FOLKS Feb 19-20 Debacle

[dailylurker]

31 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

I might need to PM @dailylurker if he indeed does have some good good stuff.   This hobby is exhausting.

Anytime, brother. It's the least I can do. You've been awesome this season and it's much appreciated. 

[TSSN+]

4 minutes ago, dailylurker said:

Anytime, brother. It's the least I can do. You've been awesome this season and it's much appreciated. 

Ya hi can I get um like 4-6 “inches” of the special blend please. 

[psuhoffman]

13 minutes ago, JenkinsJinkies said:

The posts I'm referring to were getting the point across via subtext, reading between the lines shows how they were feeling. They were also not saying it'll never snow at all again, they were saying that a 2016 style event may not happen again.

Who, who said that?  Either someone said that or they didn’t and you’re just making this up. If someone said that who. 

[Maestrobjwa]

45 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

Looking at the models like:

This is from "The Genius of Beethoven" btw. Have you ever seen it?

[psuhoffman]

@WEATHER53 you have every right to feel the way you do. Really. I’m not gonna try to change your mind. You do you!  
 

But I have the opposite perspective. As complex and chaotic as the atmosphere is with so many variables and our limited ability to sample it at every level at every location…given those realities, I’m amazed we are able to model it as well as we do!   It’s so complex. 
 

I don’t feel let down by the models this week. I feel let down by me. I started getting excited about this window before the models did. When they showed up to the party it just increased my confidence more. But it’s my own excitement and desire for a major event that let me get carried away. 
 

I knew a month ago my analogs and pattern recognition weren’t 100%. When I listed the years I pointed out a couple didn’t really produce much snow. Most did. And when the models started showing big storms I started to dream this was one of those years. No hecs I never bought that the pattern didn’t say that but I was thinking secs-MECS. But that was risky. Even good pattern fail a lot. And I should have known better. I let my emotions get the better of me. That’s on me not the models. 

[psuhoffman]

JB threw in the towel 

[TSSN+]

1 minute ago, psuhoffman said:

JB threw in the towel 

0z storm will be back smoking us all now. 

[stormtracker]

16 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Looking at the models like:

This is from "The Genius of Beethoven" btw. Have you ever seen it?

I haven't!  Might have to check it out.  I'm in a foul mood like my man B

[snowmagnet]

8 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

JB threw in the towel 

Which one?

[psuhoffman]

I can’t believe this is gonna produce nothing for us.

This is one of our worst wasted opportunities in a long long time.  This must be how Matt Ryan felt.  

[Ajb]

52 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I don’t know. I’m very curious though. It’s possible this method could do better at reducing errors due to sampling. Possible. I don’t know enough. 

"The version of the AIFS available at the time of writing is trained on a subset of the ERA5 reanalysis for 1979–2018 and fine-tuned on operational IFS data from 2019 to 2020. Pressure level fields and surface fields are used for training, together with forcing data, like time of the year and insolation."

 

https://www.ecmwf.int/en/newsletter/178/news/aifs-new-ecmwf-forecasting-system

[JenkinsJinkies]

2 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I can’t believe this is gonna produce nothing for us.

This is one of our worst wasted opportunities in a long long time.  This must be how Matt Ryan felt.  

The what went wrong thread is going to be an interesting read.

[Maestrobjwa]

7 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

I haven't!  Might have to check it out.  I'm in a foul mood like my man B

Brooooo well this would be a perfect time to see it! It's a 3-part Docudrama, and Paul Rhys' Beethoven portrayal is the best one I've ever seen. All 3 parts are on YouTube for free (and each is an hour so you'll have plenty to distract ya )

Part 1:

https://youtu.be/QVtf5LbXB2s?si=Q5bAGHkuBIfTBnqe

Part 2:

https://youtu.be/tedQsfbcMQ0?si=0j14rjArDTUp_jqb

Part 3:

https://youtu.be/pHdyfuNnaOM?si=Tln-Dr9Zn7kv7FET

 

 

 

[stormy]

We have had a weekend of wild speculation, high expectations and sobering disappointment.

My post at 4:28 Friday afternoon said:  We can't know at this time whether this will be a trace to 1 inch or 10 - 20 inches. Speculation will provide no answers. We should have a better handle by Monday.

