3/10 and beyond... all the waves threats

[jayyy]

My area is actually due for a big early April snow. Digging through old coops there were a lot of 6”+ snows in early April in the early 1900s. Even some 12”+. None recently. Of course there is that other thing that could be a reason for that lol.   
 
The progression you described is exclusive to a split flow stj dominant pattern. Even none Nino blocking regimes don’t go that way. 2016 for example, while the stj was very active so was the NS and we had to flush a couple miller b waves out of our system earlier that month before we got the NS to quiet down and allow what eventually happened. 
 
Anecdotally I’ve observed when we’re on a more noisy pattern and blocking sets in usually it leads to a major amplification in the east but that amplification is likely to be NS dominant. My theory is the blocking forces the NS to buckle and amplify under the block. Our best chance usually comes after as the pattern is deamolifyinh if a SS wave can time up right to take advantage of a temporary relaxation of the flow in the NS.  This can sometimes happen in waves as the pattern cycles.  2018 produced more threats after a reload but it was just too late by then.  Same is likely here. Might be too late for the first threat even. 

“I’ve done a shit load of research and have come to the conclusion that no matter how many favorable teleconnections are setup, there will always be something to fuck it up for us” - winter 22-23


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[psuhoffman]

 @Maestrobjwa sorry in advance for length but so much to this. I don’t know exactly how much our snow reality is altered yet.  No doubt this year the predominant pattern was not good for us.  This would have been a bad snow year in any era. We most definitely can still snow and get cold given the right circumstances. Last year it snowed a decent amount!  But my concern is I think our winning combinations in the pattern lottery are decreasing.  
 

One way I think we are losing out are in marginal situations we used to need to work out for a bad year like this to be 10” and not a complete shutout. There is a reason the frequency of single digit (or worse) winters in Baltimore are skyrocketing. It’s not because great years are suddenly bad. But I do think a lot of years like this that in the past found a way to snow a few times now it’s not working. There has been a lot of comparison to a similarly hostile pac period in the 70s. And they were similar. But many of those years like 72 and 74 and 75 managed their way to like 10-15” despite a bad base state pattern. I’m not sure if we can snow anymore by getting lucky with a good track in an otherwise bad warm pattern. Lately they doesn’t seem likely anymore. Warm is just so warm now.  I do wonder if the days of lucking into a fluke snow in a bad pattern are over. 
 

@Terpeast  here is my even bigger concern than just losing small marginal events in warm patterns. I can live with that. But some of our biggest snow periods came from blocking patterns that didn’t have true cold to work with. I’ll use the most famous of them.  Our snowiest month ever.  

It was “cold” south of 40 because frankly it doesn’t have to be that cold in Feb to be below avg there. But look where the actual cold is. Locked up in Siberia. Our source region is above avg. We had to work with marginal cold of a domestic source. I remember chatting with Wes about 8 days before the Feb 6 storm and he was concerned about the thermals. I said give me that track this time of year  and I’ll take my chances. That equation isn’t working as much anymore!  
 

This doesn’t mean we can’t get cold and snow. A pattern like 2003/2014/2015 would be cold and snowy even now Imo. But if we lose blocking regimes that don’t have arctic air as a way to get snow we are losing a HUGE part of our snow climo!  That’s my bigger fear. 
 

@Maestrobjwa I don’t know if we’ve actually lost that path or not.  2010 wasn’t that long ago.  But every super Nino seems to reset the northern hemisphere mid latitudes to a new Warner base state. Was the 2016 Nino a tipping point?  I don’t know. As @CAPEhas said we need to test that with another Nino. But I’ll go one step further I want to test it with a Nino like 1958/1966/1987/2010 where the pac wasn’t 100% perfect with a poleward epo pna ridge all winter dumping arctic cold into the conus. Years like that (2003/2015) I know can still work. But can a 1987 or 2010 when almost all the snow came within a couple degrees of freezing and there wasn’t arctic witnesses around most of the time. Because we can’t afford to lose those years or isolated similar storms like Feb 2006 in less awesome years but that we’re made ok by getting those marginal airbase setups up produce a big snow. Because if that no longer works then we lost like 50% or more of our snowfall climo. That was the more typical way we got snow not from arctic blasts. 
 

