The changes have been pretty subtle though, and all small in scale. Mostly it's minor shifts in the location/duration/strength of the jet streak on the front side of the trough that are going to make the difference between a coating, and maybe 2-3 inches. That works for most here given how things have played out this winter.
Agree, but this has been the goal for this thread since the beginning. Tracking the small scale features, and hoping for a modest event vs smoking cirrus for places further north. Trends have been good for that. The larger scale stuff has been baked in for days.
My local forecast is for a max of 2", which aligns with my thoughts yesterday for my yard, despite what the GFS still shows lol. An inch will get me over 20 for the season. I'll gladly take that.
You have to visualize it from the perspective of an air parcel entering the jet. Might help to go to 250 mb wind and hit play or scroll back and forth. Then flip to the precip panels and see what's happening at the surface and when.
The one place that has a better chance for heavier snow is the higher terrain of western VA. Most of the guidance has it, and it seems the upper jet streak, localized vorticity/ terrain effects all coincide there.
The favorable location of the right rear quadrant(entrance) of the upper jet is really the key element for producing a period of snow for our area.
The new edition of the NBM reflects the latest trends in the guidance, and would complete the objective of this thread- expansion of the blues to the snow starved areas.
It would be nice to see more than a couple inches, but it seems there is a relatively brief opportunity for decent forcing (lift), and the snow will probably be light to moderate in intensity.
If you throw out the GFS, which once again looks a bit lost, and pay no attention to models like the Hrderps that are always wrong, this looks to be what we (or I) thought it would be- An inch or 2, with maybe a few spots hitting 3.
The NAM nest can resolve banding. The 12K looks more like random blobs and holes lol. If you look at the 3k map and don't focus on the colors, its a pretty simple swath of around an inch up to as much as 3.