Feb Long Range Discussion (Day 3 and beyond) - MERGED

[Maestrobjwa]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

You have to show the causality. What about years that end in 1 affects the weather? 

Oh I am regretting this more by the minute. I never said those years affected the weather...more like indicators. Maybe I look at as do certain things predict certain things. Certainly APPEARS that way sometimes...sometimes not. But the weather ain't affected by a particular day. Maybe particular days seem to predict the weather sometimes. Ya think if something happens less often in a certain time span, when you get there you see it as less likely. Doesn't mean it is though

[Maestrobjwa]

@psuhoffman Even you said that years that were absolute duds like last year weren't typically flowed up by great years, did you not? Now does that mean it CAN'T happen? No. It just hasn't...and so you mention it.

[psuhoffman]

8 minutes ago, Ji said:

Uk

Excellent model. You should totally hold your breath for that!

[snowfan]

^^that would also apply to the gfs and euro, which have both showed ridiculous snow and temp progs that haven’t come close to panning out.

[fujiwara79]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

You have to show the causality. What about years that end in 1 affects the weather? 

i'm not saying there's any causality.  it's just a correlation.  it could be random, but statistically that's very unlikely, to keep getting a very hot summer every 11th year.  the solar cycle is 11 years, so maybe there's some causality there, but very difficult to prove the precise mechanism.

come to think of it, i think the summer of 1933 was also very hot.  so this correlation goes back a very long time.

[Miss Pixee]

57 minutes ago, fujiwara79 said:

yesterday was the first time in two years dca had a high of 32 or less.  today will be the second.  so....there is that.

kind of unbelievable that we haven't had a true arctic outbreak in three years.  the midwest is experiencing an epic one now.  dallas may go below zero on tuesday morning.  but it'll just become stale by the time it gets here.  personally, while snow is my #1 criteria for a good winter, i also consider the number of arctic outbreaks to be the second factor.  in that area, we have been lacking for a while now.

You always notice the pattern of artic blasts like that forms a "V" shape down from Canada...it doesn't go across the upper latitude. I even saw on the news where it dips down into Houston. ND, MN, WI get it the worst with MI a close second. Even Boston doesn't get that kind of cold, being off the ocean too.

[gisman]

I would perceive UK's 6"+ snow in my hometown of Austin, TX (the southernmost continental US state capital with 0.3"/year average) as an unlikely solution all around.

[fujiwara79]

1 minute ago, Pixee said:

You always notice the pattern of artic blasts like that forms a "V" shape down from Canada...it doesn't go across the upper latitude. I even saw on the news where it dips down into Houston. ND, MN, WI get it the worst with MI a close second. Even Boston doesn't get that kind of cold, being off the ocean too.

if the arctic air dumps into the south central states before trudging east, then yes that's how it works.  not all arctic outbreaks do that.  some directly target the northeast.  but we haven't had one of those in years.

look at 2004 in new england.  one of the coldest winters ever in new england.  those arctic blasts targeted them and didn't dump into the south central states at all.

[anotherman]

Uk

Drunk Ukie?

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, fujiwara79 said:

we also seem to have scorching summers every 11 years.  summer of 1944, 1955, 1966, 1977, 1988, 1999, 2010.  that means this summer is going to be brutal.  get ready.

I don't know if you are just screwing around with Maestro or not...I sometimes suck at picking up on that stuff... but this is not an accurate representation.  2010 was scorching...truly epically hot summer.  1999 and 1988 were above average but nothing spectacular, 1987 was hotter then 1988 for instance.  1966 and 1977 were about average.  and 1922, 33, 44, and 55 were below average summers.  

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, anotherman said:

Drunk Ukie?

I am not wasting my time digging into it but the UK on Pivotal counts freezing rain as snow.  So all it has to be is cold by a few degrees over the other guidance to make that map happen.  If it does actually show SNOW then its a divergent solution.  Either way unless some other guidance jumps on board its not worth close examination.  Any one model all by itself is going to be wrong 90% of the time.  

[mappy]

18 hours ago, stormtracker said:

Man, if you see 19, brace yourself.  Heavy, heavy one lane bridges.   OLB+++

Funnel cloud, actually.

[clskinsfan]

The Euro is basically a rainstorm for Tuesday. Rain and 32 NW of the cities. 

[Maestrobjwa]

22 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I don't know if you are just screwing around with Maestro or not...I sometimes suck at picking up on that stuff... but this is not an accurate representation.  2010 was scorching...truly epically hot summer.  1999 and 1988 were above average but nothing spectacular, 1987 was hotter then 1988 for instance.  1966 and 1977 were about average.  and 1922, 33, 44, and 55 were below average summers.  

Screwing with Maestro is the name of the game here today...Despite all the craziness of everybody in here,  all I gotta do is say something just a tad off and kaboom...

