March 11-12 Storm - Model Discussion STORM MODE

[WeathermanB]

This euro is stupid the snow basically stops coming north and then proceeds to skip our area. Unrealistic.

[Wonderdog]

How can a storm as depicted on 6z run be so close to the coast and yet throw so very little precipitation to the West?Especially a rapidly developing storm?

[showmethesnow]

Looking at the setup and were close. But close is only good for when you are talking hand grenades or participation trophies. 

Though some may think we have 48 hrs. to see the changes we need (coastal is off at OBX at that time) the true time is probably roughly half of that. 500's are driving the evolution of this storm off the coast and by 24 hrs we will have a very good idea where we stand. At this point at 24 hrs on the models the shortwave axis just will not get this done. It is too positive and only reaches a neutral state as it runs through our region. What we need to see is that reaching a neutral state to our west so it is going negative tilt running through our region. This would have the effect of tucking the low closer into the coast farther to the north in a favorable position for the DC/Balt corridor as the upper levels catch up and go for the capture thus stalling  it.

And what we need to see in the next 24 hrs. to change that axis of tilt is probably too much to ask for. Mentioned this a few days ago and I still believe it, the biggest culprit we have is the 50/50 low. It is located too far to the south and east for our purposes. What it is effectively doing is suppressing the flow in front of our trough not allowing heights/ridging to build quickly enough. Pull that 50/50 out sooner (talking at 500 mb) we get quicker ridging and thus a quicker rotation of the trough towards the negative. Now every hour helps but for our purposes we probably need to see a bare minimum of 6 hours but in all likelihood it is more like 12. That is a lot to ask for within a 24 hour period of time. Now one other way to possible influence our trough axis involves the energy dropping down into it from Canada. If we see that drop rapidly and deeply on the backside of the through (models hinted at this yesterday) this would tend to push the trough towards a negative state. But at this point the models are now dropping this slower and in fact on top of the trough. This will not get it done. Won't even discuss what it means if that actually drops towards the front side (east). Now the fact that the models have moved away from this solution and not towards it should tell you all you need to know about our chances in this regards.

Now Mother Nature is a fickle beast and has a tendency to throw curve balls at you so you can never rule anything out. But at this point after looking at everything I really don't like our chances.

 

[snowmagnet]

1 minute ago, showmethesnow said:

Looking at the setup and were close. But close is only good for when you are talking hand grenades or participation trophies. 

Though some may think we have 48 hrs. to see the changes we need (coastal is off at OBX at that time) the true time is probably roughly half of that. 500's are driving the evolution of this storm off the coast and by 24 hrs we will have a very good idea where we stand. At this point at 24 hrs on the models the shortwave axis just will not get this done. It is too positive and only reaches a neutral state as it runs through our region. What we need to see is that reaching a neutral state to our west so it is going negative tilt running through our region. This would have the effect of tucking the low closer into the coast farther to the north in a favorable position for the DC/Balt corridor as the upper levels catch up and go for the capture thus stalling  it.

And what we need to see in the next 24 hrs. to change that axis of tilt is probably too much to ask for. Mentioned this a few days ago and I still believe it, the biggest culprit we have is the 50/50 low. It is located too far to the south and east for our purposes. What it is effectively doing is suppressing the flow in front of our trough not allowing heights/ridging to build quickly enough. Pull that 50/50 out sooner (talking at 500 mb) we get quicker ridging and thus a quicker rotation of the trough towards the negative. Now every hour helps but for our purposes we probably need to see a bare minimum of 6 hours but in all likelihood it is more like 12. That is a lot to ask for within a 24 hour period of time. Now one other way to possible influence our trough axis involves the energy dropping down into it from Canada. If we see that drop rapidly and deeply on the backside of the through (models hinted at this yesterday) this would tend to push the trough towards a negative state. But at this point the models are now dropping this slower and in fact on top of the trough. This will not get it done. Won't even discuss what it means if that actually drops towards the front side (east). Now the fact that the models have moved away from this solution and not towards it should tell you all you need to know about our chances in this regards.

