snowcaine

I'm probably late to the party here, I haven't been very active on here the last few years, but has anyone else noticed that the GFS has been particularly bad this winter?

Liking the odds for 8" here in Toronto. Not too concerned with precip type here - FROPA moved in sooner than solutions that had a delayed changeover (eg RGEM) Wouldn't rule out a run at 10"

Jealous, I got ~5" for that storm I recall being surprised at how well YYZ did!

It's funny you say that. I counted this morning out of curiosity and I have had only 6 events above 6" in the last six years, and only one was above 8" (which was the 13" storm in Jan 2019) Averaging 1 event over 6" per season is kind of depressing when you think about it

It's hard to believe given I have yet to have an event drop more than 5" this season! Lots of little events

One of those situations where it could be 0 to 9 inches anywhere along a 60 mile distance. My forecast would probably be 3" for Toronto, but 0" is entirely possible, as is 7"

I usually find that an average between Kuchera and 10:1 works out best. Unless it's lake effect or slop, then Kuchera all the way. 7" seems like a good bet to me at this stage.

This is Canada's new obsession: stop the variants!

I would think 30 cm is more likely on ground by Friday, especially factoring in sublimation and compaction between events. 60 cm would be heavenly but I would be surprised. My guess is 20 cm of snow from today's event, 10 cm on Friday. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but we've been screwed by overblown Kuchera rates before (even if we're in prime dendrite growth zone thermally, seen far too many rod events when I was hoping for dendrites). And the Thursday night system looks like a classic coastal capture - we'll see how far west the snow shield penetrates, but again wouldn't be surprised to see less-than-ideal snow ratios, especially with such dry air on the doorstep to eat away at that moisture.

Yeah we can't catch a break, but there's at least a chance of something good hitting this week. We've had what, two snowfalls over 10" in the last 5 years?

3.5" here in Toronto overnight. A bit less than I had hoped but I'll take it especially for Christmas! Merry Christmas everyone

It's funny you mention model quality lately. I've found the GFS to be abysmal too. Oddly enough, the Canadian has been my go-to the last month. 2013-14 was the last winter that I found the Canadian to do really well, so I wonder if they've made changes to the model recently.

The Buffalo NWS office has said that they like the Canadian model suite best for lake effect snow guidance in general

We're testing about 4x as much, I am sure actual caseload was much higher in the spring than numbers suggested. Also, outbreaks in hospitals and care homes burned through our weaker/most vulnerable population early. Kind of like how dry, dying branches are the first to burn in a forest fire, resulting in a forest being less vulnerable/susceptible to future fires (or in this case, virus waves). It's unlikely virus potency is any worse or less than before, especially given that coronaviruses in general are fairly stable (in that they typically don't mutate to become any more or less severe over time).

They did drop the ball. They didn't act sooner. We shall see how this post holds up over time. Be part of the solution, not the problem.