February Banter 2019

[T. August]

36 minutes ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

You moved to Stephens City?

Let me know if you need someone to show you around.

List things you like about your location, my therapist says it helps, but it hasn’t worked for me yet.

[Fozz]

6 minutes ago, T. August said:

I’ve only been on here 5 years, but I don’t think it’s any worse than previous seasons. Maybe I just don’t give a shit. People will be people, they are annoying, full of doubt, and oblivious to others. It’s the same if you walk into Wegman’s.

You've handled things very well when they didn't go your way. I'm glad you got the jackpot in this week's storm.

[T. August]

2 minutes ago, Fozz said:

You've handled things very well when they didn't go your way. I'm glad you got the jackpot in this week's storm.

Lol thanks man, the first jack in my lifetime.

[psuhoffman]

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

I was optimistic for a light event with the initial wave. Still might happen. The other 2 events looked low probability for my yard, but could have(might still) worked out for NW areas with some mix to rain. With relatively weak lows, the bulging SE ridge this week is probably going to rule. If this week doesn't produce, we are looking at 15-20 days of legit winter at best, and no time for nickel and dime stuff. Time to join Ji for the big dog hunt lol.

Yea I don’t mind nickel and dime stuff during the heart of winter but once we get past Feb 20 I’m 100% big game hunting. 

[mappy]

11 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

I’m gonna lay it on somewhat thick.

It’s absolutely outrageous how horrific this place has become. It’s not just the mid-Atlantic either. New England’s posts have been a disgrace as well. Just straight up trash. 

I started The Panic Room to separate the panic from the serious posts. At first it worked. It was some of the most fun I’ve had. Last year it all came apart. To me it’s not even that expectations have changed. It’s that there are too many posters that are full of crap who want attention, or for people to be as miserable as they are. 

They are thrown over the top because they don’t have anything to add and want to be relevant. When winter doesn’t live up to this BS faux memory of snow on snow on snow on snow they melt and want the spotlight on them as they take everyone else down. Even negative comments are attention. 

Not only that, sometimes the place is outright hostile to people like Mappy who is somehow expected to deal sexist garbage from some posters and knowledgeable people are given crap for actually posting something of value. 

I hope we’ll get better. We can still be an awesome community and I really enjoy posting and engaging with many of you. 

We almost certainly will get better during the “off-season”. But for the period that matters to 95% of AmWx weenies, we HAVE to do better. 

Good post, friend. It's been rough around here the last month or so. I get that the pattern hasn't worked out as many hoped and that we have missed out on some decent events... but the constant negativity is really draining. We are all here for the same thing, to track the weather. Good, bad or ugly. Some of us have scored, others naso much. But even when things are sucky, in the past, we have done our best as a collective group to keep our heads up and not meltdown. 

Its nothing but meltdowns now and it just sucks to come and check things out. I checked in today to see thoughts on the weekend threat and clearly things haven't changed a bit since I last logged on. So back to following along at home and not having to deal with the negative stuff here. 

Hope everyone gets the snow it seems some desperately need. 

[Maestrobjwa]

13 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea I don’t mind nickel and dime stuff during the heart of winter but once we get past Feb 20 I’m 100% big game hunting. 

Yeah no choice now...Some of the forum still hasn't hit average (or even median)...it's gonna have to be something at least somewhat substantial to close the gap--and nickel and dime doesn't usually work in March, lol

[Maestrobjwa]

I'm not sure all the negative posts are about bringing other people down...just a certain mishandling of emotions. Disappointment is probably easier to handle for those who have been doing this longer. But for others (myself included)...it's a process, lol I know I've also had legit comments/questions about the modeling...but sometimes the disappointment leaks out and gets all mixed up in there. It's just this winter (and the last two)... just very little satisfaction. And it kinda builds the longer we go. 

All that to say...some of us gotta do better with how we handle the disappointment. Feel like there oughta be "the psychology of the snow lover" thread 

[WxUSAF]

El Niño is now official per NOAA. Bring on the HECS!

[Fozz]

March will be rockin!

[EastCoast NPZ]

1 hour ago, T. August said:

List things you like about your location, my therapist says it helps, but it hasn’t worked for me yet.

Things I like about Stephens City:

 

 

 

 

 

All done. 

[EastCoast NPZ]

17 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

El Niño is now official per NOAA. Bring on the HECS!

Just in time for March and April rains.

[Eskimo Joe]

Once Crapital Weather Gang started talking about weekend snow everything fell apart.  

[Inverted_Trough]

Is Chuck an actual person or a bot?  I'm asking a serious question here.

[Maestrobjwa]

16 minutes ago, Inverted_Trough said:

Is Chuck an actual person or a bot?  I'm asking a serious question here.

He's a real person. Just seems to have a few issues...

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, Maestrobjwa said:

He's a real person. Just seems to have a few issues...

I wish I only had a few issues.

[psuhoffman]

I watched JB's video today, hadn't watched one in a while...was curious how he is spinning it.  He isnt.  It was depressing.  He seemed pretty beat up and depressed and it was as close to a winter cancel as he will ever make.  Might make the weenies jump

[Maestrobjwa]

Only thing that will make this feel any better (barring a turnaround, of course is this:

Next winter? We are due. Our history has more instances of 3 consecutive below average winters followed by above average winters than prolonged snow droughts that last longer than that (only twice since 1980 did we have more than 3 in a row. And even throughout all weathe records, it may have happened three or four times since 1883/84.)

[tplbge]

2 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Once Crapital Weather Gang started talking about weekend snow everything fell apart.  