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

8 minutes ago, mappy said:

Funnel cloud, actually.

Hmmm, funnily enough! 

(seeing myself out, exiting stage left! )

[Ji]

Euro is close next thur to a wintry mix

[psuhoffman]

2 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Screwing with Maestro is the name of the game here today...Despite all the craziness in here,  all I gotta do is say something just a tad off and kaboom...

The problem with your "BIG SNOWSTORMS" correlation is that a 20" or even a 12" snowstorm in Baltimore is too rare an occurrence to be able to find those kinds of correlations.  There aren't enough of them to see meaningful trends.   The one meaningful trend is they mostly happen during a moderate or stronger Nino with a -NAO.  That is a meaningful trend.  

 

If we lower the bar to 10" which is still a VERY significant snowfall and rare in Baltimore...the randomness is apparent.  From 1958 to 1967 Baltimore had 7 such 10" snowstorms.  In the next 10 years they had NONE.  How is there a trend there?  Baltimore had 3 of them in 1987 and only 1 the rest of that decade!  They had 2 in 1996 and only 1 the rest of that decade!   More recently Baltimore had 3 in one year in 2010 and none in the 3 years before and after that then 2 in 3 years from 2014-2016 and none since.  It is totally random.  You have to manipulate the data into very specific and rare and arbitrary numbers like "exactly this many inches at this exact location" to find correlations and those correlations are meaningless because snowfall is too fluky locally for such a specific thing to have meaning.  

 

And 10" is still honestly too rare an event to get meaningful data.  If we do what Wes did for DC and lower the bar to 8" at Baltimore, which is still a very rare event that does not happen most winters, we get enough snowfalls to really see "trends".  But there are none. 

in 10 years from 1958 to 1967 Baltimore had 17 8" snowstorms

The next 10 years they had just 1.

THen in 1978/79 they had 2 and the next 7 only 1.

1987/88 they had 4 then the next 7 only 1.

1996 they had 3 then the next 3 years none.

From 2000 to 2016 there were 9 spread out pretty well...but then NONE since. 

You have at times focused in on too narrow of a window to find a false signal.  If you only looked at the 2000 to 2016 period there seemed to be some regularity to our snowfall but when you pull back you see that was just a random short term coincidence in the longer term randomness.  I have run the numbers...there is no predictability of snowfall based on recent history of past years.  

 

 

 

[psuhoffman]

4 minutes ago, Ji said:

Euro is close next thur to a wintry mix

Is it close to being close to being close to snow?  Or is it only close to close to close to close to maybe kinda being close?

[snowfan]

5 minutes ago, Ji said:

Euro is close next thur to a wintry mix

And, it actually stayed mostly frozen for the favored areas Monday into Tuesday. Thursday was cold going in and then a mess. By weeks end......

 

[psuhoffman]

6 minutes ago, Ji said:

Euro is close next thur to a wintry mix

Jokes aside I can’t really look right now but I care more about the trend then verbatim what it shows. The last few runs went from a snowstorm to some snow to mix to rain for us. Did that reverse or is it still trending warmer?

[Maestrobjwa]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

The problem with your "BIG SNOWSTORMS" correlation is that a 20" or even a 12" snowstorm in Baltimore is too rare an occurrence to be able to find those kinds of correlations.  There aren't enough of them to see meaningful trends.   The one meaningful trend is they mostly happen during a moderate or stronger Nino with a -NAO.  That is a meaningful trend.  

 

If we lower the bar to 10" which is still a VERY significant snowfall and rare in Baltimore...the randomness is apparent.  From 1958 to 1967 Baltimore had 7 such 10" snowstorms.  In the next 10 years they had NONE.  How is there a trend there?  Baltimore had 3 of them in 1987 and only 1 the rest of that decade!  They had 2 in 1996 and only 1 the rest of that decade!   More recently Baltimore had 3 in one year in 2010 and none in the 3 years before and after that then 2 in 3 years from 2014-2016 and none since.  It is totally random.  You have to manipulate the data into very specific and rare and arbitrary numbers like "exactly this many inches at this exact location" to find correlations and those correlations are meaningless because snowfall is too fluky locally for such a specific thing to have meaning.  

 

And 10" is still honestly too rare an event to get meaningful data.  If we do what Wes did for DC and lower the bar to 8" at Baltimore, which is still a very rare event that does not happen most winters, we get enough snowfalls to really see "trends".  But there are none. 

in 10 years from 1958 to 1967 Baltimore had 17 8" snowstorms

The next 10 years they had just 1.

THen in 1978/79 they had 2 and the next 7 only 1.

1987/88 they had 4 then the next 7 only 1.

1996 they had 3 then the next 3 years none.

From 2000 to 2016 there were 9 spread out pretty well...but then NONE since. 