But I don’t know. I’m just pointing out the obvious and data.  Seems you’re making your own inferences. I hope that’s not true. My guess if I had to predict is we have lost some of that but not all. But I don’t know how much. I’d like a test case season to help find out. 

[clskinsfan]

I cracked a Founders KBS right now. May as well get hammered with alcohol if we are never going to get hammered again with snow. I may have to retire the word pummeled from my vocabulary. 

[Weather Will]

I will wait two more weeks to throw in the towel, still some hope in the third and fourth week of March especially N and W.

[jayyy]

12z euro is colder and more dynamic than the Ukie. 10:1 is very unlikely but a range of 0-12” for Boston and the immediate NYC suburbs sounds like a fun time for Mets up there trying to make a forecast for a storm that’s only a few days away. I don’t envy NWS or local Mets trying to inform the public on this one.

[psuhoffman]

29 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Problem is it is still going to be pretty cold through the entire month. The whole situation sucks. 

Naw it’s saving the New England ski season. I was worried a few weeks ago spring skiing would be shit this year. April is the best ski month. Soft snow. Warm temps. Sun. Sometimes a dump is snow tossed in. But they have to still have snow lol. 

14 minutes ago, jayyy said:

On the bright side, UKMET says sorry to NYC and Boston as well. Rough 36 hours for the NYC metro sheesh. Places just inland around 287 went from 40” to 2” within a day and a half on this model.

Good get that snow up where it matters the ski resorts. 

[WesternFringe]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

It’s not bad spacing or bad luck imo. It’s the same problem we’ve had. The wave spacing isn’t working because it’s too warm. So we need some crazy perfect unlikely spacing between waves where they are exactly close enough such that the northerly flow behind one can suppress the southerly flow ahead of Ty next but without crushing it. Ya ok. That’s just not likely.  Waves being a few days apart isn’t the problem.  It’s that the airmass is so blah even north of the boundary where there is southerly flow that as soon as any wave ejects from the west with any amplitude the southerly flow can blast a ridge to kingdom come ahead of it regardless of the longwave pattern.  The storm is then going to track along that boundary that it was able to push way further north than the longwave pattern would historically suggest it should be.  It’s a nasty feedback loop. 
 

The airmass is so marginal north of the thermal gradient I’m not even sure it would matter if one of these did track south of us unless it bombed us with like 1” qpf in 6 hours. Take last night. Places in NE PA like Hazleton at 1600 feet got 2-3” of snow from .45 qpf. Even at 1600 feet it was barely snow with a closed h5 tracking under them!  And places in the valleys like Drums at 900 feet got a slushy coating. So if at 900 feet way to our north the airmass was barely cold enough to produce any snow even with w perfect track for them…what was the likely outcome in DC area even had that tracked 200 miles south?  
 

It’s just too warm. 

Do you think it is cold enough to snow?  Could you clarify?  Lol. Jk

Looks and feels cold enough out here again finally for snow in Augusta County.  Most models and forecasters saying to expect amounts in the 1-3” range.  If I get 3”, it will triple my 1.5” total for the season and I will be ecstatic.  What a winter!

[fujiwara79]

-NAO patterns often just involve milquetoast cold.  Which is sufficient in January and February.  But sometimes it's not in March, especially in our current climactic environment.  I remember the March 8 2013 white rain event in DC.  Temperatures in Montreal the day before were approaching 50 degrees.  The storm had to rely on pure dynamics for snow, which we didn't have in DC, but southern VA actually got more snow than DC because they had rates and dynamics.

Milquetoast cold + anomalously warm ocean temperatures = 33 and rain the lowlands.

