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February Medium/Long Range Thread


stormtracker
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10 minutes ago, mattie g said:

You’re not disagreeing with his statement about the “shady line.” He says that the “shafting” is a north/south thing and not a NW/SE thing.

Also…you might be north, but he’s way the hell west.

I think my corrections were accurate. He is indeed west but pretty far south of this area of the subforum. As Chris said above, it all evens out as the years pass, but it's been a tough one up here in the Hagerstown area this year.

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7 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

That's the lid I think. It's a tall order to get h5 to close a second low south of the vortex so the setup doesnt support a 1-2 punch storm. Without a vigorous upper low, you can't really get a long duration or moisture bomb. A warning level progressive shortwave is probably best case unless things shift around.

Another thing holding back max potential is lack of organization near the MS# River. It's diffuse and flat until approach. One way a progressive wave can produce big is a big moisture fetch/organized low in place in advance. Not the case here. I do feel like there is a very good chance at a warning level snow but anyone married to the widespread 12+" fantasy op runs is either already named Ji or their bubble will burst

I'd rather it be centered there then right on top of us... the second issue is more cold enso common and why I keep saying in general not specific to any one setup, our high end on any given storm is probably high SECS to MECS and not HECS type events.  We just don't typically get the juiced up amplified STJ waves that can bully their way across and attack the NS flow in cold enso seasons.  We need more of the other variables to go our way, and even then storms tend to max out at MECS not HECS even if everything does go our way.  

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11 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

That's the lid I think. It's a tall order to get h5 to close a second low south of the vortex so the setup doesnt support a 1-2 punch storm. Without a vigorous upper low, you can't really get a long duration or moisture bomb. A warning level progressive shortwave is probably best case unless things shift around.

Another thing holding back max potential is lack of organization near the MS# River. It's diffuse and flat until approach. One way a progressive wave can produce big is a big moisture fetch/organized low in place in advance. Not the case here. I do feel like there is a very good chance at a warning level snow but anyone married to the widespread 12+" fantasy op runs is either already named Ji or their bubble will burst

Makes sense re not having that 2nd upper level low...good point on that.  I'm all in on a warning level event.

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5 minutes ago, winter_warlock said:

If GFS  and EURO shows what icon showed this forum will explode lol

Honestly, it's a bit early for everything to show a blizzard. It will never hold because there are just too many things that can go wrong imho.

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@Ji this is kinda funny because over the last 5 years I've been the champion of how much warming is hurting our snow climo...and now this year I am defending against some who are acting like "we should be getting 100" of snow and its a horrible sign we aren't" but let me make the case why I DON'T see the need to panic over "wasting" this year...

First of all we have not "wasted" it...we did get snow and we got weeks of snow on the ground and I think we are not done at all...but this is why I don't see this as a wasted year for a big snowfall result

IAD has had 25"+ only 15 times in the last 50 years.  Here is the breakdown

9 Nino years, 5 enso neutral, 1 Nina

1 time...once. one more than none, has IAD had 25" in a la nina in the last 50 years.  And that one unicorn year 1996 had crazy blocking, not just for a few weeks but through most of winter...and a rare strongly positive PDO in a cold enso.  No other cold enso years had that combo.  And we don't have that this year so expecting that kind of anomaly again is foolish imo.  

The PDO came in around -1 for January, way better and I do see signs it may be flipping its base state some, maybe not to a positive cycle, but out of the mini super negative cycle we were in, those tend to run in 4-7 year patterns and we are due for that ish to end.  But we are still in a negative PDO so this was not the setup for a blockbuster rare non nino big snowfall winter.  It would have been unprecedented actually as in NEVER happened before, to get a cold enso -PDO blockbuster snowfall winter.  

Also, if we look at region wide true blockbuster winters, which I'll define as years that IAD and BWI got 30" and DCA got 20", we've only had 8 of those in the last 50 years. 

8 in 50 years....that's how rare what you're asking for is, a region wide big snowfall year.  Everything has to be right...not just a decently cold winter...we need the storm track, juiced up STJ, blocking...the whole works and then we still need to get lucky on top of that.  It's super rare.  This year we are lacking some factors all those others had.  Only 1996 was a cold enso on that list and it had an anomalous PDO that offset the cold enso.  We don't have that this year.  

I see getting a near normal to slightly above normal snowfall winter in most places as a win, its near the top of what the results were in similar winters.  Actually if we look at cold enso with a -PDO, which eliminates 1996 and 2006, there is a good chance this ends up the snowiest winter of the last 50 years in that subset if we an just get one more good snowstorm for places NW of 95.  

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1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

@Ji this is kinda funny because over the last 5 years I've been the champion of how much warming is hurting our snow climo...and now this year I am defending against some who are acting like "we should be getting 100" of snow and its a horrible sign we aren't" but let me make the case why I DON'T see the need to panic over "wasting" this year...

First of all we have not "wasted" it...we did get snow and we got weeks of snow on the ground and I think we are not done at all...but this is why I don't see this as a wasted year for a big snowfall result

IAD has had 25"+ only 15 times in the last 50 years.  Here is the breakdown

9 Nino years, 5 enso neutral, 1 Nina

1 time...once. one more than none, has IAD had 25" in a la nina in the last 50 years.  And that one unicorn year 1996 had crazy blocking, not just for a few weeks but through most of winter...and a rare strongly positive PDO in a cold enso.  No other cold enso years had that combo.  And we don't have that this year so expecting that kind of anomaly again is foolish imo.  

The PDO came in around -1 for January, way better and I do see signs it may be flipping its base state some, maybe not to a positive cycle, but out of the mini super negative cycle we were in, those tend to run in 4-7 year patterns and we are due for that ish to end.  But we are still in a negative PDO so this was not the setup for a blockbuster rare non nino big snowfall winter.  It would have been unprecedented actually as in NEVER happened before, to get a cold enso -PDO blockbuster snowfall winter.  

Also, if we look at region wide true blockbuster winters, which I'll define as years that IAD and BWI got 30" and DCA got 20", we've only had 8 of those in the last 50 years. 

8 in 50 years....that's how rare what you're asking for is, a region wide big snowfall year.  Everything has to be right...not just a decently cold winter...we need the storm track, juiced up STJ, blocking...the whole works and then we still need to get lucky on top of that.  It's super rare.  This year we are lacking some factors all those others had.  Only 1996 was a cold enso on that list and it had an anomalous PDO that offset the cold enso.  We don't have that this year.  

I see getting a near normal to slightly above normal snowfall winter in most places as a win, its near the top of what the results were in similar winters.  Actually if we look at cold enso with a -PDO, which eliminates 1996 and 2006, there is a good chance this ends up the snowiest winter of the last 50 years in that subset if we an just get one more good snowstorm for places NW of 95.  

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44 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

This is exactly how I remember the 80s winters, and this winter was just like them. No major extended torches, 1-2 major cold outbreaks, and a couple of sig snowstorms of 5-8" with a bunch of little stat padders in between. Some rainers in between. Feels... normal.

You know, NYC hated the 80s...and looking at the local snowfall stats for up here using the Westminster and Hanover COOP data... it was a worse decade up here compared to avg than in DC, kind of similar to this year.  Not saying the 80's were awful, but there were a lot of winters in the 80's where DC and up here had almost the same snowfall totals which is rare otherwise considering I average more than double the snowfall...but it happened like 4 times that decade and even the years I had a lot more...none were crazy more like 2021 or 2014 when I got like 50 or 70 inches more than DC lol.  There might be a lot to this... 

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