January/February Winter Storm Threat Tracker

[psuhoffman]

Lol at how the gfs gives us a 3 day window with a 1040 high in great spot and waves to our south and they just linger there until the trough exits then something cuts to the lakes. 

Ya ya details don’t matter on ops and it was a decent setup so it’s not all bad but man that was just fitting. 

[Bob Chill]

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

This is kind of the reverse of some years lately where the northern 1/3 of this forum was having a much better winter wrt average. They were probably frustrated that we were “ok” and they were freaking out about an epic snow drought. Sucks to be on the other side. Would be nice to get a year that’s equally good forum wide like 2003, 2010, 2014, 2015 but it’s more often that some part wins and some part not so much. 

[Bob chill reads between lines and chuckles because for once the northern crew is in favor of redistricting the sub]

[Bob Chill]

33 minutes ago, Chris78 said:

Friday looks interesting. GFS tried for some overrunnning snows but kind of washes out as it gets here. Seasonal trends  has been to juice up as we close in so maybe we could trend positive for once.

It's certainly something that deserves attention and not an instant writeoff. With no defined low pressure it's been staying under the radar on the ensembles but it is showing up on the qpf panels. 

[RevWarReenactor]

I feel like there is still a chance that something could break right for us prior to the torch. We are well overdue for something to break right.

Really a lot of storms can show up late in the game if the potential is there. 2015 is coming to mind that a 6-8 snowstorm showed up about 48 hours before it happened.

 

[psuhoffman]

25 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

[Bob chill reads between lines and chuckles because for once the northern crew is in favor of redistricting the sub]

I’m not in favor of that. If we did that every forum would be too small to have good discussion. People just need to deal including myself. 

[Danajames]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

I’m not in favor of that. If we did that every forum would be too small to have good discussion. People just need to deal including myself. 

As far as snowfall goes, I'm fine with it.  It is what it is.  I just want the assembly line of soaking rainstorms to stop.  But I'm certainly happy for snow lovers south of us and don't begrudge their contentment.  It would be a wonderful world(for me at least) if every system during the winter was snow and not those depressing cold rains that the Mid-Atlantic is famously known for.  Oh well, back to reality.....

[Bob Chill]

47 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I’m not in favor of that. If we did that every forum would be too small to have good discussion. People just need to deal including myself. 

I hope you and everybody else knows I'm totally joking. I only started the whole thing to poke some fun at the fact that you guys were stealing all our snow and we despise you for it. Other that that being true it was a nothing but friendly joking around. 

[psuhoffman]

6 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

I hope you and everybody else knows I'm totally joking. I only started the whole thing to poke some fun at the fact that you guys were stealing all our snow and we despise you for it. Other that that being true it was a nothing but friendly joking around. 

I 100% knew you were just having fun then and now. But some other less rational posters I think might have taken the idea too seriously.  It didn’t help that we used to have that 83 guy who would post epic deck pics in here when he knew darn well it was raining in DC. I’ve always tried to be more sensitive about that and kind of kept it discreet when I’m getting crushed and the majority is rain.  

[ravensrule]

Just now, psuhoffman said:

I 100% knew you were just having fun then and now. But some other less rational posters I think might have taken the idea too seriously.  It didn’t help that we used to have that 83 guy who would post epic deck pics in here when he knew darn well it was raining in DC. I’ve always tried to be more sensitive about that and kind of kept it discreet when I’m getting crushed and the majority is rain.  

Anyone that drives an hour and a half to their job just so that they could get more snow, deserves all the snow they get. 

[psuhoffman]

Just now, ravensrule said:

Anyone that drives an hour and a half to their job just so that they could get more snow, deserves all the snow they get. 

It’s really nice up here in summer too and my wife likes it here but the snow is a big part of it. 

[Maestrobjwa]

1 hour ago, Bob Chill said:

It's certainly something that deserves attention and not an instant writeoff. With no defined low pressure it's been staying under the radar on the ensembles but it is showing up on the qpf panels. 

So you think it still has a chance? (Are the precip panels on the ops misleading? I had assumed there wasn't much there because it looks like a bunch of dots, lol)

[Bob Chill]

11 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

So you think it still has a chance? (Are the precip panels on the ops misleading? I had assumed there wasn't much there because it looks like a bunch of dots, lol)

All guidance has a shortwave moving through. Problem is downstream on gfs/euro is a shear factory. Icon is less suppressive and allows amplification. The icon isnt alone with having the shortwave but it is alone allowing the shortwave to amplify. If the gfs or euro trend less suppressive/sheared a shield of precip will start showing up more cohesive and larger. Or if the icon trends more suppressed/sheared it will start shrinking (or completely lose) the precip shield. Right now the majority says that the icon is handling the upper levels wrong. However, a few relatively small shifts on the euro or gfs and suddenly there's consensus on event.

