North Balti Zen

If you go find the seasonal totals thread from this forum for these years and find my last post you will be able to see how Baltimore (not downtown) made out. They were good years.

Moving this over to banter to add-on as I don't want to interrupt (checks notes) yet another snow obs from areas that are (checks notes again) NOT where I currently am... @H2O wrote... I cannot agree with this enough. I've been in the Baltimore urban heat island area since 2009. I work downtown (maybe no feet of elevation) and from 2009 - 2014 lived in the Hamilton neighborhood (maybe 300 feet of elevation) and from 2014 - present live in the Roland Park/Hopkins/Hampden juncture (about 458 feet of elevation). Within my working memory, it has gotten REALLY hard to score anything of note in the city center in marginal temp set-ups and still difficult at the my current elevation to score like others do in marginal set-ups. Now, some of this is just the snow climate - there's a reason that Parkton averages more than Towson than averages more than downtown Baltimore and so forth. But my guess is that there is now a chipping away at the margins due to...more urban heat? climate shifting? dunno? than there used to be. I know that the March snows that have made many so very happy the last few years have been frustrating inside 695 - hard to get going, hard to sustain rates. Like yesterday - which was hard to get going. There is no question that inside 495 and 695 can and do very well in legit storms. But I have decided that much of the board tension (to the extent there is tension) with respect to snow climate, expectations, and the like, comes down to what kind of storms that people need to really see snow fall and accumulate well. For those of us inside 495 and 695 in particular, we really have to become default big game hunters. The "big ones", with good arctic air in place, copious moisture, and forecasts of 6+ inches give us the wiggle room to deal with all the temp, boundary layer, dew point, UHI and other issues we need to overcome to really accumulate. When I big game hunt, it is because I need to see those kinds of ingredients available for a storm to know that we have a better than even chance of overcoming the handicaps of living in the UHI areas. Now, again, I know (and agree!) that historically it is going to be slightly harder to score events in these areas (even pre-UHI) - but my working thesis is that it is even harder now on the margins and that a lot of marginal events are really too marginal for inside the beltways for whatever reason than they used to be. It is why the "we can score in March" isn't necessarily that comforting for some of us (particularly as we cross past March 10th or so). In any event, just wanted to high five h20's observation. And note that temp, sun, and other worries can be legit for many of us depending on the set-up. I'm not gonna worry about sun with an arctic high near-by, a storm approaching and temps at 35. But in events like yesterday? Where every degree matters and there isn't an obvious cold air source around? Morning sun was not so good for my zip code(s)...

North Balt City: 12/11 -- T 12/16 - .5" 1/7 - 1.5" 2019/20 --- Season total - 2.0"

That confirms my 1.5” measurement in Roland Park area.

Will call it a hard earned 1.5” here after several measurements. Nice to squeeze this in before the next ten days.

Legit gorgeous snowfall here as the last bit moves through - gonna be over an inch easily.

It still boggles my mind the differences from the city centers to just a few miles away even.

Just back from a walk with the pup and my better half. Gorgeous out - made it to the Friends School of Baltimore fields and it looks like about an inch out there - really fortunate to pull this event off.

It dropped 11 degrees in a few miles. I will assume the warm air was rapidly exiting at that point downtown, but, still, it was ridiculous.

That was hilarious. Snowing out my window 20 floors up. Exited the bldg and pouring rain ground level. 43 in the car as I left downtown. 2.4 miles out of city center urban heat hell and it is 32 in my neighborhood and snowing hard with the ground white. urban heat island hell is unreal.

Snow finally arrived downtown Balt. Looking forward to clearing out and heading 3 miles north for the better in terms of snow.

Rain in downtown Balt City.

Not for nothing, and that Middle River guy WAY overdoes the complaining, but at its core, he's not wrong. Of late- the last several years, it has really been hard to get temps inside the beltways to get back down sufficient to get the snow going in marginal events. We have had delayed starts in Balt City for every marginal event since the Jan. 16 monster. Maybe bad luck (even for a heat island), maybe something else. But early sun was kinda a bummer for folks that have a tough time cooling it back down again.

Gracias. I have noticed that those quick to dismiss that don't tend to live inside the beltways. I've watched enough of these borderline temp situations backfire or be really slow to get to snow in Balt City (especially in the last few years) that every degree north of 32 is really hard to get back at gametime...

Perfect. This bad boy is crawling in like a floor.

It's probably off w/ respect to north of 695 where snow is being reported but it is accurate for inside 695 where we have rain.

What is the opposite of coming in like a wall?

I am on the 20th floor of my bldg in downtown Balt with a west/sw facing set of windows - pretty clearly can see the precip/snow has started to the southwest - noticed it right about the time that WXUSAF noted the snow obs in Columbia...

Just in case you all missed the update, BaltimoreWX has returned to do something he has NEVER done before and that is to EXPRESS SKEPTICISM UNENDING for this being anything in his neighborhood.

That is because you are correct and he does this EVERY TIME.

The NAM is fully acceptable for the dirt around my house, so I will be hugging that.

YES. Forgot about my ancient enemy - the ground.

Dammit. I should know that by now.

For the record, those of us who live in one of the big cities are fully used to failing in marginal events and lash out and blame everything. Sun, cars, twitter, CAPE, and for sure Carbondale.

Also, I wish there was a way to know at a glance if it is Ji in character or Ji being actually serious when glancing at who made the last post in the long range thread. That's twice this morning I have flinched when I saw last post was him - and it turned out to be ok.