LibertyBell

Yes that's true. And the best way to find out what the turning point might be is to see how far down the coast we see regular coastal snowstorms. I think Norfolk is the turning point. When our SST get warmer than what they usually are around Norfolk then we're in trouble (we're talking about the most recent 30 year climo period baseline, obviously Norfolk area SST will warm too.)

72-73, 97-98, 01-02, 11-12 though I actually rank 01-02 as the worst because it was also much warmer than the others and predicted to be very cold and snowy lol. 01-02 to 02-03 has to be one of the greatest improvements of all time though and the whole era from 96-97 to 01-02 was horrible outside of 00-01 which also ended on a sour note because of March 2001. But 02-03 through 05-06 (really through 04-05) made it all worth it.

Water temps dont actually matter as much as storm track does. We've seen SECS in November with warmer temps than this.

Was it in January that we had our first SECS? I don't remember when the first significant storm was-- I thought we had snow in December too, but those were of the minor variety-- and those hit the Cape much harder right?

True even the 80s had that. Maybe we should raise the minimum to either 6 or 8 inches then.

Yeah it's pretty much over by that point. There's a stat for pretty much everything so there has to be a stat for this too. When's the latest we had a 4-6 inch or more snowfall and still had at least 24 inches of snow that season? 24 inches should be considered minimum for a C season. 30 inches for a B season and 40 inches for an A season

End of January is the dividing line, if you don't get the first 4-6 inch storm by then it's going to be a bad season.

Water temps are 52-58 wow that's warm

and we just had a minor snow event, you'd think that would be enough for at least a week since it was our first snow event of the season.

and it sounds like the normal progression from December to January is also going to be a help as December is more sensitive to what's going on in the West than January is? also what you described has been the pattern of the last few years-- since after 2017-18 anyway, we have either seen coastal hugger tracks that favor inland areas or east of benchmark tracks that favor eastern long island and southern NJ-- I guess that is because we have had thread the needle patterns the last few years?

Thats amazing Don! Where did you download the AI Chat program from?

What would it take for the pattern to favor a 12+ vs 6-12 vs 4-6, Chris? Do SECS vs MECS vs HECS all require slightly different patterns-- and is something missing preventing it from being a "historic" pattern (I assume it's the Pacific but that is supposed to get better at the end of the month correct?)

and a big one in early April-- that one was my favorite

Which is why everyone sees what they want to see and in post analysis you end up with some very subjective "grades" lol

Is there some kind of principle why models do a much better job with cutters than they do with east coast snowstorms? I would guess that cutters are much more obvious and easier for models to sense and for our big snowstorms the set ups are much more fragile. Come to think of it, I can't think of any 12+ snowstorm for our area that was sensed more than 5 days out-- aside from maybe February 1978? What an accomplishment that was almost 45 years ago! I'd put that right up there with the moon landings in the 60s and early 70s lol.

Early January 2018 had one of my favorite snowstorm of all time. True white out conditions for hours.....it was like a semi January 2016 here, exactly half the snowfall and blizzard conditions for 3 hours instead of 6. AND ALL DAY SNOW-- which is really what I crave. I can't stand night time snowstorms.

Yeah February was like summer had arrived early lol (complete with mosquitoes and ticks!) I don't think anything like that has ever happened before. Bookend winters usually have a break of a few weeks, but that was like a whole different season in the middle lol

Like you have said, March seems to have gotten better than December for consistency though. The core of winter, when one should expect snow, is January and February. So whatever we get now is actually just an appetizer. When January and February don't produce, aside from vast outliers like 2018, our winters usually suck.

In winter it's actually less, I would doubt anything more than 5 days out

December isn't really a winter month for us

Right, this is NY not Burlington. NYC in December is similar to Atlanta in terms of big snows now. Don't expect anything and be pleasantly surprised when it does happen.

Based on the totals it looks like your area ended up with 0.8 in, Ed.

Thanks so much Walt, I see both in these panels. 0.2-0.5 in one and 2.5-3.5 in the other!

I remember a storm but I thought it was SNE centric probably the least amount here considering it's late March 4-5 inches maybe

Chris what are the chances we repeat with another 4 SD -AO later in the winter (JFM)?