Dec/Jan Medium/Long Range Disco

[Maestrobjwa]

21 minutes ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

You should’ve stuck to your arguments from last year (which increasingly look to be correct) rather than throw your lot in with the weenie hivemind like you did in your seasonal forecast. This was why I went really low in my snowfall contest predictions. Hopefully I’m wrong…

It's not a "weenie hive-mind" when you carefully make a forecast based on multiple factors that have worked before (Nino, blocking, etc). That's actually a tad insulting (even if you didn't mean it that way) If any warming effects have actually sped up and that's the reason it doesn't work out, you cannot blame anybody for not seeing that. There is no way to know if it were to happen that fast. But let's not talk about something that hasn't happened and just wait and see.

To my brain, I have both the great outcome and the other outcome as legit possibilities. Fact of the matter is...we just don't know yet, and all we can do is sit back and watch!

[PrinceFrederickWx]

17 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

If any warming effects have actually sped up and that's the reason it doesn't work out, you cannot blame anybody for not seeing that.

There’s actually a quite a few good posters on this forum (and other subforums) who have seen it, but I’ve watched them get insulted and/or run off.

Not trying to insult anyone, just stating facts.

[EastCoast NPZ]

Is there any chance any of this precip this week is snow at Cannan?  I'd like to take advantage of the kids being off school and take them tubing/sledding.  But the NWS site doesn't seem to give their forecast; I'm (hoping) it's giving a forecast closer to the local office.  Because that forecast looks too warm.

[SnowenOutThere]

Ik a lot of people are focused on 6z GFS output near the 3rd for good reason but it also shows the wave near the 7th as a string costal that’s a little too far south. Even if we take the GFS output for the 3rd verbatim we still have chances later that week! Agree it is concerning though …

[WVclimo]

13 minutes ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

Is there any chance any of this precip this week is snow at Cannan?  I'd like to take advantage of the kids being off school and take them tubing/sledding.  But the NWS site doesn't seem to give their forecast; I'm (hoping) it's giving a forecast closer to the local office.  Because that forecast looks too warm.

Looks like Friday or Saturday would be your best days.  From the NWS point-and-click:

 

 

[psuhoffman]

59 minutes ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

You should’ve stuck to your arguments from last year (which increasingly look to be correct) rather than throw your lot in with the weenie hivemind like you did in your seasonal forecast. This was why I went really low in my snowfall contest predictions. Hopefully I’m wrong…

There is a middle ground.  After calculating the avg of the analogs I came to with I did reduce the snowfall to factor in warming. The number was still so high because the best matches to this winter were some of our snowiest winters ever. I acknowledged the risk and my fears regarding warning. We will see when it’s over if I miscalculated. Maybe the gfs is too warm. Maybe this storm doesn’t even happen. Maybe this is the one storm that falls into my “reduced” calculation and we still get 2 big snows in Feb and we end up with 35” instead of 45” and I was correct. We don’t know yet. 
 

But I love snow so the thought of losing and storms bothers me. Sorry. I totally get that some would rather try to ignore something that’s depressing and they can’t control. That’s probably healthier. 

[stormtracker]

Looks like I picked the right week to vacation and the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

This thread went from 0 to 60 and back to 0 in like 72 hours.   

 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Funny part about all of this.....if we get an area-wide wsw and event, most of this chatter will subside exponentially....for a little while anyway. It just needs to snow ffs.

True but the fact we’ve had so little snow recently seems related to what we’re complaining about lol 

[TSG]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

Frankly that frame is absolutely terrifying to me.  Were no longer a day into the pattern by then. We’ve had an NW flow into the eastern US for a week by then to establish a colder regime. Everything went 100% perfect for places a bit NW of DC (even DC should get a decent snow there) and it’s just rain.  

 

i'm going to disagree pretty strongly on this point. The boundary layer up to ~900mb is torched from 2.5 days of Southwest/South flow starting on the 31st. Yeah these kind of storms can bomb out and make up for less than ideal temps, but there's no real cold for the storm to pull down from the N/NW. The panel below says it all, >0C 850s all the way to Maine... 45-50F surface coming in at 20kts off the Atlantic over NJ/DE. That's just not a recipe for snow in the Mid-Altantic in my experience, bombing cyclone or not.

