January/February Mid/Long Range Disco IV: A New Hope

[Maestrobjwa]

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

So you're saying I shouldn't analyze the pattern unless its what you want to hear?  

Ehh nah...I don't know. Good analysis is good analysis. I mean some analyzers on here may say it looks awful and then don't say a lot if it still look awful...and pop back in when it gets better, lol But don't be perplexed when ya get the dead horse reaction though...You can only hear the same bad thing everyday (even when it's true) before it's like "Yes, yes I know I KNOW!" (Like when a family member nags ya, lol)

[psuhoffman]

1 minute ago, Blizzard Hunter said:

FWIW, I think your analysis is fair. I also don't deem it to be overly negative. This winter it is extra hard to read some of your analysis given how sucky the winter has been, but it's reality. 

Thanks, FWIW I am not TRYING to be negative.  My pattern analysis is simply my take on what I see.  It's been so negative because our prospects for snow have actually been that bad.  I don't feel like I am exaggerating it.   Likewise, my climate analysis stuff is simply that...we have been struggling to snow lately and I am trying to analyze why and if its likely to change.  I am not trying to come up with negative conclusions, but if the evidence leads me there I am also not trying to hide it.  At some point things will get better and then my analysis will be more positive, and then you will know it's not just because I am trying to blow smoke up your ass but because I actually think we have a better chance at snow.  

1 minute ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Ehh nah...I don't know. I mean some analyzers on here may say it looks awful and then don't say a lot if it still look awful...and pop back in when it gets better, lol

Isn't that kinda "only analyze when its good" like I said. 

[IronTy]

Well fuck.  Now we have  @psuhoffman praising Joe Bastardi and @Maestrobjwa trying to walk @psuhoffman back off the ledge.  This winter is truly a catastrophe.  

[Ralph Wiggum]

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

Not really seeing it outside of run to run noise. The window is still roughly the first 8-10 days of Feb.

Better h5 look than 12z yesterday imo.

Debs gonna deb. This looks fine to me.

[Paleocene]

Euro still aggressive with the cold D8-10. But where's the juice?

 

[SnowenOutThere]

10 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

but like...if there's no good news to report...sometime it's better not to have the reminder and just get an update if/when it gets better

 This would be like not wanting to read the newspaper unless its only good news, I ultimately would rather be informed than ignorant.  

[psuhoffman]

12 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

Now when we want the energy to hang back, the models move it out quickly.   lol...We're gonna win one day.

I don't think holding the energy back necessarily ends better.  The op GFS ended up an ice to rain storm.  Unfortunately any cold shot will likely be short lived.  IMO our only real chance at a win here, or higher probability chance, is to get a more strung out boundary with waves riding as the cold presses.  That seems to be how that little snow signal to our SE shows up on the GEFS.  I don't think a wave attacking established cold will work here, we don't have any mechanism for the cold to resist and so far the seasonal trend is for warm to rout in no time once the SER starts to pump behind any wave.  

[Maestrobjwa]

3 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

 This would be like not wanting to read the newspaper unless its only good news, I ultimately would rather be informed than ignorant.  

Except in this case we already know it's been bad, lol It's like once a newspaper reports on a bad situation...after awhile it ain't nothin' else to talk about if there are no further updates. Monday: The building burned down

Tuesday: Building still burned down

Tuesday (a month later): Building is still burned, lol (wow what an update!)

[Ralph Wiggum]

4 minutes ago, Paleocene said:

 But where's the juice?

 

[SnowenOutThere]

1 minute ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Except in this case we already know it's been bad, lol It's like once a newspaper reports on a bad situation...after awhile it ain't nothin' else to talk about if there are no further updates.

Do you just want nobody to post if the pattern doesn't look good? 

[psuhoffman]

5 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Except in this case we already know it's been bad, lol It's like once a newspaper reports on a bad situation...after awhile it ain't nothin' else to talk about if there are no further updates. Monday: The building burned down

Tuesday: Building still burned down

Tuesday (a month later): Building is still burned, lol

It won't matter.  If it makes everyone feel better to blame me fine.  I can take it.  But if me and the others who post objective analysis stop posting when it doesn't look good... when you log on each day if the only posts you see are day 15 clown maps and 3 posts a day by the posters that you know only post extra rosy optimistic takes, and there are no posts by anyone else...you will know by default it still looks like crap and will then be sad.  The problem isn't the posts, its that its not snowing.  You're just venting and finding things to take out your frustration on.  But nothing is really going to make you feel better other than snow...and if it was snowing you wouldn't give a crap what I said.  

