January Medium/Long Range Discussion

[psuhoffman]

It could be a lot worse. Northern New England has had very little snow at all and the ski resorts up there depend on it and the coming pattern isn’t even necessarily good for them. Very likely significant snow is suppressed south of them as it often is mid winter except they should have put down a 3 foot base by now. Looks like another weekend coming up where WV is the better option than northern Vermont!   

[psuhoffman]

EPS REALLY likes that threat around the 20th. That’s the one the Gfs turned into the BECS the other day. 

[SnowenOutThere]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

EPS REALLY likes that threat around the 20th. That’s the one the Gfs turned into the BECS the other day. 

You got some maps for us?

[Eskimo Joe]

12z EPS implies we get snow this weekend. Not everything can be a BECS. Would be an advisory type event. Not terrible.

[WinterWxLuvr]

18 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

I'll take this action

[snowfan]

12 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

It could be a lot worse. Northern New England has had very little snow at all and the ski resorts up there depend on it and the coming pattern isn’t even necessarily good for them. Very likely significant snow is suppressed south of them as it often is mid winter except they should have put down a 3 foot base by now. Looks like another weekend coming up where WV is the better option than northern Vermont!   

This is likely only true if you’re traveling any length of distance to get to VT. The ski season in WV has royally sucked with them barely able to remain open. 

[psuhoffman]

Excellent eps run. I’d rather look at the whole window rather than a discreet event in a complicated flow at this range.  
 

7 day temps 

7 day mean qpf 

That looks pretty good to me.  Pattern continues after this as well. 

[SnowGolfBro]

4 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Excellent eps run. I’d rather look at the whole window rather than a discreet event in a complicated flow at this range.  
 

7 day temps 

7 day mean qpf 

That looks pretty good to me.  Pattern continues after this as well. 

Nice. Cold and wet in January usually equals snow around here, all caveats about timing and luck aside. 

[psuhoffman]

10 minutes ago, snowfan said:

This is likely only true if you’re traveling any length of distance to get to VT. The ski season in WV has royally sucked with them barely able to remain open. 

There was one week (granted it was the worst timing over Xmas) that was awful and a 60 degree rain wiped their snow out. But before that snowshoe and timberline were actually having an average typical December. Both had about 50% of their terrain open which is normal for Xmas. And both have already recovered back to 50% and will be well above that soon given the pattern. WV resorts are less dependent on natural snow and have snowmaking capability on 100% of the mtn. The northern New England resorts that avg 250-325”rely much more on natural snow. Additionally the pattern coming up might be better for WV than Stowe wrt natural snow. So you aren’t wrong that WV had a rough Xmas break period as well but I think all things considered they are lined up to have a better Jan compared to normal than northern New Eng might. 

[MillvilleWx]

I know some people are interested in instant satisfaction with the coming pattern, but this is one where Mother Nature is loading her shotgun with buck shot and not a slug. There’s gonna be waves zipping through the pattern like cars on the Capital Beltway at 700pm on a Friday.

It’s a pattern that will have the chance to yield both smaller events and big kahuna’s. There’s gonna be a monster in this setup for somewhere in the east. With so many distinct 5H vorts parading through the flow, that storm is unlikely to be captured at long leads. Take a break from model watching and browse every so often. It’s going to be headfake city until the N HEMI pattern is fully established in a week.

I would be shocked if the Mid Atlantic came away with nothing, but even some small events can make the area feel wintry.

[mattie g]

6 minutes ago, MillvilleWx said:

I know some people are interested in instant satisfaction with the coming pattern, but this is one where Mother Nature is loading her shotgun with buck shot and not a slug. There’s gonna be waves zipping through the pattern like cars on the Capital Beltway at 700pm on a Friday.

It’s a pattern that will have the chance to yield both smaller events and big kahuna’s. There’s gonna be a monster in this setup for somewhere in the east. With so many distinct 5H vorts parading through the flow, that storm is unlikely to be captured at long leads. Take a break from model watching and browse every so often. It’s going to be headfake city until the N HEMI pattern is fully established in a week.

I would be shocked if the Mid Atlantic came away with nothing, but even some small events can make the area feel wintry.

Before or during COVID? Because, depending on your answer, that could make me feel good or not so good.

[psuhoffman]

EPS day 15…

big picture so long as these 3 features in the pac keep reloading we will have a favorable pattern.  No sign of it breaking down through day 15. 
 

[psuhoffman]

12z ensembles snow means for those emotionally affected by such things. 

geps

Gefs

eps

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

8 minutes ago, MillvilleWx said:

I know some people are interested in instant satisfaction with the coming pattern, but this is one where Mother Nature is loading her shotgun with buck shot and not a slug. There’s gonna be waves zipping through the pattern like cars on the Capital Beltway at 700pm on a Friday.

It’s a pattern that will have the chance to yield both smaller events and big kahuna’s. There’s gonna be a monster in this setup for somewhere in the east. With so many distinct 5H vorts parading through the flow, that storm is unlikely to be captured at long leads. Take a break from model watching and browse every so often. It’s going to be headfake city until the N HEMI pattern is fully established in a week.

