 17".  I don't care.  Nws uses 30 year means for climo.  Less is susceptible to anomaly and longer is susceptible to changing climo.  The current 30 year mean is 15".  Here is my source.  Look for yourself.  

2. Averages change every year.  When D.C. Updates theirs in 2020 unless we get more then about 30" of snow in the next two years it's going to drop.  They use 30 year means for climo because that's a good snapshot to see today's climo without too small a sample.  The 1980s were a pretty good decade and when they drop off next year D.C. mean is going to drop to 14" or so.  Right now using the last 30 years it's close to 14" unless this year turns around fast.

2. Average/mean, normal, and mode are 3 different things.  For example let's say out of 30 years 26 of them we get exactly 8". Then the other 4 years we get 100". Our mean would be 20". But 20" isn't a normal winter. 8" is. 8 is by far the most likely outcome. But 1/9 years we get a fluke huge year. The mean is skewed. Now I exaggerated a bit to illustrate but that's what's going on.

3.  DC mean might be 14 or 15 or 17 or whatever but by far the most likely outcome for winter is between 0.1 and 13.6".  Unless this year goes on a heater only 6 of the last 30 years D.C. Had more than 13.6". 80% of the time D.C. had 13.6" or less. Of those 80% of years the mean is 10.5".  And right now 15 years finished with less and 14 more. This year could make it even 15/15 if we get over 10.5". So 10.5 seems to be a "normal" winter. The most likely outcome. Not the same as average. 

Those are all facts.  That's not my perception or what I think or my feelings. Those are the snowfall statistics for D.C.  You are confusing average and normal or most likely. Not the same thing. A normal D.C. Winter is about 10". Anything between 5-13" honestly falls within 70% of years so that's our normal range. 

You can keep expecting 17" if you want but factual statistics say that will only happen 20% of the time. Do what you want with the numbers though. 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Mdecoy said:

I think what this boils down to is, climo is misleading. Its not really our average.

CwG did a writeup about this.

You have to take out the years that we got 56 inches, or 40+, because they skew it. Really DC averages about 10 inches of snow a year. Not 15, not 17.

So if we say 10 inches, which is more likely, and paint that up and down I-95 from DC to Delaware/MD border (in the 8 years here I've always had what DC has). We get a much more realistic portrait of the situation. The bar can be set much lower. We live are just on that edge of high snowfall, but just not quite there. Even 150 miles away would triple amounts in some cases. We are the screw zone. It is what it is.

 

This year is particularly hard when many southern areas have received more snow, and we are coming off a back to back year of non winter. Its not a good winter. Its below normal. This isn't one where you say "its what we should expect".

Most of this was spot on until the end...but you are getting there so I give you credit.  But we did not have back to back years of no winter.  We had a HECS in 2016.  That is like saying "so Mrs. Lincoln except for the assassination the play was great right?"  You can't conveniently ignore the HECS in 2016 to say it was a non winter.  If you start eliminating years where DC just got one huge snowfall as most of their snow then your eliminating even more "good" winters and climo gets even worse...I'm not going there.  We are NOT in the type of place that can afford to be that picky about how and when our snow comes. 

The other issue is you are assuming DC gets no more snow.  Yes if they do not this is a bad winter even by our meager climo.  But there are 5-6 weeks of snowfall potential left so its a bit premature to declare it over.  Let it play out. 

[usedtobe]

9 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

 I would reserve historic  for the 1/10 years we get 30"+ region wide. I would say good.  Actually I never used any adjective at all I just quoted facts and numbers and YOU labeled them historic. 

These are facts...based on statistics. Not my opinion. 

If you average DCA snowfall the last 30 years it's about 15". 

The two winters you mentioned rank 5 & 6 on DCA snowfall in the last 30 years.  

So only 4/30 years were more. 

Thats 13%. 

So dc only gets more snow then that 13% of the time. 

Those are all facts. And that's what I said. Then you made inferences and generalizations and attacked me with those not what I said which was just a list of factual data.  Thanks for the straw man argument but no thanks  

I'm not sure what your issue is with those facts.  You also don't seem to understand some things about statistics 

1.  I don't know who told you it was 17".  I don't care.  Nws uses 30 year means for climo.  Less is susceptible to anomaly and longer is susceptible to changing climo.  The current 30 year mean is 15".  Here is my source.  Look for yourself.  

