North Balti Zen

Cold/dry blows. warm/wet blows. cold/wet is where it’s at.

Here's a question that always comes up when I read the long range cold disco - I am never quite sure what each person is chasing. I mean, we simply need "cold enough" air masses to support big storms, we don't need bay freezing cold at all (in fact, I don't want that as it almost always murders snow chances due to suppression). Hard to tell when reading the discos if people complaining about mixed signals for cold are talking about DEEP cold or just cold enough. Get some cold air nearby and an active southern stream and let's see what happens...

@Steve25For Balt City neighborhoods in 2013/14 - I was in Hamilton neighborhood that winter and had 46" - poster NW Balt (Pikesville area) had 57. Ravensrule (near poster NW Balt reported 64"). In 2014/15 I moved to where I currently am in North Baltimore and had 30 inches, poster NW Balt had 33. I got those from the season snow totals threads for those years on this forum.

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"

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.

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

What is the opposite of coming in like a wall?

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.

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.

I guess that's me who murmured about sun. Old habit. It always feels like an enemy In the city when every temp feels precious, even if the ultimate path to victory isn't cloud cover dependent.

God bless the NAM. Wasn't it just 24 hours ago on that it was showing nada for the Beltways?

Just found the old thread - according to my notes I had .5 of ice from first part of storm and did make it to 5 inches on second part so it did verify the warning.

I would have to go back and check my notes from the annual thread but my immediate recall is that one also underperformed here inside the 695 beltway.

The Jan 2019 storm was pretty disappointing in balt city - scraped for get to five inches and missed the second part entirely. Really, since Jan 2016 it has been pretty fallow inside the 695 loop...

North Balt City: 12/11 -- T 12/16 - .5" Season total - .5"

I couldn't even log a T - just a few miles from you. So close!

BWI: 17.7" DCA: 13.4" IAD: 25.5" RIC: 16.3" Tiebreaker: SBY 10.6"

"Well, young'uns, back in MY day, there was this thing called "31 degrees". I know, I know, seems impossible to believe..."

BWI: 11/8 DCA: 12/10 IAD: 10/24 RIC: 11/30 Tiebreaker: 8.4"