[BristowWx]

If hr 174 doesnt make you cry then not sure what will.

[Terpeast]

12z a bit south, 850s bit cooler. BL still torched on the onset. We’ll see if it helps the backend

[BristowWx]

Just now, Terpeast said:

12z a bit south, 850s bit cooler. BL still torched on the onset. We’ll see if it helps the backend

it does not

[Terpeast]

534 line way north, though. No dice

[SnowenOutThere]

5 minutes ago, TSG said:

i'm going to disagree pretty strongly on this point. The boundary layer up to ~900mb is torched from 2.5 days of Southwest/South flow starting on the 31st. Yeah these kind of storms can bomb out and make up for less than ideal temps, but there's no real cold for the storm to pull down from the N/NW. The panel below says it all, >0C 850s all the way to Maine... 45-50F surface coming in at 20kts off the Atlantic over NJ/DE. That's just not a recipe for snow in the Mid-Altantic in my experience, bombing cyclone or not.

Okay what about this one where the low is further south and 850s aren’t torched?

[Solution Man]

1 minute ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Okay what about this one where the low is further south and 850s aren’t torched?

[NorthArlington101]

flee to the hills!

[Terpeast]

1 minute ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Okay what about this one where the low is further south and 850s aren’t torched?

The BL got even warmer this run, while 850s got colder

[BristowWx]

1 minute ago, Terpeast said:

534 line way north, though. No dice

a lot of you have said it but if we cannot snow with that setup in January then I went too high on my snow fall contest prediction.  being inside the 540 used to be good.  

[brooklynwx99]

1 minute ago, Terpeast said:

The BL got even warmer this run, while 850s got colder

surface cold air isn’t established before that system moves in… simple as that, really

[stormy]

On Sunday afternoon I said, "Don't be too quick to give up on Friday".

The 12z GFS now agrees:   Only a snapshot in time, but we'll see.

[Terpeast]

1 minute ago, brooklynwx99 said:

surface cold air isn’t established before that system moves in… simple as that, really

Yeah, 2 runs in a row of this, and I’m starting to think that we’re paying the price of the canadian torch. Onto the next one.

[Solution Man]

1 minute ago, BristowWx said:

a lot of you have said it but if we cannot snow with that setup in January then I went too high on my snow fall contest prediction.  being inside the 540 used to be good.  

Take you snowfall prediction /2 and X 0….that should be the answer. We suck right now

[87storms]

2 minutes ago, BristowWx said:

a lot of you have said it but if we cannot snow with that setup in January then I went too high on my snow fall contest prediction.  being inside the 540 used to be good.  

Doesn't look like there's any real surface high to the north.

[CAPE]

Locate the cold. Show me the mechanism to get a N/NW flow into the storm. LP over the GLs and HP over Atlantic Canada. Not a good setup.

 

[Terpeast]

It looks better after the 4th so far (the cold air)

[Eskimo Joe]

4 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Locate the cold. Show me the mechanism to get a N/NW flow into the storm. LP over the GLs and HP over Atlantic Canada. Not a good setup.

 

La Nina-esque

[CAPE]

Just now, Terpeast said:

It looks better after the 4th so far (the cold air)

The 4th-5th has consistently looked like the beginning of the window where snow possibilities increase outside of the mountains.

[TSG]

I don't understand the doom and gloom over this setup on the 3rd. This just isn't a good look for MA snow and never was. There's no real cold in the East to work with yet, it's all behind the storm. We need it in front.

[clskinsfan]

Just now, TSG said:

I don't understand the doom and gloom over this setup on the 3rd. This just isn't a good look for MA snow and never was. There's no real cold in the East to work with yet, it's all behind the storm. We need it in front.

You are missing the point. The fact that isnt a snowstorm in the Shenandoah Valley in early January is a problem. It would be in any other year I can remember. We have been torched at the surface plenty of times heading into snowstorms in the past. Something is just different about the base state now.

[WesternFringe]

GFS saying snow again for Augusta and surrounding counties Friday night into Sunday morning.