Now Mother Nature is a fickle beast and has a tendency to throw curve balls at you so you can never rule anything out. But at this point after looking at everything I really don't like our chances.

 

Thank you for the explanation of what is going on to likely keep us from winning this game.  I love your last paragraph which is what I keep telling myself at this point. Storms generally don’t turn out exactly as they are forecasted, especially this kind of storm.  There are so many moving parts and Mother Nature controls what will happen... not the GFS or Euro.   So we can do our snow dance tonight and hope for the best. 

[Interstate]

Look at it this way. It would have melted in a day or so. Also, we are going to get an epic rant from PSU thqtxafter thisbcan only be more epic. 

[Interstate]

So this threat has basically become an Miller B screw job

[CAPE]

Mount Holly AFD. Interesting. Admittedly if this ends up correct, it would have more impact for places towards the coast and just NE of our general region..

Model of choice: we`re looking for global models to trend a little west of the current 00z/11th fcst cycles. Normally I buy into the NAM and NAMNEST for mid Atlantic cyclogenesis but only when it appears the NAM is onto the pattern with reasonable upper level and sfc evolution. Yesterdays 12z and 18z cycles looked reasonable but the 00z/11 cycle dropped the lead short wave so far south, deferring to a much stronger northern Sw, that I did not think this was realistic. I could be wrong but I anticipate the NAM to revert to a more energetic closer to the coast solution in the next couple of cycles and once that happens, then we need to pay closer attention to the 3KM NAMNEST. There still can be tracking issues but overall I think weighting the NAM ECMWF and GFS in that order will probably yield the best result.

[snowmagnet]

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

Mount Holly AFD. Interesting. Admittedly if this ends up correct, it would have more impact for places towards the coast and just NE of our general region..

Model of choice: we`re looking for global models to trend a little west of the current 00z/11th fcst cycles. Normally I buy into the NAM and NAMNEST for mid Atlantic cyclogenesis but only when it appears the NAM is onto the pattern with reasonable upper level and sfc evolution. Yesterdays 12z and 18z cycles looked reasonable but the 00z/11 cycle dropped the lead short wave so far south, deferring to a much stronger northern Sw, that I did not think this was realistic. I could be wrong but I anticipate the NAM to revert to a more energetic closer to the coast solution in the next couple of cycles and once that happens, then we need to pay closer attention to the 3KM NAMNEST. There still can be tracking issues but overall I think weighting the NAM ECMWF and GFS in that order will probably yield the best result.

If that is correct, that is good news, right? 

[psuhoffman]

32 minutes ago, Interstate said:

Look at it this way. It would have melted in a day or so. Also, we are going to get an epic rant from PSU thqtxafter thisbcan only be more epic. 

Both the EPS and gefs have a spike in snowfall day 9-12. Next 

lol 

[showmethesnow]

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

Mount Holly AFD. Interesting. Admittedly if this ends up correct, it would have more impact for places towards the coast and just NE of our general region..

Model of choice: we`re looking for global models to trend a little west of the current 00z/11th fcst cycles. Normally I buy into the NAM and NAMNEST for mid Atlantic cyclogenesis but only when it appears the NAM is onto the pattern with reasonable upper level and sfc evolution. Yesterdays 12z and 18z cycles looked reasonable but the 00z/11 cycle dropped the lead short wave so far south, deferring to a much stronger northern Sw, that I did not think this was realistic. I could be wrong but I anticipate the NAM to revert to a more energetic closer to the coast solution in the next couple of cycles and once that happens, then we need to pay closer attention to the 3KM NAMNEST. There still can be tracking issues but overall I think weighting the NAM ECMWF and GFS in that order will probably yield the best result.

If I were on the coast and to the north I would still very much be interested in this but as far as the cities (balt/DC) it is really hard to get any enthusiasm up for this at this time. Don't know, maybe the 12z can draw me back in with another tease just like it did for our March 8th system. But fool me once.....