[brooklynwx99]

the pattern will have lots of cold air to the north and waves tracking along a boundary. legit arctic air in SE Canada and activity is all you can ask for. seeing the EC lit up with greens on the 5 day precip anomaly like that is nice 

could it go up in smoke? sure! even the best patterns do every now and then. but there’s also the possibility for a large overrunning event 

with the mood in here you’d think we’d be looking at a blowtorch when it’s far from the opposite

[SnowGolfBro]

It needs to be said that we are working off historical averages going back maybe 150 years. So what we call the average may be extremely low or extremely high if we had records going back to the beginning of time. And based off the big events i can remember, it stands to reason that we would have years or stretches of many years (maybe centuries in the data we can’t know) where it just doesn’t snow much. That sucks. But we keep tracking winter month after winter month. It’s what we all like to do. I do think we will see some some snowflakes before the Spring. But if we don’t I’ll still be tracking next winter.

[DDweatherman]

8 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Except in this case we already know it's been bad, lol It's like once a newspaper reports on a bad situation...after awhile it ain't nothin' else to talk about if there are no further updates. Monday: The building burned down

Tuesday: Building still burned down

Tuesday (a month later): Building is still burned, lol (wow what an update!)

I dread reading your posts knowing what they're going to sound like before I even read them. When we get bad news from a model run, it's like predicting death & taxes. 

[CAPE]

33 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I don't think its dead.  Ive said repeatedly its the best chance we've had.  But that's a super low bar.  My larger point is...That is unlikely to be a truly snowy period for the mid atlantic.  Look at the GEFS snow probabilities...

its still way below 50% for 3" across our area...even up here I am below 40%.  That's actually below climo!  So yes its above the level of recent threats which were near ZILCH...but still its a below climo period overall.  

But is it possible SOMEWHERE in our area might get a weak wave from this...sure.  The GEFS has some hits, enough to cause that little increase in the mean to our SE.  That could end up anywhere.  But that looks like more of the same crap to me...kinda like last year...

2021-22 snowfall anomalies

where one little area got lucky with one wave and if you lived in that small geographic area you felt like it was a decent winter...but in reality it was a god awful snowfall year for the mid atlantic and a crap pattern but the one little area that got lucky with one wave just happened to be right across some of our region.  But it was never a pattern that was ever going to lead to a truly snowy year or period in a larger sense.  Just one good enough to allow someone to maybe get lucky.  

So could this upcoming pattern produce that one lucky progressive wave, sure, and could that wave end up somewhere across our area, sure.  But its going to be another thread the needle progressive wave, where the "win" zone is relatively small and the odds of any one location getting significant snow is very low and when its over 90% of the mid atlantic is probably still going to be looking at severe negative snowfall anomalies.  So I am not getting excited by it.  

I remain more interested in seeing if the -NAO looks later in Feb are true.  There are even hints on the extended GEFS, although the GEFS continues the raging SER even with the next blocking episode later Feb, but if we can time up a less hostile PNA with a -NAO later in Feb that is when maybe we could actually enter a period that I could feel more confident there is a larger percentage chance we actually make up some ground and put down some significant snowfall across a larger area of this region.  I want that.  If and when I see any hint of it I will be screaming halleluiah from the roof tops.  I just don't see it yet.  

Re: last winter.

Jan into early Feb was a pretty cold period, and there were 3 all-snow events for eastern areas during January. Other areas in our region got in on at least one of those. The pattern was progressive, and favorable for late/offshore coastal development with legit cold air and the thermal boundary displaced eastward, but it wasn't just one lucky/fluky wave. For the region overall I suppose you can say it was god awful, but areas to the NW did at least okay in Feb and March iirc. It was the the in-between areas along I-95 that mostly missed out, and as you have said- that's pretty typical in a Nina. It's ultimately an IMBY deal, so yes I remember it as a pretty good winter even though Feb/March yielded nothing of significance. Could have easily ended up with 25-30".

[Maestrobjwa]

6 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Do you just want nobody to post if the pattern doesn't look good? 

Nah not sayin' that either...but I'd argue for an exception in winters like this one. Clemency for extraordinary circumstances 

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Re: last winter.

Jan into early Feb was a pretty cold period, and there were 3 all-snow events for eastern areas during January. Other areas in our region got in on at least one of those. The pattern was progressive, and favorable for late/offshore coastal development with legit cold air and the thermal boundary displaced eastward, but it wasn't just one lucky/fluky wave. For the region overall I suppose you can say it was god awful, but areas to the NW did at least okay in Feb and March iirc. It was the the in-between areas along I-95 that mostly missed out, and as you have said- that's pretty typical in a Nina. It's ultimately an IMBY deal, so yes I remember it as a pretty good winter even though Feb/March yielded nothing of significance. Could have easily ended up with 25-30".

I posted the mid atl snowfall anomalies. 90% of the area finished below avg snowfall and by a lot. The only areas that did well were the immediate coast and a this strip that one wave hit.  I pray to god that’s not the new bar for a “good” season. 

[CAPE]

19 minutes ago, Paleocene said:

Euro still aggressive with the cold D8-10. But where's the juice?

 

Of the big 3 global ensembles, the EPS overall has had the driest look with the cold in place.

