FOLKS Feb 19-20 Debacle

[Amped]

31 minutes ago, AlexD1990 said:

The new march 2001? At least it wasnt 12 hours before this time.

Oh yeah, I'm deducting an entire letter from this winters final grade over it.

[Heisy]

I dont think ive seen a worse model fail? GFS joined the euro on saturday afternoon and all models agreed on a MECS.


.

To be fair euro basically jumped ship right when the event got under 108 hours out or so. 96 hours has been the time frame for lock down mode this year. That’s 4 days, not bad.

For weenies in E NC and Virginia Beach I’d be worried about an even more SE trend over next couple days.

One of the worst winters of my 38 years on earth. I’d rather a 2001-02 winter than this crap where we get decent patterns that fail.


.

[Inudaw]

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

No when things are bad I’m not a blow smoke up your ass rainbows and sunshine kinda person.  When my team loses in the playoffs I don’t say “there’s always next year”. “Ya and the odds of us winning are no better, actually they’re worse we could suffer injuries and not even make the playoffs”.  And I’m not that way with snow. You have no idea when the next opportunity with this good a setup comes along. We don’t know yet if the PDO is actually flipping. We might not get another shot like this for 5 years. Next year we could get another 2020 Or 2023 type winter!  DCA only beats climo 1-2 times a decade. What if this was that good winter and we just got unlucky and missed our chance and now we have 6 more awful dreg years to suffer through before we get another!  
 

Im not who you come to for comfort if you need to see the bright side. Im a dose of reality good or bad. When it’s bad I dive into that lake of misery and swim in it. I cleanse myself in the fire through pain and lowery. And I come out the other side hardened and ready to go to battle again and take on whatever shit tomorrow has to throw at me. 

Great Post.    

[DDweatherman]

26 minutes ago, Fozz said:

From now on, any mention of Feb 2025 will have that same feeling of dread that comes up when anyone brings up March 2001, December 2010 or March 2013.

I love ya Fozz but no way I’m agreeing with this. March 2001 was a BECS for a couple days and then 48 hours out a rug pull, then Boxing Day and Snowquester had WSWarnings in effect when they busted. 
 

losing this 100 hours out and it being dead by 60+ hours out is way different. Yeah it sucked Saturdays 12z gfs came around then they tanked, but it’s a different class. 

[snowmagnet]

Why do we always remember the storms that weren’t? What about these surprises ?
Veterans Day 1987, March 1999,  Ji’s storm in January 2022. 

[psuhoffman]

9 hours ago, NorthArlington101 said:

It’s the GFS/EURO with a 50mi NW jump. I don’t think it’s insane. I was looking at the GFS and thinking that in a normal winter I’d be okay with where it’s at 3 days out. With the strengthening confluence and seasonal trend tho I imagine we’re toasted tho think 2-4” is salvageable for dc metro 

Im holding out some hope until tonight still, but what shook me last night was the flow ahead of the TPV got significantly more suppressive. That wasn’t an issue. My optimism was driven by the fact the models had the low so far southeast because of a weird and honestly destructive instead of constructive relationship between the upper low and the SS wave.  Bob made a good point that it was “dead” energy wise and acting like a kicker instead of a pinwheel in the flow to pull the storm up.  But I felt that was a mistake.  But now we have compounding issues!  Now the confluence is a problem also!   

 

[Duca892]

I still think it’s funny how the 12z GFS FINALLY caught onto the storm on Saturday Morning and then every single model suite there afterwards got worse lmfao 

[psuhoffman]

15 minutes ago, mappy said:

And it didn’t snow  

I made a deal with the devil, sorry we’re not getting snow for 20 years. But it was worth it. Eagles won the Super Bowl!!! Yeah!!!!

 

[Warm Nose]

10 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

No when things are bad I’m not a blow smoke up your ass rainbows and sunshine kinda person.  When my team loses in the playoffs I don’t say “there’s always next year”. “Ya and the odds of us winning are no better, actually they’re worse we could suffer injuries and not even make the playoffs”.  And I’m not that way with snow. You have no idea when the next opportunity with this good a setup comes along. We don’t know yet if the PDO is actually flipping. We might not get another shot like this for 5 years. Next year we could get another 2020 Or 2023 type winter!  DCA only beats climo 1-2 times a decade. What if this was that good winter and we just got unlucky and missed our chance and now we have 6 more awful dreg years to suffer through before we get another!  
 

Im not who you come to for comfort if you need to see the bright side. Im a dose of reality good or bad. When it’s bad I dive into that lake of misery and swim in it. I cleanse myself in the fire through pain and lowery. And I come out the other side hardened and ready to go to battle again and take on whatever shit tomorrow has to throw at me. 

[87storms]

guys this is NOTHING like March 2001.

