TSG

Definitely cold down there right now. Could be some upwelling caused by the low moving north, there's 30-40 mph winds off the NC/VA coast right now. You can see how much more red than blue there is across the North Atlantic though. Hard to look at that and think it won't have any effect.

I don't know if it's wise to expect another period like that. For all we know that was a transient set of conditions that could only occur with the warming that had occurred up to that point. We've gained ~0.3C globally since then. Current running mean is ~0.95C above the 1950-81 average, it was ~0.65C in 2010. So something like 25-30% of the warming that has occured, has occured since that period and as we've seen recently, our part of the Atlantic seems to be doubling down on that trend. I would expect different results now if we had the same patterns set up as those years. It's been too long. I think we're in a different era now and analogs are going to become increasingly hard to use for forecasting without adjustments being made based on our new background state.

What temp departures do we have for Jan at the major airports by this point?

but... haven't you been here since the EasternWx days? so that's like 15-20 years ago? That was ancient history by the time I was getting involved in here. I'm specifically talking about the period from 2012-2015/6ish. That was the best form this subforum has ever been in imo. Maybe it was just because times were relatively good, but I remember pattern discussions being a lot more in depth and fruitful. I learned a ton from just lurking and reading, I can't really imagine doing that now. It would at least be a lot harder to do.

It wasn't always that way. It's certainly a lot different in here now than when I joined in 2014. There's a lot of good posters that have abandoned the forum because of the constant garbage

Seems to me the disconnect comes from people's inability to represent/entertain a view that they themselves don't want to be true or to see how anyone else possibly could. Those with a heavy science background know this is just how you should approach these things... it's paramount to keeping your personal biases in check and actually conducting useful analyses. I see a lot of responses aimed at your posts that seem to come from a somewhat defensive position, like you are somehow attacking them, when you're just stating "this is what I'm seeing, let's discuss". I've always assumed this board's members were primarily math and science folks but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Clearly some strong snow weenie genes you've passed on. You should be proud!

Would you be worried about the WAR ruining our temps and pushing the baroclinic zone too far inland with the trough in that position? Seems like an issue we've had a few times this year.

It's not, but it doesn't tell nearly the whole story. An example: DC gets slightly more rain (~40") annually than Seattle (37"), but fairly close. Those locations hit those totals in very different ways. How we're getting to these averages is as important as the value itself as that is the weather we experience on the ground. We don't "feel" 10 year averages.

Anyone know of a place to bulk download historical values of the AO, NAO, EPO, etc? I've got a LOT of free time this week and want to mess around with some data

@psuhoffman Agreed, we did really well down this way. Reposting my "end of season" summary from late Feb when we were staring down highs in the 70s & 80s. I think we did get one more marginal event in mid March that the N/NW crew did better on. ----- A+ January in Charlottesville, we averaged 3.0F below average from Jan 3rd-31st (Jan 1/2 in the 60s) and depending on what measurements you look at it was somewhere in the top 5-10 range for Jan snowfall since 1920. I measured ~18.5" at my place. Hadn't seen an epic pattern like that since living in DC in 2015. We also got REALLY lucky with the mid-month storm. Never got above freezing here during that event so we maintained the snowpack for about 4 weeks straight. Would've been nice to have another 1-2 storms to track, but I broke my thumb skiing late Jan so the season ended for me then and there... bring on severe season! Overall winter rating: B, short but sweet for western-central VA ----- That mid-month storm had a huge effect on how the entire month felt. With the way the low evolved as it came up the coast, West-Central VA never got blasted with the warm ocean air. We pretty much just dryslotted and stayed in the low 30s before the later temp crash, while areas 100 miles to the north hit 45 under moderate rain and lost most, if not all, of their snowpack.

wxtrix doesn't like making new friends

you might want to check the tag at the top of our home page again

this is like telling someone in Purcellville they live near DCA

The guy lives like a 5 min drive from our subforum's borders. This is not a case of LET EVERYONE IN. Y'all need to chill the f out

The problem is when a moderator says outside of subforum obs are fine to post when they're near her backyard, but any others aren't

Yeah the geographic boundaries for subforums work, but telling some guy to **** off back to the Philly subforum when he lives 10 miles off the MD/PA border is just mean and pointless. In an era of dying online forums this is entirely the wrong attitude to have.

You're going against your own logic from 3 posts back. I don't have any skin in this game but it's kind of obnoxious to see from a moderator

Chester County touches MD. If you're willing to take obs from Shrewbury/New Freedom why wouldn't the same logic be applied to the whole southern PA border along our "subforum"?

Looking for home weather station recs in the $150-250 range. Is Ambient Weather still good quality?

Not quite. It had the idea on that run but the next day (dec 9th) we got like 3 runs in a row showing snow/frozen for central VA and north, followed by 2 or 3 showing suppression with us maybe getting some flurries. It didn't "lock in" on the correct solution until 12z on the 10th. So about 4-5 days.

Adding to what Mappy and PSU already said, if you check out the 3k NAM at the onset of precip you can get some clues there. The peaks along the Blue Ridge for example are only a couple degrees colder than the valley (Staunton/Harrisonburg area), but that's enough to have a large difference. Ice will barely accrete right at 32 degrees, you get closer to the upper 20s and it's a very different story. Later on when the warm nose does finally push through at ~925mb, the ridges and valley all switch over to rain around the same time. TL;DR: In this specific setup the high elevations accrete more ice because of conditions at the start, not because they hold onto the cold air longer. Thats also a large part of why these marginal events are so hard to forecast. Small temp swings can make for large changes in precip type/duration.

I would argue you don't have a clue what you're talking about

Yup, saw this all the time when I lived in AdMo/Woodley Park (roughly 175' asl) and worked on L St. Lots of marginal events where I walked to work in snow boots because of an inch or two of slush in my neighborhood, only to take the metro downtown and the sidewalks were bare. There were even a few events where that ~125' difference was enough to turn it into a wintry mix from all snow. Lots of tall buildings covered in materials that like to hold onto heat will do that!