SnowGoose69

Some similarities to 1/6/89 with this storm. Produced about 4-7 inches across the area in a -PNA pattern. BDL/BOS/PVD all got shutout. https://www.meteo.psu.edu/ewall/NARR/1989/us0106.php

That was just a wild winter, such a crazy +AO/NAO fairly far removed from the solar max and also in a weak to moderate El Nino.

RRFS is a squashed mess at 84, looks like if you extrapolate it we'd barely get a thing. That said, it was a squashed mess at 84 with today's system too. Maybe a bias of the model? Will have to see where we are in 3 days but its interesting to see it do the same. If we want to take its idea as gospel and assume same thing happens, something exactly like the Euro would happen.

There were a couple of ways I felt we’d head in early January. One was we’d gradually transition to something more +PNA and favorable for 2-3 weeks. The other was we’d lose the WPO/AO/NAO and it would go ugly for at least awhile if not most of the rest of the way. Some years in similar groupings of analogs did see that happen. Right now it looks like we’ll avoid that. The weeklies showing the same pattern for like 6 weeks into late January as recent as 5-7 days ago as we discussed somewhat was always unlikely as it feels as if the last 15 or so years we never hold any pattern in the winter for more than like 3 weeks anymore

May depend on how negative it is early. I’m still not confident we see it go positive consistently til like 1/12-1/15 outside of what might be a brief transient positive phase coming up in a week or just under that. If it averages only like -1 to -1.5 the first 12 days of the month it could probably end up positive in the end on the means

Nothing ever took that funky track but these were back to back overrunning events, first one was all snow, 2nd one was mixed. https://www.meteo.psu.edu/ewall/NARR/1994/us0126.php https://www.meteo.psu.edu/ewall/NARR/1994/us0127.php

Neither the AI or Op GFS changed much from 12z

We had a bunch of these in 93-94, I feel we've had basically none since minus PDII

Yeah I still think less juicy and more north is likely. I could see SN/PL/FZRA in NYC. I am not highly confident in this range at the metro being mostly snow at all. I don't like the -PNA and think the pattern upstream over the N Plains/MW will allow this to probably gain too much latitude before its shunted.

The temps did go to hell on this from what the models showed 3 days ago which is not surprising since it was always going to be a SW flow event in the low levels. I think its a case where you need it to be snowing by 8-9z. The longer you allow the DPs to rise on the SW flow the harder it will be to get down to 32-33 and get accumulation.

We have a pretty strong split this morning on social media as well as through friends who are Mets on the potential. I think about half say this could become a SNJ/SE PA mostly event and others saying this is a BDL/BOS bullseye. I do think even if we lean towards suppression its likely a fringer here and a bullseye in Philly. I don't know if this is Virginia special territory really.

I'd feel pretty good in most of SNE at this time. I'm trying to talk off people in NYC/PHL that I don't think this can really get far enough south for them to be all or even mostly frozen. Despite the block I don't like the upstream setup really to get this to be a northern MA event.

They're all sloppy with the QPF fields...if that ends up being more a consolidated WAA snow shield we may see this overperform. Once again though the NAM was pretty bad with this til we got inside 36. I've been saying for awhile now, avoid that model beyond 36, sometimes it does okay 36-48 but often time its the final day or day and a half where its reliable.

That is about my guess for the moment on what happens. I think it'll be extremely hard to get this to be heavily frozen this far south.

The EPO/PNA still suck in the long range, so it won't be going January 94/85 February 2015 anytime soon but the location of the PV being on this side of the pole will mean it can easily get cold enough for snow and the -PNA means we are not in a bone dry pattern. The AO/NAO have the look of not wanting to consistently stay strongly - or + so far for more than 7-10 days and often times if thats your trend through 12/31 it stays that way all winter so those 2 may largely be non major factors. The PNA/WPO/EPO at some stage likely go through a major reversal of where they've been in the next 20-30 days and that probably decides what the 1/15-3/10 period is