Maestrobjwa

And as I asked in the Twitter thread...is the snow cover even a legit factor that influences us? Feels like it's been bandied about the last few years...but to little result, lol

Not sure how much you can count 1941/42...The only reason for those 21 inches is because of that highly anomalous Palm Sunday blizzard. Don't want to have to rely on a redux of that! (and 1930/31...to have that tiny amount of snow to only get 10 in march doesn't seem worth the wait) So overall...that would be a recipe for mediocrity...("very backloaded" is tough to bet on...let's hope that's not the case!)

Admittedly...I'm a visitor to this forum and actually live in the Mid-ATL (but during winter "preseason", I kinda mill around the other EC forums since the discussion is more generally applicable, lol)--so not as familiar with sne climo! I had assumed that since nor'easters "crawl" up the coast, I thought the prospect of having more fast flow in the future meant things just kinda slip by (but I am a novice, so feel free to correct me)

And getting back to this...I have to wonder whether this means nor'easters would eventually go extinct? (Man, I hope not). I mean...does fast flow mean no coastal? (I may be oversimplifying this)

Well shoot...we're gonna have to deal with the fast flow crap again? Kinda helped to screw up the winter on the east coast in general (with just mild to middling events at best). The heck has been causing this "fast flow"?

A bit of weenieism here, but...here it is anyway (interestingly enough, the only below average years on this chart were la nina years--naturally, lol)

Well shoot...I wanted us to maintain our spot for the second driest September! Rain could've waited one more day?

Not the most logical approach...man, have you studied our history? Like going all the way back? Mid-Jan thru late Feb are the time the winter is more likely judged (and btw...if you insist on setting a "deadline" for having an event on the horizon...ya may want to extend that to at least January 15th. Remember that we don't usually get warning level events between Christmas and the second week of January, lol)

But wait...then how do we know what kind of ENSO we're in? (And are we reaching a point where we can't rely on history/analogs as much? And if we can't...how do ya make predictions? I'm particularly thinking about last year and how a lot of people got it wrong...partly because a weak El Niño was showing yet didn't behave like one. Are we entering uncharted weather territory overall due to the changing climate? If so...woe to the folks trying to make accurate predictions, lol

Could you elaborate a bit more on what the IOD actually is? (and what we need it to do? Lol)

Now, the only time that concept seemed to work...was the Super El Ninos of 1965-66, 1982-83, and 2015-16...All of those had very warm (like upper 60s to mid 70s) Christmases that were followed by blizzards less than a month later, lol Otherwise...nah!

Can anybody point to a reliable source for ENSO history? (I'm looking to compare snowfall during neutral winters for my region, lol)

Pretty much, lol I think the most tangible thing you can really monitor right now is ENSO state. For me, I like looking at that because it seems like...for each ENSO state, there is a specific range of possibilities that you can see in our history. While no result is 100% (or even 90%, lol)...there seems to be a general tendency of where those winters end up (with exceptions, of course).

Here we go with that emoji again...in SEPTEMBER, smh

Dang, we ran him away too? Smh We're running out of knowledgeable posters!

Thought your Avatar might melt if ya came out before December But a good maestro trolling draws ya out--how about that! Welcome back, lol

Man...we had to deal with so much atmospheric crap last winter, it's a wonder how we even averaged 15-18"+!

From what little I learned a couple years ago about volcanos...the eruption has to be pretty substantial to impact anything globally (the larger the eruption the higher the higher the ash gets into the air). I believe the last one strong enough for that was Pinatubo in 1991 (I think that ended up kinda robbing us of the effects of a mod Niño according to someone on here). There have been, of course, other climate-impacting eruptions in modern history. The most impactful was the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815...It led to infamous "year without a summer" (and Frankenstein and the poem "Darkness" was inspired as a result, lol). There's a high death toll associated with it that volcano due to the famine that caused by summer essentially getting cancelled the next year. That was probably the most impactful eruption in modern history.

Lol Yeah I just asked about NBC because of the timing of his post (it was less than 20 mins after it aired)

A relaxed flow would be nice...because my goodness last winter was a freeway! (with the SE ridge being a jerk in the road) We were hearing the term "progressive" all winter! (P.S. My snow weenism doesn't like analogs...even if they don't mean much. When I see articles like this list a bunch of years that didn't produce much, I go "ick!" But again, doesn't mean much this early, I suppose)

Were you just watching NBC Nightly News? Lol

My apologies...It seemed that some thought it the setup favored more activity getting closer to the coast. Could've misread that, though...sorry for derailing the thread.

Eh, it is still better than getting a nina...I had focused more on the weak nino as the problem since many of the other weak ninos finished with similar snowfall totals at BWI (15"-18"). Could we say that weak ninos underperform more often because they tend to be less dominant and more susceptible to negative factors overall? (and how many 20"+ weak ninos do we have, I wonder...)

But wait a minute...if that happens, couldn't we be in the same boat as last year? (Like the weak Niño getting pushed around by whatever factor and making the models go all over the place?) How do the models usually handle warm neutrals? (of course, avoiding a nina is always a good thing!)

So now we have the polar opposite conditions from this time last year...lol So would we see earlier foliage as opposed to later?