 

 

[psuhoffman]

5 minutes ago, WesternFringe said:

Do you think it is cold enough to snow?  Could you clarify?  Lol. Jk

Looks and feels cold enough out here again finally for snow in Augusta County.  Most models and forecasters saying to expect amounts in the 1-3” range.  If I get 3”, it will triple my 1.5” total for the season and I will be ecstatic.  What a winter!

My thermometer said it’s 99 degrees but I might have had it in the wrong place. It didn’t come with picture instructions 

[clskinsfan]

7 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Naw it’s saving the New England ski season. I was worried a few weeks ago spring skiing would be shit this year. April is the best ski month. Soft snow. Warm temps. Sun. Sometimes a dump is snow tossed in. But they have to still have snow lol. 

Good get that snow up where it matters the ski resorts. 

Unfortunately I am too old to ski. So an early gardening season would be nice. Especially after a February where I could have literally planted tomatoes safely. I still think we will see some snow after tomorrows minor event. By we I mean those of us to the NW. I am just frustrated by the lack of winter during actual winter. 

[fujiwara79]

99 degrees might be a low grade fever.  Lack of snow can also cause those symptoms.

[psuhoffman]

Euro was teeing up the storm around the 22nd. Who’s with me. Lol. I wouldn’t give up totally yet. It’s messy with so many NS waves but that period is close enough to good it wouldn’t take much. We would need a flush hit at night to work thoigh. 

[jayyy]

Unfortunately I am too old to ski. So an early gardening season would be nice. Especially after a February where I could have literally planted tomatoes safely. I still think we will see some snow after tomorrows minor event. By we I mean those of us to the NW. I am just frustrated by the lack of winter during actual winter. 

I’m beyond frustrated that it looks like we’re FINALLY going to enter a more SS dominant regime as climo is eroding quickly. Perhaps that leads to a last second score for our latitude, but man… if only we could have had this setup during peak climo. I honestly would not be shocked if your area over to mine and PSU scores during the final week of march or we get an April Fools storm. That’d be completely appropriate given this winter.

[fujiwara79]

I think northern New England has done fairly well this year.  Boston is much below average, but most of Maine is pretty close to average.  The difference between Boston and Portland is quite stark this winter.

[jayyy]

Euro was teeing up the storm around the 22nd. Who’s with me. Lol. I wouldn’t give up totally yet. It’s messy with so many NS waves but that period is close enough to good it wouldn’t take much. We would need a flush hit at night to work thoigh. 

I’m with you til’ the end man. You’ve been saying the 17-22 window is our best shot all along. Going to be tough for dc and points south, but I haven’t given up hope for our neck of the woods. Give me ONE flush hit and then I’ll gladly close the door on this winter and look forward to winter 23-24

[clskinsfan]

8 minutes ago, jayyy said:

I’m beyond frustrated that it looks like we’re FINALLY going to enter a more SS dominant regime as climo is eroding quickly. Perhaps that leads to a last second score for our latitude, but man… if only we could have had this setup during peak climo. I honestly would not be shocked if your area over to mine and PSU scores during the final week of march or we get an April Fools storm. That’d be completely appropriate given this winter.

We did it last year beyond mid April. Maybe that will be the norm going forward. I mean you just get much more amped storms in March and April. And it could be that we need those amped storms to be cold enough to snow going forward. I am looking forward to a Nino next winter. I want to see how an active southern jet works out with the way we currently seem to carry winter temps. Even with some blocking periods it really hasnt been cold. 

[Chris78]

15 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Euro was teeing up the storm around the 22nd. Who’s with me. Lol. I wouldn’t give up totally yet. It’s messy with so many NS waves but that period is close enough to good it wouldn’t take much. We would need a flush hit at night to work thoigh. 

Of course day 10 again but Euro had "that Look" of incoming. 

Getting late quick though. 

[jayyy]

I think northern New England has done fairly well this year.  Boston is much below average, but most of Maine is pretty close to average.  The difference between Boston and Portland is quite stark this winter.

