osfan24

4 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

This paints a really nice picture of the spread. We're all praying we get at least .5 qpf. Nearly half are an inch or more in dc. Lol

Wow that's quite a spread. Everything from basically several whiffs to several major storms to HECS to several very solid warning level snows.

To me, the GFS depiction of at least the early part of the storm makes a lot more sense. Maybe it will snow for some of the time, but it's not just going to snow lightly without stopping for hours on end. There is going to be a break or breaks in precip.

Yeah EPS looks solid. Obviously better for DC area than Baltimore area but still good with some upside if things pan out and/or ratios are legit.

4 minutes ago, leesburg 04 said:

Every year it's so funny....during the model run this looks great, boy that's improved, wow....then bang. It's worse....so dang classic

Yeah I was just following along with the play-by-play on here and inside my head I was thinking, "Wow, it's happening, it's morphing into the coastal that we saw from some of the big GEFS hits." Uhhh, not even close apparently.

There's actually a fair amount of big hitters though. Obviously not the most likely scenario, but there are four big hits among the GEFS and some that are either close or pretty solid hits.

Just now, yoda said:

Now that looks a lot more impressive, especially with just 10:1 ratios. That's a borderline warning event for most if better ratios come to fruition.

1 minute ago, yoda said:

12z GEFS snow mean is 4-5 inches for DCA

It's really teetering on that line, especially north of DCA, between a near non-event and a really nice event.

10 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

my only fear for those of us north of DC...this could be evolving into an all or nothing setup.  The coastal idea ups the ante BUT it could also rob the WAA and dynamics from the initial wave (or that could ride north of us) and then the coastal could be mostly a miss for places NW of 95.  That would be the doomsday scenario here.  Of course at this range its equally likely the coastal ends up slightly more amplified and is a hit for all.  I guess it depends on if your a glass half empty/full kinda person.  But this setup is higher risk reward.  

I like the go big scenario but I agree that we could end up watching the coastal miss us to the east, which would be agonizing after last season.

I think sitting in this position is fine if the trajectory is going to get it to climb the coast. The problem is this looks more like a west-east system and a southern slider type, so I'm not sure we will see the north adjustment at the last minute.

2 minutes ago, ers-wxman1 said:

I’m looking at the big picture over a period of several days worth of runs. It’s trending away from a more consolidated coastal storm to one that gets suppressed more south and less impactful. H5 pattern looks different and NS more suppressive, faster flow and shearing aloft in the vort. 

That's what I'm seeing as well.

29 minutes ago, snowmagnet said:

Just read CWG article explaining that the GFS is running poorly due to the shutdown.  Hmmm....   

Oh that's why it's running poorly? I didn't realize the shutdown had lasted a decade.

Going to need some fun fantasy storms to distract me from the calamity currently happening at M&T Bank.

5 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

It doesn't look any worse than the last 2 runs.

I honestly wish snowfall mean maps didn't exist. Has little value unless there is a persistent, discrete threat showing up on guidance inside of day 10 IMO.

I agree with this. Everyone always posts those stupid maps and then we get no snow. They are worthless.

2 minutes ago, frd said:

 

@40/70 Benchmark hey you called it 

 

 

That would be a disaster. I'd rather get nothing. Good thing it's not accurate.

11 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Yea I lol at those saying this winter can't be considered good now no matter what because of the bad start. They are only saying that now because now sucks. But if we actually got a repeat of something like Feb 2010 they would be calling it epic once it happens. 

It would absolutely be epic. Would it be wall-to-wall winter? No, but how many of those have we had. 2013-2014 is the only one I remember. It was a great winter, but I'd still like 2009-2010 over it, and maybe 1995-1996.

I'm sitting at about a 3-4 out of 10 on the panic meter. January 10-15 will be when I start to freak out if things aren't improving. We hoped it would be earlier, but January 20-25 and on is when we were hoping for a solid 4-6 weeks of winter and that's still very possible. Remember, 2009-2010 was a total dud until the very end of January if you ignore the December 19 storm, and we could have easily hit in early December this year but just missed.

Just have to be patient. If we get to January 15 and things still look bleak, then it becomes time to be concerned. Had we hit on that storm in December, we would be talking about a 2009-2010 redux. 

Might be time for some to either step away for a couple of weeks or stop investing so much in each run. Unless it's a real fluke, nothing of significance is happening for a few weeks. Is what it is. Let's just hope we make up for it and January 20-March 10 is rocking.

Weeklies look great! Everything still going according to plan!

13 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

I've moved on to 'February will be rockin'.

Are we talking Bruce Springsteen or Barry Manilow?

5 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

1996

Let's just do that one again. And bring back Paul Kocin to discuss it on TWC.

Just now, psuhoffman said:

Last winter wasn't even that bad for Baltimore.  We had a decent event in early December.  A couple minor events in early January and one in February.  And a borderline warning level event in March.  It was actually about a median snowfall winter here.  People to our southwest in Northern VA have way more reason to complain about last year than we do.  But you keep talking like it didn't snow last year.  Do you know where you live?  It doesn't snow that much here.  If you need like 2 feet of snow in a winter to be happy you might want to move.  

We all got spoiled by the heater we were on from 2009-2016. Even in a horrible year in 2016, we had an epic snowstorm. We had two winters in there where it was really cold and we kept getting hit by storms. We had our most epic snow season ever in there where we had three huge storms. 2010-2011 also had that fun bowling ball where went from rain to concrete and it snowed like 8 inches over a 3-4 hour period. And the 2014 storm around Valentines Day was also good, though much better for you than city area folks. That was an epic snowstorm for many northwest folks even if it was a disappointment in a lot of ways for the immediate metro. 

And now we've had two straight crappy winters. I know we ended up around climo last year, but how we got there sucked. We nickeled and dimed our way there, and a bunch of those smaller events didn't even stick on roads and wasn't even really enough to build a snowman or go sledding. I'll admit I'm even a bit anxious just to see a moderate storm where we get 8-10 hours of moderate snowfall and a nice 3-6/4-8 with lots of road stickage.

10 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Truth is...it's both. Ironically, I am learning a bunch in my often frantic search of "what could go wrong". Now, from here on, I could veil the panic side of my questions and just ask about something specific...(like on the last post..."could this be a more stout feature or a temporary one?")

I feel your pain and we all want snow, and lots of it, but patience young grasshopper. Like the most knowledgeable posters, and many mets have mentioned, this winter is going almost exactly the way many of our best winters have gone in the past. It looks like we may be setting ourselves up for an epic pattern in our best climo. You just have to hang in there and be patient. Enjoy the holidays, and by the time you return, the pattern should at least be not horrible so that some threats may start showing up, and by then, we should get a better idea if/when/how the really good pattern is going to show.

Hearing Paul Kocin's raspy voice on The Weather Channel is a memory engrained in me from when I was a kid. I miss seeing him. When you saw him on TV, you knew it was going down.

This would have been a heck of a winter storm for our area. Swing and miss on two big storms now. Hope we can make up for it during our prime snow season.

4 minutes ago, jaydreb said:

What a difference 100 miles would have made. 

No doubt bad luck played a role (that storm hits and we are talking 2009-2010 again), but that's all part of the game.