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I'm going to will it West 50 miles!

Whaaaat is the deal with central/SW Virginia this (and last I believe?!) season? Theres no way RIC has more annual snowfall than IAD lol. Then again as someone above said, they could be at their annual snowfall for the season in a few days.

Here is a prime example of the ensemble mean being skewed by anomalous members. I mentioned this yesterday. A substantial number of members from the EPS(2 sets of panels) and the GEFS (1 panel), have a cold front coming through on Christmas or the day after. The first group of thumbnails is from the GEFS at 366. Most of those members have a cold front pushing through. The EPS also has several members which produce cold. Surprisingly, the 12z GEFS has more of colder solutions. (I am pretty sure the GFS and GEFS were not updated at the same time. That leads to some discontinuity between the two at times.) This "could" be the first chink in the armor of the duration of the presumed, longer-duration warmup. Time will tell. In early December, the first signs that modeling was reverting...the oddball deterministic run which became more common and individual ensemble members.

Don’t like their graphics though

As I said earlier, when we want the PV to get involved it doesn’t. When we’d like it to retract a tad, it doesn’t. Hilarious. Snow for everybody…no snow for SNE. Oh well. It’s extremely early, so I guess there’s that.

'Good Heavens! are you guys still trying to win?'

Yup, it’s pressing further SE this run, so I’d bet we get a scraper at best

Has there been a comparable period for this feature, for this long a period in our observable past?

Not liking NAM trend at 18z, fwiw... 18z Saturday/0z Sunday is a key litmus I've been using on all guidance... all about pin-the-PV-center-on-the-lake... the further northwest that lobe center is, the better the downstream heights and tilt of our trough for our storm a day later: Over Lake Superior, high-end advisory. East of Lake Huron, it's a scraper.

I feel bad for folks who moved out to Frederick 20-25 years ago in order to get away from the I-95 craziness. Frederick has gotten so built up — and you don’t want to get caught up in their rush hour on Rt. 15. We hike near/at the Catoctins frequently and getting onto 70-east to head home is frequently a challenge. 34° here currently.

Cold out there today. Brrr.

Not the most consistently windy day, but the gusts have been impressive.

Somewhere, Larry Cosgrove has to be smiling. The Euro Weeklies have a strong EPO by about Jan 17th. So, we need to weather the storm between Dec 20 and Jan 20. It seems like the patterns this winter are not as stable as past winters, i.e. they are shorter in duration(4 weeks and not 6 weeks). If we can swing a cold air mass or two during that "warm" time frame, that would be awesome. If we can find a way to go cold during that time frame, we have a shot at a cold winter. We are all pulling for the 12z Euro to be a trend and not a blip. It does actually have support from the 12z GFS which is just about 48 hours later w/ the trough pushing east. But huge grains of salt at that range.

I love the driving lol. It's peaceful, beautiful and fun. No traffic so trips to stores always take the same amount of time. It's very predictable. I'm 30 mins each way to all the majors (wally, lowes, Kroger, etc) and an hour each way to 2 decent sized cities (roanoke, lynchburg). We've learned to be efficient by combining errands and avoiding any single store trip. We generally only run into town 1-2 days a week tops. Not much walking for errands but we walk in the woods or around the lakes daily with the dog. Lots of outdoors stuff for foot travel but if we need to buy anything it's a drive. I was 100% sick of driving anywhere in the metro region lol. 5 miles took 20+ minutes and I was surrounded by impatient jerks or people not even looking at the road lol. Here, it's just sightseeing with a few cars and trucks here and there. Totally relaxed and pretty scenery everywhere. You can drive as fast or slow as you want. I rarely see police and when I do they all wave lol. Speed limits are just suggestions on the back roads. The driving experience itself is night and day compared to the DMV so even though it's 60 miles round trip for groceries the actual driving is only 60 mins with no stress or traffic.

That’s what I figured. Just an insane stretch where even here we’ve had some big melt outs right before the holiday.

My wife and our family went rural in 2010 and never looked back. I agree with everything you said, Bob. As far as the driving, it isn't bad. My mom and dad live outside Atlanta and were telling me that they like having a grocery store a couple miles away rather than 10 miles like me. In reality though, it takes them 15 minutes to go the 2 miles and it takes me 10 minutes to go the 10 miles, so who lives closer to the grocery store? Plus, the scenery is far more enjoyable on my ride!

Just get some snow on the ground that covers the brown grass, at least for a couple days...not whining about a blizzard here. Last year the only thing that hung around was the 4 inch glacier. Made sledding useless despite the cold temps, come on mother nature, the young kids need it....

I feel we were spoiled in the 00s and 10s.

It has to be pretty low. In fact, it might be hard to find another 16 year stretch there.

You can already tell it’s worse. Classic

I may have asked before, but I don’t think I ever got a concrete response. Whats the return rate on a 16 year stretch without a white Christmas here? We did not have a white Christmas here in 2017, close by may have, but we did not.

Only at 42h and it’s the NAM, but it doesn’t look like 18z is going to help us.

I think it is a really amplified pattern. That is Arctic air under that ridge...1054 hp sliding down the Plains. Deceptive look for sure. Cold air is traveling close to the surface...coldest air of the season under that ridge.

That's awesome. I cleaned up my verbiage because I do like MoCo lol (I grew up there and lived there for most of my life), but yea the traffic/COL is legit. Even the construction in Frederick is wild. When I first moved here I was concerned there wouldn't be enough to do, but now I'm like this is absurd...there's neighborhoods going up all around the NW side of Detrick and the only real plan I see is to widen Rt 15 which will take years to complete once they start (if they start). I've only driven past Roanoke, but it looked cool...nice little town nestled in the mountains. Rough life lol. Snow is fun, but you can always chase it (though you certainly don't need to this month with that Colorado lifestyle in progress).

It seems it would only take a little adjustment in that upcoming pattern for it to actually be interesting around here. A little less western trough and a little less SE ridge would make it interesting here. There will be a lot of cold just north and west of here and probably ample gulf moisture heading up this way too.