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March Medium/Long Range Thread: The Empire Strikes Back


stormtracker
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22 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

I'm trying to hang in there yall, but it's getting tougher and tougher with every fail.  When I do quit or run out of steam, I damn sure won't clog up the thread whining and ruin yalls time.  Not there yet, but man, it's starting to wear.   Let's see what the under 200 hour threats do.

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The problem with the strong northern stream is that it takes the storm from suppressed to Binghamton to Burlington jackpot with very few solutions in-between.

Really where did you think it was going to snow? We need a new hobby.

 

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@Ji the pattern isn’t the problem. The eps nailed the pattern. 

this was the period we’ve been watching for weeks and it still looks great from a longwave pattern pov 

A6AD0CB0-C79D-47A9-AD29-F56E647230B0.thumb.png.1db6f8cdc22b281eab32db3257d53133.png

That looks similar to a composite of our biggest March snowstorms 

D8B6EBC4-9729-41A4-96B7-1561B7E43817.gif.a49194854689096b66e0c95ee1e36c5c.gif

Look at the specific threat next week

2E0917D0-46D2-4FB2-85B0-D622DBA9AD3E.thumb.png.996e8f009869f5268bc34c0ef0158b0a.png

Baffin Block, 50/50, trough going neutral as it approaches the TN valley, ridge in the mountain west, trough just off the west coast. That is a perfect longwave pattern for a big snowstorm here. It’s literally exactly what has lead to every big March snow.  And all guidance indicated the storm will track south of us. But it’s just too warm.

And don’t blame March, this same thing has happened in other months lately too.   And then the excuse was to blame the pac because we didn’t have an EPO ridge dumping arctic air at us.  But that isn’t actually the right longwave pattern to get snow.  And I don’t know how many times I have to say that.  90% of our snow didn’t come from arctic air masses.  The best longwave pattern to get big snowstorms here isn’t a very cold one!  A huge epo ridge dumps arctic air but that longwave configuration promotes a ridge in the east.  Big storms will cut.  The only way we can snow in an epo driven pattern is to hope a bunch of weaker waves eject east pulling the boundary south and pray to get lucky and have one of those boundary waves clip us.  But that is never going to be a path to either a MECS+ storm or a truly snowy 30”+ winter. Those both come from blocking patterns with marginally cold domestic air.  The best we can hope for from an epo pattern is table scraps and if we get lucky maybe a median snowfall year like last winter for example.  We will never get a truly big storm or big year that way!  

The pattern isn’t the problem. It’s just too warm. You figure out why!  
 

 

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1 hour ago, CAPE said:

And the HH drunks B)

Location has an impact obviously. When I post I generally aim to give an objective synopsis for our region as a whole, based on what I glean from latest guidance. Not crazy about the prospects for frozen for eastern areas though.

Neither am I, and frankly as I indicated in my novel post to Ji...other than getting lucky with progressive waves during a -EPO regime...lately it seems impossible to get cold enough on the coastal plain to get snow most of the time no matter what the storm track is unless we have cross polar flow which isnt even a good pattern for big snowstorms.  If I lived on the coastal plain I guess I would root for those epo patterns now since nothing else works at all...but I am a big game hunter...either huge storms or big historic seasons with lots of snow...and there is no way to get either of those from that kind of pattern.  

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1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

No that is wave 2.  There are a LOT of perfect track rainstorms in there... 

tbf - part of the problem is that this coastal is simply nothing impressive. 850s are fine but surface temps aren't great - would certaintly be helpful if precip was actually heavy. Should it be snow with any real cold? Probably. But not like we're getting soaked by a majority of members. Just trust me that the other half look like this too.

1678708800-k6T4vd6Tbps.png

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7 minutes ago, jayyy said:

If it unfolded as the 6 EPS mean depicts (just under day 6), you’ve gotta think we’d see some snow. Low doesn’t bomb out but pretty good placement.

I see a 950 in that mix...that might do it lol

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4 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

tbf - part of the problem is that this coastal is simply nothing impressive. 850s are fine but surface temps aren't great - would certaintly be helpful if precip was actually heavy. Should it be snow with any real cold? Probably. But not like we're getting soaked by a majority of members. Just trust me that the other half look like this too.

