East Coast Winter Storm (ECWS) potential Jan 21-22 was about 150 miles too far southeast. Is it ATL to New England, or just a portion of or does it yet fritter to a weaker 23-24 event only NJ/PA northward?

[TheManWithNoFace]

Hunterdon County NJ. By the end of this month it will likely be true that areas of South Carolina are ahead of my seasonal snowfall. I'm about 3" ytd.

[White Gorilla]

1 hour ago, the_other_guy said:

Yeah you needed to be west of the river. sorry

Thanks. Been shafted or fringed all winter here locally.  Haven't scored yet.  Waiting. It simply sucks. But at least we have opportunities. 

[HeadInTheClouds]

14 minutes ago, White Gorilla said:

Thanks. Been shafted or fringed all winter here locally.  Haven't scored yet.  Waiting. It simply sucks. But at least we have opportunities. 

I just took a look at latest hrrr and it's very possible we get shafted with only a dusting tonight and that was the most robust up here. I guess we hope for the best. 

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, SnoSki14 said:

The HREF is pretty accurate in these circumstances so I buy it.

It is. Still, we'll get another look at the 0z HREF ahead of the event.

[White Gorilla]

28 minutes ago, HeadInTheClouds said:

I just took a look at latest hrrr and it's very possible we get shafted with only a dusting tonight and that was the most robust up here. I guess we hope for the best. 

Par for the course this year so far.  Again, let's see what happens the rest of the winter.  I am trying to stay optimistic. 

[SnowGoose69]

If the 18Z NAM is right then even SE VA barely sees anything with this..  That would be quite a bust a 3-4 days 

[North and West]

Par for the course this year so far.  Again, let's see what happens the rest of the winter.  I am trying to stay optimistic. 

You know how some years (like last February) it just finds a way to snow? It happens on the other side of the coin, too. Sometimes, it just finds a way not to.


.

[matt8204]

6 minutes ago, SnowGoose69 said:

If the 18Z NAM is right then even SE VA barely sees anything with this..  That would be quite a bust a 3-4 days 

If it's that much of a miss, I don't even feel bad about it.  Wasn't meant to be.  Onto the next.  At least I can enjoy the playoff games and not have to worry about shoveling/salting.

[White Gorilla]

8 minutes ago, North and West said:

You know how some years (like last February) it just finds a way to snow? It happens on the other side of the coin, too. Sometimes, it just finds a way not to.


.

True, just have to accept what is and hope for the best.  Good advice for life in general too.  I try to see the positives of low or no snow as a way to console myself.  It helps. 

[gravitylover]

3 hours ago, CPcantmeasuresnow said:

Very true in many cases. I’m  in Orange County five miles west of the river and I’ve had a snowpack since January 7th. About 4 inches otg as of this morning. 

I'm well east of the river and have had snow on the ground since then too, I'm a bit under 3" now and don't think I've hit 6" yet for the year but it looks (sorta) wintery. 

[wdrag]

Not looking promising this 4 day period but still a little uncertainty. The snowstorm itself via modeling trend is reduced in size and intensity. Tomorrow morning I will look at the modeling-any trends and adjust thread title.  

[snywx]

5 hours ago, CPcantmeasuresnow said:

Very true in many cases. I’m  in Orange County five miles west of the river and I’ve had a snowpack since January 7th. About 4 inches otg as of this morning. 

7” of solid snowpack out this way. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon

[mgerb]

Did I miss something? These probs seem insanely high. 

[Franklin0529]

5 minutes ago, mgerb said:

Did I miss something? These probs seem insanely high. 

For Tommor mornings storm

[snowman19]

9 hours ago, SnowGoose69 said:

If the 18Z NAM is right then even SE VA barely sees anything with this..  That would be quite a bust a 3-4 days 

I don’t know why anyone in their right mind is still holding out hope that Saturday is going to somehow, someway, magically turn into a major snowstorm for the metro area, it’s done, gone, lost, over, finished, fat lady has sung, dead, buried, bring down the curtain, goodnight, goodbye, history, it’s over Johnny…..Let’s move on…..

[Rjay]

1 hour ago, mgerb said:

Did I miss something? These probs seem insanely high. 

It's probably a mistake.  

[eduggs]

I appears to me the ensembles may have limited use in the medium-range, i.e., out to about 5 days. We have seen how they tend to cluster around the operational runs, which has given false confidence. For the previous storm with the GEFS and now with the EPS we have seen how the members can be almost unanimously clustered around a solution that is far from the final outcome. That renders them minimally useful. In this case, I'd rather just look at the hi-res operational models during this timeframe. Out beyond 5 days, the averaging of a wider spread becomes more useful than a single operational run.