If the Albany NY area gets the 12-20” models are hinting at for the 14th storm, they’ll be above 60” for the winter. That would be their third foot plus event in the past couple weeks. My parents are currently located roughly 35-40 miles NW of NYC and are barely in double digits for the season. Another 20 or so miles to the NW in orange county NY, they are above 25” (below average but much closer) NYC is facing potential futility. The Ohio valley over to Chicago has had a rough winter in terms of lack of snowfall as well. The west coast has been getting dumped on as we all know. 30-40 feet on the ground in some areas.

The coastal plain and areas within 50 or so miles of it has definitely been the most impacted, especially up in NE. Niña played a big part, but it also feels like the scales tipping back toward the norm. I can recall plenty of winters from the early 2000s through 2015 where the coast fared better than inland areas during nor’easters due to an overall lack of coastal huggers. I remember plenty of storms where Long Island and SE CT got buried while the lower Hudson valley saw a few inches, despite much better climo. There was one storm where Long Island saw 2 feet and my parents saw 3-4”. Best dynamics were further east and such. CAPE fared better than inland areas in our neck of the woods not too long ago as well. It’s only natural that we see winters where inland areas fare much better than the coast.

It’s really hard to pinpoint exactly what’s going on in a general sense because the outcomes vary so much from year to year. 2010 and 2015 seem like an eternity ago, but they really weren’t in the grand scheme of things. It’s become pretty obvious that we now need a more perfect setup to cash in and that it’s harder to snow via good timing in a bad to average pattern, but we definitely need more data before sounding the alarm too loud IMO. I really want to see what a moderate niño winter looks like going forward. If we can break above climo, all hope is not lost… we just know our down years will be especially crappy. Seems like we’re heading in a all or nothing direction. It’s entirely possible that we could still have winters where we see two or more big storms that put us well above climo, but also see more winters where we don’t break double digits, keeping our annual average roughly the same.

I hope we get at least one decent event before this winter ends. This will still be one of the worst winters ever, but at least all of the tracking we’ve done won’t be for absolutely nothing.

[jayyy]

Of course day 10 again but Euro had "that Look" of incoming. 
Getting late quick though. 

00z Canadian last night also had that look at day 10. Big storm up the coast with heavy snow. At least it was a Miller A for a change

[Terpeast]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

 @Maestrobjwa sorry in advance for length but so much to this. I don’t know exactly how much our snow reality is altered yet.  No doubt this year the predominant pattern was not good for us.  This would have been a bad snow year in any era. We most definitely can still snow and get cold given the right circumstances. Last year it snowed a decent amount!  But my concern is I think our winning combinations in the pattern lottery are decreasing.  
 

One way I think we are losing out are in marginal situations we used to need to work out for a bad year like this to be 10” and not a complete shutout. There is a reason the frequency of single digit (or worse) winters in Baltimore are skyrocketing. It’s not because great years are suddenly bad. But I do think a lot of years like this that in the past found a way to snow a few times now it’s not working. There has been a lot of comparison to a similarly hostile pac period in the 70s. And they were similar. But many of those years like 72 and 74 and 75 managed their way to like 10-15” despite a bad base state pattern. I’m not sure if we can snow anymore by getting lucky with a good track in an otherwise bad warm pattern. Lately they doesn’t seem likely anymore. Warm is just so warm now.  I do wonder if the days of lucking into a fluke snow in a bad pattern are over. 
 

@Terpeast  here is my even bigger concern than just losing small marginal events in warm patterns. I can live with that. But some of our biggest snow periods came from blocking patterns that didn’t have true cold to work with. I’ll use the most famous of them.  Our snowiest month ever.  

It was “cold” south of 40 because frankly it doesn’t have to be that cold in Feb to be below avg there. But look where the actual cold is. Locked up in Siberia. Our source region is above avg. We had to work with marginal cold of a domestic source. I remember chatting with Wes about 8 days before the Feb 6 storm and he was concerned about the thermals. I said give me that track this time of year  and I’ll take my chances. That equation isn’t working as much anymore!  
 