1678708800-k6T4vd6Tbps.png

That plot in isolation is a bit misleading because a few of those members have a slower evolution and are going to show precip in later panels.  Some precip falls in the next panel on most members...if you look at the total precip from the members and subtract what falls from wave 1, quite a few end up getting the qpf up to like .5-.6  in the DC/Balt area and those are still rain also.  Yes if the storm was an absolute bomb with over 1" qpf over 12 hours it would work...but aren't we setting a high bar now?  This is a matter of degrees.  Of course it can still snow.  In rare instances where we get cross polar flow and lucky with the track of a boundary wave...we have gotten snow as recently as last winter.  And I am sure if we ever do get an absolute monster bomb storm with a perfect track in a blocking regime like 2016 or 1996 we can still get snow that way... but the problem is we are losing all the more marginal storms in a blocking regime lately.  And those made up a huge portion of our snowfall historically.  This reminds me of that storm in Feb 2021 where it took a perfect track and put down like .45 qpf along 95 and was just white rain and everyone said the problem was that the precip wasnt heavier.  Yea that is one way to look at it...that had it been extremely heavy precip it could have cooled things another 3 degrees and accumulated....but my POV was that should have been a 3-5" snowstorm for Baltimore.  There was absolutely no excuse that in early Feb with a perfect track storm, and a typical domestic airmass in place that it shouldn't have been snow.  I guess that is just a matter of perspective.  

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15 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Neither am I, and frankly as I indicated in my novel post to Ji...other than getting lucky with progressive waves during a -EPO regime...lately it seems impossible to get cold enough on the coastal plain to get snow most of the time no matter what the storm track is unless we have cross polar flow which isnt even a good pattern for big snowstorms.  If I lived on the coastal plain I guess I would root for those epo patterns now since nothing else works at all...but I am a big game hunter...either huge storms or big historic seasons with lots of snow...and there is no way to get either of those from that kind of pattern.  

what kind of pattern should would be looking before that delivers those cold Arctic highs(Feb 2003 pattern for example). Thats what we are really missing....those 1045 highs....we are getting 1025 highs or Great Lakes lows. I do want to test your climate theory with a Moderate Nino 

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3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

That plot in isolation is a bit misleading because a few of those members have a slower evolution and are going to show precip in later panels.  Some precip falls in the next panel on most members...if you look at the total precip from the members and subtract what falls from wave 1, quite a few end up getting the qpf up to like .5-.6  in the DC/Balt area and those are still rain also.  Yes if the storm was an absolute bomb with over 1" qpf over 12 hours it would work...but aren't we setting a high bar now?  This is a matter of degrees.  Of course it can still snow.  In rare instances where we get cross polar flow and lucky with the track of a boundary wave...we have gotten snow as recently as last winter.  And I am sure if we ever do get an absolute monster bomb storm with a perfect track in a blocking regime like 2016 or 1996 we can still get snow that way... but the problem is we are losing all the more marginal storms in a blocking regime lately.  And those made up a huge portion of our snowfall historically.  This reminds me of that storm in Feb 2021 where it took a perfect track and put down like .45 qpf along 95 and was just white rain and everyone said the problem was that the precip wasnt heavier.  Yea that is one way to look at it...that had it been extremely heavy precip it could have cooled things another 3 degrees and accumulated....but my POV was that should have been a 3-5" snowstorm for Baltimore.  There was absolutely no excuse that in early Feb with a perfect track storm, and a typical domestic airmass in place that it shouldn't have been snow.  I guess that is just a matter of perspective.  

Trust me, I agree with the broad point. It is horrible that we need a perfect track, QPF bomb to get there. I'm just saying that this one isn't even close to a notable rainstorm IMO. Yes the storm can't be represented in a single panel (or even a 24hr panel) but this is the wettest 50th percentile panel I can get for the window for most of us. Typing this out I guess I'm just replying to be argumentative since this winter has finally tilted me but the average member isn't close to a memorable miss. Just another drizzly March day.

