40/70 Benchmark

BTW, this was @raindancewxIMO....go back read his. Nailed it.

Totally get it. Wasn't meant as a criticism at all.

TBH, I think January being +8 is what sunk my forecast...you replace that with even pedestrian warmth, and most of region hits my forecast seasonal amounts.

100% this. Nice job with pattern recognition this year.

Well, I don't think the fact that winter was very mild was just bad luck....but do think the fable about November warmth holding up was luck.

He certainly seemed to be correctly on the mild train, but its difficult to really assess when there was never a formal outlook published.

It was clear to me this month wasn't going to be as cold as March 2018 because the PV is on the other side of the globe again, but I did think that we'd do better with respect to snow than we have. Just couldn't catch a break.

Yea, 40.5".

I feel like the part of the year that I really fell on my face was January. The very active storm track worked out, but it was just sooooo mild that the big snows only worked out for NNE. I had it near normal temps. I have some idea as to why. I will do the assessment in May, but I feel like that is the one month that I really missed.

Decent Forecast for Very Difficult & Protracted Major Winter Storm Here is the Eastern Mass Weather Final Call forecast map for the major, long duration winter storm that concluded early yesterday morning. Here is what actually verified in terms of snowfall across the southern New England Region. While the forecast did in exemplary job identifying the areas where 30" or more of snow would fall, the gradient was too broad on the southern and eastern portions of the heavy snowfall area, over south central and eastern Mass. Obviously this is not ideal because this is the most densely populated area of the region. There are two reasons for this forecasting error: 1) The forecast failed to convey the extent to which the warm protrusion at roughly the 925mb level, caused by the dying primary surface low over Connecticut, would limit snowfall at lower elevations over southern Worcester county. This resulted in an obscene snowfall gradient over the city of Worcester to the degree that lower elevations on the southern side of the city say just a few inches, while just a 3-4 miles to the north and a few hundred feet higher up accumulated over 2 feet of snow. Where as the gradient of forecast ranges employed in this area was from 6-12" to 15-25". This at least partially explained by the second reason for the forecasting error. 2) The reason that snowfall was significant less than anticipated across the eastern portions of the area is not due to thermal fields, as this was well predicted. In fact, precipitation actually transitioned to snowfall slightly earlier than forecast on Tuesday AM. The reason that the forecast called for several more inches of snow than actually fell across the densely populated eastern areas, which includes the Boston area, is because there simply wasn't as much precipitation pivoting around the backside of the circulation of the developing coastal storm as forecast just one day prior, which is when the final call was made. Here is the QPF forecast from the 00z Monday European guidance for the early afternoon on Tuesday into Tuesday evening , at which point precipitation had already transitioned to snowfall across most of eastern Mass. 00z Monday European 6hr QPF valid 00z Wednesday Note that it implies up to an inch of additional precipitation, which would have resulted in at least several inches of snowfall. However, here is the forecast from Tuesday afternoon from that very same model. Now you see a great deal of QPF... 12z Tuesday European 6hr QPF valid 00z Wednesday Now you don't. All of a sudden over the span of the 24 hours after the forecast was issued, .3" of QPF is expected to fall as snow on Tuesday afternoon over eastern areas, as opposed to an inch. This is essentially why the southern half of the 12-20" forecast range verified as 5-10", and why the several inches of snowfall forecast for the Boston area and southeastern Mass verified as more like 1-3" Thus the contingent of meteorologists and hobbyists alike that are claiming validation for the belief that it wasn't cold enough for significant snowfall in these regions are either incorrect and/or disingenuous. The fact of that matter is that it was marginally cold enough, but the precipitation was more banded and less organized because the primary mid level system was slower to transfer energy to the coast than forecast just one day earlier. FINAL GRADE: B-

Yea...I think its over for most of us.

I haven't expressed any frustration since about January...over it. I didn't even really complain when we got boned Tuesday.

I don't think there is any connection. It just happened to work out like that that that this year.

I agree....need to project the frustration somewhere.

It just so happens that this logic worked out this year, but it often does not....like in 2000. Claiming you knew winter would be mild because of a warm stretch in November sounds like BS to me, unless you had some research presented amongst the train of memes that I missed. Just like those claiming that they knew winter wouldn't be mild without anything to back it was BS. This is as example of luck rather than any forecasting skill, per se.

I honestly hope its right.

Generally agree, but I'll take weak el nino all else being equal.

My impression after a quick look...probably something that will necessitate blogs from me, but will ultimately yield relatively little returns outside of the same areas that have seen it all season. Another deep energy dump out west, translates east and attenuates... blah, blah...please shoot me and make it stop.

Obviously some areas are going to come well below forecast, but I'm fairly happy with the seasonal effort, overall...I feel like we could redo this season 100 more times and everyone would end up with more snowfall. I freely admit when I issue a horrible outlook, but I don't feel that was the case this year.

I haven't looked yet.

Need 19.5" to hit my forecast range IMBY.

+7.5" 40.5"

Yea, we had a ton of QPF in general...but of course, the snow part underperformed..true to form this winter.

TBH, I flipped to snow a little earlier than I had expected. I think others who may have flipped later than expected were due to more meager fall rates as a result of banded nature on backside.

Decent Forecast for Very Difficult & Protracted Major Winter Storm | Eastern Mass Weather I attribute the forecast not working out east due to less than QPF than modeled on the backside, and not temps....though I know many are claiming victory over less snow due to thermal fields.....having the first 1"+ QPF fall as rain was expected. The primary took longer to shift mid level energy to the coast than modeled. Final Grade: B-