2. Averages change every year.  When D.C. Updates theirs in 2020 unless we get more then about 30" of snow in the next two years it's going to drop.  They use 30 year means for climo because that's a good snapshot to see today's climo without too small a sample.  The 1980s were a pretty good decade and when they drop off next year D.C. mean is going to drop to 14" or so.  Right now using the last 30 years it's close to 14" unless this year turns around fast.

2. Average/mean, normal, and mode are 3 different things.  For example let's say out of 30 years 26 of them we get exactly 8". Then the other 4 years we get 100". Our mean would be 20". But 20" isn't a normal winter. 8" is. 8 is by far the most likely outcome. But 1/9 years we get a fluke huge year. The mean is skewed. Now I exaggerated a bit to illustrate but that's what's going on.

3.  DC mean might be 14 or 15 or 17 or whatever but by far the most likely outcome for winter is between 0.1 and 13.6".  Unless this year goes on a heater only 6 of the last 30 years D.C. Had more than 13.6". 80% of the time D.C. had 13.6" or less. Of those 80% of years the mean is 10.5".  And right now 15 years finished with less and 14 more. This year could make it even 15/15 if we get over 10.5". So 10.5 seems to be a "normal" winter. The most likely outcome. Not the same as average. 

Those are all facts.  That's not my perception or what I think or my feelings. Those are the snowfall statistics for D.C.  You are confusing average and normal or most likely. Not the same thing. A normal D.C. Winter is about 10". Anything between 5-13" honestly falls within 70% of years so that's our normal range. 

You can keep expecting 17" if you want but factual statistics say that will only happen 20% of the time. Do what you want with the numbers though. 

I've always wished the NWSused the median rather than the mean since that is in the middle of the distribution but as you note, the distribution still is skewed.  You're still more likely to see less than 10 inches than more that 20.  The strange thing is during the 11 year period starting in 1957-1958 most years got more than the mean.  Until I became a met,  that skewed my perception of what was normal.  I does seem like we now get more monster storms than back them but way less 6-10 inch events. 

[psuhoffman]

 

18 minutes ago, usedtobe said:

I've always wished the NWSused the median rather than the mean since that is in the middle of the distribution but as you note, the distribution still is skewed.  You're still more likely to see less than 10 inches than more that 20.  The strange thing is during the 11 year period starting in 1957-1958 most years got more than the mean.  Until I became a met,  that skewed my perception of what was normal.  I does seem like we now get more monster storms than back them but way less 6-10 inch events. 

I have begun looking at how different combo's of the long term phases of the NAO, PDO, AMO and some other factors seem to influence snowfall distribution patterns.  Its early on in the process...but I am curious how the different combinations add up to impact our snow.   Its really early in the process but one thing from just a glance at all the numbers...the current +AMO and +NAO phase we have been in the last 15 years or so seems to be a pretty crappy one for DC.  It seems to be the worst combo to make it most likely DC gets a totally crappy snowfall winter.  Luckily both the NAO and AMO phase is likely to flip soon.   

I do wonder though if the current phase, maybe the AMO, does make it more likely to get a HECS when the NAO does cooperate.  It seems whenever we get the rare blocking now some HUGE storm comes almost every time.  They don't always impact us.  Last march for example but that was a HECS.  Parts of PA got 20-30" from that.  Almost every major blocking episode ends with some monster storm somewhere in the east.  That wasn't the case before.  So our odds of a crap below 5" winter might go down but so might our chances of 20" snowstorms.  Just thinking out loud here. 

[Round Hill WX]

Where has Mitchnick been? Last I heard he was sick with the flu. Hope he is alright..

[Cobalt]

5 minutes ago, Round Hill WX said:

Where has Mitchnick been? Last I heard he was sick with the flu. Hope he is alright..

Yeah. about that..

He's fine. Apparently Mappy checked in on him a couple days ago, and he's fine. He's just browsing the sub-forum and not posting.

Only weird thing is I was looking through old storm threads reliving the past, and I saw that his rank was changed to "FORMER MEMBER", and his location was changed to "ACCOUNT CLOSED A MEMBER'S REQUEST". I don't know if I'm saying something that I shouldn't, but that was concerning, and I'm not sure what's going on. If I'm missing something mods, just let me know and I'll delete this post. 

[mappy]

58 minutes ago, Cobalt said:

Yeah. about that..

He's fine. Apparently Mappy checked in on him a couple days ago, and he's fine. He's just browsing the sub-forum and not posting.

Only weird thing is I was looking through old storm threads reliving the past, and I saw that his rank was changed to "FORMER MEMBER", and his location was changed to "ACCOUNT CLOSED A MEMBER'S REQUEST". I don't know if I'm saying something that I shouldn't, but that was concerning, and I'm not sure what's going on. If I'm missing something mods, just let me know and I'll delete this post. 

