I'd take a continuous series of light to moderate events that don't erode a block, vs one "big dog" storm that melts off in 4 days. Snow-on-snow is the best!
To be clear, I'm not debbing on this winter. We have several favorable factors working in our favor thus far, and as @WxUSAF has noted these torches advertised in the medium to long range have been muted as we close on the date.
While I hope to be wrong, I agree. We're investing a lot of hope in an early SSWE and the past 10 years have largely been putrid for snow lovers in this subforum.
18z GFS/GEFS shows a legitimate fail mode for us, and one that I'm always concerned about happening. The trough dumps out west, flexes the southeast ridge, and we just torch while the central and western US score. Hope this is just a fluke.
My goals before Christmas:
Outstanding: multiple snow events, whether all advisory/warning/combination of these
Great: One warning level snowfall event.
Good: One advisory level snowfall event
Bad: No snow
Shut the Blinds: patterns fails and we get back to zonal puke
The fly in the ointment right now for the holidays is a lack of a -NAO. It's tough to get a big snowstorm without that feature to hold a storm closer to the coast. I'm not unhappy by any stretch of the imagination though...it beats Pacific Puke with 580dm heights across the entire CONUS!
Congrats to @wxmeddlerfor his work on the statewide mesonet, and his first TV appearance!
https://video.mpt.tv/video/tracking-local-weather-a-hidden-whale-highway-maryland-big-tree-program-zhvzir/
For RSTM2 COOP site, really impressed to see the warm start to November. We're running right at average now only because the past couple of days have been so abnormally cool.
I'm fine with saving our best pattern for after Dec 15th. A regionwide, 1" - 3" Dec 5th cartopper would be sweet, but I'm all about Christmas snow, ESPECIALLY if it falls Christmas Day and then we just go vodka cold through January.