[Ji]

RGEM and HDRPS? both have pretty good tracks for DC snow but the precip is light on the NW side

[psuhoffman]

1 minute ago, showmethesnow said:

If I were on the coast and to the north I would still very much be interested in this but as far as the cities (balt/DC) it is really hard to get any enthusiasm up for this at this time. Don't know, maybe the 12z can draw me back in with another tease just like it did for our March 8th system. But fool me one.....

Yea I'm done with this. In the end the stj just wasn't strong enough to get the phase to our west. It's missing that boat then phases once the NS dives in off the northeast. Typical Nina. If you exclude 1996 as an outlier most other Nina blocks we struggled too. We eventually scored something in 2011 but not until over a month of frustration and similar results to now. Blocking won't make the stj come to life. So if things can't amp until the northern branch phases were in trouble most times here. We need a storm that is healthy into the TN valley that jumps to eastern NC. Hard to get that with no Stj.  I think had this pattern come earlier we would have eventually lucked our way to something.  This pattern looks to linger a while longer and next jokes aside you and me up here might not be done with snow given the look the next 2 weeks.  It can snow up here into early April.  But most of this forum is hitting midnight here I think and even for us any event it unlikely to be significant.  Too much to overcome this late.  

 

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, Ji said:

RGEM and HDRPS? both have pretty good tracks for DC snow but the precip is light on the NW side

You just can't let it go can you. 

[Quasievil]

Weenie-ism aside, you have to look at how storms have evolved this year. Obviously there can be outliers but more often than not, storms will follow the same type of pattern for the year. 

[showmethesnow]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea I'm done with this. In the end the stj just wasn't strong enough to get the phase to our west. It's missing that boat then phases once the NS dives in off the northeast. Typical Nina. If you exclude 1996 as an outlier most other Nina blocks we struggled too. We eventually scored something in 2011 but not until over a month of frustration and similar results to now. Blocking won't make the stj come to life. So if things can't amp until the northern branch phases were in trouble most times here. We need a storm that is healthy into the TN valley that jumps to eastern NC. Hard to get that with no Stj.  I think had this pattern come earlier we would have eventually lucked our way to something.  This pattern looks to linger a while longer and next jokes aside you and me up here might not be done with snow given the look the next 2 weeks.  It can snow up here into early April.  But most of this forum is hitting midnight here I think and even for us any event it unlikely to be significant.  Too much to overcome this late.  

 

Actually kind of glad this pattern didn't set up earlier. Temps have kept snow ratios down a good deal for those to our north and east. But move this back a month and those to our NE would have been scoring even higher snow-totals, possibly substantially so, while in most likelihood we would have still been missing out.

[Ji]

14 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea I'm done with this. In the end the stj just wasn't strong enough to get the phase to our west. It's missing that boat then phases once the NS dives in off the northeast. Typical Nina. If you exclude 1996 as an outlier most other Nina blocks we struggled too. We eventually scored something in 2011 but not until over a month of frustration and similar results to now. Blocking won't make the stj come to life. So if things can't amp until the northern branch phases were in trouble most times here. We need a storm that is healthy into the TN valley that jumps to eastern NC. Hard to get that with no Stj.  I think had this pattern come earlier we would have eventually lucked our way to something.  This pattern looks to linger a while longer and next jokes aside you and me up here might not be done with snow given the look the next 2 weeks.  It can snow up here into early April.  But most of this forum is hitting midnight here I think and even for us any event it unlikely to be significant.  Too much to overcome this late.  

 

i hope this isnt your epic rant

[showmethesnow]

2 minutes ago, Ji said:

i hope this isnt your epic rant

Nothings going to beat PD3's rant from yesterday. What a looser. 

[psuhoffman]

15 minutes ago, Ji said:

RGEM and HDRPS? both have pretty good tracks for DC snow but the precip is light on the NW side

How is a track 100 miles outside the outer banks a good track?  For DC the perfect track is over the outer banks or just inside then just east of VA beach and 50-100 miles off ocean city.  For me it's a track just inside VA beach then up to near ocean city. This is way outside those. 