This storm isn’t even a bust lol

[mdhokie]

5 minutes ago, Duca892 said:

I still think it’s funny how the 12z GFS FINALLY caught onto the storm on Saturday Morning and then every single model suite there afterwards got worse lmfao 

If we are gonna cherry pick runs, the GFS Feb 12 0Z nailed it:

[mappy]

3 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I made a deal with the devil, sorry we’re not getting snow for 20 years. But it was worth it. Eagles won the Super Bowl!!! Yeah!!!!

 

Maybe next time  

[dallen7908]

While the median forecast snow/sleet from the ECMWF EPS  is about 0.1" for most of us, the 90th PCTL outcome shows the 2" line just southeast of many of us. 

[AdamHLG]

The only good thing that happened during the 7 days of tracking this non-event was a few days ago when Stormtracker temporarily changed his Beethoven image face to a "FOLKS" face .  That was absolutely perfect comedic timing and it was just a genuine great hour of everyone feeling amazing at the storm depicted by the King.    

[Kevin Reilly]

51 minutes ago, Imgoinhungry said:

What was the first model to sniff out south trend? Icon!?


.

Gfs I’d say it was never really that far north in the first place guessing Canadian too for that fact as it stands right now. 

[DDweatherman]

2 minutes ago, AdamHLG said:

The only good thing that happened during the 7 days of tracking this non-event was a few days ago when Stormtracker temporarily changed his Beethoven image face to a "FOLKS" face .  That was absolutely perfect comedic timing and it was just a genuine great hour of everyone feeling amazing at the storm depicted by the King.    

If it wasn’t for that hour though, a lot of people would be a lot less disappointed…

[LP08]

The GEFS were pretty good I think.  Never really moved the max stripe north of Rich over to east shore, even when the euro was blasting us.

[clskinsfan]

Not even gonna chase this one to OC at this point. Not gonna happen there either imo. Damn shame. 

[Maestrobjwa]

27 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

No when things are bad I’m not a blow smoke up your ass rainbows and sunshine kinda person.  When my team loses in the playoffs I don’t say “there’s always next year”. “Ya and the odds of us winning are no better, actually they’re worse we could suffer injuries and not even make the playoffs”.  And I’m not that way with snow. You have no idea when the next opportunity with this good a setup comes along. We don’t know yet if the PDO is actually flipping. We might not get another shot like this for 5 years. Next year we could get another 2020 Or 2023 type winter!  DCA only beats climo 1-2 times a decade. What if this was that good winter and we just got unlucky and missed our chance and now we have 6 more awful dreg years to suffer through before we get another!  
 

Im not who you come to for comfort if you need to see the bright side. Im a dose of reality good or bad. When it’s bad I dive into that lake of misery and swim in it. I cleanse myself in the fire through pain and lowery. And I come out the other side hardened and ready to go to battle again and take on whatever shit tomorrow has to throw at me. 

Whoa...wasn't expecting that lecture. I never meant that you should sugarcoat anything. You keep things realistic and we need that. And I'm not telling YOU how to post, per se. That was just MY opinion on the "what if" part of this we don't know yet. That unknown is also part of the reality. We don't know--You could be right, or perhaps it could be better. We can choose which one we focus on in the midst of any disappointment over this winter.

Funny...one poster skewered me terribly for debbing on his unlimited optimism about a winter (and folks in general when I'd say in the Fall I doubted the winter results) And now I counter with a positive spin and get this. Ah, well...can't please everybody 

[Amped]

3 minutes ago, LP08 said:

The GEFS were pretty good I think.  Never really moved the max stripe north of Rich over to east shore, even when the euro was blasting us.

The gfs and the AI Euro did the best with this. Both took a lot of trash talk from forum members.

[blizzardmeiser]

49 minutes ago, Fozz said:

From now on, any mention of Feb 2025 will have that same feeling of dread that comes up when anyone brings up March 2001, December 2010 or March 2013.

The models lost this storm five days out, not the same as getting the carpet pulled out from under us in March 01

[psuhoffman]

11 minutes ago, Duca892 said:

I still think it’s funny how the 12z GFS FINALLY caught onto the storm on Saturday Morning and then every single model suite there afterwards got worse lmfao 

It kinda makes sense though... 

@WEATHER53 this also pertains to the discussion about models we were having yesterday. 

There are multiple things that can cause a model error.  One of the main ones is obviously a deficiency in the "math" of the model.  We don't have the ability to model the atmosphere 100% accurately.  

But the other is sampling error.  We also don't have the ability to sample every square inch of the world at every level 100%.  So the models are forced to guess and estimate what is going on and initialize the atmosphere globally as best they can.  And a very small error in that initialization due to a lack of sampling can lead to exponential errors when you get out to 100, 200, forget about it at 300 hours.  