[HVSnowLover]

The models did ok with this except the Euro none of them really had a hit inside 120 hours, 

[LibertyBell]

15 hours ago, bluewave said:

The rule this season has been needing more than one model showing the event. The GFS was the overamped model on January 3rd initially showing the heavy totals near ACY in our area. But the mesos showed the confluence over our area and us missing the storm. This event it was the Euros turn to show several overamped runs before it backed off and joined the other models. It would be great to have the old days back like February 2013 and January 1996 when amped up Euro run was all we needed for a KU without any other models on board. But these days we need multiple globals on board beyond 72 hrs and then have the mesos hone in on the finer details like banding locations.

why have the models become less accurate than they were 10 and even 25 years ago?

what was different about the mid 90s to the mid 10s?

 

[wdrag]

Snowstorm (for them pretty good sized) eastern Carolinas/se VA, maybe DE with Cape May NJ on the possible grazer northern fringe Fri afternoon early Sat. So this escaped south of us.  

Close doesn't cut it but we knew from the headline it wasn't a lock. Still going to be interesting to monitor. 

In the meantime, to replace it Sat morning, possibly NYC coldest temp of the season so far??

24th??  nothing yet, and so this thread may be a miss of us, a hit only to our southern mid-Atlantic.

[bluewave]

9 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

why have the models become less accurate than they were 10 and even 25 years ago?

what was different about the mid 90s to the mid 10s?

 

The models have become much more accurate than they were in the past. But in those days, we didn’t have weather forums and twitter posting every long range model snowstorm forecast. Models never have done particularly well with East Coast storm tracks past 3-5 days. Every once in a while a model like the Euro would score a long range win. This happened in January 1996 and February 2013. But we often forget how many long range misses the models had between the few long range successes.

In the 70s and 80s, we often didn’t even know the storm track or P types a day before the storm. The forecast a day before the Jan 78 snowstorm with 12-18” was for rain heavy at times. That was my first school snow day in the 1970s that I can remember. Numerous snowstorm forecasts  like in 1980 from a day before went OTS during nowcast time. The January 1987 forecast was for snow changing to rain hours before the storm started. Instead we got a heavy wet 10” of snow in about 5-6 hours.

Our last actual model bust from a day before was January 2000. We went from no snow to record snows in the Mid-Atlantic. Nothing like that has happened in over 20 years. So that represents a great improvement. Perhaps the eventual Euro and EPS upgrade to convection permitting 3-5 km resolution will extend the forecast range for East Coast snowstorms. But we may not know until they actually try it.

[Volcanic Winter]

So long, little fella. 

[Blizzardo]

6 hours ago, bluewave said:

The models have become much more accurate than they were in the past. But in those days, we didn’t have weather forums and twitter posting every long range model snowstorm forecast. Models never have done particularly well with East Coast storm tracks past 3-5 days. Every once in a while a model like the Euro would score a long range win. This happened in January 1996 and February 2013. But we often forget how many long range misses the models had between the few long range successes.

In the 70s and 80s, we often didn’t even know the storm track or P types a day before the storm. The forecast a day before the Jan 78 snowstorm with 12-18” was for rain heavy at times. That was my first school snow day in the 1970s that I can remember. Numerous snowstorm forecasts  like in 1980 from a day before went OTS during nowcast time. The January 1987 forecast was for snow changing to rain hours before the storm started. Instead we got a heavy wet 10” of snow in about 5-6 hours.

Our last actual model bust from a day before was January 2000. We went from no snow to record snows in the Mid-Atlantic. Nothing like that has happened in over 20 years. So that represents a great improvement. Perhaps the eventual Euro and EPS upgrade to convection permitting 3-5 km resolution will extend the forecast range for East Coast snowstorms. But we may not know until they actually try it.

What do you consider a model bust? This is a matter of personal opinion but there have been quite a few "busts" since 2000...

[RU848789]

7 hours ago, wdrag said:

Snowstorm (for them pretty good sized) eastern Carolinas/se VA, maybe DE with Cape May NJ on the possible grazer northern fringe Fri afternoon early Sat. So this escaped south of us.  

Close doesn't cut it but we knew from the headline it wasn't a lock. Still going to be interesting to monitor. 

In the meantime, to replace it Sat morning, possibly NYC coldest temp of the season so far??