Not concerning at all. Account closed at member's request is exactly what it says. 

[mappy]

pretty sure you can connect the dots since you did the digging already. 

[Round Hill WX]

@Cobalt @mappy Thanks for the info. Glad to hear he is okay. Hopefully we’ll hear from him soon. Have a nice weekend!

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

6 minutes ago, mappy said:

pretty sure you can connect the dots since you did the digging already. 

We all will wish him well!

[yoda]

Damn, that sucks.  Going to miss mitchnick

[mappy]

FWIW: no one closed his account. those changes were made by him. 

edit: you can update your "member" text and location. which is what he did. 

[psuhoffman]

If he is gone that's very sad. We didn't always agree but I liked to debate him and he was a valued regular and long time contributor. He will be greatly missed.  

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

Someone with authority better lock reactions to posts from archived threads.

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

This is no 2015.

[yoda]

Oh hey there Capitals fans... good game tonight lol

Oh, who am I kidding... it's always awesome to beat the Craps, i mean, Caps

[Ji]

Oh hey there Capitals fans... good game tonight lol
Oh, who am I kidding... it's always awesome to beat the Craps, i mean, Caps

We need to trade holtby for a real goalie who dosent wilt under Pittsburgh pressure

[87storms]

best part of CO is that you can live pretty much anywhere in the city area and have easy access to the resorts.  i worked in highlands ranch for about a year.  some of my better work memories were on that contract...and the skiing...top notch.  gotta love that dry, powdery snow.  i'd like to get back out there again as i still have fam there, but the pac nw is also calling me for a visit one day.

[Jebman]

The refreshing cool weather was great for a jebwalk......... but the unbelievable downside is how on earth can it get so incredibly cold then still manage to rain on Sunday?

This is very reminiscent of a super strong El Nino ENSO episode.

 

However, I still think we will see some serious snow this month in the subforum region.

[smokeybandit]

Cold/dry, warm/wet.  Rinse, repeat.

[Jebman]

We are going to get COLD/SNOWY'd at least twice in the next 6-8 weeks in the Mid Atlantic. Stands to reason, we've seen the cold/dry and the warm/wet modalities, we are bound to get smashed by the cold/snowy one any time now.

[Ralph Wiggum]

As you say, it all depends on how bad the illness is really is. If it's the flu, then forget it. If it's just colds, then it shouldn't be a big deal. They can get hopped up on vitamins and stuff and once they're on the field the sinuses and everything open up just because of sheer adrenaline, as you mentioned. But the reports I've seen are that it's been bad enough for players to miss entire practices, and that it's the defense that's been hit the hardest to this point. Hopefully it's all just precautionary though.
I agree on the ceiling thing. The reason we've been underdogs is almost exclusively down to having Foles as our starter right now. The rest of the injuries haven't had a noticeable effect on us because we've had time to come to grips with them. If what we're seeing is Foles getting into his grove now that he's had gametime reps with the rest of the offense, then we do have a high ceiling. Brady is the wildcard, in my opinion, because he can turn it on in the biggest moments at the drop of a hat. You just can't count him out. We need to take advantage of our opportunities, and not allow Brady the chance to whip up a comeback. If we can keep him *relatively* in check and get some yards on the ground to open up the pass, then we've got a great chance at parading the Lombardi Trophy down Broad Street!

Mind games. If u honestly think every player didnt have a flu shot back in October then I have some beachfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. They have head colds at worst. I dont buy the whole "illness ripping thru the team" thing. I realize "reports" say players missed practice and I realize some were absent on media night. Still doesnt mean anything imo. Think about it....those reports have US talking about it on a weather forum. You dont think it entered the back of the opposition heads at the very least? Any edge this time of year and mental games are a HUGE part of the game and trying to gain an edge. I dont think it's anything.

[NorthArlington101]

Mind games. If u honestly think every player didnt have a flu shot back in October then I have some beachfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. They have head colds at worst. I dont buy the whole "illness ripping thru the team" thing. I realize "reports" say players missed practice and I realize some were absent on media night. Still doesnt mean anything imo. Think about it....those reports have US talking about it on a weather forum. You dont think it entered the back of the opposition heads at the very least? Any edge this time of year and mental games are a HUGE part of the game and trying to gain an edge. I dont think it's anything.

Flu shot is something like 10-20% effective. Doubt it’s mind games.