[psuhoffman]

11 minutes ago, brooklynwx99 said:

the pattern will have lots of cold air to the north and waves tracking along a boundary. legit arctic air in SE Canada and activity is all you can ask for. seeing the EC lit up with greens on the 5 day precip anomaly like that is nice 

could it go up in smoke? sure! even the best patterns do every now and then. but there’s also the possibility for a large overrunning event 

with the mood in here you’d think we’d be looking at a blowtorch when it’s far from the opposite

The top analog is 1994. But remember that was mostly frustrating down here. We didn’t get that much snow that winter. It was below avg here!  The snow was mostly north of us. And…that pattern persisted all winter. This looks like a 5 day window. So we’re talking 1-2 waves. How much snow did DC get from any 5 day period in 1994?  Not much. So I could definitely see one of the waves early Feb acting like the plethora of 94 waves did but that would mean most likely the big snow ends up to our NW.  But I’m just playing odds here. Maybe the unlikely outcome hits. The were due index is about to explode. 

[Heisy]

The 12z Euro control leaves energy behind just like GFS. This is the progression we want models to show if we want a good snowstorm. We pray

Wish we could get Op to show this






.

[Solution Man]

26 minutes ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

 

Still looking for the killer GFS one golf course at a time

[Heisy]

I don't think holding the energy back necessarily ends better.  The op GFS ended up an ice to rain storm.  Unfortunately any cold shot will likely be short lived.  IMO our only real chance at a win here, or higher probability chance, is to get a more strung out boundary with waves riding as the cold presses.  That seems to be how that little snow signal to our SE shows up on the GEFS.  I don't think a wave attacking established cold will work here, we don't have any mechanism for the cold to resist and so far the seasonal trend is for warm to rout in no time once the SER starts to pump behind any wave.  

GFS left a ton of energy behind so there wasn’t as big of a cold push up top with the initial front, euro is on the other side of spectrum with only leaving a little behind. Need a perfect balance like Control. Or somehow get lucky with some kind of post fropa/anafront if trough goes positive idk….


.

[Maestrobjwa]

5 minutes ago, Heisy said:

GFS left a ton of energy behind so there wasn’t as big of a cold push up top with the initial front, euro is on the other side of spectrum with only leaving a little behind. Need a perfect balance like Control. Or somehow get lucky with some kind of post fropa/anafront if trough goes positive idk….


.

I mean the Euro solution we ain't seen all winter (have we?) I mean that SE ridge ain't surrendered to quite that extent  save the temporary arctic front Christmas Eve/Day. So you'd think the solution would be either the GFS or something between that and the euro control...

[CAPE]

23 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I posted the mid atl snowfall anomalies. 90% of the area finished below avg snowfall and by a lot. The only areas that did well were the immediate coast and a this strip that one wave hit.  I pray to god that’s not the new bar for a “good” season. 

But there were 3 waves, and you probably ended up with more snow than any of those areas. In most cases if you post an anomaly map like that for a given MA winter the NW areas will be closer to (or exceed) mean snowfall. More typical. It just didn't work out that way last winter, but many areas still got some snow despite being below average. I doubt that becomes the new bar for what is 'good' lol.

[mattie g]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

so you want me to lie to you and make up BS analysis,  ok 

It's a really good setup, despite a lack of blocking and a SE ridge its going to work, we're going to get wave after wave to take a perfect track and save our season.  There.  Have a good day.  

Thanks. That's more like it.

Keep it up, champ!

[Daniel Boone]

4 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

 

This is correct in that we have had a couple blocks recently where there was no response in the mid latitude Atlantic under it. That’s troubling. But what’s more troubling are these 2 recent blocking episodes where we did get the 50/50 and it still made no difference. 

and yea the pac wasn’t good…but back to my point about the pdo, if that’s going to be the pac base state 80% of the time for the foreseeable future we can’t afford to just say “the pac”. We have to look at how we overcame that look in the past. What troubles me in the last 4 times we got blocking recently…it didn’t work!  
I am in the process of compiling data to see what the % of times we got snow in a -NAO -PDO month during the last -pdo cycle and see what the success rate was to see if our recent -NAO fails are typical or a red flag. But I have to do some real work so I’ll get to that later. 

Yeah, really is puzzling. Look forward to your findings.

[Daniel Boone]

4 hours ago, Terpeast said:

And for that, we have to kill the SER/WAR. As long as that is there, it’s very hard to lock in a 50/50

Yeah agree, and it seems the SST's off Newfoundland are prob. somewhat of the culprit inhibiting LP development in that particular area thereby allowing the -NAO/SER hookup.

[BristowWx]

Happy hour coming up…prediction?  

[Solution Man]

2 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

Happy hour coming up…prediction?  

I’m in pushing all chips on table for a better than average run

[Interstate]

1 hour ago, Heisy said:

The 12z Euro control leaves energy behind just like GFS. This is the progression we want models to show if we want a good snowstorm. We pray

Wish we could get Op to show this






.

This seems just like last years Jan storm.