This doesn’t mean we can’t get cold and snow. A pattern like 2003/2014/2015 would be cold and snowy even now Imo. But if we lose blocking regimes that don’t have arctic air as a way to get snow we are losing a HUGE part of our snow climo!  That’s my bigger fear. 
 

@Maestrobjwa I don’t know if we’ve actually lost that path or not.  2010 wasn’t that long ago.  But every super Nino seems to reset the northern hemisphere mid latitudes to a new Warner base state. Was the 2016 Nino a tipping point?  I don’t know. As @CAPEhas said we need to test that with another Nino. But I’ll go one step further I want to test it with a Nino like 1958/1966/1987/2010 where the pac wasn’t 100% perfect with a poleward epo pna ridge all winter dumping arctic cold into the conus. Years like that (2003/2015) I know can still work. But can a 1987 or 2010 when almost all the snow came within a couple degrees of freezing and there wasn’t arctic witnesses around most of the time. Because we can’t afford to lose those years or isolated similar storms like Feb 2006 in less awesome years but that we’re made ok by getting those marginal airbase setups up produce a big snow. Because if that no longer works then we lost like 50% or more of our snowfall climo. That was the more typical way we got snow not from arctic blasts. 
 

But I don’t know. I’m just pointing out the obvious and data.  Seems you’re making your own inferences. I hope that’s not true. My guess if I had to predict is we have lost some of that but not all. But I don’t know how much. I’d like a test case season to help find out. 

Ok in your feb 2010 map, most of the cold was in siberia but that secondary lobe of cold was right where we wanted it for it to work for us. 

This year? The secondary lobe was centered in CA. It snowed all the way down to where it rarely snows, and I’m not talking about climo at 8,000 ft which is irrelevant for us. What’s relevant is where that cold air predominantly goes. 

This is why I remain optimistic that we will still get big snow years, even while we lose the smaller events in most other years. 

[midatlanticweather]

I threw in the towel! The larger swollen lady has sung, the fork tested winter, and it is done. I will not trust Lucy again this season. Looks like a cool couple of weeks, but snow chances are likely done! 

 

[WesternFringe]

19 minutes ago, jayyy said:

If the Albany NY area gets the 12-20” models are hinting at for the 14th storm, they’ll be above 60” for the winter. That would be their third foot plus event in the past couple weeks. My parents are currently located roughly 35-40 miles NW of NYC and are barely in double digits for the season. Another 20 or so miles to the NW in orange county NY, they are above 25” (below average but much closer) NYC is facing potential futility. The Ohio valley over to Chicago has had a rough winter in terms of lack of snowfall as well. The west coast has been getting dumped on as we all know. 30-40 feet on the ground in some areas.

The coastal plain and areas within 50 or so miles of it has definitely been the most impacted, especially up in NE. Niña played a big part, but it also feels like the scales tipping back toward the norm. I can recall plenty of winters from the early 2000s through 2015 where the coast fared better than inland areas during nor’easters due to an overall lack of coastal huggers. I remember plenty of storms where Long Island and SE CT got buried while the lower Hudson valley saw a few inches, despite much better climo. There was one storm where Long Island saw 2 feet and my parents saw 3-4”. Best dynamics were further east and such. CAPE fared better than inland areas in our neck of the woods not too long ago as well. It’s only natural that we see winters where inland areas fare much better than the coast.

It’s really hard to pinpoint exactly what’s going on in a general sense because the outcomes vary so much from year to year. 2010 and 2015 seem like an eternity ago, but they really weren’t in the grand scheme of things. It’s become pretty obvious that we now need a more perfect setup to cash in and that it’s harder to snow via good timing in a bad to average pattern, but we definitely need more data before sounding the alarm too loud IMO. I really want to see what a moderate niño winter looks like going forward. If we can break above climo, all hope is not lost… we just know our down years will be especially crappy. Seems like we’re heading in a all or nothing direction. It’s entirely possible that we could still have winters where we see two or more big storms that put us well above climo, but also see more winters where we don’t break double digits, keeping our annual average roughly the same.

