January Storm Term Threat Discussions (Day 3 - Day 7)

[Yeoman]

43 minutes ago, Ji said:

The Canadian tpv is way north of the gfs but the storm isn't much more north. There are other influences

Sent from my SM-G981V using Tapatalk
 

i think we can safely add TPV to the weenie bingo card

[Heisy]

Humming here I go again. Euro has a slow moving Miller a b type system. Meanders like a March ULL. But the remnants of Thursday’s system holds some cold in long enough 

[Whitecheddar]

I rarely chime in but feel like I need to get this one off my chest.. this is to the few barking that models suck.. blah blah blah

U might need to look at urself for a moment. You saw one model with a 0z output of 932 (exaggerating) snowicaine bombogenesis cyclone off the coast at 7 days out.  You canceled ur weekend plans went out and bought salt and raided the grocery store for milk and bread because you set ur expectation at 20 inches.

The fail was on you.. I won't throw names on hear but they have said it time and time again.. the point of these models and all the data is to look for trends look at what's going right for your area and whats going wrong for your area. And then you make a logical decision of what your weather might be like that many days out.  

Did anyone see nws or weather Channel or any weather app put snow in the forecast 7 days away 90% chance 8-10 accumulation? No.. why?? Cause the people that know what they are doing know that setting your expectation at 20 inches 7 days out would get you a first class ticket to the unemployment line. 

If your feelings are truly hurt right now then your doing this hobby all wrong. Models don't suck, (Let's keep the NAM out of this lol) its the people that don't know how to read the data correctly that suck.

And on a side note im not talking about a good majority of posters on here.. we all have fun and love to see the bombs 7 days out but we live in reality where.. well a whole hell of a lot can change in 7 days.

[wkd]

5 minutes ago, Whitecheddar said:

I rarely chime in but feel like I need to get this one off my chest.. this is to the few barking that models suck.. blah blah blah

U might need to look at urself for a moment. You saw one model with a 0z output of 932 (exaggerating) snowicaine bombogenesis cyclone off the coast at 7 days out.  You canceled ur weekend plans went out and bought salt and raided the grocery store for milk and bread because you set ur expectation at 20 inches.

The fail was on you.. I won't throw names on hear but they have said it time and time again.. the point of these models and all the data is to look for trends look at what's going right for your area and whats going wrong for your area. And then you make a logical decision of what your weather might be like that many days out.  

Did anyone see nws or weather Channel or any weather app put snow in the forecast 7 days away 90% chance 8-10 accumulation? No.. why?? Cause the people that know what they are doing know that setting your expectation at 20 inches 7 days out would get you a first class ticket to the unemployment line. 

If your feelings are truly hurt right now then your doing this hobby all wrong. Models don't suck, (Let's keep the NAM out of this lol) its the people that don't know how to read the data correctly that suck.

And on a side note im talking about a good majority of posters on here.. we all have fun and love to see the bombs 7 days out but we live in reality where.. well a whole hell of a lot can change in 7 days.

You're not saying anything that everyone in here doesn't already know. Hope it made you feel better though.

[MD Snow]

1 hour ago, Dabuckeyes said:

It appears the UKIE does not get any precip into MD.  

Yup. Nothing new. It has never gotten precip into MD for this threat. It was just yesterday that it started to even show a storm. 

Other than the GFS and GEFS coming back to earth...this threat hasn't really changed imo. The majority of models over the last 48hrs - euro, uk, icon and cmc - have actually trended slightly better or stayed the same. 

[LP08]

2 minutes ago, losetoa6 said:

Very nice trend on Eps for day 7/8 . 

Back on the horse! Lol

[NorthArlington101]

12 minutes ago, losetoa6 said:

Eps with a bit stronger primary for Thurs . I might root for that to get as strong as it can fmby to see something.

I don't think there is an EPS member that totally blanks us. Said it late last night, but I'd take the EPS' 1" of cold snow on Thursday.

[Heisy]

9 minutes ago, LP08 said:

Back on the horse! Lol

It takes place outside of January 2021 so that’s a plus. Nice high pressure showing up. At least it’s something else to track.

[jaydreb]

12 minutes ago, LP08 said:

Back on the horse! Lol

That image is giving me flashbacks.  

[LP08]

Just now, jaydreb said:

That image is giving me flashbacks.  

If that does so will this.  

[BTRWx's Thanks Giving]

4 minutes ago, LP08 said:

If that does so will this.  

It's never good to be at 2.5" on long range ensembles.

[LP08]

Just now, BTRWx's Thanks Giving said:

It's never good to be at 2.5" on long range ensembles.

Huh? For a 24 hr period? I’d say that is a signal

[Cobalt]

1 hour ago, LP08 said:

Huh? For a 24 hr period? I’d say that is a signal

This captures the full period I believe (initial thump and then costal redevelopment??)

 

[mattie g]

9 minutes ago, BTRWx's Thanks Giving said:

It's never good to be at 2.5" on long range ensembles.

With all due respect, your posts very rarely make any sense.