Models will start to get us back in the game later tonight.  You've got to believe!

[NorthArlington101]

[CAPE]

21 minutes ago, tplbge said:

Models will start to get us back in the game later tonight.  You've got to believe!

I believe! it might be time to tear another week off of the winter calendar and toss it in the trash.

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Only thing that will make this feel any better (barring a turnaround, of course is this:

Next winter? We are due. Our history has more instances of 3 consecutive below average winters followed by above average winters than prolonged snow droughts that last longer than that (only twice since 1980 did we have more than 3 in a row. And even throughout all weathe records, it may have happened three or four times since 1883/84.)

That just means we're due for 4 straight crap years!

There are a few problems with your law of averages assumptions.  First...last year wasn't actually a crap year, it was a pretty good snowfall year across most of the eastern CONUS, and we just got unlucky.  Those kind of local minimum flukes don't really count wrt overall climo trends.  And...each year is independent of the others.  It's like flipping a coin.  Yea going in the odds of getting heads too many times in a row is low...but once each flip is done, the next one is still 50/50 regardless of the outcome of the previous ones.  It doesn't work the way you say it.  

[Jandurin]

i.e. weather can't count so don't count on it

[LP08]

It's been brought up a bunch but I finally dove into the GEFS and its snowfall products on Weathermodels.com.  Just for instance, E4 shows over 20" throughout the area through the run and I did not count 1 storm that went under us throughout the run.  It is even the worst with the Saturday storm.  Buyer beware on that site and its flawed algorithms.

[psuhoffman]

I have never seen as fast a complete collapse of a great looking pattern as the last 72 hours.  A single storm yea...but never a whole period in the relatively near range that looked great just fall apart like this.  It's amazing in a train wreck kind of way.  I think the failure of the cutter bomb this weekend was the first domino.  I said a few days ago that while it was creating the chance of something this weekend...that it was also degrading the look for our bigger and better setup next week, and that if the weekend failed it would increase our chances of a total fail.  That seems to be the direction we are heading right now.  The trend to have a series of weaker flat waves vs an amplified system this weekend meant less suppressive flow, the cold shot got shunted off to the north vs diving into the east, the 50/50 shifted east, the trough in the west pulled back, and the ridge went nuts.  It was a chain reaction of crap that just killed the whole thing.  What caused the failure of anything to amplify to our northeast is beyond me but I think HM said something about that the other day and some causality link.  But he was being his typical coded self and I was in too frustrated a mood to try to comprehend it.  

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, LP08 said:

It's been brought up a bunch but I finally dove into the GEFS and its snowfall products on Weathermodels.com.  Just for instance, E4 shows over 20" throughout the area through the run and I did not count 1 storm that went under us throughout the run.  It is even the worst with the Saturday storm.  Buyer beware on that site and its flawed algorithms.

They use the same flawed metrics on wxbell...probably because they havent changed them since Ryan left to do weathermodels.com.  It's really really bad.  It seems to count all precip that falls with any measured level near freezing as snow.  I have seen times when it's not even really close at all...not even ice actually...its like 35 degree rain and its showing up on the maps as snow.  Times when the actual rain/snow line is 150 miles away in northern PA and its showing up as snow here.  Its so so bad and it skews those maps really bad.  When the mslp tracks are under us its not so bad and I take it more seriously...but right now most of that snow on the gefs is false signals from the two cutters next week.  

[HighStakes]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

I watched JB's video today, hadn't watched one in a while...was curious how he is spinning it.  He isnt.  It was depressing.  He seemed pretty beat up and depressed and it was as close to a winter cancel as he will ever make.  Might make the weenies jump

I knew that was coming. I didn't watch today but I did yesterday and he was baffled. Basically speechless.

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, HighStakes said:

I knew that was coming. I didn't watch today but I did yesterday and he was baffled. Basically speechless.

he seemed to hold out some hope for March but admitted its a disaster until then.  

[tplbge]

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

I believe! it might be time to tear another week off of the winter calendar and toss it in the trash.

It's not over until the Richmond forum claims victory.

[Maestrobjwa]

49 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

That just means we're due for 4 straight crap years!

There are a few problems with your law of averages assumptions.  First...last year wasn't actually a crap year, it was a pretty good snowfall year across most of the eastern CONUS, and we just got unlucky.  Those kind of local minimum flukes don't really count wrt overall climo trends.  And...each year is independent of the others.  It's like flipping a coin.  Yea going in the odds of getting heads too many times in a row is low...but once each flip is done, the next one is still 50/50 regardless of the outcome of the previous ones.  It doesn't work the way you say it.  

Perhaps...but just to clarify, when I label a year "bad" I'm speaking primarily of below average (which by BWI standards anything below 20" +/- 2 inches). I just think there has indeed been a historical trend.

Just like we've gotten a snowfall of at least a foot every 3-4 years since 1996...which would also mean we're due. Feels like some (not all) of our weather history likes to repeat themselves (like the 70 degree Christmases in strong El Niños led to a big snowfall that winter 3 times--including 2016).

Also about to repeat itself unless this winter turns around? Winters that follow very wet years (above like 50 inches of rain) had below average snowfall. So there are trends...not caused by anything in particular (and perhaps some are coincidences--who knows?)

[NorthArlington101]

I guess it can’t be definitely stated that there is no repetitive pattern of some kind but it just seems like saying “we’re due” is simply falling victim to the Gambler’s Fallacy. Think many people (including myself) fall victim to the “we’re due index”.