If you really want to get into this hobby I can't stress enough how important it is to learn 500mb height and vorticity panels. It's not as hard is it seems. If you just look at surface panels it can seem like models are terrible because they lose and discover storms with what seems like out of thin air. If you understand upper air charts you will grasp what is a good and bad setup regardless of what verbatim surface panels look like.

[wasnow215]

7 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

All guidance has a shortwave moving through. Problem is downstream on gfs/euro is a shear factory. Icon is less suppressive and allows amplification. The icon isnt alone with having the shortwave but it is alone allowing the shortwave to amplify. If the gfs or euro trend less suppressive/sheared a shield of precip will start showing up more cohesive and larger. Or if the icon trends more suppressed/sheared it will start shrinking (or completely lose) the precip shield. Right now the majority says that the icon is handling the upper levels wrong. However, a few relatively small shifts on the euro or gfs and suddenly there's consensus on event.

If you really want to get into this hobby I can't stress enough how important it is to learn 500mb height and vorticity panels. It's not as hard is it seems. If you just look at surface panels it can seem like models are terrible because they lose and discover storms with what seems like out of thin air. If you understand upper air charts you will grasp what is a good and bad setup regardless of what verbatim surface panels look like.

Sincere question: You talk about reading the 500mb and Vort panels quite often and I know you’re right. Why can’t weather models be “programmed” to do the same to help with better surface output? Sorry if this is banter, I won’t ask follow up questions lol.

[Bob Chill]

Check out the icons 500mb vort panel. You can see how the heights look "uphill" over our region in front of the approaching shortwave. Icon is amplifying upper level flow.

 

Now look at the same panel on the gfs. It has the shortwave but the isobars are flat out in front. There is no amplification in front of the shortwave on the gfs. We often call flat or downhill isobars in front of shortwaves "shear". The gfs isnt hugely different than the icon but because there's shear instead of amplification there's no organized preip or storm. It's not that far away from something and wouldn't take much of a shift to become something interesting.

If you want to track this potnetial then track 500mb panels and look for signs of guidance trending towards amplification. Right now the icon is on an island. 

[frd]

Keep an eye out later Weds. afternoon per Mount Holly 

 This setup of an Arctic front and sharp pressure trough brings with
 it the potential for snow squalls. There are some rather impressive 
model soundings for Wednesday afternoon and evening showing very deep 
mixed layers and some surface based instability. Moisture is a 
limiting factor, but believe there will be enough to trigger at 
least scattered snow showers and potentiallysome heavier squalls.

Timing looks to be focused on Wednesday late
afternoon and evening with no portion of the CWA particularly
favored over another in terms of areal coverage. 

In addition, even if squalls fail to materialize, deep mixing ahead of the front
presents considerable concern for a period of strong wind gusts in
excess of 40mph. 

It will be a breezy day to begin with but concern
is for a shorter period of enhanced winds as the front approaches.
Temperatures will fall quickly Wednesday evening as the front
passes.

[Bob Chill]

2 hours ago, wasnow215 said:

Sincere question: You talk about reading the 500mb and Vort panels quite often and I know you’re right. Why can’t weather models be “programmed” to do the same to help with better surface output? Sorry if this is banter, I won’t ask follow up questions lol.

All levels of the atmosphere are tied together in model physics. The issue is accuracy as leads go out in time. The atmosphere can't be modeled at 100% accuracy even at initialization so errors start at the very beginning. Models are amazing nowadays but still decades away from being dead accurate even just 3-4 days out in time. Once you get to 5 days out skill starts dropping really fast because of compounding errors. Weather models are basically incredibly complicated math calculators and the  pretty graphics we use are the result of countless math problems being solved.

Also, what type of weather plays a large role in skill. A large stable upper level ridge is exponentially easier for models to handle at longer leads. A stable southeast ridge in august can be nailed by models 5 or even 7 days out. Synoptic events (like snowstorms) are exponentially more difficult and complicated for models to get right as you go out in time. Even in the short range it's a huge task for a weather model to solve a synoptic event's birth and progression.