[psuhoffman]

53 minutes ago, leesburg 04 said:

GEFS was in 100% agreement basically yesterday...I'm of the opinion any model run or ensemble is only telling you today what it thinks might happen and often that changes with each run. I'm certain they are useful for something but even if psu only had the gefs to look at yesterday he couldn't tell you what today's gfs would do. That said I do think its pretty remarkable the models gave the hint something was going to happen so long ago...but clearly the details even with Thursdays storm aren't clear until most models agree...anyone telling you what Thursday will be is giving an educated guess...we have a general idea right now but not a locked and loaded one. All my opinion of course and to reiterate i think the models ability to generate potential so far in advance is spectacular unfortunately we humans f it up by trying to out predict them 

Agree with all this. That first point is totally true. The models can only project based on the data they have at the time they initialize. If we start trying to tinker around with predictions on top of predictions chaos would take over and we would get too much volatility.  So as new data comes in every 6 hours they adjust as a crucial feature gets better sampled or something they projected turns out to be an error. 
 

The second point...only having the gfs would be a problem. Only having any one model would be. None of them are so good that an error at day 5-10 is unlikely. Contrary we know they definitely do have errors. No operational is ever in any run going to nail the details globally at day 5-10.  The trick is predicting the errors and adjusting for them. Only having one tool would make that harder since often the others give clues.  We could still adjust for biases but the gfs was actually running contrary to its typical bias in this case.  
 

The GFS gets way too much attention Imo.  It saturates us because it runs a full suite every 6 hours, it’s the main flagship tool of NCEP and its the first and most easily accessible product every run. But frankly it’s behind the other major globals. It’s on par with the JMA and we dismiss that as a joke.  But honestly more times then not over the 25 years I’ve been doing this the gfs adds more uncertainty then of it simply didn’t exist. More often then not we probably could have done better had it simply not been there!  Some of that is our fault. If we weighted it correctly based on its scores it wouldn’t be as problematic but we weight it too heavily and allow it to skew our perception imo.  Imagine if it was only the ICON showing what the gfs was the last 2 days...and the gfs was showing the weak POS the icon was...our perception would have been completely different. But they shouldn’t be. That’s our fault. 
 

lastly (and I bear some blame here) the way we evaluate on here is not really scientifically sound and healthy. We know guidance can’t see details at day 7+ but the problem is all we care about is one detail...snow in our yard. And so we try to pull that detail from guidance we know can’t possibly get that right at long range. If I had an actual job forecasting I would never do what we do here and talk about snow chances for a specific spot 10 days away. If I was actually forecasting the last few days for Thursday I would say “a threat for a storm along the mid Atlantic coast. Snow or rain possible, we will know more details as we get closer”.  That’s in reality the best we can do. But that’s not good enough on here. Some get carried away. I probably feed into that because I sometimes try to be an optimist and not just crap on a threat until it’s apparent it’s not working out. The left few days I saw the flaws but I did have some hope maybe guidance was weakening the energy out west in error. Sometimes day 5-8 I’ve seen that and it bounces back. But it almost always bounces back at day 5 and we’re inside that so when I didn’t see a trend the last 24 hours I think you could see the frustration in my posts. This was my baby. I picked out this threat 3 weeks out. And in general the pattern progressed how I thought but the details matter. But I wanted it to work. I want snow. I want DC to get snow. I didn’t want to admit I was wrong and some of the discreet details just weren’t coming together. And I was probably too optimistic in my posts for those reasons.  Even now it’s not 100% over. Maybe guidance is dampening the feature too much. But we’re getting to the point I’m not going to stick my head in the sand anymore wrt the obvious issues showing.  
 

 

 

[PhatStorm]

Snowing in Blue Grass...31/20

[WinterWxLuvr]

19 minutes ago, LP08 said:

Huh? For a 24 hr period? I’d say that is a signal

How have the last few signals worked out?

[LP08]

5 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

How have the last few signals worked out?

Terribly.  But what else is there to do?  I don’t know about everyone else but we only get 2.5 months of winter and I’m going to watch until it’s over.

[WinterWxLuvr]

I would like to state this just to get it off my chest. When we get a couple of systems that put down rain, only rain, then I’ll climb on board the temp train. Right now it does not seem possible to get non cold front related precip here. The awesome storm track that we had all fall until about mid December vanished as soon as the holy grail blocking set up. We have had 0.3” of precip here since Jan 1. If this is what Atlantic blocking brings then I don’t ever want Atlantic blocking again.

Im tired of hearing about patterns, blocking, good windows, storm signals. Until the weather proves that precipitation can occur here, then I’m not putting any faith into forecast.

Ok I’m good now. Just had to get that out of my system. LOL. Good luck y’all. Think we may need it.

[WinterWxLuvr]

Just now, LP08 said:

Terribly.  But what else is there to do?  I don’t know about everyone else but we only get 2.5 months of winter and I’m going to watch until it’s over.

I’m with you. But I don’t think ens snow maps mean much quite frankly.

[psuhoffman]

10 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

How have the last few signals worked out?

The Cubs and Red Sox finally won a World Series in my lifetime. We just have to keep at it. 