You have at times focused in on too narrow of a window to find a false signal.  If you only looked at the 2000 to 2016 period there seemed to be some regularity to our snowfall but when you pull back you see that was just a random short term coincidence in the longer term randomness.  I have run the numbers...there is no predictability of snowfall based on recent history of past years.  

 

 

 

Will keep that in mind...

[NorthArlington101]

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Jokes aside I can’t really look right now but I care more about the trend then verbatim what it shows. The last few runs went from a snowstorm to some snow to mix to rain for us. Did that reverse or is it still trending warmer?

Maybe slightly cooler but it looks essentially identical to 00z from my quick glance.

[Ji]

Jokes aside I can’t really look right now but I care more about the trend then verbatim what it shows. The last few runs went from a snowstorm to some snow to mix to rain for us. Did that reverse or is it still trending warmer?

Thursday was never shown as a pure snowstorm and you know that. Euro shows snow to wintry mix to rain

[HighStakes]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Jokes aside I can’t really look right now but I care more about the trend then verbatim what it shows. The last few runs went from a snowstorm to some snow to mix to rain for us. Did that reverse or is it still trending warmer?

Verbatim we get a couple inches of snow, then zr then heavy a cold rain. Temps get into low 40's even here by 18z friday before the front sweeps through. The run was warmer overall. Slow death  

[Bob Chill]

7 minutes ago, Ji said:

11 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Jokes aside I can’t really look right now but I care more about the trend then verbatim what it shows. The last few runs went from a snowstorm to some snow to mix to rain for us. Did that reverse or is it still trending warmer?

Thursday was never shown as a pure snowstorm and you know that. Euro shows snow to wintry mix to rain

This would be a win for us imo Ji. It's a long ways away and future changes will keep coming. Any run that shows the knife edge within a reasonable distance is a net positive. Who knows what we'll be looking at in a few short days. Real cold is nearby. Lots of precip is overhead. I'm not jumping to any conclusions yet. We've trended the wrong way a lot last few weeks. Now that it's ugly instead in the mid range, maybe... just maybe the trend works the other way. 

After what we've all experienced since mid/late Jan, I'm def not spiking any footballs before the short range starts agreeing... and even then....

[clskinsfan]

14 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Jokes aside I can’t really look right now but I care more about the trend then verbatim what it shows. The last few runs went from a snowstorm to some snow to mix to rain for us. Did that reverse or is it still trending warmer?

Better HP this run vs. 0Z. 1037 vs. 1034. It helps in the upper levels just enough to snow us at the start. 

[Scraff]

3 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Better HP this run vs. 0Z. 1037 vs. 1034. It helps in the upper levels just enough to snow us at the start. 

Let’s feed our H some steroids and pump it up to a 1040 next run. 

[psuhoffman]

9 minutes ago, Ji said:

13 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Jokes aside I can’t really look right now but I care more about the trend then verbatim what it shows. The last few runs went from a snowstorm to some snow to mix to rain for us. Did that reverse or is it still trending warmer?

Thursday was never shown as a pure snowstorm and you know that. Euro shows snow to wintry mix to rain

About 36 hours ago the euro was mostly a snow to dryslot event for us and kept the snow pack destroying warm sector to our southeast. There was no rain. It’s trended warmer every run since. The eps also. Had the max snow just NW of 95 a couple days ago but shifted up into central pa last night.  I’m not that interested in a minor front end snowfall that’s immediately washed away by 45 degree rain. Those storms are depressing. I want to see signs the storm stays southeast of us.  Also...in case you haven’t noticed models at range are always way too optimistic on front end frozen with a west track system. It can work but it’s rare. Models show that a lot at range but it typically is a mirage and the mid level warm layer comes blasting in before the heavy precip arrives.  Without a suppressed flow it hard to prevent that. So I was asking doc the euro make a real trend towards a meaningful frozen event or did it continue trending towards a minor front end frozen before the main storm cuts way west and we get rain?  

[psuhoffman]

17 minutes ago, HighStakes said:

Verbatim we get a couple inches of snow, then zr then heavy a cold rain. Temps get into low 40's even here by 18z friday before the front sweeps through. The run was warmer overall. Slow death  

That sounds like what I was afraid it showed. I know some might see some blue over them to start and celebrate but I don’t buy medium range guidance that shows that with a cutting system and the mid level flow is all from the south. Imo that’s unlikely to work out. I want to see signs the wave is suppressed south of us. That would be meaningful. 

[Chris78]

1 minute ago, clskinsfan said:

Better HP this run vs. 0Z. 1037 vs. 1034. It helps in the upper levels just enough to snow us at the start. 

The trend is the trend but verbatim its like a 2 to 5 " thump from South to north then atleast 6 to  12 hours of icing for areas NW of the metros.longer for the M/D crew . Would be a fairly sig winter storm for areas  N+W. But the trend hasn't been great for anything next week so who knows.