I would be shocked if the Mid Atlantic came away with nothing, but even some small events can make the area feel wintry.


.

Very good points, Millville.  The main take-away I have, really, is pretty much what you say here...as long as we have a good, long window with opportunities, that's all we can really think about right now.  And not chase individual things that pop up in deterministic models >4 days out.

The only thing I take issue with is this:
There’s gonna be waves zipping through the pattern like cars on the Capital Beltway at 700pm on a Friday.

It's physically not possible for cars on the Beltway to "zip through" at any time of day!!   Perhaps a better analogy might be "...zipping through the pattern faster than Ji can declare every model run a disaster!" 

Hope you are doing well and had a good Holiday season!

[StormchaserChuck!]

STJ moisture is good Jan 22-26 it looks like. 

[Maestrobjwa]

57 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

EPS REALLY likes that threat around the 20th. That’s the one the Gfs turned into the BECS the other day. 

I'm almost wanna get to the weekend just to see if we can track the next week/weekend a...and leave the snowcane mess to do...whatever, lol (would be nice to get a small/moderate event out of that, though). Feels like I've seen the Euro, gfs, and cmc trying to sniff out something...but of course, still way out there!

[Bob Chill]

@psuhoffman

@CAPE

You guys remember back in 2015 the week leading into the superbowl in early Feb when there was a northern stream shortwave originally tracking from Indianapolis ESE into our area? We tracked it for about 5 days. Started off with a sweet pass south of us.Very unusual track with suppressive flow. That kept bugging me and sure enough, suppression backed off in the short range and it tracked north of us and destroyed Boston. 

This weekend reminds me of that. I starkly remember thinking to myself back in 2015 that if that type of setup ever shows up again, that shortwave better start off passing pretty far south in the mid range... we'll see...

Eta: that might have been the storm that inspired @Jebman to post the most hilarious rambling rant against Boston that has ever been written. Anywhere. Lol

[Buddy1987]

18z Icon juiced up at 96 with LP in southern IL. Canadian at 12z had much less moisture until about 6-12 hrs later. Both have the LP placement relatively similar (Icon just a tad southeast of CMC) 

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

8 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

@psuhoffman

@CAPE

You guys remember back in 2015 the week leading into the superbowl in early Feb when there was a northern stream shortwave originally tracking from Indianapolis ESE into our area? We tracked it for about 5 days. Started off with a sweet pass south of us.Very unusual track with suppressive flow. That kept bugging me and sure enough, suppression backed off in the short range and it tracked north of us and destroyed Boston. 

This weekend reminds me of that. I starkly remember thinking to myself back in 2015 that if that type of setup ever shows up again, that shortwave better start off passing pretty far south in the mid range... we'll see...

Yup, I definitely remember that particular storm.  For awhile and for several model runs it looked good for us, and there was a fair bit of excitement.  Sometime not long before the event (a few days), the 18Z deterministic GFS was still looking fine and you put up a sort of warning post saying, "Guys, don't look at the 18Z GEFS ensembles!"  Sure enough, the ensembles didn't look good for here and from there after it was clear the event was going more north.

[stormtracker]

1 hour ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

And imma need boardwalk and all 4 RRs.

[ravensrule]

2 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

And imma need boardwalk and all 4 RRs.

There are 4 of me?. You guys can’t handle 1. 

[Buddy1987]

8 minutes ago, Buddy1987 said:

18z Icon juiced up at 96 with LP in southern IL. Canadian at 12z had much less moisture until about 6-12 hrs later. Both have the LP placement relatively similar (Icon just a tad southeast of CMC) 

Edit: then the similarities completely disappear at 108. LP over WV at that time. 

[dallen7908]

The EPO goes "way" negative week 2.  Similar GEFS plot. 

 

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

ICON is a nice hit, light/moderate daytime event with temps dropping as the snow falls.  Sign me up. 

[WxUSAF]

That memory many of you have for forecast failures astounds me. I remember bust events, but I have almost no memory of something that looked good on progs at some point and was clearly a miss by day X.

[Eskimo Joe]

3 minutes ago, SomeguyfromTakomaPark said:

ICON is a nice hit, light/moderate daytime event with temps dropping as the snow falls.  Sign me up. 

Snow and falling temps are great. Cold powder with no temp worries. Deep winter

[osfan24]

2 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

That memory many of you have for forecast failures astounds me. I remember bust events, but I have almost no memory of something that looked good on progs at some point and was clearly a miss by day X.

Boxing Day is the one that I immediately think of, mostly because I remember it was so close to a big Christmas storm.

I also think I remember the one Chill is talking about because it was Super Bowl weekend. It usually takes a holiday or something for me to remember it. I choose to stuff my brain with good memories instead, lol.

[WinterWxLuvr]

18 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

And imma need boardwalk and all 4 RRs.

[WinterWxLuvr]

Imagine living in the Canadian Maritimes watching that beast off shore sizing you up. The blizzard that thing is gonna create is gonna be legendary if it comes to fruition.

[Yeoman]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

12z ensembles snow means for those emotionally affected by such things. 

geps

Gefs

eps

I'd be pissed if I lived in the NE or Great lakes considering this is 15 days in the heart of winter