I hope we get at least one decent event before this winter ends. This will still be one of the worst winters ever, but at least all of the tracking we’ve done won’t be for absolutely nothing.

Yeah, my sister who lives north of Albany (Halfmoon/ Clifton Park) is just reaching climo of 60” and is modeled to surpass that easily with the upcoming storms.  Must be nice!

[jayyy]

Pretty much the first time all winter where we have a SS born storm with the 540 line WAY south of us leading in. On march 20th haha. This solution ends up being suppressed like the GFS, but the 00z last night tracked that storm directly up the coast with heavy snow for most of us. The euro also looks to be hinting at this same general idea.

We do tend to see big storms pop up at the tail end of good patterns as they begin to break down, and it is the end of march so clashing air masses are bound to pop a big storm somewhere. The question remains whether or not we can get things to line up just right.

GFS looks like it wants to brew another big storm in the gulf around the 27th. Our time is short but the pattern is certainly active and the window isn’t fully closed just yet. Especially for inland areas. I won’t be tracking as closely over the next few days, but my interest is still there for the 17th-27th window.

[stormy]

11 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Ok in your feb 2010 map, most of the cold was in siberia but that secondary lobe of cold was right where we wanted it for it to work for us. 

This year? The secondary lobe was centered in CA. It snowed all the way down to where it rarely snows, and I’m not talking about climo at 8,000 ft which is irrelevant for us. What’s relevant is where that cold air predominantly goes. 

This is why I remain optimistic that we will still get big snow years, even while we lose the smaller events in most other years. 

I agree with you 100% ................. Nothing more need be said.  Thanks for your wisdom!

[jayyy]

NAM almost makes you think for a moment that snow is heading our way… but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that dynamics shift east shortly after this frame. The southern vort is more consolidated and digging looks improved, but the positive results of that will probably only bear fruit to our NE.

[Rvarookie]

For fucks sake…at least don’t forget to change your clocks

[Heisy]

Problem with that day 10+ euro pac wave (and it’s a signal on other models too) is we lose the cold source by time it comes east….we really needed that wave that the cmc blew up last night that is all suppressed on the models today to be the key player imo. That has a perfect confluence setup ahead of it, but it just has no damn spacing because of the next shortwave and -PNA energy pushing it east.

Just another example of bad luck…

Mean for that 10+ day event shows our 50/50 being too far out of play by then.




.

[stormy]

1 hour ago, WesternFringe said:

Do you think it is cold enough to snow?  Could you clarify?  Lol. Jk

Looks and feels cold enough out here again finally for snow in Augusta County.  Most models and forecasters saying to expect amounts in the 1-3” range.  If I get 3”, it will triple my 1.5” total for the season and I will be ecstatic.  What a winter!

Hello Neighbor!

This should be an elevation event.  I'm telling my many fans to expect less than 2 inches below 2000 ft and 2 - 4 inches from 2000 - 4000 ft. elevation. Its plenty cold for snow at 850mb at -5 C.    Surface temperatures are very marginal for daytime accumulation in mid March at 32 - 35F. unless rates are heavy.

Southward suppression of qp could be an issue.

[WesternFringe]

37 minutes ago, stormy said:

Hello Neighbor!

This should be an elevation event.  I'm telling my many fans to expect less than 2 inches below 2000 ft and 2 - 4 inches from 2000 - 4000 ft. elevation. Its plenty cold for snow at 850mb at -5 C.    Surface temperatures are very marginal for daytime accumulation in mid March at 32 - 35F. unless rates are heavy.

Southward suppression of qp could be an issue.

Hello! I am at 1540’ but have some topographic lifting that helps me and tend to do well for my elevation.  Expecting 2”-5” in my county falling from the sky by looking at modeled snowfall but only maybe 1”-2” accumulating looking at snow depth change maps.  Rates should be fairly heavy considering the whole event is not very lengthy.

[WesternFringe]

I would create a thread for the ten of us that live out this way, but then we would get predominantly cold rain once again lol.

@Buddy1987is looking like he lives in a good spot for this wave