The atmosphere is 3 dimensional and a fluid emvironment with countless variables. Many hobbiests only use weather models to watch a surface weather movie and set expectations at a lead time that is very unreasonable for a weather model to be accurate. That leads to a lot of "models suck" responses and it's really unfair honestly.  Personally, I'm blown away by how incredibly accurate models have become in just the past 13 years. Unfortunately weather models get little respect from many hobbiests because they can't nail the atmosphere to a tee a week out in time. I'll be long dead before models are capable of that. 

Eta: the earth's surface is just under 200 million square miles and the atmosphere that we care about is about 10 miles thick. The volume of atmosphere that weather models replicate and predict is mind boggling. And it's all done through numerical calculations. It's hard to wrap your head around. But since models steal snow from a quarter acre of land... they suck. Lol

[LP08]

GFS a small hit for the weekend.

[AfewUniversesBelowNormal]

This one could trend wetter because it's our pattern changing storm, and one of our last shots for the Winter lol. 

[Chris78]

Friday is starting to game some traction. Heights have more rise over the east allowing a bit more juice for the overrunning.

[Bob Chill]

Both the icon and gfs came in better with the shortwave on Friday. That's a good sign 4-5 days out. Maybe we get a sneaky mid range storm. 

[Ji]

Both the icon and gfs came in better with the shortwave on Friday. That's a good sign 4-5 days out. Maybe we get a sneaky mid range storm. 

We need 2 snow events before we hit 80 during the epic phase of the weeklies from 3 weeks ago next week

[Bob Chill]

7 minutes ago, Ji said:

11 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

Both the icon and gfs came in better with the shortwave on Friday. That's a good sign 4-5 days out. Maybe we get a sneaky mid range storm. 

We need 2 snow events before we hit 80 during the epic phase of the weeklies from 3 weeks ago next week

I'll have over 20" on the season by then so I'll enjoy the warmth sitting on my patio. Long range forecasts have been abysmal but somehow my yard is doing well. 

[aldie 22]

My money is on the Friday event being the over performer 

[attml]

NWS is calling for 2-4inches  (total storm precip) on their point and click for central Maryland.

[Blue Dream]

On 1/25/2019 at 8:18 PM, mattie g said:

And you’re doing so in the Mid-Atlantic forum. Don’t expect people to be sympathetic. Snow is life or death.

PA is the Mid-Atlantic

 

Sorry to distract from the conversation, just responding to a previous post.

[MD Snow]

Friday looks solid on 12z gfs. More robust precip shield. Looks like a 1-2” type deal atm.

[yoda]

12z CMC has a quick hitter Friday night... only around an inch or so though

[Bob Chill]

1 hour ago, JMcCaughey42 said:

PA is the Mid-Atlantic

 

Sorry to distract from the conversation, just responding to a previous post.

It is but you have to not lose sight of why forums are divided the way they are. Sure, eastern PA is technically in the mid atlantic but climo wise (snow in particular) it's very different than south of the mason dixon. We often don't share the same results with the same event. We look for different things and what's good for my yard is often not good for yours. I don't really care that people from outside the sub come here looking for info but sometimes people come here asking about their yard. There's 2 problems with that. #1) most here don't care about wx north of the mason dixon so we have no idea one way or the other and #2) we interpret model data and event potential very differently.

[Blue Dream]

6 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

It is but you have to not lose sight of why forums are divided the way they are. Sure, eastern PA is technically in the mid atlantic but climo wise (snow in particular) it's very different than south of the mason dixon. We often don't share the same results with the same event. We look for different things and what's good for my yard is often not good for yours. I don't really care that people from outside the sub come here looking for info but sometimes people come here asking about their yard. There's 2 problems with that. #1) most here don't care about wx north of the mason dixon so we have no idea one way or the other and #2) we interpret model data and event potential very differently.

I completely get that.  I wasn't asking about my area but merely pointing out to another poster that SE PA has been largely snowless this winter, forget the exact context now.

 

Anyway, I enjoy learning and reading from the MA forum.  Here in SE PA, I consider my area as part of the Northern Mid-Atlantic.  The Philly forum is not nearly as active as the MA forum so I tend to frequent this forum.  Appreciate all your insight!  Again, sorry to distract from the conversation.  Let's hope for at least 1 snowstorm that hits the entire Mid-Atlantic before winter's end!

[Chris78]

GEFS on board for a light event on Friday. The 12z run is the best it's looked.