Fozz

I hope so. A lot of the guidance looks pretty good here, but some of it dryslots my area or even has temp/precip type issues where I’m right at the gradient. It’s a very common thing here, and it could go either way. @ravensrule and @nw baltimore wx know exactly what I’m talking about, and just have to see where the chips fall. Since I haven’t seen a warning level storm IMBY in a long time (I was out on 1/6 which probably had around ~5”), I’m naturally a bit cautious. My bar is 3”. That is enough to set us up for a very fun week of deep winter without getting too greedy.

You’re in a fantastic spot, you enjoy this one!

Nervous is exactly how I feel. For those of us just slightly NW, we win some and we lose some but sometimes you don’t really know where that line will be.

It’s got a nasty dryslot over Baltimore and those of us nearby. I hope this isn’t right.

That’s a huge shift, definitely worth watching. And if I’m understanding it will also be a bitterly cold storm if it reaches us?

Already?

You missed both the big ones in Feb 2010?

I wonder what happens a week later.

As much as I love the GFS, I’m a bit nervous because it’s starting to look a bit more like the GGEM, except most of I-95 is fine. But the NW trend can stop now.

Just what I was thinking, too. Let’s do this.

The map itself is fine, it’s the number ranges that are weird and confusing.

This is where we’d want it 5 days out

Getting another subzero in DCA will take an eruption much worse than Pinatubo. Or God forbid, nuclear war.

Can we just lock this up? It looks so perfect and I wish it wasn’t 2.5 days away.

Yeah I don’t like being on the southern end of the bullseye 3 days out.

So close to being a monster storm for most of us.

If a 2013-14 setup is actually in play, then that might be the best thing I’ve heard all decade. Those who were too young back then are in for a real treat.

2014-15 was pretty good but 2013-14 was the real GOAT. The closest thing to a wall to wall winter that I’ve ever seen. Especially north of I-70.

So we have a lake cutter on the GFS that is mostly snow.

Yeah, that is a true bust. You never really know where the banding will set up and this system seems especially reliant on them. And it’s disappointing when the 3k NAM repeatedly showed a solid swath of 8-12” at close range.

Exactly. The Euro, Canadian models and UKMET all insisted on this northern MD disappointment, and so this turned out to be another typical post-2016 storm. IMO the LWX did a great job hedging on this uncertainty, and so I think the 4-8” forecast will end up right on point. Those of us who live up north but not quite Mt PSU will eventually get ours. And it will be glorious. I just hope it will be this year.

Yeah I’ve been very quiet about it and kept it in the banter thread. I’ve mostly enjoyed my own trip and kept the current storm on the back burner mentally. The memories that I’ll have will be worth much more than 10” of snow. And I want everyone else to have a great time with this storm. It may or may not HECS next weekend. I’m hoping for the big one in our classic peak climo (Jan 15 to Feb 25 or so).

The last time I did a trip similar to this was December 2009. The big one happened just 1 day before I departed, so I didn’t miss that. But then there was another HECS scare that came up for the New Year period when I would’ve still been gone, before that was reduced to a 2-5” event.

In my case it’s a family wedding. That is way too important to miss, especially if I already committed. If this was Disney then I’d cut and run.

I also prefer not to have vacations in the winter planned way in advance, but sometimes there are other people in our lives who do want them. And saying no to everything based on a 1% chance of missing something extraordinary makes no sense. And yet, here we are, now faced with the choice of missing a legendary HECS, or upsetting our closest loved ones for the sake of some obscure hobby that 99% of people couldn’t care less about. I did enjoy those runs for this storm that fringed northern MD (tho that is no guarantee), and I take some solace in the fact that the chance of the latest GFS coming true is extremely low, based on any rational analysis. But the weather isn’t always rational, and when the atmosphere is going full 2009-10, then there’s very little to stop it.