24th??  nothing yet, and so this thread may be a miss of us, a hit only to our southern mid-Atlantic.

GFS Cat 3 Snowicane on the 12Z run today, days 8/9 - it's a lock, lol...

[LibertyBell]

7 hours ago, bluewave said:

The models have become much more accurate than they were in the past. But in those days, we didn’t have weather forums and twitter posting every long range model snowstorm forecast. Models never have done particularly well with East Coast storm tracks past 3-5 days. Every once in a while a model like the Euro would score a long range win. This happened in January 1996 and February 2013. But we often forget how many long range misses the models had between the few long range successes.

In the 70s and 80s, we often didn’t even know the storm track or P types a day before the storm. The forecast a day before the Jan 78 snowstorm with 12-18” was for rain heavy at times. That was my first school snow day in the 1970s that I can remember. Numerous snowstorm forecasts  like in 1980 from a day before went OTS during nowcast time. The January 1987 forecast was for snow changing to rain hours before the storm started. Instead we got a heavy wet 10” of snow in about 5-6 hours.

Our last actual model bust from a day before was January 2000. We went from no snow to record snows in the Mid-Atlantic. Nothing like that has happened in over 20 years. So that represents a great improvement. Perhaps the eventual Euro and EPS upgrade to convection permitting 3-5 km resolution will extend the forecast range for East Coast snowstorms. But we may not know until they actually try it.

But then we have great performances that stand out like February 1978 which was predicted from a week out.  January 1996 you already mentioned....wasn't March 1993 another one? and PD2?

The Euro has perceptibly gotten worse over the last few years, why can't we roll back the changes to what it was previously?

 

The other storms I can remember that the models did awfully with was March 2001 and January 2008 (our last Heavy Snow Warning.)  Looks like there was another bust today lol.

[LibertyBell]

34 minutes ago, RU848789 said:

GFS Cat 3 Snowicane on the 12Z run today, days 8/9 - it's a lock, lol...

lol maybe we could save ourselves some tax payer money by cutting down on these inaccurate models.

 

[LibertyBell]

57 minutes ago, Blizzardo said:

What do you consider a model bust? This is a matter of personal opinion but there have been quite a few "busts" since 2000...

Yeah I just mentioned two right off the top of my head....March 2001 and January 2008.

And January 2015 too.

So that's 3 right there.

 

[bluewave]

2 hours ago, Blizzardo said:

What do you consider a model bust? This is a matter of personal opinion but there have been quite a few "busts" since 2000...

Since I have a frame of reference back to the 70s, I consider a model bust a complete miss of the P-Type or storm track from the day before for a high impact event.  January 2000 fits that description with the storm coming hundreds of miles west from the day before. There was no storm forecast for many sections that got warning level to historic snows. 

I would consider January 2015 a large model error with a 60 mile + shift in the track to the east from the day before. We still got warning level snows around NYC and Western LI, but the jackpot shifted out to our east. Had the storm shifted hundreds of miles east and dropped no snow in NYC, then I would call that a bust. This happened several times in the 70s and 80s. 

We haven’t seen a complete P-type bust from the day before for a major event in a while. The most memorable one for me was 1-20-78. The forecast from the day before was for rain heavy at times. The next morning we had 12-18” on the ground. 

But I guess the term bust can be highly subjective.
 

[LibertyBell]

43 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Since I have a frame of reference back to the 70s, I consider a model bust a complete miss of the P-Type or storm track from the day before for a high impact event.  January 2000 fits that description with the storm coming hundreds of miles west from the day before. There was no storm forecast for many sections that got warning level to historic snows. 

I would consider January 2015 a large model error with a 60 mile + shift in the track to the east from the day before. We still got warning level snows around NYC and Western LI, but the jackpot shifted out to our east. Had the storm shifted hundreds of miles east and dropped no snow in NYC, then I would call that a bust. This happened several times in the 70s and 80s. 

We haven’t seen a complete P-type bust from the day before for a major event in a while. The most memorable one for me was 1-20-78. The forecast from the day before was for rain heavy at times. The next morning we had 12-18” on the ground. 

But I guess the term bust can be highly subjective.
 

What about March 2001 and January 2008?

 

[bluewave]

27 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

What about March 2001 and January 2008?

 

Yeah, March 2001 was pretty bad. But the writing was on the wall for January 2008. Each run from 3 days out was cutting back on the snowfall. The morning of the storm several models had much less snowfall than they were showing from the days before.