On Friday afternoon the GFS gave me 2.3 inches and the EURO gave me 13.7 inches. Since then the EURO has sometimes tremendously over hyped some 15 - 20 inch accumulations for what is now for many considered a non event.  The EURO gets a D- for this event. The GFS gets a B-.

My current 10:1 expectation 1.0"    Kuchera is 1.9"

 

[snowmagnet]

21 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

@WEATHER53 you have every right to feel the way you do. Really. I’m not gonna try to change your mind. You do you!  
 

But I have the opposite perspective. As complex and chaotic as the atmosphere is with so many variables and our limited ability to sample it at every level at every location…given those realities, I’m amazed we are able to model it as well as we do!   It’s so complex. 
 

I don’t feel let down by the models this week. I feel let down by me. I started getting excited about this window before the models did. When they showed up to the party it just increased my confidence more. But it’s my own excitement and desire for a major event that let me get carried away. 
 

I knew a month ago my analogs and pattern recognition weren’t 100%. When I listed the years I pointed out a couple didn’t really produce much snow. Most did. And when the models started showing big storms I started to dream this was one of those years. No hecs I never bought that the pattern didn’t say that but I was thinking secs-MECS. But that was risky. Even good pattern fail a lot. And I should have known better. I let my emotions get the better of me. That’s on me not the models. 

This! You have a lot of pressure on you and it’s really not fair that so many blame  the messenger. People want to know if there is a chance of snow, and then they get pissed at the meteorologists when it doesn’t happen.  It’s way too stressful. 

I love the banter on this forum of bipolar snow nerds. It’s a great place to geek out over pretty snow maps and learn something about nature and meteorology in the process. 

[Maestrobjwa]

9 minutes ago, JenkinsJinkies said:

The what went wrong thread is going to be an interesting read.

Well, it doesn't have to be...I mean this to me just felt like something totally random in the flow that ultimately screwed it up.  It just wasn't meant to be this time around...just gotta flush this one and move on. All you can do, really.

[Ruin]

14 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I can’t believe this is gonna produce nothing for us.

This is one of our worst wasted opportunities in a long long time.  This must be how Matt Ryan felt.  

These models are junk we need better models we need to demand better results not settle for 20% accuracy 

[LVblizzard]

In the Philly subforum we accepted defeat yesterday, thinking okay, at least it’ll still be a decent storm for DC who hasn’t seen much in recent years. But now it looks like it’ll miss you guys too. I can’t recall another time when the models just kept trending worse and worse and worse for days at a time, to the point where there’s barely even a storm anymore. I’ve been in this hobby for nearly two decades, and while there has obviously been a fair share of storms that look great and then fizzle out, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a snowstorm threat shit the bed in such a sudden and dramatic fashion like this.

[psuhoffman]

Imo it’s not one thing. It’s a bunch of tiny things. Which is why the 30,000 ft view of the pattern looks great. You have to zoom in on a lot of small details to see the flaws. Death by 1000 paper cuts  

1) the kicker, I thought this might limit the setup to a MECS level not hecs level event not destroy it and I don’t think it did, runs with a storm had the kicker. But it was one of the many paper cuts.  
 

2) the TPV didn’t detach fully. There was still a bit too much play between the main TPV and the detached lobe which kept the flow more W-E under it rather than the detached lobe acting like a true ULL pinwheel in the flow.  It made the ULL act more like just an extension of the PV.  This alone could have been overcome with a strong enough SS wave…

3) not a strong enough SS wave. Weak sauce that needed more of all those other minor flaws not to work against it. If we had some el Nino STJ on roids wave coming across it would have bullied through all these minor flaws and throws a ton of moisture up over this cold air. That’s why we get so many more big snows in a Nino! 

4) a duel wave structure with destructive interference between the waves.  The weak STJ wave starts to amplify at the exact time the NS wave over top of it was trying. We actually wanted that. Sorry I’m never rooting for some low off thr southeast coast to phase capture and bomb due north.  That’s worked out like almost never. We’ve had maybe 4 MECS storms that way. Ever. That ain’t it. We want a healthy wave up into the TN valley that transfers to eastern NC or VA capes.   That northern wave gets starved of moisture inflow by the wave down by New Orleans starting to amplify under it. In the end they split the energy and neither becomes the wave we need. 
 