So...in this case...what if the error here wasn't in the euro's math, it was sampling.  What if the sampling that we had at 140 hours out really did create an initialization (in error) that had it been correct, had the atmosphere really actually been that way, the most likely outcome was a big snowstorm here!  The math wasnt making a mistake, the mistake was the atmosphere never actually looked that way.  Something important to that storm was in a data sparce area and the models did their best to guess what was going on and it wasn't totally right.  A piece of energy was either more or less amplified. 

So...under this premise...from 150 to 100 hours the GFS wasn't "getting it right".  We know from verification scores it really is the worse model of the major globals.  What was happening is it was right for the wrong reasons.  It was messing up the math in the same direction that the sampling error was occurring.  Then there was a very brief moment in time for one run where the GFS started to "get it" under the old paradigm where the sampling error was creating the false impression a storm should be coming.  But by the next run that sampling error was discovered, the new data showed a storm was less likely as we realized something was not the way we thought, and so then ALL guidance started to move in that direction.  

This is just an educated guess...but I think its very plausible and I've seen this kind of thing happen like this before.  Others with more knowledge of the inner workings of these things could chime in, I love these kinds of thought puzzles.  

[Scraff]

So who’s winning the snowfall contest? Do we have any updates? 

[Bob Chill]

Just now, LP08 said:

The GEFS were pretty good I think.  Never really moved the max stripe north of Rich over to east shore, even when the euro was blasting us.

There's a bias in play here. Gfs/gefs was getting ripped when it was weak and disorganized while the euro was going big. It was assumed to be wrong and would catch on to the euro. I looked at if different. To me it was a consistent warning sign that a cohesive storm had some problems. More that one. 

It seems like a model collapse when consensus showed the northern piece being a thorn instead of a boom. But there were plenty of warning signs not to jump on the boom bandwagon and I never did. Never doubted an OK storm, but those big totals never seemed real to me. 

I'll say this, this place would be a lot more fun if people would stop marrying mid range high end fantasy stuff. Anything less is unacceptable but less is a near certainty.... time and time again over and over lol. The majority of our storms are looked at with turd colored glasses come gametime  because of this. Even when it produces what's expected in the short range. 

[psuhoffman]

6 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Whoa...wasn't expecting that lecture. I never meant that you should sugarcoat anything. You keep things realistic and we need that. And I'm not telling YOU how to post, per se. That was just MY opinion on the "what if" part of this we don't know yet. That unknown is also part of the reality. We don't know--You could be right, or perhaps it could be better. We can choose which one we focus on in the midst of any disappointment over this winter.

Funny...one poster skewered me terribly for debbing on his unlimited optimism about a winter (and folks in general when I'd say in the Fall I doubted the winter results) And now I counter with a positive spin and get this. Ah, well...can't please everybody 

It wasn't a lecture to you, it was just how I do business 

[psuhoffman]

17 minutes ago, Warm Nose said:

Dilly Dilly 

[LP08]

Just now, Bob Chill said:

There's a bias in play here. Gfs/gefs was getting ripped when it was weak and disorganized while the euro was going big. It was assumed to be wrong and would catch on to the euro. I looked at if different. To me it was a consistent warning sign that a cohesive storm had some problems. More that one. 

It seems like a model collapse when consensus showed the northern piece being a thorn instead of a boom. But there were plenty of warning signs not to jump on the boom bandwagon and I never did. Never doubted an OK storm, but those big totals never seemed real to me. 

I'll say this, this place would be a lot more fun if people would stop marrying mid range high end fantasy stuff. Anything less is unacceptable but less is a near certainty.... time and time again over and over lol. The majority of our storms are looked at with turd colored glasses come gametime  because of this. Even when it produces what's expected in the short range. 

Definitely!  If we could some how remove those max runs 120 hours out then the pages of disappointing replies to a “lesser degree” hit would make this more enjoyable.

[ravensrule]

My bar is now 2”. Let’s pray for a miracle. 

[psuhoffman]

24 minutes ago, snowmagnet said:

Why do we always remember the storms that weren’t? What about these surprises ?
Veterans Day 1987, March 1999,  Ji’s storm in January 2022. 

We didn't start to get big model runs for Dec 2009 until inside 100 hours out.  If we are going to treat 100 hour rug pulls like we used to treat the 24 hour ones...well that just shows us how far we've come.  We didnt' even take 100 hours seriously back then!  But a lot of our snowstorms didn't show up until around 100 hours recently.  I know 2018, my last big snowstorm here, didn't look like much until inside 72 hours.  

[Darkstorm]

Just now, ravensrule said:

My bar is now 2”. Let’s pray for a miracle. 

You may need to lower that bar 6 feet under at this rate. It's going to be pelting ash and brimstone at us at the rate its retreating.