[LP08]

Just now, WinterWxLuvr said:

I’m with you. But I don’t think ens snow maps mean much quite frankly.

If you take them at face value, sure.  But how I see them as more of a target zone per se. Could be flawed but it at least shows where cold and precip might be meeting. It’s a quick glance to see potentially after looking at H5.  I’m going to keep posting and let the chips fall for the remaining 6 weeks we have left.

[PivotPoint]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

I took issue with your reason not the prediction. The high location was a result of other drivers not a cause. The compressed flow in front in the Atlantic and the amplitude of the wave are the real issues. The wave needed to be stronger or the flow more relaxed in front.  Some combo. 2 days ago for a bit those things were trending our way across guidance. Since they have gone the other way. 

My rationale two days was either a) storm is more progressive (weaker) and we Chet light snow but perhaps better temp profile (maybe) or b) it’s wound up and we get more dynamics and qpf. The reason we’re failing is confluence to the north created by TPV. I mentioned too much confluence and we get no development and southern track. Pretty sure that’s close to what’s happening. I dunno

[aldie 22]

Would anyone really be shocked if a model run or two shows a decent snow up this way? I mean it's Sunday for a Thursday storm...this isn't locked in and yes it could get even worse. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

Just now, leesburg 04 said:

Would anyone really be shocked if a model run or two shows a decent snow up this way? I mean it's Sunday for a Thursday storm...this isn't locked in and yes it could get even worse. 

Dude at this point I’ll take any type of heavy precip. Seriously.

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

I’m with you. But I don’t think ens snow maps mean much quite frankly.

No they don’t, and I don’t blame anyone for not giving a crap what I have to say at this point..., but here is the deal.  Back on the horse. Analysis. Not using clown snow maps lol. 

this is the setup for day 4 and then day 8 with key features identified  

As I said it’s almost a replay do over.  The pattern sort of hit the pause/reset button because of the amplification of the Thursday wave delaying the eventual progression.  
 

Btw it’s possible  if that were to happen with each wave we get through the “reboot” period without ever having the pattern break down before what could evolve mid Feb but one step at a time and that’s rather hopeful but it’s on the table.  
 

So what are the difference that could lead to a better outcome day 8.  Frankly both look good at a quick glance.  It’s not like Thursday is an awful look.  But when you zoom in the spacing issue becomes apparent.  The wave in front has slowed significantly in the last 72 hours.  The ridge behind has shifted east slightly.  The combo is compressing the flow around our wave and limiting its ability to amplify.  
 

Looking at day 8 the spacing seems better.  What sticks out to me is the block is weaker, it’s more just a ridge in northern Quebec by then but that’s fine it’s done it’s dirty work and set up the suppressed flow across the Conus and the 50/50s.  The 50/50 is exiting though and there is more space between the waves here on both sides!  Don’t mind the lesser amplitude of the wave that’s mostly due to the longer lead time washing things a bit.  All features are more muted on ensembles at range. 
 

Flashing ahead to the critical moment we need amplification as the wave crosses our longitude 

you can see the difference with the spacing. 
 

All that said...the issues to be careful of here are that the spacing could change. It looked better for Thursday around day 8-10 too then the wave in front slowed down. Also like I’ve said were in a double bind so if the spacing is too great we could go the other way and get rain. But that look there is worthy of interest. It’s basically a do over of Thursday’s setup and I was in love with that look from range so I would by a hypocrite to crap on this next one. Let’s try take 2. 

[BristowWx]

2 minutes ago, leesburg 04 said:

Would anyone really be shocked if a model run or two shows a decent snow up this way? I mean it's Sunday for a Thursday storm...this isn't locked in and yes it could get even worse. 

I would be shocked because I have not seen things turn better as we get closer in a long time.  That said, if I could get 2 inches then it would double my total for the season.  2 inches is underrated.  It can have impact and make someone happy.   Most prefer 6 inches or more but some are satisfied with a solid 2 inches.  

[MD Snow]

18z 12k nam at range, so caveats etc... but has some snow into DC at 84 hrs. Also, has the TPV further south and appears to be interacting with the TPV. Not sure if it's acting to suppress or trying to phase a bit...thoughts? 

[caviman2201]

5 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

I would be shocked because I have not seen things turn better as we get closer in a long time.  That said, if I could get 2 inches then it would double my total for the season.  2 inches is underrated.  It can have impact and make someone happy.   Most prefer 6 inches or more but some are satisfied with a solid 2 inches.  

I feel like all season everything has trended north/warm in the last 48h before the event. Maybe this one can too... but with our luck this will be the one that doesn't

[BristowWx]

Just now, caviman2201 said:

I feel like all season everything has trended north/warm in the last 48h before the event. Maybe this one can too... but with our luck this will be the one that doesn't

You know what. It’s Sunday.  This happens Thursday.  Not a lot of time and certainly trending wrong but if a couple of inches is the goal then we are all in the game.  I’m telling you those green hue snow outputs fcuks with people’s minds and some are so fragile that taking that away just causes an extinction. Level event.