5) the trough takes a little too long to go negative. 
 

6) Jim Cantore booked tickets to DC.  I’m not saying he is bad luck everywhere. But not here. Never again. We should assign someone to watch every airport and tackle his ass and say “no” not on our watch. 

[psuhoffman]

3 minutes ago, LVblizzard said:

In the Philly subforum we accepted defeat yesterday, thinking okay, at least it’ll still be a decent storm for DC who hasn’t seen much in recent years. But now it looks like it’ll miss you guys too. I can’t recall another time when the models just kept trending worse and worse and worse for days at a time, to the point where there’s barely even a storm anymore. I’ve been in this hobby for nearly two decades, and while there has obviously been a fair share of storms that look great and then fizzle out, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a snowstorm threat shit the bed in such a sudden and dramatic fashion like this.

2004 there was a storm like this that trended worse until there was no storm anywhere. Or maybe some snow in NC. I stopped following it once it got that bad. 

[deer]

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

6) Jim Cantore booked tickets to DC.  I’m not saying he is bad luck everywhere. But not here. Never again. We should assign someone to watch every airport and tackle his ass and say “no” not on our watch. 

this is the most important detail. everything else is secondary!

[Ralph Wiggum]

9 minutes ago, LVblizzard said:

In the Philly subforum we accepted defeat yesterday, thinking okay, at least it’ll still be a decent storm for DC who hasn’t seen much in recent years. But now it looks like it’ll miss you guys too. I can’t recall another time when the models just kept trending worse and worse and worse for days at a time, to the point where there’s barely even a storm anymore. I’ve been in this hobby for nearly two decades, and while there has obviously been a fair share of storms that look great and then fizzle out, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a snowstorm threat shit the bed in such a sudden and dramatic fashion like this.

This was always an 'almost' all or nothing event. Anytime you try and work the tpv into the flow south of the Canadian Border and potentially a phase you run the risk. We walked the razors edge between a high-end mecs and a weakish wave/late bloomer. Unfortunately, the latter looks to prevail.

[gymengineer]

10 minutes ago, LVblizzard said:

In the Philly subforum we accepted defeat yesterday, thinking okay, at least it’ll still be a decent storm for DC who hasn’t seen much in recent years. But now it looks like it’ll miss you guys too. I can’t recall another time when the models just kept trending worse and worse and worse for days at a time, to the point where there’s barely even a storm anymore. I’ve been in this hobby for nearly two decades, and while there has obviously been a fair share of storms that look great and then fizzle out, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a snowstorm threat shit the bed in such a sudden and dramatic fashion like this.

At least there was a trend in the medium term and the bust was not literally the day of, which we do regularly. 

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

lol just looked at the euro.

someone in NC is gonna get like 3 inches as the max of this storm. 

[Solution Man]

Nam not giving up, but we know

[Imgoinhungry]

Silly nam. Wont give up on getting snow further north.


.

[gymengineer]

I feel like we'd all avoid the peaks and valleys of modeling at range if we adopted the mindset of a NWS meteorologist doing their job. Like no watches issued day 3 and beyond. Snow maps only to 72 hours. Only the range of possibilities discussed in the medium range. Use of probabilities. 

[stormtracker]

1 minute ago, Solution Man said:

Nam not giving up, but we know

lol, I said to myself..the NAM trying to be funny.  It's gonna fail tho...but these mirages will be funny in the next few runs

[Solution Man]

Just now, stormtracker said:

lol, I said to myself..the NAM trying to be funny.  It's gonna fail tho...but these mirages will be funny in the next few runs

Fng wit us

[LVblizzard]

18 minutes ago, gymengineer said:

At least there was a trend in the medium term and the bust was not literally the day of, which we do regularly. 

Nothing will ever top March 2001. I was only 7 at the time, so I don’t remember it, but some of the anecdotes I’ve seen on here have been wild. Apparently there was a huge blizzard for I-95 predicted 2 days out, then everything shifted dramatically north at the last minute and the big cities got a brief period of snow that turned quickly to a mix and rain. And of course I’ve heard of the John Bolaris fiasco with that storm.