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January/February Winter Storm Threat Tracker


Ji

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45 minutes ago, DCTeacherman said:

EPS snow mean looks better at 18z compared to 12z for the Tuesday/wed deal.  

Edit: to be specific the 24 hour snow map centered at 144 hours is 2-4 for the whole area as opposed to 12z when there was a stripe of 1-2 over dc and immediate area.  Also the 4-6 line bumped south closer to the PA/MD border.

Have an 18z EPS snow map?

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43 minutes ago, DCTeacherman said:

EPS snow mean looks better at 18z compared to 12z for the Tuesday/wed deal.  

Edit: to be specific the 24 hour snow map centered at 144 hours is 2-4 for the whole area as opposed to 12z when there was a stripe of 1-2 over dc and immediate area.  Also the 4-6 line bumped south closer to the PA/MD border.

That's really encouraging honestly. The euro op was a razor edge of win/fail. 12z EPS was similar to the gefs with 80% showing at least a trace and around 14 of those showing 2" or more. Only 2 of those showing 5-6". Mean qpf as snow was around .15.

From what you describe it sounds like double the qpf as snow within the members. Too bad we can't get meteograms for the off hour runs. Would like to see the spread. If we could get .3 - .4 qpf as snow we could get a warning level event with high ratios. Then howling winds and single digit temps...yea, sign me up for that.

It's really not a good setup for snow so my expectations are reasonable. The prospect of what type event it would be with crashing temps and gusty winds is very intriguing though... 

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One thing about real deal arctic airmasses (capable of setting daily records, where all the airports are lower single digits and outer suburbs below 0) is that they seem to come in with some kind of frozen precip even if just 1-2 inches of snow with the front. Think back to Feb 2015, early Mar 2014, and going back further Jan 94/Feb 96. All were big time arctic outbreaks, the latter two featuring the pool of -40C air in the midwest, similar to what we are seeing on the models for next week (more recent ones were in -34 to -38 range iirc). Maybe someone with a better memory can think of a time when all the airports were near zero w/o snowcover (Jan 2014 might be the best example but there was a 2-4 inch event a few days before the arctic front and I seem to recall that front underperforming the hype a little around here)

Now part of this might be a chicken and egg thing - without snow cover the boundary layer probably moderates enough along the trajectory that by the time it reaches our area, temps are out of the extreme range. But I do think it has to do with the nature of the air mass and that true arctic air is a) usually preceded by an cold enough antecendent airmass that any precip produced by the front can be frozen, b) the shallow nature of the cold lends itself a bit more to an anfrontal structure (showmethesnow had a nice explanation of this earlier today).

Another point is that to drive those air masses into our area you need to be to the west of the surface low to stay in or near the cold sector and have a strong northerly component after the low passes - a true cutter like the one last weekend or today can't do it because the flow behind the front is has more of a westerly/downslope component which reinforces the dynamic downward motion and maxes out the adiabatic heating. 

I'm not sure how much of this applies to next week since the core of the cold seems to want to stay north, except on the op EC which of course amplifies the storm in the right place to drive the core of the cold into our region. But I'd be skeptical of forecasts for area-wide temps near zero unless we get some snow cover laid down ahead of time.

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6 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

Since we're throwing around weenie fantasy maps I figured I should post the biggest storm on the EPS. This one literally buries 95 and east with what looks like 30+" of snow. A 968 tucked like that with arctic air sprawled banana style all over the top of it would be a true blizzard of the likes that I've only seen in the Rockies. This has to be a front runner for the weeniest storm ever inside of 10 days. Maybe I'm missing one but a sub 970 tucked like that is mind boggling... lol

7tjQRwT.jpg

 

ETA: it's like 40"+ and that doesn't even take ratios into consideration. LOL

Lucky #7

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Took off the past couple of days from the board. Work interference and other things. The only thing I have to say is there is no way we go the next 10 days without at least one snow storm. It just wont happen. There are waves all over the place and plenty of cold air. I would bet against a big storm. But I would bet everything I own that we see at least a small event in the next week or so.

 

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4 minutes ago, LP08 said:

ICON has the post frontal snows. Not as robust as the euro but would be a fun event.

You would think with the clash of airmasses and this type of upper level energy that something interesting can happen. Probably one of the reasons the ens strongly support snowfall in some fashion. I could envision an intense but narrow stripe of snow.

icon_z500_vort_us_41.png

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Just now, Bob Chill said:

You would think with the clash of airmasses and this type of upper level energy that something interesting can happen. Probably one of the reasons the ens strongly support snowfall in some fashion. I could envision an intense but narrow stripe of snow.

icon_z500_vort_us_41.png

Potentially a longer version of everyone’s favorite arctic front squall from 2015

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3 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

If ya don't think it'll affect us...what was your reason for sharing it? Lol Just for the overall trends, or?

Because originally, Monday looked like an opportunity for a big storm. Then it disappeared to nothing and now the last few runs it's made like a 300mile shift west and organized into a coastal again...

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