1678752000-vaUfmA2fmTY.png

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22 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Neither am I, and frankly as I indicated in my novel post to Ji...other than getting lucky with progressive waves during a -EPO regime...lately it seems impossible to get cold enough on the coastal plain to get snow most of the time no matter what the storm track is unless we have cross polar flow which isnt even a good pattern for big snowstorms.  If I lived on the coastal plain I guess I would root for those epo patterns now since nothing else works at all...but I am a big game hunter...either huge storms or big historic seasons with lots of snow...and there is no way to get either of those from that kind of pattern.  

What was the set up last January? I don’t remember all the details. 1/29/22 got me for 16 inches at 22f at the time of snowfall. I’m about 15 miles inland from the south / central NJ coast at home at about 70 ft asl. 

Last January actually had appreciable cold and I snowed with a few different events culminating in the big show the 29th. Definitely my best storm since Jan 2018. 

The big ACY storm missed to my south or it would’ve been an outstanding Jan, but the theme was available cold and the ability to combine that with waves. It felt very counter to the theme lately and I hold onto it for that reason. 

The Delmarva did pretty well too I thought, yes? What worked last Jan? 

Asking genuinely. 

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5 minutes ago, Ji said:

what kind of pattern should would be looking before that delivers those cold Arctic highs(Feb 2003 pattern for example). Thats what we are really missing....those 1045 highs....we are getting 1025 highs or Great Lakes lows. I do want to test your climate theory with a Moderate Nino 

compday.5oVbdtnUgr.gif.7ed7b5adf594fa1991d4932c49ecf948.gif

The loading pattern for Feb 2003 was a poleward EPO ridge COMBINED with a severely displaced monster TPV over top of us that in conjunction displaced true arctic air south.  The specifics that lead to the storm was as the TPV started to exit it traversed the 50/50 region which set up possibly one of the most MONSTER 50/50's in history which compensated for what was honestly a complete crap longwave pattern otherwise.  If you look at that storm its an anomaly in almost every way except it had the best 50/50 of every HECS which overcame the problems everywhere else.  

 

But those kinds of things are an extreme anomaly.  Yes they will still happen.  Every once in a while we will get something like that and it would still work.  A year like 2014 would still work where we got an absolutely perfectly placed full latitude epo/pna ridge combined with enough of a -AO at times to displace the boundary eastward of normal in that pattern.  Or Feb/March 2015 where we got a -EPO in combination with a displaced TPV in eastern Canada.  Things like that will still work.  And eventually we will get lucky.  But those kinds of patterns have always been extremely rare and are not going to become more common just because all the other ways we snow no longer work as well.  

The issue I am talking about is why we can't get much snow in every other pattern that doesn't involve cross polar flow and some ridiculous anomalously displaced TPV scenario.   That is never going to be a reliable common way to get snow here.  That is super rare.  I am not so much talking about our super huge snowfall years being affected.  WHat I think is being affected more are what used to be the more common years.  A year that used to be 18" is 9" now.  A season that would have been 15" is 5".  Stuff like that.  Marginal events where we could have got a 5" wet snow storm from a less than perfect setup in a marginal airmass no longer works.  And that used to be a LOT of our snow.  especially in those less than perfect seasons which make up 90% of our seasons.  It's also possible we lose some snow in the big years on the margins...but there would be no way to prove it and most wouldnt care that it was 43" instead of 48" in a season.   But it really makes these years in between those rare perfect pattern season just god awful instead of bearable.  

 

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8 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

Trust me, I agree with the broad point. It is horrible that we need a perfect track, QPF bomb to get there. I'm just saying that this one isn't even close to a notable rainstorm IMO. Yes the storm can't be represented in a single panel (or even a 24hr panel) but this is the wettest 50th percentile panel I can get for the window for most of us. Typing this out I guess I'm just replying to be argumentative since this winter has finally tilted me but the average member isn't close to a memorable miss. Just another drizzly March day.

1678752000-vaUfmA2fmTY.png

I don't think we disagree here just focusing on different things.  My point was there are quite a few members in the mean that do get the qpf up around .5 qpf and those are still rain also!  

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