The only reason precip gets so far inland is a combo of the old dying system from the TN valley and the new trough diving in pulling some moisture in. There is no high and confluence is leaving as the next trough comes in. That means precip can bleed way NW but it also means it's light. Without the high and confluence you don't get that resistance that causes the heavy banding often seen near the back edge of big storms that makes the snowfall totals more evenly distributed vs a slow tailing off. This storm won't have that sharp back edge but the precip inland will be very light absent some major shift that gets better moisture convergence into our area. 

[psuhoffman]

9 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Actually kind of glad this pattern didn't set up earlier. Temps have kept snow ratios down a good deal for those to our north and east. But move this back a month and those to our NE would have been scoring even higher snow-totals, possibly substantially so, while in most likelihood we would have still been missing out.

Yea like 2011 but we eventually did score a mecs. So it depends what your focused on. 

[psuhoffman]

6 minutes ago, Ji said:

i hope this isnt your epic rant

It's coming 

[Ralph Wiggum]

13 minutes ago, Quasievil said:

Weenie-ism aside, you have to look at how storms have evolved this year. Obviously there can be outliers but more often than not, storms will follow the same type of pattern for the year. 

Yep, reminds me alot of the "bomb cyclone" from January that was headed for Bermuda then came back and took a similar track. Expecting basically a redux of that but to a lesser snow degree, ie, March wet snow vs January fluff piling up for those areas that are lucky enough to see flakeage. 

[osfan24]

So is Bastardi's January 96 blizzard off the table now?

[BristowWx]

1 minute ago, osfan24 said:

So is Bastardi's January 96 blizzard off the table now?

Good question.  Is DT still barking?  In their defense this did look pretty sweet just days ago.  Last Sunday were pretty enthused.

[psuhoffman]

4 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

So is Bastardi's January 96 blizzard off the table now?

If I know his style (which is why I got turned off to him) JB will simply shift his focus to New England and declare victory. "I saw the major amplification from a week out" conveniently ignoring that the storm hit 500 miles away from his intended target. 

[BristowWx]

4 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

DT has us in 4" up this way. Im not sure any model aside from the Canadians have us looking like that will verify. I expect he will change that when he issues his post first-guess call update to second guess for his final first call amended to the final call, not sure tho. 

I hope you get it I hope somebody get something ...for all the squabbling we do we are all just one big dysfunctional family..That becomes more evident when somebody from another form tries to come in and troll and we proceed to crush that person.  

[Ralph Wiggum]

I hope you get it I hope somebody get something ...for all the squabbling we do we are all just one big dysfunctional family..That becomes more evident when somebody from another form tries to come in and troll and we proceed to crush that person.  

We will see mood flakes at best or snow tv up here. It is what it is. Btw, I wasnt trolling the forum, just DT, so not sure if that was directed at me or not. I realized as soon as I posted it I shouldnt even poke humor at him as it wasnt relevant to discussion but before I deleted it you were able to grab the quote. No harm intended.

[showmethesnow]

Remember people, at least those that are still tracking, models will have an hour later starting time today. So plan your day accordingly.

[BristowWx]

6 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

16 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

I hope you get it I hope somebody get something ...for all the squabbling we do we are all just one big dysfunctional family..That becomes more evident when somebody from another form tries to come in and troll and we proceed to crush that person.  

We will see mood flakes at best or snow tv up here. It is what it is. Btw, I wasnt trolling the forum, just DT, so not sure if that was directed at me or not. I realized as soon as I posted it I shouldnt even poke humor at him as it wasnt relevant to discussion but before I deleted it you were able to grab the quote. No harm intended.

Ha No dude you misunderstood me entirely.  I was just thinking this morning about how much better the forum is with everybody who contributes  including you.  I’ve never read one trolling post from you.  even if we don’t get one flake  this was still fun.   Let’s just hope for a miracle at 12z.   

[smokeybandit]

I think we'd all be giddy with 3-4" 

 

https://twitter.com/crankywxguy/status/972829332455481344

[EastCoast NPZ]

Just now, smokeybandit said:

I think we'd all be giddy with 3-4" 

 

https://twitter.com/crankywxguy/status/972829332455481344

I think you'd be wrong.