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March Medium/Long Range Discussion


WinterWxLuvr
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1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

It doesn’t mean there won’t be cold air outbreaks again, just that they are rarer and less potent then they would have been 20-50-100 years ago. Take any daily temp anomaly threshold you want: +/-5F, 10F, 20F whatever. Look back over the last many years and compare how often you get that level warm anomaly vs cold anomaly. Warm always wins. You can look at this winter as an example. I’d have to double check, but I don’t think there were any -20F or greater daily departures at BWI in DJF. But there was like ~8 days with +20F. And yes yes, UHI exists, but UHI doesn’t take a “normal” day in rural/suburbs to +10 or +20 at the airport. 

It cuts both ways around here imho too. Moisture transport benefits greatly from just modest rises in base temps. That + strong baroclonicty with warm ocean/cold continent is most likely the primary driver behind the series of outsized east coast storms since 2009. That will likely continue for years. But being right in between cold/warm climo regions, we're also going to continue to suffer fails that wouldn't fail before.

We had a lot of boring mild winter wx in the 80s. Especially the first half before the 87 storms. Reminds me very much of the last couple winters here. We really did struggle to get good snow between 1980-87. It was warm A LOT too. Maybe not the new normal warm but just boring and crappy. If you lived here between the blizzard of 79 and 87 back to backers you would have absolutely hated this hobby. I'm sure of that. 

There are cycles in cycles in cycles with longwave patterns. I'll reserve my personal fear and concerns for another 5 years or so. Back in the 50s there was a stretch of ungodly warm winters iirc. Maybe we're in that cycle and it's being exasperated by a warming planet. Beats me. I'm kinda old so when it stops snowing entirely around here IWGAF cuz I'm doing dead things by then

 

 

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10 hours ago, Maestrobjwa said:

But how do you know the PAC firehose wasn't the reason for that? Was there not a general lack of cold air last season? This season we had cold air but no blocking...we have this last year and it's different. And as far as not having an article outbreak, to me, Jan 2017 wasn't that long ago, lol I just wonder if it's premature to sound the alarm.

This is exactly what I was talking about. Everytime I bring up a marginal event that went the wrong way someone brings up the reasons it wasn’t colder because every factor wasn’t perfect. We’ve snowed in a -NAO but flawed pac pattern before. The airmass wasn’t putrid in early Feb. There had been an injection of some attic air from brief cross polar flow in late January. It wasn’t a fresh arctic airmass by then but that setup has worked plenty of times. It worked in Feb 2010!!!  
 

Im not sure exactly what you’re point is. Are you denying it’s several degrees warmer now than it was?  Are you denying the fact that being warmer means some storms that would have worked and been a 32/33 degree snow before is rain now?  That seems a pretty simple and obvious conclusion. Our falling snow means bear it out. What’s more troubling is our median is dropping like a rock. The mean is being propped up some by an uptick (until recently) of big storms and big years. But the % of single digit snow years is way higher now than any past periods in records. 
 

Everytine I bring up a synoptic event that I feel should have been snow based on historical norms someone basically says “but it didn’t snow because it was too warm for this or that reason”. Well ya!  My point is but if it’s 3 degrees warmer now and it was a 36 degree rain event…well do the math!  Maybe instead of it being slightly too warm because of whatever imperfections you being up 50 years ago it was just cold enough to overcome it. The vast majority of past snow events in Baltimore were flawed and we had to overcome something not right about the pattern. We won’t snow often if we need a perfect setup. 

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I hate these setups. Rain changing to snow soon after onset of precip is fun. Anafrontal setups is watching rain (sometimes heavy) streaming down the street along with our tears of what could have been… only to get pity snow after the climax of precipitation. Yawn.

Win lose or draw, thank you all for another great winter of online analysis, comment and banter. Anticipation awaits for severe season and RadarScope watching. And then tropical season. And then we shall meet again and I hope next winter doesn’t suck as much as this one. At least you DC folks got the early Jan storm. Up here in Mappy territory the last good one was 2016. Another miss this year. Too long.


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2 hours ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

I’m in your camp. I think it’s very premature to sound alarms.

Not trying to sound an alarm. I don’t even think what I’m saying is some profound revelation. I’m not saying we can’t get snowstorms. Not saying we can’t get a big year.  Just saying we are getting less. We’re losing some snow on the margins.  Is that controversial?  If we know it’s 2-4 degrees warmer isn’t that just “duh”?  

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6 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

Will didn't even share the weeniest map. For shame. Enjoy this one.

image.thumb.png.096c939db683c66c66e9488850ed9c0b.png

I actually have taken to heart the criticism on the snow maps.   So I have refined my snow map criteria to within 5 days, and whether temps actually support it.  With this storm I am just trying to post the depth maps since temps don’t support snow sticking without heavy rates before mid to late morning and the snow will be falling on wet, soggy ground.  If I get 2 inches and any coverage on the roads I will score it a win in SW Frederick County.

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